I'm not a conspiracy-minded man. Really. Most people and groups are too incompetent to manage any endeavor so complex and nefarious as to merit the title of conspiracy. But one exception is starting to become clear, and it's being perpetrated by conscienceless corporate power-brokers.
As a business professor, I'm both intellectually and professionally curious about how business should work, what it should accomplish, and how it should get along with government. When I think about the long-term implications of corporations having so much influence over government, it starts to become scary.
Laws control people. Governments control laws. And people are supposed to control governments, just to make a nice, virtuous circle. However, if corporations control governments (as they already do to a huge extent), and "the people" have very little control over corporations (see what influence those 100 shares you own get you at the next board meeting), then that circle becomes a unidirectional line, with business at the top and everything else at the bottom.
And the recent wave of Republican muscle-flexing is clearly, obviously aimed at supporting the eventual control of everything by corporations. Why? Money. And power. Well, there's not much difference between those, since they mutually reinforce each other...have one and you'll get the other, etc., etc.
Let's take a look at recent events to work through a hypothetical. First, GOP governors want to end labor's rights to organize while simultaneously giving big tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy (who are almost universally tied to corporations). This is exactly the same kind of "wealth redistribution" Obama talked about, and which the Right decried as an abomination, during the 2008 election, but in the opposite direction. As labor rights decrease, so do wages and benefits....i.e., wealth. But where does that wealth go? It stays with the corporation, which no longer is forced to distribute that to its employees. If it's a good corporation, that newly conserved wealth gets distributed instead to shareholders, which are generally the wealthiest 10% already. So, now you have wealth from the working poor and middle-class being transferred to other corporations and wealthy individuals.
But that's not the most nefarious part. Not even close. By undermining the tax base, Republicans get to reduce social services and spending on public education. This drives states and local governments to lay off teachers and consolidate schools. That drives the number of kids per class up and the number of extracurricular learning activities and educational materials down. As a result, overall educational quality drops for all those kids not fortunate enough to be able to afford private school. And who would those be? Yep, the kids of the working poor and middle-class.
So these kids get a crappy education, which means it's harder to get into a good college. Not even state schools will be able to take them because they're having to cut rolls or raise tuition (and limit scholarships), if not both, as a result of these same GOP efforts to reduce support for public higher education. And not to mention the reduction in federal and state education grants, which isn't a universally Republican thing. This means these kids will have less of a chance to get a good education and will have a harder time competing for the most desirable jobs. Instead, who will get those good jobs? The kids of the wealthy...the ones who initially benefited from the major redistribution of wealth.
This entrenches that wealth transfer by creating a permanent underclass, who are locked into menial and low-paying jobs by virtue of no realistic way to acquire a decent education (the only way most people move up through the socioeconomic hierarchy). The less they earn, the less taxes their communities generate, which means even less money for education, and the cycle into entrenched poverty is complete.
Also, as voting tendencies correlate with income, the growing number of poor will have less and less influence as to who is making the laws that define their society. And, Citizens United already granted corporations some citizen-like, or at least person-like, rights that can greatly influence elections. Since these undereducated masses will have little ability to think critically about the information being provided to them, and the "news" networks will continue to use their bully pulpits to push agendas that benefit themselves first and foremost, there's little chance that the masses will get access to good, critical information. And, even if they did, what's the chance they'd be able to comprehend it? After all, isn't that Dancing with the Stars controversy much more interesting?
You may think I'm being melodramatic. Or that I have a conspiratorial streak in me after all. You could be right...but what if I am? Education is the fundamental linchpin that holds society together. If we let corporations undermine that, as they are indirectly starting to, we are lost.
