by Jose Astorga

Created on: September 27, 2009

A failed corporation is the natural consequence of our free market system; consequently, any government intervention is an unnatural occurrence and could have negative repercussions.

I am not an economist or anything like that, but I am reasoned enough to understand that when a business fails because of greed and bad decision making the innocent employees pay the price. This is a very unfortunate and painful side-effect of our unilateral focus on margins, productivity and, what I have come to consider, a form of enslavement. Yes, enslavement. Except for the self-employed, we are at corporate's mercy and everyone is enslaved by the dollar.

I am also reasoned enough to understand that corporate bail-outs are politically motivated; there is nothing benevolent about a bailout. No politician wants to lose corporate funding or have angry constituents collecting unemployment at the risk of losing a vote, if they can avoid it. And they haven't been successful.

Our government and our corporations colluded to get us into the economic mess and now they are colluding to get themselves out of it. And who pays the price, the millions of people unemployed, losing their homes, losing their benefits, losing their minds.

I've also come to the conclusion that we really don't live in a democracy, we live in a kind of corpacrocy. The United States is run by millionaire politicians and millionaire business people, pure and simple. Money attracts money and money can corrupt power. And crazy inflation is probably just around the corner.

And yet, huge corporate bonuses still abound. Does it ever end? The answer is a resounding no, at least not until the collapse is so severe and the dollar so worthless and the average citizen so poor and angry that society undergoes a remarkable thought transformation. Because long term, it is our thinking that must change.

In the short term, our politicians need management and guidance and any corporate leader that received a bailout either gets replaced or takes no bonus until the bailout is repaid without taxpayer involvement. All political pay increases should be frozen. The highest paid politicians and all executives involved in this mess should take, at a minimum, a ten percent pay cut. No executive whose company received a bailout or whose company had mass layoffs would receive a pay increase or a bonus until such time that the bailout is paid back and former employees have also been bailed out, again, without taxpayer involvement.

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