What competition?

Rationales for the way our economy operates are in constant conflict. Lower taxes are a conservative rallying cry, but tax cuts tended to put money in the pockets of the rich without benefiting most Americans. The transfer of wealth to the affluent did not create jobs but, resulted, rather, in massive layoffs, pay cuts and benefit reductions or “increased productivity” for those seeking euphemisms to describe the process.

Some analysts agree that our tax system needs re-working in order to create a revenue stream for needed social programs, close loopholes and produce something resembling a level playing field. Of course free-marketeers decry any effort to redistribute wealth as tantamount to creating a socialist form of government. But when executives can walk off with multi-million-dollar golden parachutes and retirement packages while union workers are called avaricious consumers of health care and wages, a moment’s reflection proves that our present system has deteriorated into a twisted version of free enterprise in which money managers are free to manipulate markets and people at will.

When Henry Ford priced his cars so that his workers could afford to buy them he wasn’t doing it to be charitable. He was making a business calculation. That connection between profit making and a public ready and able to participate in the rewards of entrepreneurial innovation has been lost in the way business today interacts with ordinary people.

And arguments in Congress and the media about health care reform expose the fact that competition has become an empty word that clouds true debate and fosters the pretense that a competitive insurance market exists. It is the last thing insurance companies really want. Only when the voices of the mistreated, under-treated and not-treated-at-all are heard is the true picture of our health-care delivery system made clear.

Only then do we learn that one company may dominate an entire region and that the industry is exempt from anti-trust legislation. Only then do we worry that insurance entities may be engaging in some form of ‘price fixing.’ And only then do we get an accurate picture of what happens to ordinary folks who thought their government would protect them, not just from outside forces in times of war but against threats from tyrants within as well. Who ever imagined we would be besieged by fortune hunters playing medical roulette with our finances and our lives?

It seems odd there are so many Republican doctors in Congress that they have their own caucus. Why they aren’t actively at work in their chosen profession instead of trying to promote what are in many cases ideological positions about abortion for example is an irritating subtext to the subject of health-care. But their steady rant about tort reform despite its relatively small impact on costs doesn’t seem worth the elongated exchanges it provokes. An accommodation in that regard would take that argument out of circulation and allow more important health-care-reform evaluations to proceed.

A capitalist construct in this country shouldn’t just be a tussle among corporate giants. It should be a validation of a common heritage in which we the people are provided with an opportunity to participate in enterprises that are at the core of our economic survival. But we are caught up in a dishonest version of capitalism with people unable to benefit from the fruits of their labor and to feel secure in their homes.  The deck is stacked and no amount of pontificating about free markets can dispel visions of the robber barons in earlier times or cover up the inequities that contort our financial interests. The health-care debate is a crystallization of how far we have departed from real competition.

The aura surrounding our “national pastime” provides further proof that we are enveloped in a stifling corporate embrace. Naming rights for Citi Field, the new Mets stadium in NYC, were purchased by Citigroup referred to as “a financial service company” for $20 million a year for 20 years. (ballparksofbaseball.com) In Texas the Enron Corporation paid $100 million for naming rights to its stadium. Of course the name has since been changed - - the disgrace and all. The new Yankee Stadium is a monument of every amenity imaginable for both players and fans. The trouble is that tickets are so expensive the regular fan base has been all but priced out of the market.

And at the University of Kentucky the Board of Trustees has agreed to include “coal” in the name of its new basketball-team dorm, as stipulated by its major donor who heads the Alliance Coal Company - - a lesson that shouldn’t be lost on the undergraduates attending the university as a tribute to the kind of society we have become.