This is the conclusion posed by Dirk Philipsen, Associate Research Professor of economic history at the Sanford School of Public Policy and Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University.[1]
Free market capitalism, he says, “rewards competing, positioning, and elbowing, so these have become the most desirable qualifications people can have. [On the other hand, this system] does not value “empathy, solidarity, or concern for the public good, . . . social stability, health, or happiness. As a result, . . . the market system has depleted and ravaged the public sphere — public health, public education, public access to a healthy environment — in favor of private gain.”
This system also “fails to recognize the obvious: every private accomplishment is possible only on the basis of a thriving commons — a stable society and a healthy environment.”
In addition,. many “successful” corporations in the U.S. version of free market capitalism seek and obtain government bailouts, tax breaks and subsidies. One example, during this pandemic, is the recent adoption of the CARES Act to provide stimulus to the economy. Yet more than $5 billion was disbursed, under this Act, to 20 large hospitals that had more than $108 billion of cash on hand and whose lobbyists helped the Department of Health and Human Services devise formulas for such disbursements.that did not include hospitals existing financial resources.[2]
Here are two other recent examples of such exploitation by the wealthy. “A package of $170 billion in federal tax breaks . . .will go overwhelmingly to many of the country’s richest people and biggest companies. A program to rescue small businesses initially directed hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to publicly traded companies while many smaller firms were frozen out.”[3]
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[1] Philpsen, Private gain must no longer be allowed to elbow out the public good, The Week (May 25, 2020).
[2] Drucker, Silver-Greenberg & Kliff, Wealthiest Hospitals Got Billions in Bailout for Struggling Health Providers, N.Y. Times (May 25, 2020).
[3] Ibid; .Drucker, The Tax-Break Bonanza Inside the Economic Rescue Package, N.Y. Times (April 24, 2020).
