Rampant capitalism in the American Age — a piquant note from the 2018 Super Bowl

05 February 2018

Today's message

A sardonically amusing look at American culture.

Let's start with the enormous (brain-crushing) NFL business called the Super Bowl.

The 2018 Super Bowl's RAM trucks advertisement

In our "Homeland", Jesus' message has already been slaughtered by pretend Christians' Prosperity Gospel.

And now, according to RAM Trucks, it was Martin Luther King Jr's turn to go under the Values Masher.

RAM's 2108 Super Bowl advertisement coopted — and blastingly corrupted — Dr. King's anti-capitalist message in order to sell new pickups.

This is how Rampant Capitalism works

Absolutely everything is suborned and redirected so as to sell Greed.

Meanwhile and similarly

Big Government takes and then loses your money:

Ernst & Young [see who they are here] found that the Defense Logistics Agency [see what that is here] failed to properly document more than $800 million in construction projects, just one of a series of examples where it lacks a paper trail for millions of dollars in property and equipment.

Across the board, its financial management is so weak that its leaders and oversight bodies have no reliable way to track the huge sums it's responsible for, the firm warned in its initial audit of the massive Pentagon purchasing agent.

The audit raises new questions about whether the Defense Department can responsibly manage its $700 billion annual budget — let alone the additional billions that Trump plans to propose this month. The department has never undergone a full audit despite a congressional mandate — and to some lawmakers, the messy state of the Defense Logistics Agency's books indicates one may never even be possible.

Lost public money and hidden private loot — the effect is the same

Consider, for example, that:

An estimated $21 to $32 trillion of private financial wealth is located, untaxed or lightly taxed, in secrecy jurisdictions around the world. Secrecy jurisdictions - a term we often use as an alternative to the more widely used term tax havens - use secrecy to attract illicit and illegitimate or abusive financial flows.

A global industry has developed involving the world's biggest banks, law practices, accounting firms and specialist providers who design and market secretive offshore structures for their tax- and law-dodging clients. 'Competition' between jurisdictions to provide secrecy facilities has, particularly since the era of financial globalisation really took off in the 1980s, become a central feature of global financial markets.

The problems go far beyond tax. In providing secrecy, the offshore world corrupts and distorts markets and investments, shaping them in ways that have nothing to do with efficiency.

The secrecy world creates a criminogenic hothouse for multiple evils including fraud, tax cheating, escape from financial regulations, embezzlement, insider dealing, bribery, money laundering, and plenty more.

It provides multiple ways for insiders to extract wealth at the expense of societies, creating political impunity and undermining the healthy 'no taxation without representation' bargain that has underpinned the growth of accountable modern nation states. Many poorer countries, deprived of tax and haemorrhaging capital into secrecy jurisdictions, rely on foreign aid handouts.

Who leads the International Hide the Money Sweepstakes?

By one persuasive measure, Switzerland and the United States.

See those rankings here.

And the study's methods, here.

The moral? — We 'Muricans squash saints, trample values, and we're damn proud of it

Next year, we'll enjoy another round of chronic traumatic encephalopathy-inducing violence on the gridiron — as Rampant Capitalism distracts us with its circuses — while it robs us of money, societal sense and ethical scripture.

A brilliantly designed system.

The devil (so to speak) would be proud.

PeteFree.com

Rampant capitalism in the American Age — a piquant note from the 2018 Super Bowl