Wealth and Want in the United States
In Democracy for the Few, Parenti illustrates how our society is primarily divided into two categories: the "owning class" and the "working class." He explains those who are considered the "owning class," are the extremely well-to-do people; those who are independently wealthy and mostly live on profits from their investments. This class consists of wealthy stockholders of large corporations, but also includes the struggling small business owners. Parenti compares these giant corporations and small businesses to elephants and squirrels, in order to give a better perspective as to who is better able to bully their way around the markets. The other class mentioned by Parenti is the "working class," who primarily live on wages, salaries, and pensions. This class ranges widely from blue collar workers and includes anyone who is not independently wealthy. Parenti goes on to explain how seldom the hard work of someone in this class can ever make them rich. As a matter of fact, the ones who become wealthy or maintain their wealth are the stock holders of the giant corporations. The majority of stockholding owners who are collecting a substantially large income from the labor of others have yet to step foot into the corporation's
Parenti further states that vast wealth renders vast power. He goes on to say that these giant corporations have control of technological development and influence the standards of consumption and so on. Yet, these same giant corporations are taken over by super-giants in industries such as oil, telecommunications, banking, etc. Parenti points out that when corporations merge, they try to justify the merge by saying it is to "strengthen the competitive capacity of a firm." However, he writes that very rarely do these merged corporations show any improvement in their performance. In fact the corporate consolidations get the companies deeper in debt. With deeper debts, the corporations find the need to reduce the number of jobs by mass lay offs of their employees here in the states. But to make up for the loss in production, they open up factories abroad and hire double the number of employees in third world countries at extremely lesser wages. Another example of squirrels dancing among elephants would be farming. Smaller family farms are constantly being put out of business because of the low prices that agribusiness distributors pay for their crops. These low prices do not come anywhere near the costs of machinery, seeds, and fertilizers. When these giant corporate agribusinesses take over, they bring in toxic pesticides and chemicals to help boost crops and keep pest away. Meanwhile, they are exposing farm laborers to these harmful toxins and ruining the topsoil with their artificial fertilizers. Parenti stresses that the wages paid out to these f
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1060
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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