How can high level bankers and financiers hold their heads high in public?

My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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I thought I'd open a savings account today until I received over a dozen sheets of paper, printed on both sides, from the bank with more fine print than it would take a lawyer to figure out. When I got to the tables indicating the interest rates, at first it looked really good. If I could manage to put together $5,000 I'd get 5% interest per year, which nowadays is pretty good, right? It seemed too good to be true; so I looked more closely and discovered that, in fact, that was too good to be true.

What is really being offered is 0.05% on a balance of over $5,000. That works out to 5 hundreths of one percent, or, to be even clearer, 5 ten thousandths. So for $5,000 that would amount to total interest per year of $2.50. I had to double check with the calculator, and sure enough, multiply 5,000 by 0.05% and that is what you get, $2.50.

It's a joke. The high level bankers are playing with the hard-earned money of the entire population of our countries and making record-breaking profits - I hate to think of how they must be treating their employees - and giving us just about nothing in return, except perhaps some security and guarantee against robbery and fraud. These past decades, banks have made insane profits, which may explain the foolhardiness with which they made speculative investments, some of which caused the financial crisis of 2007-2008. Those who made and promoted those risky investiments obviously didn't care about the people whose money they WERE PLAYING WITH. It was all about GREED and CAREERISM. 

The next step we might anticipate is that banks'll try to convince us that we should PAY THEM for the privilege of allowing them to play with our money, our hard-earned savings. That would be the limit. 

All that is because our entire financial and economic system is based on the principle of debt and credit. When you start out in life you have all your potential before you: youth, strength, ability to learn, ability and willingness to apply yourself to tasks and jobs, and much more. In the eyes of our financial and economic system, all of that - all of YOU - is worth NOTHING.

You have to take out a loan, to apply for credit, in order to have any value at all, and your value is only as much as you OWE. It's a new or old form of slavery which defines your worth by what value you have to the one who holds over you a debt. That is as close a definition of slavery as I can think of, with the exception of freedom of movement and of speech; although in many places these are limited as well. 

I recall reading somewhere that when industrialists and capitalists of the industrial revolution first offered salaries to workers - a specific wage for a specific duration of time worked - that citizens generally balked at the offer. They were actually offended because common sense told them that this arrangement was nothing more than a volunary form of slavery because their time would no longer be their own and they would, in effect, belong to the owners for the duration of their work period.

In actual fact, initially and for a number of decades, working conditions grew increasingly horrendous as capitalist industrialist owners of factories put the "squeeze" on workers to extract as much labor and output from them as they possibly could for as little remuneration as they could get away with in return. Typical factory, store, and restaurant workers in the early decades of the 20th century would work six days at 10 to 12 hours a day for $7 a week. It often cost them $6 a week to share a bed with other workers, which left them with only $1 a week to eat, clothe themselves, and buy medicine. Many poor women who were single parents had to "sell" themselves in order to feed their children. 

Original catholic activists like Dorothy Day and Catherine Doherty cried out loud on behalf of the poor. even embarrassing Church leaders - bishops and pastors - to finally come to recognize that the Church was doing NOTHING for the poor and poor workers. Before and after the "Great Crash" of 1929 there was nothing like health care, employment insurance, social welfare, retirement funds, or even soup kitchens. At best there was only a bit of simple neighborly help by those good people willing to notice and bring some limited comfort to the trouble of their neighbours. 

The very first soup kitchens were set up by Dorothy Day at the Catholic Worker New York in 1933 and by Catherine Doherty at Friendship House in Toronto in 1931, in Ottawa in 1936, in Harlem, New York in 1938, and in Chicago in 1941. Those movements rose and fell and engendered many others as social awarness and responsibility grew in the general population of our countries and in other lands as well. 

These prophetic leaders and activists and the movements they generated arose from their faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Lord, and by prayerfully looking to Him, his life, death and resurrection; seeking from the Gospels light that could be shed on the many ethical and social issues of the day that were having deleterious impacts on the lives of the general population: war and peace, wealth and poverty, the privileges of the rich and powerful versus the constraints on the poor and helpless, issues of exploitation and violence, the insensitivity of public and private institutions and of the ordinary citizen to the trials, tribulations, and suffering of the disenfranchized. 

Originally, Dorothy Day was caught up with the work, writings, speeches, and public manifestations by communist and socialist activists, but she shortly experienced a religious conversion and from then on she followed none other than Jesus Christ. Such as the faith and motivation of Catherine Doherty, who unlike Dorothy, followed Jesus Christ from her childhood. Having experienced the "downside" of communism in Russia from 1917 to 1920, Catherine strove all her life to bring the Gospel to bear on the troubles of the poor and oppressed in order to bring a better light to bear on their lives than anything that communists and socialists might claim to bring. 

Catherine read what the popes had been writing since the beginning of the industrial revolution about the plight of exploited workers and she won the approval of popes she met who encouraged her to persevere in her labours. Pope Paul VI even said to her that on her and her work and others like her depended the survival and progress of the Church herself. That is why she became such a thorn in the sides of bishops, cardinals, and priests who had not caught up to the rapidly deteriorating living conditions of ordinary people from the mid-1800's to the mid-1900's. It took time, but church people increasingly became aware and mobilized into action for the poor and dispossessed of the Earth. 

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Health Care - in Canada: Medical Care Act of 1966 - in Saskatchewan 1st provincial hospitalization plan in 1957 - in U.S.A. teachers set up first plan in Texas in 1929; Blue Cross began in 1936 and Blue Shield in 1939; Medicare and Medicaid came in 1965

Employment Insurance - in Canada: Unemployment Insurance Acts of 1940 and 1971 - in U.S.A. the federal-state Unemployment Insurance (UI) Program created in 1935

Social Welfare - in Canada: Social Welfare created in 1940's; in Québec in 1958; in Ontario the first step was the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1914 for destitute persons over 70 - in U.S.A. the National Welfare system was created in 1935; from 1910 to 1915 32 states enacted workers' compensation insurance 

Retirement Programs - in Canada: the Registered Retirement Annuity was created in 1957; followed by the Canada Pension Plan in 1965 by Lester B. Pearson - in U.S.A. the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad established in 1884 the first pension plan by a major employer (at 65 workers for 10+ years could retire for 20 to 35% of wages; in 1875 American Express created the first private pension plan for the elderly and disabled; by 1926 there were around 200 private pensions by larger employers. Plans continued to develop in the 1900's but less and less employers offered them since the 1990's. The U.S.A. never developed a country-wide pension plan, reflecting its capitalist foundations and principles. It's every man for himself and every woman for herself. You don't plan, you don't get. 

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We have forgotten the original reasons why people were willing to suffer brutality at the hands of police called by the capitalists when workers began to demonstrate in order to convince fellow workers to unite and form unions. They desperately wanted to win the authority to negotiate with the capitalist owners on behalf of the workers in order to seek better hours, safer working conditions, and better pay.

Human nature being what it is, many unions developed into caricatures of what they were originally intended and designed to be, trying to control plants and production and to dictate conditions to the owners without reference to the costs of production and the profit margins. In the past several decades many factories and businesses have closed or sold out because of unreasonable demands by unions, whose representatives lived on the union dues paid by the very workers whose jobs they destroyed. 

The best balance I have ever seen between workers, owners, and bankers is in the entirely worker owned and operated collection of companies developed originally in the Basque country of Spain in the 1950's by Catholics which has become a multinational corporation. Workers actually own the various companies and the supervisors and managers must report to them. 

Instead of companies being owned by a handful of people, who can sell the company and dismiss the workforce at any time and retire with their profits to the Caribbean, the companies are actually entirely owned, operated, and managed by the workers themselves. We're not talking about communists or socialists here, because initially these were good Catholics and I would suspect that a good number of them still are. They haven't upset political institutions but on the contrary have been the economic and social backbone of their peoples and states.

No worker loses his or her job unless they don't want to work, and they are evaluated by all the workers at general meetings. No one earns more than 5 or 6 times the one who earns the least. Their collective profits and pension funds are reinvested into more development, education, and savings. They have developed their own university, and all the towns in which they have companies and workers are doing very well because of the great benefits generated by this cooperative movement. This amazing, creative, and cooperative movement is called Mondragon Corporation. Check it out. 

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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC 

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Boeing 737 Max - What about the common good?

My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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What are we to think of the ongoing crisis in aviation concerning the Boeing 737 Max? Evidence in the U.S.A. is accumulating that there is something structurally wrong with this model, which was a redesign in order to put in larger engines in response to its competitor in Europe. The result appears to have been that the plane tends to put its nose down instead of gliding effortlessly; as planes are supposed to do. Rather than solve this mechanical fault it was decided to make a software solution which would require new training for pilots. The result has been two fatal crashes and for now the planes are all grounded. There is a wrestling match between Boeing and the FAA regulating agency and, now, public opinion.

So what are we to think? There is a growing groundswell of advice for people to avoid any flights on any Boeing 737 but with flight cancellations and changes this may be beyond anyone's control.

For me the underlying issue is much deeper and much more serious, because it stems from the human condition. Charles Dickens was so taken with it that he wrote many novels to express all the human trouble he observed. It comes down to each individual's choice in the face of their human limitations, faults, and disturbing inclinations.

A person either chooses to make relentless daily efforts to master their impulses, inclinations, passions, bad habits, weaknesses, sins... or they don't. The person who settles with their faults, shuts down their conscience by considering moral questions as irrelevant, and sets out to look after their own interests first or exclusively becomes a person who represents a very real and serious threat to the rest of society, because this is a person who sets out to use, manipulate, and exploit others. To use an analogy, that person becomes a shark that considers all other people as so many fish on the "menu" to be consumed at will.

In a society as sophisticated as the U.S.A., this scenario is taken to complex levels in which the legal system, the medical system, the political system, the banking and financial system, government agencies, and transnational corporations, become transformed by a preponderance of "sharks" who employ the full weight of their resources - such as teams of lawyers, engineers, architects, and other professionals - to obtain results which are the complete opposite of the common good originally intended by human laws and customs. The rich, powerful, and influential push their own agendas and "to hell" with everyone else.

The Boeing problem is a mere pimple on the rear end of American society, but the real problem is far worse and much more serious a threat to the common good. America boasts it is the best society in the world, but its form of democracy and capitalism favors the less than one percent who are the rich, the powerful, and the influential who grab the levers of control of the dynamics of the whole society in order to look after their own interests, euphemistically called "American interests", but they turn events away from the common good and toward their own private interests. In public they create a mirage of the opposite, declaring unashamedly that they are doing everything in their power to serve the common good, but in private and in practice, the opposite is true.
The results are everywhere visible in the U.S.A. Consider "Corporate America" and the growing number of thriving little towns turned into ghost towns after the Walmarts of this world have squeezed all the juice out, put all the little businesses out of work, and abandoned their empty store to move on to another town in order to do the same there. American corporations are securely locked into a form of capitalism whose only interests are the profit and well being of the owners, board members and officers, and the controlling share holders. The profit and well being of everyone else, including all their workers, are of little or no consequence; such that with little or no notice they move jobs out of the country or eliminate them altogether with no apology or any sense of wrongdoing.

Then there is the medical system and public health. There are the 1 out of 4 Americans who don't have health coverage at all - the "working poor" - whose values prevent them from taking welfare but who can't afford health insurance. The bulk of Americans who do have health insurance are often told their condition isn't covered. Insurance companies - life as well as health and others too - have lots of staff whose job is to full exploit the exclusions in the contract to save the company as much money as possible and refuse as many claims as possible.

Then there is the legal system which tolerates hordes of "ambulance chasing lawyers", sharks, who encourage desperate people to sue for almost anything, whether legitimate or reasonable or not, and the judiciary system that tolerates and allows wrongful suits, driving the legal costs way out into space. People with the money to hire teams of lawyers trained in all the ways of exploiting laws to profit their employers destroy the lives of people they sue, and the judiciary is often without the wisdom of Solomon and gives its stamp of approval to such miscarriage of justice.
Then there is the food industry which has so industrialized agriculture that they are depleting the soils and turning them into deserts while producing foods that are less and less nutritious, also taking pains and employing lawyers to pressure small farmers out of their family farms in order to seize their property and turn it into huge agribusiness fields. A new strategy is the biological modification and copyrighting of seeds and suing small farmers out of their right to use normal seeds and in the end causing them to lose their farms so they can grab them.

Then there is big pharma which has industrialized medicine and exerts considerable power over the medical system and has pressured, bought, or sued legitimate alternative medical practices and practitioners out of existence, going so far as to create by malicious rumor suspicion of alternative doctors and going so far as to destroy their practices and even drive them to mysterious deaths.
Then there is the banking and financial system that in the U.S.A. has one of the most if not the most unforgiving rule book. All too often contracts clearly state that should the borrower default in their payments beyond a certain limit that their property reverts to the bank or financial institution and they are out on the street. Any number of life crises as indicated above can put people in a situation of hardship where they are unable for a time to pay their mortgage or taxes. When that happens, if they have no rich relatives to help them or insufficient income, they are consumed by the "sharks" and join the ranks of the homeless.

In society that final recourse rests on government. It is the role of government to rule the nation on behalf of its citizens and to ensure the common good by regulating the many rabid human tendencies which tend to exploit the weak and helpless. America came closest to having such a government as an outcome of WW II when in the 1950's a large middle class came into being with an abundance of well paid jobs, good homes, and good health care. Then from the 1960's and 1970's on - coinciding with the government's insane warmongering in Viet Nam and subsequently other nations - American presidents led governments that progressively deregulated all of these fields of action in order to favor the rich, powerful, and influential by simultaneously disenfranchising the common citizen.

One of the results of all of these situations can be observed on late night TV in the "GREAT U.S.A." where people sell schemes for getting rich by gobbling up homes and properties of people who have fallen on hard times and are very late in paying their mortgages or taxes. Banks and financial institutions are the first to take over properties in default of their mortgage payments, but when the banks haven't already seized people's homes, entrepreneurs can grab them simply by paying the back taxes and the people who owned those homes are on the street.

A second result is the poor condition of infrastructures all over the U.S.A. - decrepit utility grids, bridges, dams, roads, sewage systems, and so on - because the rich, powerful, and influential refuse to pay their fair share and insist the burden fall squarely on the common citizen and taxpayer. Rather than do that, governments allow conditions to further deteriorate. Remember what happened to New Orleans when the poor condition of the levees allowed the hurricane to destroy much of the city and make permanently homeless any number of residents.

This is just a brief sketch of the scandalous condition of America's public institutions, and the Boeing problem appears to be wrong in the eyes of public America only because the callous disregard of its agents for the common good was so negligent that they exposed to public view what all the other sharks manage to keep hidden from view. The proof of that is how the current president manages to persuade much of the population that he is acting in their interests at the very same time that he is acting on behalf of all the rich, powerful, and influential and not at all for the common good. There are a few exceptions, such as the way in which at the United Nations he leads the American presence and delegation in hindering the efforts of those bent on forcing the nations into adopting abortion policies against their own nations' values in favor of preserving human life.

Please don't get me wrong... I have met many Americans during my seven decades of life on Planet Earth, both in the U.S.A. and elsewhere around the world, but especially here in Canada. Rarely have I not liked or even admired those Americans I have known. It is ironic that there can be so many very fine Americans while they endure such perverse public institutions. Their government buildings have emulated Greek architecture, as the Romans also did, in part because from the beginning they have seen themselves as successors to the Roman Empire.

Like them, they now interfere worldwide in the affairs of other nations, going so far as to bring down governments they consider unfavorable to their interests. No governments anywhere can be permitted to truly serve the common good in the genuine interests of the general population, because in their view the supreme interests are those of the rich, the powerful, and the influential. The general population can only be allowed the crumbs that fall from the tables of the rich, if there are any, but if not; then that's just too bad.

American public institutions are not particularly more blameworthy than you or I, because they are simply more visible manifestations of the human condition, and what Christians call the original sin. Once human beings turn away from the benevolent will of their Creator and God, they no longer have any solid moral grounds for their thoughts or feelings, for their choices or decisions, for their deeds or behavior. Once we treat God as if He doesn't exist, the way is clear for us to take his place. America makes this most eloquently clear by constantly deciding what is to be considered good or evil, but always in accord with its current definition of American interests.

We in Canada are not far behind with our frenzied public enthusiasm for doing away with unwanted babies and anyone who may be tired of suffering or even of living, just as easily as we are publicly eager to redefine not only marriage but even what it means to be a human person, a man or woman. Without God there can be no moral compass, and I feel deep pity for people without God. It is still good news, no, great news, that God does not so easily abandon us as we abandon Him. During these Days of Christmas we have found once again great joy in celebrating the One who came to dwell among us - Emmanuel - Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the Messiah, the true Savior of the world.

DISCLAIMER:    It is possible that I may have been inaccurate in one or other of my statements above or in the details. What I have written is nothing of my own but simply an accumulation of other people's observations as reported in countless articles, reports, public inquiries, public investigations, books by professionals, public scandals, American citizens I've been privileged to meet and know, other eye witnesses, and other reliable sources of information that I have been privileged over the past 5 decades to see, hear, or read. Where I am in error, I apologize, and am quite eager to receive authentic evidence to the contrary; upon reception of which I will gladly revise my views.

Peace to you and your family, and a very Happy, Healthy, and Holy New Year 2020!

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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC 

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