Review by Juan Mendez
Capitalism has died. A class of intergovernmental-corporate
managers who own very small percentages of equity but control
and benefit from vast wealth run the financial enterprises of planet
Earth. This obvious thesis forms the core of Suzie Golnik's book
Good-by Capitalism. What makes the book a read is the wealth
(pardon the pun) of detail that she uses to support it.
Suzie, a self-proclaimed Mercantilist (though not a bullionist or
proponent of the gold-standard) and National Republican, began
writing this book many years ago after the default of the old United
States.
As Thomas Jefferson said," she offers, "Merchants have no country.
And that's what happened to us, when we allowed money to rule
and displace our nation-state."
One of her surprising remedies (in retrospect) would have been to
raise the nominal tax rate to 60 per cent or more on the highest
brackets. But by then progressive taxes had been replaced by first
a flat tax, then a sales tax and then abolished altogether.
"What we did, " she explains, "was to give chief executives a
cash-out price rather than an incentive to re-invest in their
companies. So a class of people who traded themselves into and
out of government for the influence and connections it would
generate got their friends to appoint them to executive positions in
corporations owned by anonymous funds. They off-shored
resources to exempt them from taxation. Out-sourced or cut labor
to add to the bottom line, gave themselves quarter-billion dollar
compensation packages and cashed out, buying houses around the
world. Meanwhile they tore up the social contract with their fellow
citizens and f**ked their country."
Knowing that such a point view would not generate any sympathy
in the Corporate United States or with the World Trade
Organization, I asked how she got this published. "I did it myself,"
she said, "After all, I am a capitalist."
I nodded my head sadly. "Well, lot's of luck," I offered
half-heartedly, knowing that such a volume will go nowhere on
substantive bookshelves.
