Profiteering

This is from Wikipedia--which we all know is not the most accurate source of information all the time, but makes a great jumping-off spot.
(Capitalism is an economic system and a mode of production in which trade, industries, and the means of production are largely or entirely privately owned and operated for profit.^[1][2] Central characteristics of capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor and, in many models, competitive markets.^[3] In a capitalist economy, the parties to a transaction typically determine the prices at which assets, goods, and services are exchanged.^[4]
The degree of competition, role of intervention and regulation, and scope of state ownership varies across different models of capitalism.^[5] Economists, political economists, and historians have taken different perspectives in their analysis of capitalism and recognized various forms of it in practice. These include laissez-faire capitalism, welfare capitalism, crony capitalism and state capitalism; each highlighting varying degrees of dependency on markets, public ownership, and inclusion of social policies. The extent to which different markets are free, as well as the rules defining private property, is a matter of politics and policy. Many states have what are termed capitalist mixed economies, referring to a mix between planned and market-driven elements.^[6] Capitalism has existed under many forms of government, in many different times, places, and cultures.^[7] Following the demise of feudalism, capitalism became the dominant economic system in the Western world.)

I have always been in favor of Capitalism!  (my parents were for it, scared of being bombed by the USSR or RED China and made sure we got that our way was the only good way)  Well, except for that short period in college when I had the strange little sociology grad. student teaching freshman intro to soc.  He was weird, so he didn't make me change, but he did a good job of adding some questions to my mind.  So I then was almost sent to a camp for deprogramming for asking those questions during the following summer--"what if everyone got to choose their own job according to what they were good at  and and what they wanted to do, but we all made the same amount of money?"  The horrified answer was  "dammit, then we'd be commies"

I dropped that.  Went on with my life constantly trying to find a job I liked and that paid enough to live on(in my world, it was never the same job, sometimes it wasn't even the same two jobs), all the time watching what TV showed as middle class existence and my own world which was more of a BET series or maybe an HBO look at the struggles of a down and out family.  That was a time in which just getting by was all consuming.  The world went through a lot of changes, and all I noticed was I still couldn't keep all the bills current AND get my kids the clothes they thought were necessary to compete with their classmates.  The bills won and the kids still complain about that.

So what does any of this have to do with profiteering.

EVERYTHING!

Capitalism is all about making a profit.  What no one tells the students in class learning about it, is that most of us are not in the group that receives the profits.  Most of us are under the expense column.  We are skilled labor or unskilled labor.  We are in marketing or accounting.  We are in research and development.  We are in the technology budget.

 The profits go to the stockholders.

So, while capitalism runs our nations, most of us are not stockholders, we are expenses to be controlled.
That explains why, despite making a profit, the raising of the minimum wage is fought tooth and nail and giving better benefits is not seen as helping the company.  It is all about how much of the money obtained from sales goes back to the stockholders.

Amazingly, stockholders didn't have to do any work, they just had to buy stock.  And if all those expenses perform well and at a low enough cost, the profits go up.  And the people that created that profit, profit not at all.

Right now, we have huge income inequality and a huge fight to keep that inequality as it is.  The same thoughts that made my own parents teach me the evils of anything but capitalism are still using the same methods---only the names are changed because---names and borderlines change.

Currently in the news:  We are having a major fight on the political, economic and street fronts for/against raising the minimum wage.  If all the jobs had increased evenly, by percent, the current minimum wage would be $21.00/hour. (I used my own wage, but am in a field with a high demand right now.  If I had used the increase in CEO pay, they would need to be $75.00/hour.  The $15.00 currently being suggested is based on what is should be by cost of living/inflation increases.  And yet there are people making less than that claiming it is too much.  (now who needs deprogramming?)

We have people in healthcare griping about Obama care, which would get rid of all that unpaid healthcare that has been wrecking havoc on hospitals due to loss of payments by people without insurance.  So, who is actually complaining and why:  well, there is more government over site and pay is going to be more standardized.  Selling patient's drugs and procedures and hospital stays to increase profits will be identified and stopped.  A dying patient does not need a $200,000 surgery unless that surgery can save them, yet patients with stage 5 lung Cancer have had major heart surgery, only to die without every making it home.  That is what oversight is about.  People that are blind from glaucoma will not profit from cataract surgery and annual colonoscopies for diverticulosis does not help the patient, they just bring in money.  The people talking bad about Obama care are insurance companies (more oversight and thus fewer of those ridiculous clauses they don't pay on) pharmaceutical companies (more oversight of those high cost meds that are no better than their cheaper cousins)  physician Lobby groups (sooooo powerful, there is a reason that physicians make more money than all other Doctorate prepared people)

In the news was standardized test companies pouring money into lobbying for their company and "for profit"  jails/prisons with quotas that the states/cities have to reach to keep their contracts (how is more people in the prison system really good?) there is a proliferation of career and internet colleges with tuition higher than the highest Ivy League school that promises to make everyone, no matter what their difficulties a successful person. For Profit career colleges have been doing this for thirty years but when that degree cost so much that you owe more than you can ever make per year, that is more scam than education. (brings to mind my fathers "smart pill" joke).

We have lawmakers making laws that determine what is science, using greed and wishful thinking as their conscience.  We have the ability to clean up our environment but while it is do-able, it will take profits from a giant industry--petroleum.  Rather than using this time to find other energy sources and becoming the front line in those, they have focused on keeping their own power just as it is and damn progress and the environment and the future of the planet.

We have a War on Drugs, and there is so much under the table money being passed around to keep that war going that it makes prohibition look like a minor error in law making.  Legalize them.  Pull the teeth of the criminal enterprises and tax the addicts and recreational users, and stop filling the pockets of the stockholders of the For Profit Prisons and Jails.  And Get those drug users and dealers with no violent behavior back out of those prisons.  Those three strikes for drug crimes are lives that don't have to be lost.

And the big bear--the WAR MACHINE.  Weapons manufacturers, military suppliers, and that includes all those "meals-ready-to-eat" makers and uniform factories and combat boots and hanger's on industries that profit most highly when there are people being killed in the name of a country and its wants.  Any company that can only profit during a time of war is not a successful company.  If they can't make a profit without someone dying, they should quit.

Perhaps the worst of the profiteers are our lawmakers.  The old "fox in the hen house" comes to mind.  When the ethics of those determining the fate of our country is up for sale to the biggest SUPERPAC, the whole checks and balances system is thrown into a tailspin.  When the people being voted in no longer fight for those people, but rather fight for the money that backed them, only the profiteers win. 

There is nothing wrong with making a profit.  If I sell what I make for the cost of the materials I used to make the thing, I will starve.  A profit is not unfair.  Profiteering is beyond that, it is when we change the system, use the emergencies, use the fears, create a system in which the only important thing is the profit.

We need our ethics back.