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15.3 The Vicious Circle
The red arrows in the Vicious Circle Chart above track the flows of a huge amount of money. The range, suggested by the size of the several arrowheads, is even more mind-boggling. About half of the annual GDP is consumer buying goods and services from corporations adding up to $6 Trillion. That's 3000 times the expenditures by the political parties, now reaching a record $2 Billion that is spent for the quadrennial presidential election campaigns (including primaries). The green arrows track the flow of services. The service the public performs for the government is voting in the elections.
Limited to a brief mention on the Chart, the services that the government provides the corporations, is more fully described here. Corporations sponsor White House and Congressional lobbyists and others who obtain for their corporate benefactors about a 10% increase in annual revenues, much of which flows right to the corporate bottom line. The benefits are provided by government officials and go-betweens employing an astonishing variety of means:
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cutting corporate and top-bracket income taxes,
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offering opportunities to bid on huge contracts or obtain sole-source work,
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legislating and regulating that allows companies
i. to add profitable new customer charges and raise old charges and
ii. to reduce corporate costs
by accepting or ignoring corner-cutting consumer values,
by the consequence of improved technologies and
by let-the-buyer-beware marketing strategies,
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permitting growing external costs to society, to the environment, and to future generations by pollution and other means, and
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presidential pardons of wealthy individuals, usually timed to occur at term end.