Extractive Capitalism

Gusher Up, Trickle Down, Leads Me to a Sinking Feeling

Extractive capitalism is the economic model for the United States.

We’ve been living through a brutal experiment of how much work and wealth can be extracted from the working- and middle classes and funneled upward before the former are exhausted. The same brutal experiment is being inflicted on Mother Earth: how much lithium, gold, fossil fuels, strategic metals and minerals, even drinking water can be commodified and extracted before the earth itself is exhausted.

It’s a gusher up, trickle down system where almost all the profit is absorbed by corporations and the oligarchs. It’s a system we’re told that’s inevitable—the best possible system, the most efficient, market-driven, a reflection of the “genius” of men like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. And it is indeed a reflection of those men—and their boundless greed.

It’s truly amazing how much wealth is being extracted from workers. The tax code targets wages more than capital gains. Inflation (gas, groceries, and other essentials) cuts into largely fixed incomes. Health care costs continue to rise and are the leading cause of personal bankruptcies. Higher education often leads to onerous student debt that cannot be discharged through personal bankruptcy. Workers are bombarded with ads to bet money on sports using apps on their phones. Lottery tickets are everywhere, selling the dream of a financial windfall at very long odds. Expensive prescription drugs are sold as a solution to excessive weight and even to addiction to other drugs such as opioids.

The term “debt slavery” describes the status of many Americans; they own so little, not their houses (assuming they can afford one), not their cars and trucks, in some cases not even their furniture.

Productive capitalism is possible. So too is a “share the wealth” system centered on communal health rather than the greed of billionaires. But we are fed constant BS that “lifestyles of the rich and famous” are what we should all aspire toward.

How long a top-heavy system of extractive capitalism can last before it collapses under the weight of its own greed and waste is an experiment we’re currently conducting. What will come after the collapse is unknown.

To me, it seems the idea of a social contract is dead. America’s oligarchs and corporations are driven by profit margins, and workers’ jobs are being ruthlessly curtailed or eliminated in the process. AI is being pushed largely to make salaried employees redundant. Who needs people when machines can perform the same function, even if the machines are limited and only as reliable as their (faulty) programming?

Corporations say they exist to maximize shareholder value. Billionaires say they deserve all the money they can extract because they are the “makers” and creators (the rest of us, of course, are takers and drones). They owe us (the little people) nothing, so they say, and if we complain, we are told to work harder toward the American dream, even if it takes three jobs, none of which may provide health care benefits.

Small wonder that the American people want a different system; small wonder we are so heavily propagandized against anything that smacks of “communism” or even democratic socialism.

It’s laughable that Trump and Company sell communism (!) as a leading threat to America when it’s so obviously extractive capitalism that threatens to bury us. Meanwhile, extractive capitalism is protected (and accelerated) by unbridled U.S. militarism as the Pentagon’s budget soars to $1.5 trillion (or higher) in FY2027.

A militant extractive system is very good for a few at the expense of a great many. I suppose this is why my dad warned me that “the rich get richer and the poor poorer” and that tough times were ahead that might rival his experience of surviving the Great Depression in the 1930s.

I don’t know if it’s too late to change course. Whether we’ve already hit the iceberg and are just fighting over the lifeboats as the ship of state goes down remains to be seen. America, I like to think, still has the potential to rally. What is so deeply frustrating is that we’re being led by rogues and villains who seek to keep us in steerage even as they dance in the ballroom.

And when the ship finally slips beneath the waves, they won’t be onboard, dressed in their best while waiting for their demise. They will be long gone, motoring away on their luxury yachts.