Looming Longshoremen’s Strike Exposes Basic Flaw in Capitalist Economics

U.S. Political Parties Have No Answer

By Richard C. Cook, Co-Founder and Lead Analyst, American Geopolitical Institute. Author, Our Country, Then and Now (Clarity Press, 2023)

September 30, 2024

The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) said on Sunday that its 85,000 members, along with “tens of thousands of dockworkers and maritime workers around the world,” will hit the picket lines Tuesday, October 1, “and strike at all Atlantic and Gulf Coast ports from Maine to Texas.”

The longshoremen are demanding higher wages and a total ban on the automation at ports regarding cranes, gates, and moving containers in the loading and unloading of freight.

Potential U.S. port strike locations service the entire eastern half of the country—and beyond, through supply chains. The strike is expected to have a crippling impact on commerce—and consumer prices—just a month from the presidential election.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans have offered a solution to the hardships facing port workers with massive inflation of the prices of food and other essentials over recent years or to the possible loss of employment of huge numbers of workers due to automation. Of course “automation” also translates to AI.

According to the Washington Post, “The union’s leaders say longshoremen deserve a fair share of the hundreds of billions in profits that shippers have made in recent years and have accused the management alliance of making lowball wage offers. The negotiations broke down in June and the two sides have barely been speaking.”

Business leaders have condemned the union’s stance and are calling on President Joe Biden to assert federal authority to force workers back to their jobs if they do in fact walk off.

But the looming strike is exposing a fundamental flaw in capitalist economics that cannot simply be ordered to go away. The businesses that run the U.S. economy are almost entirely owned by billionaires and giant hedge and investment funds whose wealth has been soaring with record stock market quotations over the last several years.

There has been a direct correlation between the passive wealth of the nation’s investors and the inflation that has pinched every wage earner and their families.

Every industry is also under pressure from increasing automation, including AI. As of today, there does not appear to be the political will from any direction to force business owners to share their wealth with workers or to mitigate the adverse impact of job loss. The U.S. workforce has also seen mass layoffs from stock buybacks and leveraged buyouts, both of which were illegal until the “Reagan Revolution” which began the enormous deregulation of the economy in favor of big finance.

But here is the contradiction: As Henry Ford discovered long ago, the economy requires workers and consumers to earn enough money to buy the products which industrialization makes available. That is why Ford decided to pay his own employees more than enough to merely scrape by but in sufficient amounts to purchase his dandy new automobiles.

Of course, many suggest that what is required is greater economic “growth” or a more favorable balance of trade with respect to foreign nations. But what are employees to do who have lost their jobs or seen their wages stagnate while they are waiting for the wizards of macroeconomics to bring about better overall conditions?

This is a huge problem that a longshoremen’s strike is about to expose.

My own view is that the nation requires a massive overhaul of the entire monetary and financial system that I have been writing about for years. Unfortunately, the politicians have little to offer except band-aids on band-aids. And nothing for workers or families feeling the pinch.

Richard C. Cook is co-founder and lead investigator for the American Geopolitical Institute.  Mr. Cook is a retired U.S. federal analyst with extensive experience across various government agencies, including the U.S. Civil Service Commission, FDA, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury. He is a graduate of the College of William and Mary. As a whistleblower at the time of the Challenger disaster, he exposed the flawed O-ring joints that destroyed the Space Shuttle, documenting his story in the book “Challenger Revealed.” After serving at Treasury, he became a vocal critic of the private finance-controlled monetary system, detailing his concerns in “We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform.” He served as an adviser to the American Monetary Institute and worked with Congressman Dennis Kucinich to advocate for replacing the Federal Reserve with a genuine national currency. See his new book, Our Country, Then and Now, Clarity Press, 2023. Also see his Three Sages Substack at https://montanarcc.substack.com/publish/posts and his American Geopolitical Institute articles at https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/category/agi/.

“Every human enterprise must serve life, must seek to enrich existence on earth, lest man become enslaved where he seeks to establish his dominion!” Bô Yin Râ (Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, 1876-1943), translation by Posthumus Projects Amsterdam, 2014. Also download the Kober Press edition of The Book on the Living God here.