Slavery 2.0 - The American Caste System

 

In America, the outright buying and selling of humans into slavery have evolved into a varied plethora of schemes to exploit people for financial gain.  A new form of indentured servitude has arisen from the ashes of the slave markets.  These are not formal contracts for indentured servitude common early in the 17th century where individuals paid back the expense of their passage to the New World.  Those contracts were finite and included the expense of their lodging, board, and freedom dues, by working for the contract holder.  Under such contracts, the servant worked from four to seven years and could, at the end of their contracts, receive, along with their freedom, 25 acres of land, some corn, a cow, new clothes, and a gun.

Indentured Servants

No, today in what I am calling the New Slavery or Slavery 2.0, a caste system has evolved whereby people are held in a vicious cycle of poverty that is enforced by poor educational opportunities, low wages, nutritional insecurity, and limited access to healthcare.  People are sometimes tied to jobs as the only assurance of healthcare for themselves and their families.  Even those who manage a college education are often burdened with a crushing debt that again relegates them to a permanent association in some lower caste.

Crushing Student Loan Debt

Early in the evolution of the American caste system, we found the “Company Store” that provided a monopolistic source of essentials to company workers where their wages were recycled back to the company.  The workers were paid, sometimes in company script, and they were held in perpetual debt peonage.  In the song made famous by Tennessee Ernie Ford titled Sixteen Tons, he laments, “I owe my soul to the Company Store.” 

The Company Store

Today we have large corporations that pay below subsistence wages to their employees thus guaranteeing huge profits for their owners and shareholders.  Their employees are then forced to draw on public assistance for rent, food, and other essentials.  Such companies are thus benefiting at taxpayer expense.  Since many of these corporations pay little or no taxes, the situation is even more egregious.

Are there solutions to this problem?  Yes, but it is not as simple as raising the minimum wage as some might suggest.  An improvement in minimum wage disparity would go a long way to address the issue but overall it is a bit more complicated.  We need to address the disparity in educational opportunities.  We need to address the healthcare issue and break its tie to employment.  We need to tax all wealthy individuals and large businesses and corporations through at least some minimum tax.  Perhaps we could allow companies like Walmart to pay a below subsistence wage but tax them in such a way as to make that financially ill-advised.  We need to break the profit incentive of mass incarceration by eliminating the private prison system.  We need to revisit the crime and punishment portion of our society whereby we have become the world leader in the incarceration of our citizens. We need to assure that all individuals have access to a sound nutritional diet beyond what food stamps and similar programs provide.

Pays below subsistence wages; employees supported by taxpayers

If we break the cycle of poverty and allow more people access to the realization of the American Dream, we will have come a long way to solving many of our other problems.  We need the American Dream, not the American Nightmare.  If we truly “hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” then we need to make some wholesale changes in the structure of this democracy.