The economic system in America is functioning exactly as it was designed. The homelessness we see all around us is a sure sign that our capitalistic system is working the way it was meant to.
I consider capitalism to be a system imposed on the working class. It depends on paying low wages, which equals high profits. Capitalists, the owners of property whose wealth depends on the exploitation of labor, benefit from high rent and inflated real estate prices, or asset inflation, to ensure their wealth and profits.
In the United States, over 15% of the population, or nearly 50 million people, live in extreme poverty, which means there is a lack of all the basic needs people require to live a dignified and comfortable life. Another 35% of the population live in near poverty, which means they live “paycheck to paycheck,” always on the hustle to pay the rent and likely going further into debt each month.
Why is this so? It is this very desperation in society that guarantees an obedient workforce in which the working class, the essential workers, will work long hours for low wages, ensuring high profits for the capitalist class, whose wealth can only come from the hard work of laborers. At the bottom of this system are the people who remind everyone what happens if they can no longer continue working so hard to pay all their bills, the homeless.
When we do the math and see that the richest country in the world has a poverty and homelessness and prison epidemic, we must understand that only systemic change can solve any of our problems.
Capitalism is thriving because morality and common decency is absent from the policies imposed by the capitalist class. The way I see it, high demand (lots of people) and low supply (not enough available housing) will always create fierce competition and drive up the cost of rent and mortgage payments. When adequate housing is guaranteed, the rental market will crumble. People will no longer sign a contract in which half or a third of their income goes to rent because they will no longer have the fear of being homeless.
There are less than a million homeless people across the United States and there are millions of empty homes and apartments. Again this is a supply and demand issue. All this goes to say that we do not have a scarcity problem, we have a policy problem.
While it may seem discouraging that our problems are systemic and politicians appear to have no real intention of solving them, there are plenty of reasons to believe we can transform society and end homelessness forever.
There are people in all classes who are outraged at the homeless epidemic and realize we are failing ourselves when we fail to take care of each other. We need to teach people that the reason there is homelessness is not because of individual failures, but rather it is intentionally built into the design of capitalism to ensure the highest possible profits for the rich and powerful.
When we pull back the curtain and expose the criminal design that ensures homelessness and poverty, we will achieve what Martin Luther King Jr. was speaking about when he envisioned a revolution of core values. The fundamental missing value is the knowledge that we are all in this together and we can cooperate to transform the system. Being poor is certainly not a crime. The crime is the policies that have designed a system which thrives on poverty and homelessness.
We must never cease making our demands. When we advocate for homeless people, we are advocating for the conscience of everyone. The health of society can never be measured by the wealth and privilege gathered by those who have far more than they need.
A true measurement of society must look at the big picture and realize that a society, just like a person’s body, can only be seen as a whole, and if any one part is suffering then the whole body is sick. Ending homelessness is the medicine we need to heal our society.
Ace Thelin, of Forest Knolls, is a veteran educator in Marin County.
