Over the years, I've developed my own personal theory about how America works, and if anything, Trump's less blatantly-offensive actions as he prepares to take the country's highest office are bearing it out. So let me share this theory with you, although I can almost guarantee that regardless of your political bent, you're not going to like it...
In short, America is based on an uneasy alliance between capitalism and socialism. These are directly opposing ideologies of how a human society should work, but every part of the continual back-and-forth of American politics and American business directly derives from their ongoing collision.
Now, since both of the terms I use here have taken on negative connotations -- mostly by the concerted efforts of supporters of the other -- let me define what I mean by them. By "capitalism", I mean an economy based on the process of gathering resources, using them to produce something that people want or need, and then selling it to them for the lowest possible price, thereby raising their quality of life. And by "socialism", I mean it in its original, intended form, which is an economy based on giving people an equal share of wealth and resources, and using their combined mental and physical efforts to provide everyone with what they need to be safe, healthy, and comfortable.
If you look at the way America currently works, it's a constant battle between these polarizing tides. American business seeks to expand its revenue and reduce its costs, but when it does, it always comes at the expense of someone. And the government looks to counter this -- to keep workers from being exploited and unfair business practices being enacted. Conversely, when the federal and state governments take control of rights that should be in the hands of the individual, big business uses its leverage to keep freedoms intact. That's the main idea, anyway.
Let's use the example of a big, hypothetical corporation to illustrate: A big company necessarily operates on the money and credit it garners from appearing continually profitable. It has to, in order to maintain itself. In order to do this, it needs to sell more product. So it looks for cheaper resources, cheaper workforces, cheaper whatever. It looks to pay workers less or even outsource its production work to other countries. So the American federal or state governments aid unions to make sure that workers have bargaining power and can be assured to make a continued decent living from their job.
It works the other way, too. Look at our country's welfare program, which doles out taxpayers' money to people who either cannot work or are currently unable to find or are untrained for work. The capitalist part of society sees this as the antithesis of what it stands for, and lobbies to get welfare programs reduced or cut, claiming that programs like this indoctrinate people into dependence on the government, undercutting their motivation to work, innovate, and in general progress as a society.
This directly puts capitalism and socialism in conflict. The capitalistic side of the equation feels they're being hindered from continuing their necessary growth by having to pay American wages and American resources, and the socialistic side strives to keep people from being exploited or having their jobs taken away. In my opinion, it would be much easier if we dropped our pretense of political parties and defined ourselves as advocates for either Capitalism or Communism. Of course, due to the stigma those words have garnered over the years, it's not going to happen, but we're basically working under these veiled labels already. Rename either ideology and it seems to work well...
Republican/Capitalist: "Economic growth is how society and individuals progress. Wealth can be made most efficiently by large companies who then pass it on to the people. There is plenty of opportunity for people who want to put forth the effort, and teaching people to be dependent on their government opens up a short path to oppression and the rule of an elite political class."
Democrat/Socialist: "All people need to share in progress. Business expansions must be regulated to protect people and the planet alike, and there has to be a safety net for common citizens when bad things happen. When money is concentrated in one place, what happens is that a class system is established, those who have the money and those who have to work to gain it. Unless measures are put in place, business will look out for its own interests, without caring about what happens to people who work for their living."
Writing it out, I can see one striking similarity between the two ideologies: both believe they are in the business of keeping the other side from creating stratums of society, something that America was founded by being fundamentally opposed to. Everyone seems to agree that having upper classes and lower classes, with people born into one or the other by chance rather than their individual merit, but their approaches to keeping this from happening take wildly divergent paths.
You can probably tell where I fall on this issue from what I've written so far. But it's still true that I've experienced both sides of this: I worked for a large corporation for many years, and then had to fall back on the government for a few years after the recession swept it away.
Personally, I believe that the corporate goal of unending growth is impossible, resulting in bubble after bubble that artificially inflates wealth and then snatches it away, with the middle and lower classes bearing the brunt of every financial upheaval. I also believe that when bad things happen, a government has a responsibility to be there to keep an average person's life from falling into ruin. The only people who truly benefit from the current state of play are the ones who 1) know when to bail from the next bubble that is about to burst, and 2) stay illness-free. And there are precious few human beings who can reliably fall into both those categories.
So here comes the bad news: we are about to enter into an era where the people in charge believe that a country can be run like a business, when in fact government and industry were maintaining a balance -- Not well, admittedly, but they were mostly maintaining it. As you can see, the incoming President's cabinet is being filled with multimillionaires who are going to try to apply their "successful" business principles onto a "workforce" of 370 million people. They've also been put in charge of the federal entity that, in the past, has regulated them.
The biggest issue I have here is one of allegiance. Big business is beholden to no one, and no particular place. It will go where it needs to in order to be competitive and survive, and treat people in whatever way benefits them the most. On the flip side, federal and state governments exist -- at least in theory -- to be the advocate for the people, to be their voice, to protect them against tides of misfortune, engineered or otherwise.
So here's a parting thought: The earliest set of laws we have from human civilizations past is the Code of Hammurabi. You'll learn about in any social studies and law classes you make take, but one thing I never knew until recently is that the Code explicitly states its purpose, which is to prevent the weak from being mistreated by the strong. So what do we do when the proverbial strong are the ones who are deciding these protective laws? Do we really think they're going to act with all peoples' best in mind?
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