Community and Capitalism
Materialism, the accumulation of things and the richness of how we celebrate anything, has grown and grown as the most important ingredient in our lives here in the United States since the early 1980s. It used to be that the CEO’s of any company here lived in the same town as his workers; he knew them, he ran into them frequently. They were his neighbors. By the 1980s, international corporations became the norm, more and more divorced from the American people. That was when the CEO’s started to compete with each other to see who could earn the most money. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, the local CEO’s earned 20 times what their average worker did and then 30 times. Since the 1980s, that percentage has grown and grown. As of 2024, “CEOs earn an average of 281 times more than the typical worker in the U.S.”[1] The latest Oxfam report shows that “the pay of CEOs at almost 2,000 companies across 35 countries, all of whom made at least $1 million a year in 2024; [it] also shows that the world’s billionaires make an average of $23,500 every hour. The average annual global income, by contrast, is about $21,000.”[2]
The result of this huge increase in CEO’s salaries has been the loss of community as their preoccupation with their huge earnings have rubbed off on the entire population. Worse yet, the current Trump administration is reducing the support that lower earners and middle class workers make. There is little or no way for people on the lower rungs of the ladder to take care of their needs, especially since the Social Security payments and the price of any medical help from Obamacare and Medicare and Medicaid are just now being raised in spite of the needs of the people in this country.
Even worse than the money we all need to live in this industrialized society, the lack of community means that people are more anxious, more depressed, less hopeful about their future. It isn’t clear today how little help they will get; but in January, 2026, that might become crystal clear! Congress has failed to create new solutions through Obama Care now in December 2025. The Trump administration is only interested in lowering taxes for the rich CEO’s who support this presidency to meet their “needs”.
The administration is also wanting to make any dissent against the law, which means that the public has nothing to say about the economy or the administration without being liable to be thrown in jail just for disagreeing with the Trump administration. “Illegal protests” are being proclaimed as a safety and civil rights issue, not a freedom of speech issue.[3] The administration is treating the immigrants they are arresting all over the country with ICE raids on immigrants being named as criminals when only about a third have had any legal actions taken against them. Let’s not forget the horrible conditions these immigrants experience when they are imprisoned.
This materialism has undercut any interest we citizens might have had in our fellow citizens. When the most important thing in your life is acquiring the next best thing on your list, then what other citizens are going through or suffering is not important. We might be the richest country in the world, but it is not because we care about the other citizens and even non-citizens in our midst. The trouble with not caring is that it goes against the very conscience we have inside our hearts and minds. We are ignoring the wisdom of God our conscience in order to gain stuff for ourselves. But the weight of these choices on us is hard to bear and means that we have to ignore the risk of ignoring our own sin and our own needs for good, healthy relationships with family and friends, at church and in other social settings. We get wrapped up in fear and distrust and can’t find a way out from this horrible dilemma.
And what about the super-rich people who are accumulating wealth by underpaying their workers. When Investopedia’s headline published in September, 2025 revealed that “Starbucks Faces Scrutiny as CEO’s Pay is 6,666 Times that of the Median Barista,”[4] this was a horrible revelation to anyone who cares about the workers who work such hours at such low pay. It seems that the richer someone gets, the more willing he or she is to make sure that their own capital growth is phenomenal, regardless of what they are doing to their workers.
Capitalism is not a fair system either for the worker nor for the country that supports these capitalists. The more separated the workers are from their employers who now work for multi-national companies, the less the top executives care about their workers. And now, we see that the executives of the gas and oil and coal companies refuse to listen to the scientists about global warming and its root cause being their products. They only care about their earnings and keeping going as usual. And, then our president, who also doesn’t care about global warming, makes sure that they will get what they want here in America. Global Warming is just going to get worse and worse.
True community means that we acknowledge the needs of all the people, knowing that their health and safety and productivity are essential to the happiness of us all. Socialism has certainly taken care of that as those socialist countries provide a secure livable basis for every citizen to enjoy including basis health care, solid earnings, paid vacations, maternity- and fraternity-paid leaves. Everyone in these countries can relax and enjoy their lives. People who live here in the United States at the bottom of the economic ladder struggle to enjoy anything. If we were truly listening to God or Jesus or our own consciences, we would promote a whole different economic system in which every worker was assured of a livable income. Call it socialism or just caring about our neighbors, but it would solve so much of the agony that the capitalistic system here causes.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to not live with our own guilt measured out by our consciences, for not caring for our citizens, who are truly ignored here in this country? It would be such a gift to the those on the bottom of the economic ladder, and a gift to all citizens of this country if we made life affordable to everyone. Now that would really promote community here!
[1] https://www.bing.com/search?FORM=ARPSEC&PC=ARPL&PTAG=1319&q=today%20the%20CEO%20earn%20what%20percentage%20more%20than%20their%20average%20workers%3F
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/josiecox/2025/04/30/ceo-pay-rose-by-56-times-more-than-worker-pay-in-2024-research-shows/
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/13/us/protests-legal-illegal-constitution-trump
[4] https://www.investopedia.com/starbucks-faces-scrutiny-as-ceo-s-pay-is-6-666-times-that-of-the-median-barista-11807782