An Economy Based on Profit-Maximizing Companies is Unsustainable and Bad for the Common Man

"Round 2 is for opening arguments"This is where you should have posted your statements from round one. Please forfeit round 2 of this debate, and proceed with your rebuttals and arguments in round 3. A main point that I must prove is that when all firms operate under a profit-maximizing model, average Joe's standard of living is hurt. One sure way to show this is through the income disparity that countries like the USA have. I'm sure you've heard enough of Bernie Sanders yelling about the "one tenth of one percent making as much as the bottom 50%" but here's some stats just to beat a dead horse. . http://inequality.org... shows a variety of US statistics that may interest you, or . http://inequality.org... for a global perspective. Wow, who knew that the US would house almost 1/2 of the world's millionaires? I would like to point out that in a profit-maximizing scenario, unions are seen as hindrances to profits. Any Microeconomics course will tell you that the easiest way for a company to improve profit margins by cutting costs is through cutting labor. Unions and labor laws get in the way, so companies operating under this model must resort to political tactics such as the ones we are seeing today with corporate lobbying. It is odd when it is actually a cheaper, profit-maximizing model to spend money on lobbying and cut labor/wages than it is to negotiate with a union. Please refer to the second link above to see the correlation between labor union participation and income inequality. I would like to now bring up the point of the unsustainable nature of a profit-maximizing economy. Were it not for inflation, there would be no ability for all firms to operate under this model and receive positive revenue. Put simply, if there were 10 million in a market, 5 firms owning 2 million apiece, monetary flow cannot create revenue for all 5 firms. At least one firm has to suffer a loss in order for any firm to gain. Obviously collecting and hoarding profits freezes up monetary flow, contributing to economical stagnation. We have now a system that does not encourage spending and that is a reason for why we see billionaires hoarding, completely discrediting any of this "trickle-down effect". The cups at the top merely get bigger if there is no incentive for them to let anything trickle down. Obviously this is not something positive for aspiring average Joes who would like to rise rank in this economy. Many of these profit-maximizing firms operate to maximize profits in the short run for they need to "do right" by their investors. They do not particularly see past 5 years, and this is possibly why we see so many new companies outright fail. Many people also believe that to abandon the model of profit-maximizing and to take up sustainability/social good practices is corporate suicide, yet there is evidence to prove otherwise. . https://www.brookings.edu... is a Harvard study that compared the portfolios of profit-maximizing firms to sustainability-modeled firms and found a significantly higher gain in sustainability models (46%). This study is mentioned in this well-done Ted Talk measuring the business perspective of "doing good", finding that companies with this philosophy tended to perform better - . https://www.ted.com... Lastly I would like to bring up a possible counterargument to my points that inflation is good for an economy, and a little inflation helps all the companies operate under a profit-maximizing model. I would say to that person, that if average Joe is not keeping up with the income gains of the higher-ups, inflation is not at all a good thing. It merely raises the consumer price index, lowering the value of his work. Though it may help put off the burst of the ever-expanding bubble that is the overvaluation of profit-maximizing firms, it does not stop the eventual, inevitable burst that is to come. Average Joe needs to eat, how does he manage if he makes 12/hr with no raises and the price of his milk, his gas, his clothes, his everything rises 6.32% every five years? . https://www.statbureau.org...