this afternoon i watched a documentary on the life and career of playwright arthur miller produced by his daughter rebecca and i'm left with such great sadness sadness for the suffering he witnessed during his lifetime the suffering he wrote about and his own personal suffering his own suffering it was perhaps larger than most people experience because he had those wild artistic moments when he knew he had created a remarkable place plays equal to anything in the history of literature and he had that wild public acclaim with all that he had the normal fantasies of any great artist of any famous artist feeling like a god godlike omniscience and creative power he knew it was a literary genius but that genius and none of his works of art could save the life of marilyn monroe not his genius not his honest love for any effort on his part could save her from self destruction the internal and external forces in her life were just too powerful while she was still alive when a reporter asked arthur miller what it was like being married to marilyn monroe and he said honestly most of the time is spent taking care of her imply that in many basic ways she was not able to look after herself not able to look after her own physical needs or her mental health  ur miller may never have questioned the ultimate value of art as a result of his own art not being able to do much but i do if even the finest work of art cannot save one person from self destruction well what good is it as far as i can tell no poem has ever stopped to believe no play has ever changed the world view of a brutal businessman or reformed a corrupt politician no painting no piece of music has ever made the lives of poor people less difficult or built a home for a homeless person with a reason exception i noticed one recent art auction donated all the money to a homeless shelter so that's one example of where art can make it tangible difference i know a lot of art exists simply to save the sanity of the artist giving an artist a way to exist in a brutal and hostile world i know art sues the heart and elevates the hope of people that is people with good jobs millions of people have no jobs does art ever do much about that we have even more economic slaves in two thousand and eighteen then when arthur miller wrote death of a salesman in one nine hundred forty nine there is just as much mingling of fantasy and reality in our lives most of us are still pretty much slaves to economic and political forces far beyond our control not even after all the works of american artists between one nine hundred forty nine and now artistic genius has generally fallen out of fashion in two thousand and eighteen it's computer and technology geniuses that are held up as the heroes the artistic hope of serious playwrights screenwriters movie directors novelists and poets is usually to make the world a better place make it a better place by pointing out what is good and what is not good in the way we do things but the question remains does pointing out a problem with the work of art make any difference at all in solving that problem the struggle to earn a living is still the most challenging fact of most people's lives and that one struggle generates many of our national psychosis and personal failures along with that our reality is dominated by the ideas of the wealthy one percenters and their corporations it's those handful of people and the corporations that they create that define a reality those people define a reality more than any artist or writer for for poet any personal beliefs we may have exists only as secondary considerations after our allegiance to our jobs and the reality of our jobs more and more if we lack allegiance to our employers were simply replaced we're no longer employable we can be discarded corporations know that everyone is easily replaceable else we're example we began to design ourselves as servants to the cause of making money and to define our lives by our ability or lack of ability to generate money at any given moment we design our lives to generate enough cash to buy our way out of economic slavery we call the post slavery years retirement but that's only if we have enough money to retire there was perhaps a truly naive fantasy of those twentieth century artists to believe their work if it was only good enough could generate social change and stimulate the consciences of wealthy and powerful people so those people would behave more humanely toward the rest of us in the case of arthur miller the art was certainly good enough but as artists in the twenty first century we've learned changing the minds of the wealthy and powerful is not something any art can do that is simply beyond the reach of art the consciences of wealthy and powerful people march to the beat of their own drums wealthy and powerful parents attempt to pass those march tunes down to their children but sometimes the children of wealthy and powerful people decide they want other kinds of music so sometimes the new marches lead to  better living conditions for the rest of us once in a while but most corporate marches still lead to the growth of fascist control and economic slavery in most major corporations the main intention continues to be raiding the wallets of his many citizens as possible in the shortest amount of time that is the goal keeping the prices as high as possible in the corporate view the sole purpose for most people's lives to generate billions of dollars billions of dollars for the shareholders billions of dollars for the people in charge this is as true in the united states as it is in china whatever industry we look at the primary intention is the same universities medical centers law offices banks real estate car sales chain grocery stores the suppliers of chain grocery stores gasoline electricity natural gas and water internet high tech phone cable services everything we buy the the intention is not to provide the best product or service at a fair price the intention is to squeeze people as much as possible there is a big difference between corporate behavior and the behavior of many independent businessmen the independent businessman might personally know their customers and honestly care about their customers but it's corporate behavior that has become the dominant behavior in our economic system and our political system the truth is i'm amazed anyone can keep themselves from becoming paranoid and neurotic in a civilization as economically brutal as ours perhaps are it allows us to feel better about ourselves and lets us believe our civilization is ok even when it is clearly not ok that form of consolation is almost religious our very best art answers to a higher power higher than politics  economics though we can truthfully say some of the art we most admire like the sistine chapel were created for really good paycheck it is a fact michelangelo was paid seventy eight thousand dollars in today's terms which at the time was equivalent to several million dollars the painter vermeer was not so lucky petitioning the court after his death for relief of her outstanding debts his wife said during the ruinous war with france he not only was unable to sell any of his art but also to his great detriment he was left sitting with paintings of other masters that he was dealing in as a result and to the great burden of his children having no means of his own he lapsed into such decay and decadence which he had so taken to heart it was as if he had fallen into a frenzy in a day in a half he went from being healthy to being dead in two thousand and four vermeer's painting young woman seated at the virginal zz sold for almost forty million dollars what are we to think of the ultimate value of art when the artist dies flat broke and over three hundred years later just one of his paintings is worth more money than he and his family ever had in their entire lifetimes the modern value did the artist no good at all it did his wife and family no good at all with that perhaps it's time to reconsider how we do things we cannot pretend there is any fairness or equality in our economic system when some of our best geniuses the geniuses of our time end up no better off than vermeer and all those thousands of people who are not as talented as vermeer while many of them have talents in making money talents on wall street talents for selling sub prime mortgages so those people will leave us no art at all let's talk about economic slavery if we want to name a root cause for most of the problems we have in our country we could start with economic slavery economic slavery is the social economic and political system in which we live we are required to earn twelve thousand dollars per year to be considered impoverished and required to earn much more than that and if we want any quality of life to live comfortably in most places a single person needs to earn twenty thirty to forty thousand dollars per year how we earn that money is the problem what we are willing to destroy for that money is the problem what lies we are willing to tell to make that money is a problem who we are willing to cheat to make money is a problem destruction lies and cheating are part of every large business we don't like to hear that but every large business model including universities medical centers and churches in the united states rely on varying amounts of dishonesty and varying amounts of psychological and environmental destruction psychological destruction being the bending of a person's view of reality do chinese businesses lie cheat and destroy less than our own do businesses in europe lie cheat and destroy less than our own it's hard to measure i mention china because many of us few china as having a less attractive way of running businesses and a less attractive way of running their society than our own we assume our ways are better we have specific social propaganda which we all learn in grade school propaganda which tells us meaningful good paying jobs are available to anyone willing to work hard well that is a fundamental lie upon that live we invent many other lies like equal opportunity and freedom of choice when we accept the fundamental law as truth we set ourselves up for a life time of neurotic behavior and the big lie skews our view of reality our view of reality is blurred because of economic slavery and our view of reality limits what is possible rather than creating new and better possibilities our current way of doing things we learn is not the only way nor the best way right now in the twenty first century in the united states there are tens of millions of jobs meaningful good paying jobs are available but not three hundred and one million jobs that is one good job for every adult citizen we're not even close i don't know where our government gets the statistics about unemployment they don't match the numbers at all we grow up in an environment of brutal competition and we are told that is ok a percentage of us fail completely to adapt to that competition some developmental problems some and up homeless we are supposed to be ok with that as well it is ok with the people in charge if a percentage of our citizens live desperate impoverished lives we know this to be a fact because over the past twenty years as homelessness expands no effective solutions have been created we notice our democratic and republican parties both talk about equality and a fair shake for everyone but they do nothing significant to create viable solutions to the obvious and growing problem of epidemic was another problem which got little political notice until it became too big to ignore the tens of millions of people with good jobs naturally believe our social and economic systems are working just fine those systems serve them well and allow them opportunities and freedom of choice they get to go to the gym and get to take vacations and buy new cars and make babies and buy trucks some believe the problem is a lack of effort or lack of education on the part of the desperate people some take a wider view and notice the problem is caused by or inadequate way of doing things our way of doing things does not create tens of millions of good jobs each year the tens of millions of jobs which would allow the middle class to grow and prosper the people in charge the one percenters the leaders of the democratic party and the republican party clearly do not care the middle class grows and prospers given the behavior of our federal government it is clear the people making the decisions are ok with just two classes that is the very rich and the very poor only two classes are necessary to create and maintain a busy wealth producing system of economic slavery where we live corporate money translates into governmental policy we do indeed have the best democracy money can buy if we want to more humane and more honest economic and political system perhaps we all need to move to south korea or iceland the rise in the consolidation of national and multinational corporations is one of the main factors which creates economic slavery while those corporations provide great jobs for millions of people they also control which products and services are available and can push prices pretty much as high as they want and i'm grateful as anyone for the magical useful things like internet and my laptop and the software on my laptop and i'm grateful i can buy shoes and shirts and jeans and groceries and affordable prices but i'm not grateful for the vicious business practices and limited social responsibility of the corporations who make the things i use i'm not grateful for the increased corporate control over the creation marketing distribution of all things which reach a mass audience corporate control means a few thousand people decide what is and what is not available to hundreds of millions of people in some places the corporations decide where people get to live where the good jobs  how much those jobs pay as well as deliberately limiting the availability of products and services that the corporations do not currently control the battle for internet neutrality is an example of corporations attempting to control the internet just as corporations gained nearly complete control over radio and t v broadcasting lately i notice deliberate fiction is sold to us in glamorous t v ads we see a young entrepreneur creating a startup going national and getting famous getting rich because she uses eighteen t business internet and marketing services or because she designs her products on the latest microsoft tablet it is not mention the same designs could have been created with pencil and paper for less than five dollars rather than spending over two thousand dollars on the tablet and the software we're supposed to assume success hinges on the use of products and services from major multinational corporations and as product distribution and marketing services is more and more controlled by multinational corporations success may indeed rely on making deals with those corporations and using their excellent products scrambling for a dollar is nothing new our parents our grandparents and our great grandparents knew all about earning money is expected like death and taxes having a select group of one percenters wanting to control everything wanting to control the production the wholesale buying the distribution the selling and having a desire to control all the national laws which govern production and commerce that is also nothing new is new is the fact of modern technology which makes thora terry in control and total a tarion control more possible than ever over greater numbers of people than ever before in human history and in our country the control that money has over who gets elected and what laws those elected people create or what laws get eliminated the control of big money is greater than ever in both commerce and in government here's an example of what is now possible in the people's republic of china facial recognition cameras are now on most street corners in most major cities this means your coming and going is monitored who visits you and when and all you say to all the people in your life is monitor much like when you talk on cell phones or use e mail or communicate with facebook it's just one step further we've got our eye on you watch your step we're listening we're listening so we can sell you products and tell you who to vote for where listening so we can make the most money possible from your little life our own government our homeland security would love facial recognition software on street corners if they could get it but truthfully that kind of expensive government control is not necessary if our government continues to hand power and control to major corporations on silver and platinum platters the corporations can install the cameras and manage all the data and sell it out of to each other