america's capitalistic canker sore on the soul

​“Wo unto you rich men, that will not give your substance to the poor, for your riches will canker your souls; and this shall be your lamentation in the day of visitation, and of judgment, and of indignation: The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and my soul is not saved!” (DC 56.16).
 
It is no longer enough to quote such passages and then let listeners and readers figure out what they mean and how they are to be applied to modern life. Modern day examples must be brought to bear. In the case of the American cankered capitalistic system and the cankered souls of its practitioners, sorcerers of dark magic all, examples are far from difficult to find. They are everywhere and all the time.
 
Here is but one snapshot in time.
 
“As the coronavirus pandemic devastated small businesses and plunged millions of Americans into poverty this summer and fall, executives at some of the country’s largest corporations sounded surprisingly upbeat…. 
 
“‘These are times when the strong can get stronger,’ Nike chief John Donahoe told analysts in September….
 
“With few exceptions, big businesses are having a very different year from most of the country. Between April and September, one of the most tumultuous economic stretches in modern history, 45 of the 50 most valuable publicly traded U.S. companies turned a profit…
 
“Despite their success, at least 27 of the 50 largest firms held layoffs this year, collectively cutting more than 100,000 workers…
 
“The data reveals a split screen inside many big companies this year. On one side, corporate leaders are touting their success and casting themselves as leaders on the road to economic recovery. On the other, many of their firms have put Americans out of work and used their profits to increase the wealth of shareholders….
 
“Companies sent thousands of employees packing while sending billions of dollars to shareholders. Walmart, whose CEO spent the past year championing the idea that businesses “should not just serve shareholders,” nonetheless distributed more than $10 billion to its investors during the pandemic while laying off 1,200 corporate office employees.”
 
“Wo unto these rich men” is much too light a condemnation. Even better,
 
Let “their torments shall be as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever.” Let them “be chained down to an everlasting destruction, according to the power and captivity of Satan, he having subjected them according to his will” (Alma 12.17)—“you can have anything in this world for money.”