How are you using the terms Wall Street and Main Street?

In common usage the terms Wall Street and Main Street distinguish between two economies with strikingly different priorities, values and institutions. They are distinct, but interconnected, and they are often in competition.

Wall Street

Wall Street refers to the institutions of big finance and the captive ccorporationsthat serve them. They may be located anywhere, not necessarily on the famous street in New York City that has become a global symbol of capitalism.

Wall Street is a world of pure finance in the business of using money to make money by whatever means for people who have money. It has perfected the arts of generating unearned profits through financial speculation, corporate asset stripping, usury, deceptive lending practices and securities ratings, lending, risk shifting, leveraging, and creating debt pyramids. Maximizing financial return is the name of the game. Successful players are rewarded with celebrity, extravagant perks, and vast financial fortunes.

Wall Street players may justify their actions with the claim that they are creating wealth for the larger beneit of the society, a convenient bit of self-delusion. Money isn’t wealth. It is only an accounting chit, a number of value only because by social convention we are willing to accept it in return for things of real value. It has no inherent value or existence outside the human mind. Creating money money unrelated to the production of anything of real value, although often legal, is a form of theft.

Main Street

Main Street is the world of local businesses and working people engaged in producing real goods and services to provide a livelihood for themselves, their families, and communities. Main Street is more varied in its priorities, values, and institutions. Like the diverse species of a healthy ecosystem, its enterprises take many forms, from sole proprietorships and family businesses to cooperatives and locally owned and rooted privately held corporations. Achieving a positive financial return is an essential condition of staying in business, but most Main Street businesses function within a framework of community values and interests that moderate the drive for profit.

I grew up in a small town in which my family had a successful retail music and appliance business. My dad took great pride in standing behind and servicing everything he sold. I recall the not infrequent experience of his answering the phone during dinner and asking mother to keep his dinner warm as he got up to open the store for a customer with an urgent need. One, I remember, was from a local musician who had broken his guitar pick and needed a replacement for a job he was playing that night. At that time, a pick was no more than a 10-cent item, but the customer had an urgent need and that was all that mattered.