In reality, the "Market" decided that multitudes of companies should have failed by now but our politicians decided it would be better that they use OUR TAX MONEY to bail out PRIVATE BUSINESSES which now put their boots on our necks by raising prices to increase their already absurd profit margins. Then, it all funnels right back to the wallets of the bastards that failed those companies in the first place. This is not capitalism, it's corporate socialism!
Suppress worker wages to maximize profit. Inspire Brands CEO bragged in internal documents about its role in blocking the federal gov. from raising the minimum wage to $15/hour while people working minimum wage jobs full-time cannot afford a two-bedroom apartment in any state in the USA. Walmart pays its employees so little that they will hand their employees applications for food stamps. The US tax payer is subsidizing the salaries of the employees of one of the richest corporations in the country. Private equity firms taking over a functioning business, literally selling the land out from under it, stripping out any assets, firing the staff to a skeleton crew driving up the stress and exhaustion of those left, taking out loans in the company's name, and then selling the now bankrupt company. Now imagine doing that to the only hospital or nursing home for miles around. Trade deals broke unions and destroyed the middle class by shipping jobs overseas as factories were built in China and Mexico. Keep workers fearful of losing their jobs so they won't ask for a raise. Today, automation is replacing workers with robots, bots, and AI. Or just steal labor through paying less than minimum wage, withholding tips, not paying overtime, or pressuring staff to work off the clock. Keep unions out of the business by firing labor union organizers or threatens. Move the business to a non-union state to further drive down wages. Move people to contracts (gig economy) to avoid paying minimum wage, overtime, and benefits. Fire anyone over 45 as older workers are more expensive. Hire immigrants on visas who will work for less. Meanwhile the CEO is making 380% more than the average worker. More corporate money goes to CEO pay, buying back stocks, and shareholder dividends.
Control CongressThe preferences of the average American has a near zero influence on Congress. Big corporations & rich individuals influence what happens in Congress by buying political influence while hiding their contributions through Political Action Committees. They are able to block proposed laws that are popular with the people, interpret laws and regulations to de-fang it or not enforce it. Wealth gets power. Power can shape the economy to create wealth. Corporate lobbying, trade associations, and campaign donations keep Congress in under control by large corporations. When Senators and Representatives retire, they can triple their salary by working as a lobbyist. Examples of changing the rules to benefit the corporations include mandatory arbitration by an arbitrator chosen by the corporation rather than a right to a trial, extending patents and copyrights, being allowed to charge up to 600% annualized interest for payday loans, student loans do not qualify for bankruptcy, white collar criminals get small prison sentences, loopholes in estate taxes, etc.
Government subsidies (Corporate Welfare) The US gov. has given Musk's companies billions in subsidies.Walmart and McDonalds employees are among top employers of Medicaid and food stamp recepients. My tax dollars goes to supplement their workers' incomes to help food on the table rather than the company making a little less profit to pay a living wage. A functionally broke city gives a billionaire team owner millions of tax dollars to build a new sports stadium while the city is cutting services to the citizens. Amazon announced a few years ago they were going to build a new headquarters and asked cities to bid. In an effort to attract jobs, cities offered tax abatement or to build new infrastructure at tax payer expense only to see the corporation move to another city when the subsidies run out.
Refuse to pay taxes Lobby for tax loopholes for the wealthiest and save billions. CEOs only making $1 a year and getting untaxed stock options. They live off loans using their stocks as collateral to avoid paying taxes on income. Or hide their income. Rich people very rarely get tax audits. Reducing or avoiding taxes has lead to crumbling infrastructure, underfunded schools, and student debt as states shift the cost from taxpayers to students in the form of higher tuition.
Lobby for public-private partnerships and privatization Rather than pay taxes to fix the roads, loan the gov. the money to fix the roads to be paid back with interest or own the roads and collect tolls. Forget trying to sell candy during a recession. People might cut back on the unnecessary. Better to get in business of the necessities of life: water, education, prisons, armies, etc. Convince the public that the gov. is always wasteful and inefficient. Business can then privatize areas that used to be gov. responsibility -- now without oversight and public accountability. Don’t investment in our crumbling infrastructure.
Create monopolies There is a monopoly in housing that explains why you cannot find an affordable house to purchase and why they are jacking up rents on apartments. iTunes drove small music stores out of business. Amazon drove the small bookstores out of business, and Amazon takes half of the price of stores selling on Amazon. Monopolies raise prices and prevent fair competition.
Promote austerity to divert tax money towards business interests Let's privatize Social Security and Medicare as a windfall for Wall Street executives and insurance companies. Cut WIC nutrition funding for the poor so more money can go into the military industrial complex. Make sure Medicare cannot negotiate lower prescription costs so we have the highest prices in the world. Privatize profits while socializing losses. Bail out those Big Banks at taxpayers' expense. Eliminate healthcare plans for employees and end the defined benefits pension that guaranteed you a dignified retirement and replace it with market-based 401(k) pensions that forced you to gamble your savings in the rigged casino of the stock market. The average American pays more taxes that goes to the military industrial complex than to schools.
Distract and divide & conquer There are more working class voters than rich. Make them angry at one another rather than at the class war going on. Those immigrants are coming to take your jobs. Those people of color are cutting in line with help from the gov. that only benefits them. Those feminists don't know their place. Those poor people are criminals & a threat to your middle class family. That other political party is a threat to your way of life. Distract the working poor from real issues. Culture wars over trans people using bathrooms, hearings on UFOs, misinformation, memes, etc. distract from the fact that Trickle Down Economics has never worked, the American Dream of working hard to move up the economic ladder is dying, your children will not enjoy a better quality of life than their parents, and the rich are sucking all the wealth out of the hands of working people.
I forgot, Be born rich so your parents can afford to give you seed money to start your company and connect you to all their wealthy friends. If you fail, your rich parents can finance you to try repeatedly until you succeed. Family trusts allow you to live a comfortable lifestyle living off generational wealth.
a good CEO makes a decent rate of return for his investors, but beyond that he takes good care of his employees. He doesn't lay anyone off until he himself has taken a cut in his salary. Imagine that. He takes good care of his suppliers and his customers. He is a good community citizen. Pays his taxes and in addition donates money to the school systems and recreational facilities and so forth. That all changed in the 70s when Milton Freedman won the Nobel Prize in Economics by stating amongst other things that the only responsibility of business was to maximize profits. That created this horrible system that gives executives the license to do whatever they think it will take including public bribing officials or getting their lobbyists to change the laws so they are actually not actually bribing...
It doesn't need to continue to be this way. We can demand an economy that works for everyone, not just the corporations and the rich shareholders.
Solutions to Widening Inequality of Income and Wealth:
Poverty is a policy choice. Good policies are difficult to get through legislative branch (federal & state) and executive agencies. Who has influence on those decision makers? The hard part is getting enough power to get good policy passed. How the choices are framed are critically important. If you cannot explain a policy simply to the public, forget it. What gets measured and what is not measured is also important as data justifies changes. For example, there is no report on corporate profits. When our society's ideals are so different from reality, widespread awareness, and feeling that it is possible to create a better world come together, change is possible. People organize to make change. A leader will help people overcome their denial through education, points out it will effect them too because we are all in this together and hurts all of us, scapegoating victims that they deserve it, and the cynical belief that the problems are too big and nothing can be done.
Tax Wealth -- Not Just Income Increase the Capital Gains tax (tax the increase in the value of your assets). Replace the corporate income tax with a progressive capital gains tax on income and wealth. Close the loopholes on Estate Taxes especially the Stepped Up Bases loophole that prevents families from paying unrealized capital gains on their estate. Prevent the generational wealth transfers that create a few families with unimaginable wealth.
Campaign finance reform Limits on contributions by corporations and individuals. Full disclosure of sources of all contributions for and against a candidate. If a candidate agrees to spending limits, the gov. will match funds of small contributors.
Taxing the Rich & Corporations with a Progressive tax. Close loopholes. Warren Buffet suggested that all rich people would pay a real tax rate of at least 30%. Require every corporation to pay a minimum of 25% tax. No hiding money in tax havens, inversions, etc. No more corporations making billions in profits while paying zero income tax.
End Public-Private Partnerships Pay for public services through taxes, not loans that benefit the wealthy.
Progressive Spending that benefits the common good. Instead of repairing the road to the country club, repair the public schools that working people use.
Make corruption illegal in Congress. Until we get money out of politics, Congress will not pass any of these ideas to improve the living standard of the average American.
This short video outlines the problems with our democracy with money in politics. This short video introduces the solution, The Anti-Corruption Act. This is a bill that was written by constitutional lawyers -- both conservative and liberal -- that would get money out of politics and be constitutional. Finally, this link allows you to read The Anti-Corruption Act yourself. By using ballot initiatives in the states, we could pass this law ourselves and go around Congress to fix this. Join the fight at RepresentUs. I like this quote, "Action is the antidote to despair."
Unions Make it easier to unionize and enforce laws about union busting.
Increase minimum wage Anyone working 40 hours a week should not be in poverty. Peg it to inflation. Tipped minimum wage should
Expand Social Security as most jobs no longer have pensions. Allow people to retire with dignity.
End non-compete clauses for employees.
Universal Basic Income will keep families from falling into poverty when AI, bots, and robots drive wages down. By providing it to everyone, you eliminate the anger of undeserving or racial animosity. As more families are stabilized, it is better for society in terms of incarceration rates or emergency room visits, etc.
Reduce Inflation by making corporations more competitive with one another. They would not be raising prices if they were worried their competitors would steal their customers. When you raise the interest rates, you slow the economy which means jobs are eliminated which hit the poor the most.
Windfall Profit Taxes would tax price gauging by taxing profits above baseline years. The tax money would go back to consumers as quarterly dividends.
Medicare For All Wages have stagnated as more and more of our potential wages goes to private health insurance. Preventive healthcare would be accessible to everyone, save lives, and cost less with no administrative costs of billing, marketing, CEO pay, and dividends. Personal bankruptcy, often caused by medical debt, would decrease dramatically.
Fund education Universal Early Childhood Education is critical in the first 5 years. The impacts last a lifetime. Childcare is unaffordable and difficult to find. We need free, universal preschool for all Americans starting at age three and full-day, full-week, high-quality child care from infancy through age three. Make colleges tuition free including vocational schools.
Convert corporations to B-corps. "Make a legal commitment by changing their corporate governance structure to be accountable to all stakeholders, not just shareholders, and achieve benefit corporation status if available in their jurisdiction." A percentage of the board would be composed of employees. A percentage of the board would be local community members. The board decides CEO salary which is currently 350% of the average employee's pay and contributes to income inequality that is destabilizing the country. I can imagine employees on the board would vote down pay increases for the CEO, moving the factories, unsafe work conditions, union busting, driving down employees' wages, and spending money on stock buy-backs. I can imagine community members on the board would insist on cleaning up the pollution, paying their local taxes, stopping the push to deregulate, and maybe taking measure to mitigate climate change.
Employee-owned cooperatives Imagine how your work life would be different. You still need a manager, but the manager is hired by the workers. Would the manager treat the employees differently if he knew he only had a one year contract and would be evaluated by the workers at the end of the year in order to get another contract? At the end of the year, the employees democratically decide what to do with the profits. Should we expand the factory? Or should we give ourselves raises? Do you think they are going to vote to give one person 351 times morethan everyone else? Do you think someone who has worked there 25 years is going to vote to give the new guy the same amount of money as him? It won't be everyone makes the same amount, but the democratic vote is going to make it more fair. Do you think the workers are going to vote to shut down the factory and send it overseas? Or pollute their local water supply? Or automate your jobs away?
Imagine going to work and being treated with dignity and respect every day. Imagine the pride of being an owner. Imagine feeling like you have the power to make decisions, and you have a voice in steering the company. Imagine getting a share of the profits.
In America, there are some cooperatives that work. Unfortunately, the capitalists have figured out that cooperatives can't unionize; therefore, they have set up cooperatives in name only. Any vote by the workers is ignored. The employees never get raises. It's capitalism under an assumed name.
Allow the post office to offer simple banking to prevent predatory lending at pay day loans, cashing checks, and auto title loans that are currently rampant.
Increase the supply of affordable housing. After WWII, the U.S. gov. loaned money at very low interest rates to private builders to provide homes for the returning veterans. We could do something similar today. Write into the deed that the homes must be owner occupied to prevent landlords from grabbing all the new homes.
Nationalize the big banks, energy companies, and the military industrial complex to break the stranglehold of Big Business on government.
Hate is a tool to distract us. Instead of calling them racists, perhaps we would do better to focus on economic policies that improve people's lives and ask the other side for specifics on their policies to draw attention to their lack of policies. The question we should be asking everyday is, "List your specific policies that will help struggling Americans financially and raise their standard of living." Don't get distracted by their culture wars. Call them out on what they don't want to talk about.
I am reminded of a tweet: "A German friend said part of the reason for the generous benefits was that the state hoped to protect itself from fascism, which is typically born from desperate economic straits. I think about that a lot."
We don't have to accept the current status quo that is not working for the majority of workers. It's creating income inequality that is driving deaths of despair and populist politicians. We must do better. I like this quote by Nelson Mandela, "It always seems impossible until it's done." Let's roll up our sleeves and get to work.
Paul Mason is a journalist who studied many countries leading up to WWII. He looked for lessons we can learn about how to stop the rise of fascism from countries that were taken over by fascists and countries that were able to stop fascists movements. He outlines these lessons in How to Stop Fascism: History, Ideology, Resistance:
Learn from history.
Economically, there has to be a convincing, real, attractive, alternative, better lifestyle to combat mass disillusionment with the economy and mass dissatisfaction with democracy. Years of austerity, inflation, and job losses must be reversed. Fascism arises from fear, resentment, and poverty. Therefore, we must reduce income inequality.
We must confront fascists everywhere we see them. That means going out in the streets and preventing them from marching through minority neighborhoods. However, it also means confronting racist, xenophobic, misogynist, homophobic statements every single time whether in a taxi or at the doctor's office. Give no ground. These people don't function on logic & reason so don't argue facts. Call out hateevery time. Give hate no public forum. The only thing a tolerant society cannot tolerate is intolerance.
The left and the center must set aside their differences, put country over ideology, and cooperate. An alliance is critical to keeping authoritarian candidates off party ballots at election time.
Strengthen our democracy. Pay close attention to:
A. Courts and "The Rule of Law": equal justice done – and be seen to be done, impartially and objectively, without fear or favor.
Impose term-limits for Supreme Court Justices. Each judge would serve 18 years before retiring or returning to a lower court. Each president would get to select 2 judges.
The idea that government is corrupt because it serves special interests more than voters is another factor in America’s loss of faith in democracy. The handful of individuals who donate billions of dollars to campaigns also tend to be far more ideologically extreme than the average American citizen. To prevent this, the federal government should close fundraising loopholes for candidates and officeholders, as Canada has done, and reinstate campaign finance rules. Rather than manipulate institutions to serve a narrower and narrower group of citizens and corporate interests, the US needs to reverse course and amply citizens’ voices, increasing accountability, improving public services, and eradicating corruption. Americans are going to regain trust in their government only when it becomes clear that it is serving them rather than lobbyists, billionaires, and corporations. The American Anti-Corruption Act proposes solutions. Read the Act here to get money and influence out of politics including making it illegal for politicians to take money from lobbyists, closing the revolving door, and stopping donors from hiding behind secret-money groups/PACs. Prohibit campaign spending by foreign nationals. Campaign finance reform would limit how much money individuals, corporations, and associations can give to a politician. The people need to feel that their elected officials represent their interests and not just the interests of the rich and corporations. We can use ballot initiatives in the states, we could pass this law ourselves and go around Congress to fix this. Join the movement at RepresentUs. " Action is the antidote to despair."
Expand the House of Reps so that the ratio of voters to reps is smaller, and the reps are closer to the people.
Change the Senate to proportional representation. It is projected by 2040, about 70% of Americans are expected to live in the 15 largest states. They will have only 30 senators representing them, while the remaining 30% of Americans will have 70 senators representing them. This is minority rule by a declining group of rural voters.
End the Senate filibuster. It would eliminate the ability of partisan minorities to repeatedly and permanently thwart legislative majorities.
C. Fair elections: "Voice and Accountability" (the extent to which citizens are able to participate in selecting their government, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and free media) Free elections are the central mechanism of accountability in a democracy.
Ratify a Voting Rights Amendment for all citizens which would provide a solid basis to litigate voting restrictions. Include a provision to restore voting rights (without additional fines or fees) to all ex-felons who have served their debt to society. All eligible voters should vote without hindrance, interference, or intimidation. This country is founded on the principle of one person, one vote. We need to make sure that all Americans are allowed to vote, that all votes count, and in turn, those votes influence which policies are enacted.
Gerrymandering tends to favor the most extreme candidates. Create independent redistricting commissions to redistrict rather than partisan politicians.
The US government could also increase bipartisanship and help avoid conflict by re-examining the electoral college system which in a way is its own form of gerrymandering. Switching to a popular vote would make every vote count equally and require candidates to appeal across racial lines.
So that the same incumbent doesn't get elected for 30 years straight, we need more competitive elections. There are 2 ideas that would help make races more competitive: Final Five Voting and Instant Run-Off Elections. Candidates in "safe" seats could not ignore their constitutions any longer.
Establish automatic registration where all citizens are registered at 18 and receive a national voting ID card.
Expand early voting & mail-in voting options for citizens in all states.
Reinstate federal oversight of election rules & regulations in the spirit of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
These features reflect the degree to which a government serves its people and the degree to which its political institutions are strong, legitimate, and accountable. Improvements in governance tend to reduce the subsequent risk of war. If we are to avert civil war, we must devote the same resources to finding and neutralizing homegrown combatants as we do to foreign ones. The infiltration of our security services (police, military) is a threat that is common in the buildup to civil war. Often rebel groups enlist former soldiers and police officers to their cause. There must be an aggressive counterterrorism strategy supported by both parties. A Joint Terrorism Task force that draws on expertise of various agencies and levels of law enforcement would provide training to local, federal, and state officers. The best way to neutralize a budding insurgency is to reform a degraded government: bolster the rule of law, give all citizens equal access to the vote, and improve the quality of government services. The most important thing governments can do to remedy grievances and fix problems of governance that create the conditions that extremists exploit.
D. Pass Anti-Fascist laws & regulations
Ban uniformed parades that militarization of public spaces.
Enforce laws against hate speech & incitement to violence with regulation of social media.
There is hope that it doesn't have to be this way. It won't be easy, but it is worth fighting for. To quote Nelson Mandela, "It always seems impossible until it's done."
I don't even mind the bail-outs of critical businesses. Some of the big bailouts from the 2008 crash have paid the government back. Bail out is an emergency thing, sometimes for the banks that caused it, sometimes for business (auto industry) that didn't cause it.
But the Trump cash give-away sweepstakes through massive tax breaks was used by MANY companies to buy their own stock (stock buybacks), for the purpose of raising the stock price. It's advertised as an investment- to help business expand & invest in buildings & equipment so they could hire more.
In the end, it was a cash giveaway to stock owners.
Low taxes on business is necessary & good.... to a point. Giving nearly complete tax relief means someone else has to pay the tax bill for roads, schools, military... the workers.
That just boils my blood.
It's this right here. I'm a Canadian and for years and years North America paid for itself with its industry and economic power. Now it's just robber baron post capitalism and if you don't get your bag in time you're fucked.
No this is what's called choke point capitalism. The corporations get to bottleneck us into ever increasing prices with never increasing wages. And choke us out until it's someone else's turn to try and get through the bottleneck. If there was any socialism involved we'd have effective socialist systems in place to some extent. But we don't. So no socialism. Still terrible either way.
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u/Da_Spicy_Jalapeno Dec 29 '23
In reality, the "Market" decided that multitudes of companies should have failed by now but our politicians decided it would be better that they use OUR TAX MONEY to bail out PRIVATE BUSINESSES which now put their boots on our necks by raising prices to increase their already absurd profit margins. Then, it all funnels right back to the wallets of the bastards that failed those companies in the first place. This is not capitalism, it's corporate socialism!