Inequality for All
Back in the 1850s when I was a cadet at West Point, my roommate unfairly accused me of being a socialist, a communist and an abolitionist (okay, it’s true that I was a closet abolitionist, but that’s another issue). Now, with more than 150 years having transpired, we’ve seen far too many examples that prove socialism doesn’t work. As for communism, from what I can tell, it was total bullshit and not worth any further consideration.
The problem right now in this country is that we have socialism for the rich, but cold, brutal capitalism for everyone else. To be more specific, just about everywhere you look the top 1% is enjoying the benefits of socialism, the next 10% enjoys a comfortable illusion of free markets, and everyone else suffers under the weight of supporting all those benefits and illusions. To say the system is “rigged” is a gross understatement.
“Socialism for the Rich” Isn’t Just a Catchy Slogan.
There are almost too many examples to mention, but let me start with access to healthcare, something that in my opinion should be a right, not a privilege. Huge corporations like Walmart and McDonalds (fast food chains are major offenders in this area!) pay their part-time employees minimum wage (or close to it!) and don’t even provide them with health insurance. Make no mistake, they deliberately keep their employees “part-time” so they don’t have to pay for their insurance. And guess who pays for those people’s healthcare? The American taxpayer, that’s who! We taxpayers (I’ve been dead for over 150 years, but even I pay taxes!) pay for Medicaid, the subsidies provided by the National Healthcare Act (“Obamacare”), and innumerable state programs. While executives make huge salaries and bonuses, and their stock and bond holders reap profits from money that should have gone to pay for their employees’ healthcare, the middle class is left picking up the tab.
How dare they dump responsibility for their employees off on taxpayers and pretend they made a profit? Who made up those rules? I’ll tell you who—the lobbyists they pay to influence our government in our so-called democracy. On top of all that, we’re supposed to hold them in esteem and admire their success, even if the rest of us pay for it.
Some of the biggest companies in America have only achieved their success because they’re continually subsidized by the rest of us. Amazon.com, which avoided paying sales taxes in every state until 2017, is a prime (pardon the pun) example, but I’ll go into that charming example at another time. On top of that, these same companies have the audacity to claim they’d have to raise their prices—and we’d all suffer—if they had to pay for their employees’ health insurance, never mind higher wages. One gets the impression that cutting the top executives’ salaries is out of the question, as though that group at the top represents capitalism’s sacred class.
Then there’s the ridiculous premise that shareholders, the so-called “average investor,” benefit from the largest corporations’ success. While it’s true that, if you include their participation in mutual funds and pensions, more than half of American families own “some” stock, that figure is grossly misleading. The fact is, as much as 50% of stock is owned by just the top 1% of households. Think of it, half of America’s corporate wealth is owned by just 1% of the population! What’s even worse, approx. 90%of the stock is owned by the top 10%. In other words, 90% of the population only owns about 10%! A pretty sad state of affairs if you ask me!
And let’s not forget my personal favorite, the sacrosanct imperative of increasing, and protecting, shareholder wealth. If any phrase ever rolled off professors’ tongues at our nation’s top business schools, that’s it. And if ever there was a crock of shit that puts communism to shame it’s the ridiculous premise that any and all corporate actions are justified in the name of shareholder wealth. The personal interests of the executives who make the decisions, of course, are usually aligned with those of the shareholders, but no matter. At what point will they stop? Would they justify murder in the name of shareholder wealth? IIf you look at the decisions corporate executives have made that adversely impacting public health and safety, including the environment and the threat posed by climate change, the answer is a resounding “yes.”
