Corporations/Rich Are Buying An End To Democracy

The following is just part of a thought-provoking post by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich:

By the 2016 campaign cycle, corporations and Wall Street contributed $34 to political campaigns for every $1 donated by labor unions and all public interest organizations combined. (And the richest one-hundredth of 1 percent of Americans accounted for 40 percent of all personal donations.)

Citizens United opened the floodgates to big money.

WHAT HAVE BIG CORPORATIONS and the ultra-wealthy received for all their money? Among other things:

 

— Lower trade barriers, which have enabled corporations to outsource abroad — making more stuff in low-wage nations. While Americans have got the benefit of cheaper goods, workers have also lost higher-paying and more secure work. As a result, entire sections of America have been denuded of manufacturing jobs.

— The deregulation of Wall Street, which has enabled corporate raiders (now dubbed shareholder activists and private-equity managers) to force CEOs to abandon all otherstakeholders (workers, communities, those concerned about the environment) to enrich shareholders.

— Deregulation of finance, which has also allowed high-paid bankers to pocket huge sums while exposing most Americans to extraordinary economic risks. One result was the financial crisis of 2008 and the taxpayer-funded bailout of large Wall Street firms. Americans who subsequently lost their jobs, savings, and homes were understandably outraged, especially because these same bankers were never held accountable. 

— Weakened unions, causing the unionized portion of the workforce to drop from 35 percent of all private-sector workers in the 1960s to just 6 percent today, and wages to stagnate.

— Weakened laws against monopolies, resulting in a much greater degree of industrial concentration — which, in turn, has meant higher prices for consumers, fewer employers from whom workers can find jobs, and greater political clout for the biggest corporations. 

— Lower taxes and wider tax loopholes for large corporations and the ultra-wealthy, which have required that other Americans pay higher taxes and do without many of the social benefits taken for granted in other rich countries — as the national debt has grown.

— Weakened laws against insider trading, resulting in even more rigging of financial markets in favor of those at the top, with access to financial information unavailable to most investors.

IT HAS BEEN A VICIOUS CYCLE. Each change in laws has ratcheted wealth and power upward, making it easier for the wealthy and powerful to gain further legal changes that ratchet even more wealth and power upward.

All of this has taken a profound toll on public trust. A growing portion of the American public no longer believes that the nation’s major institutions are working for the common good. They are deemed to be vessels for the few.

When the game is widely seen as rigged in favor of those at the top, society shifts from a system of mutual obligations to a system of private deals. 

Rather than be founded in the common good, political and social relationships increasingly are viewed as contracts whose participants seek to do as well as possible for themselves, often at the expense of others (workers, consumers, the community, the public) who do not walk the corridors of power. . . .

Those who claim to be on the side of freedom while ignoring the growing imbalance of economic and political power in America are not in fact on the side of freedom. They are on the side of those with the power.

One consequence of this imbalance is the emergence of neofascism in America. 

Is it really so surprising that some who feel they no longer have a voice — that the economic and political system is rigged against them — prefer a demagogic strongman who will at least shake up the system over a president who appears to personify that system?

Donald Trump is not on the side of American workers, of course. To the contrary, his one legislative accomplishment during his bonkers presidency was a major tax cut for corporations and the ultra-wealthy.

 

But Trump sounds tough. He says he’ll give voice to Americans who have been left behind. He deploys racism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and misogyny as weapons to make many white, Christian, American males feel more powerful. 

When Trump speaks of wreaking revenge against the “deep state,” “socialists,” the media, and “enemies” within, many voiceless Americans believe he’s talking about their own vindication against the Establishment. 

Trump is selling dangerous snake oil. Why are there so many buyers? Because they have felt acutely vulnerable, and his snake oil gives them hope of becoming powerful.