For decades now, Washington, DC has been the world’s biggest butchery. Carving up the US’s carcass – and selling it by the pound to the highest bidders.
This has massively grown the nation’s Big Businesses. While the nation itself has withered and shriveled.
For its part, the Left occasionally has a point about the problems we face. They are almost always wrong about their causes – and their solutions. But that changes not their correctness about the problems.
To wit: Remember when the Left’s Occupy Wall Street – and its slogan “We are the 99%” – became a thing?:
“(A) left-wing populist movement against economic inequality, corporate greed, big finance, and the influence of money in politics that began in …2011….
“There were many particular points of interest leading up to the Occupy movement that angered populist and left-wing groups. For instance, the 2008 bank bailouts under the George W. Bush administration….”
“The Occupy protesters’ slogan ‘We are the 99%’ referred to the income disparity in the US and economic inequality in general, which were main issues for OWS.”
In retrospect? The Left was exactly correct about nearly all of the excerpts I chose.
Big Government spent the 2010s giving the Big Banks a $29 trillion bailout – as a reward for partnering with Big Gov to destroy the global economy.
While giving ZERO similar assistance to the many tens of millions of Americans destroyed or damaged by the Big Gov-Big Bank cabal.
All of which certainly seems a bit misplaced. Not to mention excessive.
And that “99%” thing? There have been decades’ worth of a growing gap between the rich – and all the rest of US:
“Rising income inequality, the disparity between the rich and the poor in the U.S., has been growing for decades. In 2021, the top 1% of earners controlled 32.3% of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 50% controlled just 2.6%.”
The wealth discrepancy has in part grown – because the income discrepancy has grown:
“(R)eal average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.”
“(T)he highest paid-tier of workers,” you say?:
“In 2022, it was estimated that the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was 344.3 in the United States. This indicates that, on average, CEOs received more than 344 times the annual average salary of production and nonsupervisory workers in the key industry of their firm.”
In 1970, that ratio was 24.3%. So in 52 years, the discrepancy increased – by 14 times.
While the Working Class flatlined – the CEO Class soared.
How did all of this happen?
Again: DC became a butchery – and put the US on the chopping block.
Big Business has spent the last half-century-plus going to DC – and bribing its way to ever-greater crony-opulence. At the relentless expense of…everyone else.
Like, say, their employees.
Big Biz spent decades getting Big Gov to impose policies that favor the outsourcing of US jobs – and their wages – to excellent places like slave-labor Communist China.
Which did wonders for Big Biz – and their CEOs.
Not so much for the US middle class, its jobs and its wages.
And now, of course, Big Biz is rushing to replace the few remaining US human employees – with robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Speaking of Big Tech….
No Big Biz subdivision has more dominated DC this past decade-plus – than has Big Tech.
And thereby – Big Tech has become the HUGEST sector in the history of humanity.
But some of the Big Gov-Big Tech cronyism?
Big Tech wanted to steal Intellectual Property (IP) – rather than pay the Little Guy Inventors the relative pittances required to license it. So Big Gov gave Big Tech the America Invents Act (AIA) – which made Big Tech’s mass-IP theft oh-so-much-easier.
Big Gov has steadfastly refused to pass ANY comprehensive law limiting AT ALL how much of our data Big Tech can collect – or what they can do with it whence they do. Thereby further maximizing Big Tech’s MASSIVE profits – at our expense.
Big Gov has wasted hundreds of billions of dollars taxing-and-spending for government programs to connect to the Internet – a nation that has already been nigh totally connected for a decade. But Big Tech – doesn’t pay a dime for any of these programs.
Get that? Big Tech – the biggest beneficiaries on the planet of everyone being connected to the Internet? Pays zero into the welfare programs dedicated to everyone being connected to the Internet.
Then there’s DC repeatedly ramming down our throats. Which is awful in oh-so-many-ways. For our purposes here, we’ll mention but one: It outlaws Big Tech being charged ANYTHING for the MASSIVE bandwidth it uses. We will pay WAY more to connect – to even further augment Big Tech’s MASSIVE profits.
The only thing Big Tech uses more than our data – and bandwidth? Electricity:
“Some regulators are concerned that the tech companies aren’t paying their fair share, while leaving customers from homeowners to small businesses on the hook….
“The recent auction to secure power for the (Mid-Atlantic regional power) grid during periods of extreme weather and high demand resulted in an 800 percent jump in the price that the grid’s member utilities had to pay.”
So we’re ALSO subsidizing Big Tech’s electric bills – and thereby even FURTHER augmenting Big Tech’s profits.
But this is where the Left – goes WAY off the rails.
The Left watches all of this Big Gov-Big Biz cronyism. And somehow decides the solution is…even more government.
You should want to DIS-empower the Big Gov – that makes all of this Big Biz cronyism possible.
Which creates all of the problems the Left has properly identified – but has so woefully misdiagnosed.