The 'Share the Scraps' Economy

Robert Reich was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration. He is an economist, who believes government and public policy should serve the broad interests of the American people.

Reich has become one of the most important voices opposing the sell out of our government to big corporations and the super rich.  This article focuses on the collapse of the middle class, driven by the loss of living wage jobs.   



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Robert Reich: Why Work Is Turning Into a Nightmare

By Robert Reich         

February 3, 2015

How would you like to live in an economy where robots do everything that can be predictably programmed in advance, and almost all profits go to the robots' owners?

Meanwhile, human beings do the work that's unpredictable - odd jobs, on-call projects, fetching and fixing, driving and delivering, tiny tasks needed at any and all hours - and patch together barely enough to live on.
Brace yourself. This is the economy we're now barreling toward.
They're Uber [3] drivers, Instacart [4] shoppers, and Airbnb [5] hosts. They include Taskrabbit [6] jobbers, Upcounsel [7]'s on-demand attorneys, and Healthtap [8]'s on-line doctors.
They're Mechanical Turks [9].
The euphemism is the "share" economy [10]. A more accurate term would be the "share-the-scraps" economy.
New software technologies are allowing almost any job to be divided up into discrete tasks that can be parceled out to workers when they're needed, with pay determined by demand for that particular job at that particular moment.
Customers and workers are matched online. Workers are rated on quality and reliability.
The big money goes to the corporations that own the software. The scraps go to the on-demand workers.
Consider Amazon's "Mechanical Turk." Amazon calls it "a marketplace for work that requires human intelligence [11]."
In reality, it's an Internet job board offering minimal pay for mindlessly-boring bite-sized chores. Computers can't do them because they require some minimal judgment, so human beings do them for peanuts -- say, writing a product description, for $3; or choosing the best of several photographs, for 30 cents; or deciphering handwriting, for 50 cents.
Amazon takes a healthy cut of every transaction.
This is the logical culmination of a process that began thirty years ago when corporations began turning over full-time jobs to temporary workers, independent contractors, free-lancers, and consultants.
It was a way to shift risks and uncertainties onto the workers - work that might entail more hours than planned for, or was more stressful than expected.
And a way to circumvent labor laws that set minimal standards for wages, hours, and working conditions. And that enabled employees to join together to bargain for better pay and benefits.
The new on-demand work shifts risks entirely onto workers, and eliminates minimal standards completely.
In effect, on-demand work is a reversion to the piece work of the nineteenth century - when workers had no power and no legal rights, took all the risks, and worked all hours for almost nothing.
Uber drivers [12] use their own cars, take out their own insurance, work as many hours as they want or can - and pay Uber a fat percent [13]. Worker safety? Social Security? Uber says it's not the employer so it's not responsible.
Amazon's Mechanical Turks work for pennies, literally. Minimum wage? Time-and-a half for overtime? Amazon says it just connects buyers and sellers so it's not responsible.
Defenders of on-demand work emphasize its flexibility. Workers can put in whatever time they want, work around their schedules, fill in the downtime in their calendars.
"People are monetizing their own downtime," says [14] Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New York University's business school.
But this argument confuses "downtime" with the time people normally reserve for the rest of their lives.
There are still only twenty-four hours in a day. When "downtime" is turned into work time, and that work time is unpredictable and low-paid, what happens to personal relationships? Family? One's own health?
Other proponents of on-demand work point to studies, such as one recently commissioned by Uber [15], showing Uber's on-demand workers to be "happy [15]."
But how many of them would be happier with a good-paying job offering regular hours?
An opportunity to make some extra bucks can seem mighty attractive in an economy whose median wage has been stagnant for thirty years and almost all of whose economic gains have been going to the top.
That doesn't make the opportunity a great deal. It only shows how bad a deal most working people have otherwise been getting.
Defenders also point out that as on-demand work continues to grow, on-demand workers are joining together in guild-like groups [16] to buy insurance and other benefits.
But, notably, they aren't using their bargaining power to get a larger share of the income they pull in, or steadier hours. That would be a union - something that Uber, Amazon, and other on-demand companies don't want.
Some economists laud on-demand work as a means of utilizing people moreefficiently [17].
But the biggest economic challenge we face isn't using people more efficiently. It's allocating work and the gains from work more decently.
On this measure, the share-the-scraps economy is hurtling us backwards.
 

                          

    

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Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/robert-reich-why-work-turning-nightmare

Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/robert-reich-0
[2] http://alternet.org
[3] https://get.uber.com/cl/?city_name=san-francisco&utm_source=AdWords_Brand&utm_campaign=search%7Cc%7Cdrivers%7Csan-francisco%7Ccountry-1%7Ccity-1%7Ckeyword_Uber%7Cmatchtype_e%7Cad_69616707880%7Ccampaign_brand%7Cgroup_uber%3eexact%7Cnetwork_g&utm_medium=kenid_ce47600c-ca8d-4f0f-b00c-08e02d402eae&gclid=CKyr5vTiw8MCFRBgfgodXYkAMw
[4] https://www.instacart.com/
[5] https://www.airbnb.com/?af=1922719&c=A_TC%3Dm84nccm9s3%26G_MT%3De%26G_CR%3D22111491256%26G_N%3Dg%26G_K%3Dairbnb%26G_P%3D&gclid=CJ-vgajjw8MCFQZafgod24cACA
[6] https://www.taskrabbit.com/careers
[7] https://www.upcounsel.com/home/careers
[8] https://www.healthtap.com/prime-trial?AG=HealthTap&CN=%5BUI%5D_-_%5BBrand%5D_-_%5BUS%5D_-_%28Exact%29&gclid=CPvpldnjw8MCFZSPfgodFzsA8A&pubcode=GA&referrer=ppc&type=Search&v=5
[9] https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome
[10] http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21573104-internet-everything-hire-rise-sharing-economy
[11] http://aws.amazon.com/mturk/
[12] http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-drivers-across-the-country-are-protesting-tomorrow--heres-why-2014-10
[13] http://www.wsj.com/articles/ubers-new-funding-values-it-at-over-41-billion-1417715938
[14] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/technology/personaltech/uber-a-rising-business-model.html?_r=0
[15] http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120832/uber-study-uber-drivers-are-happy-uber
[16] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/technology/personaltech/uber-a-rising-business-model.html
[17] http://blogs.microsoft.com/work/2013/11/12/the-mobile-workforce-more-productive-efficient-and-healthy/
[18] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Robert Reich: Why Work Is Turning Into a Nightmare
[19] http://www.alternet.org/
[20] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

The Richest 1% Owns Everything

A report was just released by Oxfam International. It showed that a handful of people have managed to take control of more of the world's privately held wealth than the other 99% of us combined. They have given new definition to the word, greed. The vast majority of people who are not part of that small, self-absorbed cabal of obscene wealth are fed up. - EMPDX

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In less than two years, if current trends continued unchecked, the richest 1% percent of people on the planet will own at least half of the world's wealth.

That's the conclusion of a new report from Oxfam International, released Monday, which states that the rate of global inequality is not only morally obscene, but an existential threat to the economies of the world and the very survival of the planet. Alongside climate change, Oxfam says that spiraling disparity between the super-rich and everyone else, is brewing disaster for humanity as a whole.
"Do we really want to live in a world where the one percent own more than the rest of us combined?" asked Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of Oxfam International. "The scale of global inequality is quite simply staggering and despite the issues shooting up the global agenda, the gap between the richest and the rest is widening fast."

According to the report—titled Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More (pdf):

Global wealth is becoming increasing concentrated among a small wealthy elite. Data from Credit Suisse shows that since 2010, the richest 1% of adults in the world have been increasing their share of total global wealth . Figure 1 shows that 2010 marks an inflection point in the share of global wealth going to this group. Figure 1 : Share of global wealth of the top 1% and bottom 99% respectively ; Credit Suisse data available 2000 – 2014. In 2014 , the richest 1% of people in the world own ed 48% of global wealth , leaving just 52% to be shared between the other 99% of adults on the planet. 1 Almost all of th at 52% is owned by those included in the richest 20%, leaving just 5.5% for the remaining 80% of people in the world. If this trend continues of an increasing wealth share to the richest, the top 1% will have more wealth than the remaining 99% of people in just two years with the wealth share of the top 1% exceeding 50% by 2016.

The report also shows that even among the über-rich there remain divisions, with an outsized majority on the list of the world's wealthiest people hailing from the United States. And it's not an accident. The world's most wealthy, as the Oxfam report documents, spends enormous amounts of their money each year on lobbying efforts designed to defend the assets they have and expand their ability to make even more.

The world's wealthiest, reads the report, "have generated and sustained their vast riches through their interests and activities in a few important economic sectors, including finance and insurance and pharmaceuticals and healthcare. Companies from these sectors spend millions of dollars every year on lobbying to create a policy environment that protects and enhances their interests further. The most prolific lobbying activities in the US are on budget and tax issues; public resources that should be directed to benefit the whole population, rather than reflect the interests of powerful lobbyists."
Released on the eve of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam says that the world's financial and political elite can no longer ignore, and should no longer perpetuate, inequality at this scale.

"Our report is just the latest evidence that inequality has reached shocking extremes, and continues to grow," said Byanyima, who was invited to act as co-chair for this year's Davos summit. "It is time for the global leaders of modern capitalism, in addition to our politicians, to work to change the system to make it more inclusive, more equitable and more sustainable."

She continued, "Extreme inequality isn't just a moral wrong. It undermines economic growth and it threatens the private sector's bottom line.  All those gathering at Davos who want a stable and prosperous world should make tackling inequality a top priority."

Contained in the paper is a seven-point plan of specific proposals which Oxfam says must be added to the agenda of all world leaders:

1. Clamp down on tax dodging by corporations and rich individuals
2. Invest in universal, free public services such as health and education
3. Share the tax burden fairly, shifting taxation from labour and consumption towards    capital and wealth
4. Introduce minimum wages and move towards a living wage for all workers
5. Introduce equal pay legislation and promote economic policies to give women a fair deal
6. Ensure adequate safety-nets for the poorest, including a minimum income guarantee
7. Agree a global goal to tackle inequality.

On her role as co-chair at the WEF summit this week, Byanyima told the Guardian she was surprised to be invited, because Oxfam represents a "critical voice" to most of the others who attend. "We go there to challenge these powerful elites," she said. "It is an act of courage to invite me."

However, part of the message contained in the report is that economic inequality of this magnitude is not just threat to the poor and disadvantaged but also to those who have traditionally benefited from the model of pro-growth capitalism. As growing amounts of research have shown—most prominently in the work of French economist Thomas Piketty—the nearly unprecedented levels of inequality is hurting modern capitalism even on its own terms.

But just as these levels of inequality are the result of government policies that have benefited the rich, Oxfam believes that a change in such governing structures is the key to reversing the trend.
As Byanyima told the Guardian, "Extreme inequality is not just an accident or a natural rule of economics. It is the result of policies and with different policies it can be reduced. I am optimistic that there will be change."

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

My Message to the Billionaire Ruling Class

Hey, congratulations, rich guys. You’ve made more money than you could possibly ever spend. Most of you are content with that, but a few of you are not. Some of you, instead of using your money to do good deeds and champion genuine progress,  are way off in the opposite direction. By that I mean using your wealth and power to force your self-centered worldview on the rest of us.

The truth is most billionaires - in fact most people who have more than a million or two in assets - are not part of the political hardball being played by a small group of bankers, corporatists, and billionaire psychopaths who behave like greedy thugs.

Being rich is a wonderful thing for those who are grateful for their good fortune, and are willing to give high priority to the common good.  Wealth also offers those who are so blessed an opportunity to be leaders and heroes, who want a future for the Earth that is worthy of our species.

The Gates Foundation, in the name of Bill and Melinda Gates, and to a lesser extent Warren Buffet, has applied billions of dollars to some of the world’s most pressing problems.  But even Bill and Warren, with all the good that they do, are playing both ends against the middle.  Both are substantially invested in the continued massive consumption of coal and oil.  

Journalist Naomi Klein’s most recent book, This Changes Everything, exposes the dualistic thinking that certain high profile billionaires keep hidden behind their polished public images.  They may genuinely want clean skies and a healthy biosphere, but the record shows they are not willing to give up profitable revenue streams from investments that foster our continued dependence on dirty fossil energy.

Too many wealthy people are content to sit on the political sidelines and collect their fat profits, while the economic and culturally corrosive public policy promoted by the worst of their billionaire neighbors makes everybody that already has big money even more rich, even more separate and unequal from the rest of us.

In fact, the real political evil emerges from a very small number of wealthy people.   Almost all the worst offenders are old.  Almost all are politically conservative men, who very much believe in white power and privilege. They aggressively use their wealth and influence to buy politicians and manipulate the American political process, with the intent to maximize their personal interests. I don’t suppose there is much of anything that I or anyone else could say that could turn that small band of big money evildoers in a more benevolent direction. They are simply indifferent to the consequences of their pathological actions.

But there is hope for the vast majority of millionaires and billionaires, who are not hopelessly self-absorbed.  Here’s my message to those wealthy folks, who recognize that they are not immune to the consequences of all the unprecedented, deeply unsettling, global scale challenges humanity must deal with.  I’m talking about climate change and fossil fuel dependence. I’m talking about our reckless, abjectly corrupt, and massively dysfunctional political process.  I’m talking about the human-driven shredding of the biosphere, whose finite water and living resources are being overwhelmed by the demands of seven billion plus human beings. We have made an Earth-sized mess of things.  Humanity and nature are near a breaking point of unprecedented scale.  Every human being has an obligation to get serious about this. Whether you’re a billionaire or an indigenous person, terrified and brutalized by illegal loggers in your forest, you have a life-and-death stake in what happens to this planet. 

To all fundamentally good and decent Americans who happen to be rich, and also happen to be passive or indifferent to our broken political process, I say, time to wake up.  You might think you can escape the consequences of your inaction. Don’t count on it.   History has shown that when the privileged members of a society stand by passively and watch the masses sink, the rabble tend to rise up. They focus their rage and demands for retribution on people of privilege, reserving their greatest ire for those who have shown no compassion for their suffering.  I’m not just talking about the oppressors. I’m talking about those who turned a blind eye to the process of oppression.

In 1794, during the French Revolution, Antoine Lavoiser, who is remembered historically for his contributions to science, was guillotined because he made his living as a tax collector for the ruling class.  The same dynamic that resulted in Lavosier losing his head applies today. Being on the losing side of a life and death, cultural struggle can be a fatal mistake.

Getting on the morally correct, and very likely, the winning side of history, requires making yourself part of the solution.  It is not acceptable to sit by passively while a handful of bad billionaires use their wealth to ruin our environment and tear society apart in the name of profit. End of story.

Nature's Trust

Written by University of Oregon Law Professor, Mary Christina Wood, Nature's Trust provides a thoroughly researched review of the trust responsibility of government at all levels in America, to the people and to future generations.

Here is how Professor Wood puts that responsibility in the introduction of Nature's Trust.

The sovereign trust obligation offers a catalyzing principle to citizens worldwide in their common struggle to hold government's accountable for protecting life-systems. Nature's Trust and the primordial rights inculcating it create a populist manifesto that surfaces at epic times through the generations of humanity. These principles stand no less revolutionary for our time and our crises than the forcing of the Magna Carta on the English monarchy in 1215 or Mahatma Gandhi's great Salt March to the sea in 1930.  Resonating deeply and resolutely within the ancestral memory of humanity,  trust principles must now revive to stir a global assertion of citizenship in defense of humanity and all future generations.

Professor Mary Christina Wood has done an enormous service to society by reminding us how deeply entrenched the trust responsibility is in global governance.  We live in a time when the American political process has devolved in a circumstance of  'He who has the money makes the rules.'  Climate change, driven by the human addiction to dirty coal and oil, is a challenge that is not being addressed, primarily because of the failure of our elected representatives to recognize and live up to their trust responsibilities to the people and to future generations.

Trust law is no panacea. The best way to put government back on track would be a Constitutional Amendment that says, 'Corporations are not People' and 'Money is not Speech'.   That's a very tough nut to crack. For now, Mary Christina Wood's  illumination of  natural trust law has inspired a number of court challenges, demanding a proper government response to climate change.  Nature's Trust provides a solid foundation for legal remedy against our government's failure to meet it's obligation to protect nature and the commons for future generations.

This is a very important book. I give it my highest recommendation, with one caveat. The price tag - $40 for a paperback book - creates an unfortunate accessibility problem. I would love to have Nature's Trust for reference in my own library. Perhaps, at some point, they will come out with a different edition at a more reasonable cost.  For now, when I need to visit this book, I will go to the library.

Here is a link to author Mary Christina Wood, appearing on the Bill Moyers PBS Show, talking about Nature's Trust...  http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-climate-crusade/

A Few Things That Suck

Here, we have another Earthmanpdx video. This one focuses on some of the things that are wrong in America, and about a Constitutional amendment as the best way to get our nation back on  a course that puts the public interest ahead of corporations, bankers,  and self-absorbed billionaires. 

The link is https://vimeo.com/113999042

At the end of the day, the way out of the mess we are in is to support www.movetoamend.org

Sordid Tales of Selfishness

I detest the 'I got mine, so fuck you' attitude reflected in self-absorbed, money-driven sociopathy.

Most people who have multi-million dollar bank accounts didn't get that way from being smarter, or working harder than everybody else. More than a few were born into good fortune. Some got rich from nurturing a great idea. The guys at Google come to mind. But, most of those people who have become part of the top one percent over the last forty or so years did it by being takers....ruthlessly determined to use every advantage to elevate themselves... stepping on anyone or anything in the way, without regard to consequences.

I want to be clear. Being rich doesn't make you evil. There are many wealthy people who are deeply compassionate, and are open in their concern for nature and their fellow human residents of Earth,  Having a big bank account is not a bad thing,  Unfortunately, too many, way too many of the one percenters  are all about themselves. They share a worldview characterized by callous indifference, even outright hostility to those they dismiss as the rabble.

The article below comes from the AlterNet website.  I feel sorry for the kind of people it describes.  Being selfish is not pretty. I'm not suggesting that taking nothing at all is a good example either. We are all born with the right to do as Spock espouses, 'To live long, and prosper'.  Being prosperous doesn't include the right to harm the biosphere and roll over other people.

I believe that joy comes to those who find ways to nurture and give back, when fortune smiles on them. You don't have to be religious to agree that 'it is better to give, than to receive'.

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Four Sordid Tales of Selfishness of the Super-Rich

 by Paul Buchheit          

 

AlterNet, November 16, 2014  |  

If the mainstream media made the effort to analyze and report the facts, the whole country would know about a level of selfishness that has spiraled out of control since the economists of the Reagan era convinced the wealthiest Americans that greed is good for everyone. Here are four extreme examples of that selfishness.

1. Ebola's Not Worth the Money If Only Africans Get Infected

World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Dr. Margaret Chan recently stated [3]: "Ebola emerged nearly four decades ago. Why are clinicians still empty-handed, with no vaccines and no cure? Because Ebola has historically been confined to poor African nations. The R&D incentive is virtually non-existent. A profit-driven industry does not invest in products for markets that cannot pay."

So we turn to philanthropy. But rich donors don't compensate for the flaws of capitalism. The Gates Foundation, among others, may appear noble and praiseworthy for all its charitable giving, but Dr. Chan noted [4] that "My budget [is] highly earmarked, so it is driven by what I call donor interests." Little of that 'earmarking' is toward diseases of the poor. A study in The Lancet [5] of medical products registered in 2000-11 revealed that "Only four new chemical entities were approved for neglected diseases (three for malaria, one for diarrhoeal disease), accounting for 1% of the 336 new chemical entities approved during the study period."

A related problem with philanthropy is summarized [6] by Stacy Palmer, editor of The Chronicle of Philanthropy: "Wealthy people tend to give to colleges, art museums, opera and hospitals very generously...Food banks depend more on lower income Americans."

The Chronicle of Philanthropy [7] confirmed that Americans with annual earnings under $100,000 increased their post-recession giving by 4.5 percent. Americans who earned over $200,000 reduced their giving by 4.6 percent over the same time period.

2. Going To Their Graves Without Paying What They Owe

Charles Koch, who is very much alive, said "I want my fair share - and that's all of it."

His dream is coming true. $30 trillion [8] has been taken since the recession [9], most of it financial gains [10], almost all of it [11] by the richest 1%, one-hundred thousand of whom made an estimated $18 million [12] each in three years, and most of whom are so rich that they can let their portfolios sit nearly tax-free until they die, at which point an almost non-existent estate tax ensures nearly tax-free [13] fortunes for their fortunate sons and daughters (only about one out of a thousand [14] estates are taxed).

Yet these are the people who benefit most from national security, infrastructure, tax laws, and patent and copyright laws. They're protected by police who stop and frisk and harass and arrest anyone who threatens the status quo of their wealthy society. But they don't want to pay for all the benefits, even after they're dead.

3. Inventing Rules That Take Money from the Poor

A collection of contrived laws and policies effectively transfer money from the middle class to the rulemakers:

---Capital Gains [15]: Pay less for just owning stocks

---Carried Interest [16]: The astonishing claim that hedge fund profits are not regular income

---Payroll Tax [17]: Multi-millionaires pay a tiny percentage compared to middle-income earners

---Roth IRAs [18]: A tax loophole [19] for the 20% of Americans who own 95 percent [20] of the financial wealth

---Derivatives [21]: Risky financial instruments are the first to be paid off in a bank collapse

---Bankruptcies [22]: Businesses can get out of debt, students can't

4. Treating Less Fortunate People As If They Don't Exist

Compelling research [23] by Paul Piff [24] and his colleagues has demonstrated that the accumulation of wealth leads to a sense of entitlement and qualities of narcissism. For example, rich people are more likely to flout traffic laws, to take items of value from others, and to cheat when necessary to win a prize or position.

At a higher level, irrefutable data [25] has been accumulated [26] to confirm [27] the relentless flow of money [28] away from our most vulnerable citizens:

Children: One out of every five American children lives in poverty [29], and for black children under the age of six it's nearly one out of TWO [30]. Almost half of food stamp recipients [31] are children. Worldwide, 76 million children [32] are living in poverty in the developed world, and hundreds of millions more in the developing world.

The Elderly: Three-quarters [33] of Americans approaching retirement in 2010 had an average of less than $30,000 [34] to support them in their retirement years.

The Homeless: According to The Nation [35], there are now more homeless people in New York City than at any time since the 1970s, and the number of homeless schoolchildren is at an all-time high.

The Sick and Disabled: Over 200 recent studies [36] have confirmed a link between financial stress and sickness. In just 20 years America's ranking among developed countries dropped [37] on nearly every major health measure.


Privileged people, oblivious to the realities beneath their lofty positions, talk about struggling Americans getting "comfortable" [38] in poverty, using food stamps to buy expensive food [38], and resting in the "hammock" [39] of the safety net. Perhaps delusion helps them to rationalize their selfishness. 

 

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Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/economy/four-sordid-tales-selfishness-super-rich

Links:
[1] http://alternet.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/paul-buchheit
[3] http://www.who.int/dg/speeches/2014/regional-committee-africa/en/
[4] http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/26861-privatized-ebola
[5] http://image.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X%2813%2970078-0/fulltext
[6] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wealthier-americans-give-less-than-poorer-people-2014-10-06
[7] http://philanthropy.com/article/As-Wealthy-Give-Smaller-Share/149191/
[8] http://www.usagainstgreed.org/20141103_Analysis.txt
[9] http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/infuriating-facts-about-our-disappearing-middle-class-wealth
[10] http://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/ar/2012/PDFs/ar12_complete.pdf
[11] http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2011.pdf
[12] http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/grim-numbers-from-the-2014-global-wealth-report/18953-grim-numbers-from-the-2014-global-wealth-report
[13] http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2014/10/01/guest-post-when-income-tax-cuts-masquerade-as-estate-tax-repeal/
[14] http://blogs.wsj.com/totalreturn/2014/10/30/estate-tax-exemption-for-2015-announced-by-irs/
[15] http://nationalpriorities.org/blog/2013/11/04/tax-break-hedge-fund-managers/
[16] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-anderson/yes-we-can-taxes_b_2505621.html
[17] http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/11/16/1208701/democratic-senator-introduces-bill-to-lift-social-securitys-tax-cap-extend-its-solvency-for-decades/
[18] http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/27418-the-roth-blunder-barrels-on
[19] http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/10/opinion/la-oe-scorse-roth-iras-20110410
[20] http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
[21] http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/baliin.php
[22] http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/09/11/3566194/senior-citizens-student-loan-debt-social-security/
[23] http://psp.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/08/19/0146167213501699.full#aff-1
[24] http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/02/21/1118373109.full.pdf
[25] http://www.alternet.org/economy/5-facts-about-how-america-rigged-massive-wealth-transfer-rich
[26] http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/the-billion-dollar-a-month-club-a-runaway-transfer-of-wealth-to-the-super-rich
[27] http://www.nationofchange.org/2014/10/27/grim-numbers-2014-global-wealth-report/
[28] http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/10/13/why-we-should-be-seething-anger-over-inequality
[29] http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acsbr10-05.pdf
[30] http://stateofworkingamerica.org/fact-sheets/poverty/
[31] http://blogs.usda.gov/2011/06/24/fact-vs-fiction-usda%E2%80%99s-supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program/
[32] http://www.unicef-irc.org/article/1069/
[33] http://www.economicpolicyresearch.org/guaranteeing-retirement-income/528-retirement-account-balances-by-income-even-the-highest-earners-dont-have-enough.html
[34] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/opinion/sunday/our-ridiculous-approach-to-retirement.html?_r=1&
[35] http://www.thenation.com/article/177032/gops-poverty-denialism#
[36] http://www.pfeef.org/research/Financial-Wellness-and-Health-Care-Costs.pdf
[37] http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/07/10/2279851/us-mediocre-health/
[38] http://www.thenation.com/article/177032/gops-poverty-denialism
[39] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/opinion/krugman-the-hammock-fallacy.html
[40] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Four Sordid Tales of Selfishness of the Super-Rich
[41] http://www.alternet.org/tags/selfishness
[42] http://www.alternet.org/tags/greed
[43] http://www.alternet.org/tags/income-inequality-0
[44] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B



 

Top 0.1 Percent Has More Wealth Than Bottom 90 Percent

This post comes from an article on the Mother Jones  blog by Inae Oh.

It's a reflection of what is fundamentally wrong in America.  Less than 160,000 families have more money than the other 316 million of us combined.    Stunning, shameful, incredibly corrosive to our economy and our democracy:.. those are some words I would choose to describe this circumstance.

Economics is pretty simple at its most basic.  Markets are a place where sellers come to deal with people who have the need to buy at least the necessities among all those things for sale. But, when the vast majority of people are no longer able to participate in that marketplace, because they have almost nothing to exchange for even basic needs like  food, shelter, and healthcare; when that happens,  the entire idea of a marketplace is undermined.    Sad to say, that is exactly what is wrong with America's today.  In effect, our economy is trapped in a malaise caused a tiny fraction of us owning all the wealth. 

All of the political power in America has fallen into the hands of big bankers, bloated corporations, and the super-rich.  Until that changes,  nine out of ten of us will continue to get the very short end of the stick.
_________________

From Inae Oh's Mother Jones blog piece...

While a complex web of factors have contributed to the rise in income inequality in America, a new research paper says most of the blame can be largely placed in the immense growth experienced by the top tenth of the richest 1 percent of Americans in recent years. From the report:

The rise of wealth inequality is almost entirely due to the rise of the top 0.1% wealth share, from 7% in 1979 to 22% in 2012, a level almost as high as in 1929. The bottom 90% wealth share first increased up to the mid-1980s and then steadily declined. The increase in wealth concentration is due to the surge of top incomes combined with an increase in saving rate inequality.

So, who are the 0.1 percent among us? According to Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, the paper's researchers, the elite group is a small one, roughly composed of 160,000 families with assets exceeding $20 million, but their grip on America's wealth distribution is about to surpass the bottom 90 percent for the first time in more than half a century.  Today's 0.1 percent also tend to be younger than the top incomers of the 1960's, despite the fact the country as a whole has been living longer—proving once again, that there has truly never been a more opportune time to be rich in America:

The Mid-Term Elections - Last Gasp of Obstructionism Before Genuine Renewal?

This past week, common sense got whacked in the national mid-term elections.  Around the country, citizens who voted put Republicans firmly in power in both houses of the United States Congress. Republicans also took firm control of state legislatures around the country. How could this happen, given the narrow interests that Republicans support and the abject obstruction they represent on most important issues? 

The biggest reason for this political debacle is the corrosive influence of corporate power and money on our election process.  The conservative majority on our Supreme Court opened the floodgates on legalized bribery with their 'Citizens United' decision on campaign finance.  Corporations and billionaires  are able to buy the politicians and public policy they want by pouring essentially limitless amounts of money into our elections. Our system is rigged to serve the interests of the rich and powerful.

By a wide margin, the Republican Party is the principle conduit for the corruption of our politics. But the Democrats are only marginally better.  Both parties are up to their ears in a system built on moneyed influence.   The vast majority of politicians that are attracted to elective office these days are unprincipled opportunists lining up to feed at the 'dirty money' trough. 

A big part of the problem lies with citizens who don't vote.  Only about a third of the electorate voted in this mid-term election.  Most of those non-voters were registered Democrats or Independents. Some of their failure to vote can be attributed to indifference, but many citizens are just fed up with the open influence peddling that has replaced honest discourse in our system of governance.   Right or wrong, they register their displeasure by dropping out of the voting process.

Republicans don't have that problem. They cater to a handful of single issue voting blocks, who come out to support conservative politicians. I'm talking about gun extremists, anti-abortion zealots, anti-gay evangelicals, and people who have an aversion to taxation of any kind.  Only about twenty percent of registered voters make up the Republican base. They tend to be older, whiter, and male. No matter. They can be counted on to vote.  What amazes me is how many of these misguided souls are poor. For them, a vote for a Republican is ultimately always a vote against their own interests.  Because the Republican Party is a corporatist party.  They really don 't care about their base. They support the bases'  narrow issues, so the base will keep showing up with their votes on election day. The actual constituents  Republican represent are Wall Street bankers, self-absorbed billionaires, and corporatists that are focused on profit to the exclusion of all else.

So, here we are. Republicans, who have successfully obstructed and thwarted most of President Barack Obama's progressive agenda for the past six years, are now the majority in both houses of Congress.   They will continue to obstruct meaningful climate legislation, and they will continue to try to derail the affordable care act, the President's single most important legislative achievement.

Moreover, they will leverage their majority to push legislation that will 'amnesty' billions of dollars of corporate profits that have been hiding in plain sight for years in foreign banks to avoid being taxed.  They will squeeze the life out of the regulatory process by denying operating funds to the Environmental Protection Agency and other government agencies, whose job it is to protect the public from bad corporate behavior.  They will look for reasons to funnel more  and more government money to military contractors, despite the fact that the Untied States already spends more on its military than all of the rest of the world combined.

The Republican majority will not do anything to help the middle class. They will not raise the minimum wage, or support job creation programs. They will aggressively resist any initiative that does not serve the interests of  their big money enablers. They will deny the most basic science, when it doesn't fit their political agenda.  Forget about meaningful action on climate change. Forget about reproductive choice. Forget about any kind of useful environmental legislation. The Republican game is more tax breaks for billionaires,  more subsidies for dirty energy, more cuts to anything that helps the middle class. 

The next two years are looking pretty bleak. Even before this last election, the American Congress only registered a 15% approval rating among voters.  The level of public discontent has never been higher, and it can only get worse. 

I see a silver lining in this unfortunate set of political circumstances .  We elect our governments  to protect us against foreign enemies, to maintain law and order, to nurture a healthy economy, to look out for the well being of all citizens.  That's a tall order for Republicans, whose stated goal is to 'drown government in a bathtub'.  Until the next election, Republicans will be in the lead. If they perform as they have over the past few decades, they will fail miserably in their responsibility. Despite their expertise in shifting blame, they will find it difficult to avoid being tagged with the ineptitude that will surely be reflected in their lack of achievement for anyone other than Wall Street, billionaires, and craven corporatists.

By 2016, the public disgust with the corporate plutocracy that has displaced democracy in America will likely be at a fever pitch.  In the next two years, I expect Republicans to thoroughly discredit themselves. 

Echoes of the coming public backlash can be seen in some of the state-level initiatives that passed in this most recent election.  In Wisconsin, Ohio, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Florida, dozens of communities had initiatives on the ballot calling for a Constitutional amendment that eliminates 'Corporate Personhood' and repudiates 'Money being treated as Speech'.  These political referendums all passed by as much as 70% of the voters, including many that characterize themselves as conservatives.

I am convinced that Move to Amend [ www.movetoamend.org }  is the .key to restoring true  democracy in America.   Its Constitutional agenda would take away citizen rights and 'personhood' status from corporations. It would affirm that corporations are nothing more than state chartered legal fictions that, by law, must be accountable to the people for their actions.  The Move to Amend Constitutional Amendment also says that money is property, not a form of speech. Having boatloads of money should not include the right to use it to buy politicians and pervert the American political process.   What we see every time Move to Amend finds its way onto a local ballot, is that voters sign on with their overwhelming support.

The most important response to America's political malfeasance over the next two years is to expand awareness of the Move to Amend agenda.   As a citizen, I believe serving that end is the most important thing I can do.

We cannot count on politicians to deliver the fundamental political change we need. It must come from the grassroots.  'We, the people' must step up and demand the brand of governance the founders of our nation intended, free of corporate dominance; and free of moneyed influence.   We must become the change we wish for.

Pay 2 Play

Here is another outstanding wake-up call to the American people. Your political system; your government at every level, local, state, and national is egregiously corrupt.    This film demonstrates clearly that America is no longer a democracy. It is a Konfederacy of Kleptocrats  for sale to any billionaire, banker, or corporate executive willing to shell out big money to buy the public policy they want, with no regard for the consequences.

This is the core issue... the core challenge of our time. The singular focus on profit above all else is shredding the fabric of life on Earth.  Fixing this problem must be job one. 

Here is a link to a trailer for the feature documentary, Pay 2 Play...http://vimeo.com/87025347

He3re is a link to the webpage for Pay 2 Play...  http://pay2play.nationbuilder.com/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=advertising-pay-2-play-20140910-2&utm_campaign=Advertising%20-%20Pay%202%20Play%20-%2020140910

Stakeholder Capitalism

I lifted the article below from the AlterNet webpage. Robert Reich was at one time the U.S. Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration. He's now a professor at U.C. Berkeley.  Over the last decade, Robert Reich has become a strident voice against the predatory brand of capitalism that emerged with Ronald Reagan in the eighties.   In this kind of capitalism, the only rights that count are those of the shareholder owners, who put profit ahead of all other considerations.  It's an ugly, sociopathic approach to business that allows a handful of CEO's and stockholder-owners to get very rich, while  employees and the public get screwed.

In the piece below, Robert Reich talks about a different approach to corporate capitalism that acknowledges employees and the public as stakeholders, whose perspective on corporate governance should count just as much as that of shareholders.

Germany has one of the most consistently successful economies in the world. In Germany, by law, a corporation's board must include members from the company's labor force and also from the communities in which the business operates.  That business paradigm works for Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Siemens, etc. etc. German companies are some of the most well-managed and highly regarded in the world.

Stakeholder Capitalism is kind of capitalism on which a sustainable, life-affirming future can be built.  As Robert Reich demonstrates in the article below, genuine stakeholder democracy does not exist these days in America. What we have now is a brand of legalized bribery that allows public policy to be shaped by bankers, big business, and bad billionaires.

How do we get the saner approach to Capitalism that Robert Reich advocates?  It starts with fundamental change to the rules we live by. We need a Constitutional Amendment. It should say, 'Corporations are not People', and 'Money is not Speech'. For more about this, check out my earlier blogs that are labeled, Move to Amend.

________________________



The World Needs This Saner Approach to Capitalism

 by Robert Reich

 

AlterNet, August 10, 2014  |

  

In recent weeks, the managers, employees, and customers of a New England chain of supermarkets called "Market Basket" have joined together to oppose the board of director's decision earlier in the year to oust the chain's popular chief executive, Arthur T. Demoulas.

Their demonstrations and boycotts have emptied most of the chain's seventy stores.

What was so special about Arthur T., as he's known? Mainly, his business model. He kept prices lower than his competitors, paid his employees more, and gave them and his managers more authority.

Late last year he offered customers an additional 4 percent discount, arguing they could use the money more than the shareholders.

In other words, Arthur T. viewed the company as a joint enterprise from which everyone should benefit, not just shareholders. Which is why the board fired him.

It's far from clear who will win this battle. But, interestingly, we're beginning to see the Arthur T. business model pop up all over the place.

Patagonia, a large apparel manufacturer based in Ventura, California, has organized itself as a "B-corporation." That's a for-profit company whose articles of incorporation require it to take into account the interests of workers, the community, and the environment, as well as shareholders.
The performance of B-corporations according to this measure is regularly reviewed and certified by a nonprofit entity called B Lab.

To date, over 500 companies in sixty industries have been certified as B-corporations, including the household products firm "Seventh Generation."

In addition, 27 states have passed laws allowing companies to incorporate as "benefit corporations." This gives directors legal protection to consider the interests of all stakeholders rather than just the shareholders who elected them.

We may be witnessing the beginning of a return to a form of capitalism that was taken for granted in America sixty years ago.

Then, most CEOs assumed they were responsible for all their stakeholders.

"The job of management," proclaimed Frank Abrams, chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey, in 1951, "is to maintain an equitable and working balance among the claims of the various directly interested groups ... stockholders, employees, customers, and the public at large."

Johnson & Johnson publicly stated that its "first responsibility" was to patients, doctors, and nurses, and not to investors.

What changed? In the 1980s, corporate raiders began mounting unfriendly takeovers of companies that could deliver higher returns to their shareholders - if they abandoned their other stakeholders.
The raiders figured profits would be higher if the companies fought unions, cut workers' pay or fired them, automated as many jobs as possible or moved jobs abroad, shuttered factories, abandoned their communities, and squeezed their customers.

Although the law didn't require companies to maximize shareholder value, shareholders had the legal right to replace directors. The raiders pushed them to vote out directors who wouldn't make these changes and vote in directors who would (or else sell their shares to the raiders, who'd do the dirty work).

Since then, shareholder capitalism has replaced stakeholder capitalism. Corporate raiders have morphed into private equity managers, and unfriendly takeovers are rare. But it's now assumed corporations exist only to maximize shareholder returns.

Are we better off? Some argue shareholder capitalism has proven more efficient. It has moved economic resources to where they're most productive, and thereby enabled the economy to grow faster.

By this view, stakeholder capitalism locked up resources in unproductive ways. CEOs were too complacent. Companies were too fat. They employed workers they didn't need, and paid them too much. They were too tied to their communities.

But maybe, in retrospect, shareholder capitalism wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Look at the flat or declining wages of most Americans, their growing economic insecurity, and the abandoned communities that litter the nation.

Then look at the record corporate profits, CEO pay that's soared into the stratosphere, and Wall Street's financial casino (along with its near meltdown in 2008 that imposed collateral damage on most Americans).

You might conclude we went a bit overboard with shareholder capitalism.

The directors of "Market Basket" are now considering selling the company. Arthur T. has made a bid [3], but other bidders have offered more.

Reportedly, some prospective bidders think they can squeeze more profits out of the company than Arthur T. did.

But Arthur T. knew may have known something about how to run a business that made it successful in a larger sense.

Only some of us are corporate shareholders, and shareholders have won big in America over the last three decades.

But we're all stakeholders in the American economy, and many stakeholders have done miserably.
Maybe a bit more stakeholder capitalism is in order.


Here is a link to Robert Reich's webpage... http://robertreich.org/






 

The U.S. Supreme Court - A Corporation's Best Friend

There is nothing written in law that gives corporations human rights, but that hasn't stopped the Supreme Court. Over the years, conservative majority's on the court have issued ten decisions that have bolstered corporate personhood, and seriously undermined the rights of the nation's human citizens in the process.

I pulled the article below from Mother Jones.
 ____________________________

10 Supreme Court Rulings—Before Hobby Lobby—That Turned Corporations Into People

Last week's decision is the latest in a 200-year-long line of rulings giving businesses the same rights as humans.

By Alex Park | Thu Jul. 10, 2014 6:00 AM EDT

 

                         

 

Hobby Lobby is the latest in a 200-year-long line of rulings giving businesses the same rights as humans. 

     

Last week's Hobby Lobby ruling charted new legal territory by granting corporations the same religious rights as real people. The rationale [1] behind the decision—that expanding constitutional rights to businesses is necessary to "protect the rights of people associated with the corporation"—is far from novel. A line of Supreme Court rulings stretching back 200 years has blurred the distinction between flesh-and-blood citizens and the businesses they own, laying the groundwork for Hobby Lobby [2] and the equally contentious Citizens United [3] ruling. Here's a timeline of the corporation's human evolution:

 

1809 (Bank of the United States v. Deveaux) [4]: In the early days of the republic, when state and federal courts were still working out their jurisdictions, the Bank of the United States—a precursor to the US Treasury—sued a Georgia tax collector named Peter Deveaux for property he had seized when the bank failed to pay state taxes. Deveaux argued that, because corporations weren't people, they couldn't sue in federal court. Chief Justice John Marshall agreed. This meant businesses could only sue or be sued in federal court if all the shareholders, and at least one member of the opposing party, lived in the same state. According to Burt Neuborne, a corporate law professor at New York University, Wall Street banks hated this decision because it restricted suits to state courts where judges were partial to the banks' local clients—typically Midwestern farmers.

 

1844 (Louisville, Cincinnati, and Charleston Railroad v. Letson [5]): It soon became apparent that Marshall's decision in Bank of the United States was unworkable because it put corporations outside the reach of the federal courts. Thirty-five years later, after hearing the Louisville, Cincinnati, and Charleston Railroad [5] case, the Supreme Court shifted course, ruling that corporations were "citizens" of the states where they incorporated. Still, it was difficult for a corporation to sue or be sued in federal court unless all its shareholders lived in the same state.

 

1853 (Marshall v. Baltimore and Ohio Railroad [6]): The Supreme Court later upheld the notion that corporations were citizens, but only for the purposes of court jurisdiction; they did not have the same constitutional rights as actual people. The court also ruled that, for litigation purposes, shareholders would be considered citizens of their company's home state. This made it easier for corporations to sue or be sued in federal court by eliminating jurisdictional conflicts.

 

1886 (County of Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad [7]): Now that corporations were legally citizens, corporate attorneys worked to expand their rights. When California officials levied a special tax [8] on the Southern Pacific Railroad, the railroad sued, arguing that singling out the company violated its rights to equal protection under the 14th Amendment, which was intended to protect freed slaves. In a strange twist, the court reporter—a former railroad man—wrote in the published notes on the case that the 14th Amendment did, in fact, apply to the company. Even though this notion appeared nowhere in the high court's actual ruling, 11 years later the court declared it was "well settled [9]" that "corporations are persons within the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment," citing Santa Clara. 

 

1898 (Smyth v. Ames [10]): Building on the Santa Clara decision, the court voided a Nebraska railroad tax, ruling that it was akin to the government taking a corporation's property without due process—a violation of its 14th Amendment rights. (The decision was overturned in the 1944 Federal Power Commission v. Hope Natural Gas decision [11].)

 

1906 (Hale v. Henkel) [12]: Having blocked unlawful seizures of corporate property, the court went on to shield companies from other kinds of intrusion. Writing for the majority, Justice Henry Billings Brown found that corporations, like people, are protected from unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment (although the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination did not apply). 

 

1931 (Russian Volunteer Fleet v. United States [13]): A Russian shipbuilder, Russian Volunteer Fleet, sued the US government, claiming that government officials had unlawfully seized property worth more than $4 million. The high court sided with the company, ruling that even foreign corporations are protected from unlawful government seizures under the Fifth Amendment, which ensures fair treatment by the legal system.

 

1977 (United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co. [14]): After a criminal trial for two linen companies and their owner was dismissed due to jury deadlock, federal prosecutors appealed the decision. The Supreme Court ruled that a second trial violated the companies' rights to be tried only once, expanding the double jeopardy rule to include both humans and corporations.

 

2010 (Citizens United v. FEC) [15]: In the run up to the 2008 election, the Federal Elections Commission blocked the conservative nonprofit Citizens United from airing a film about Hillary Clinton based on a law barring companies from using their funds for "electioneering communications" within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. The organization sued, arguing that, because people's campaign donations are a protected form of speech (see Buckley v. Valeo [16]) and corporations and people enjoy the same legal rights, the government can't limit a corporation's independent political donations. The Supreme Court agreed. The Citizens United ruling may be the most sweeping expansion of corporate personhood to date. 

 

2014 (Burwell v. Hobby Lobby) [17]: Corporations are legally people with the right to free speech, but do they have religious rights? Apparently, they do. In 2012, Hobby Lobby, an Oklahoma-based craft store chain, sued the federal government, arguing that a provision in the Affordable Care Act requiring it to provide contraception coverage for employees violated shareholders' constitutional rights to freedom of religion. The Supreme Court sided with Hobby Lobby and found that corporations can assert the religious rights of their owners, greatly expanding the power of shareholders while creating a world of confusion [18] for corporate attorneys.

 

The Future: If a corporation has First Amendment rights, could it also claim Second Amendment protections? Amazingly, this is a question some scholars are seriously pondering. As Darrell A.H. Miller wrote in his 2011 article "Guns, Inc." in the NYU Law Review [19], "If Citizens United is taken seriously, the Second Amendment, like the First Amendment and like many other provisions of the Bill of Rights, guarantees liberties to natural and corporate persons alike." Bang!

 

---

Source URL: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/how-supreme-court-turned-corporations-people-200-year-saga

Links:
[1] http://www.omaha.com/money/court-rulings-trigger-renewed-debate-over-corporate-personhood/article_55f847ac-6d18-5c9b-acbe-c25de887a756.html
[2] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/hobby-lobby-supreme-court-obamacare
[3] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/05/citizens-united-amendment-flowchart
[4] http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a3_2_1s50.html
[5] http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/43/497/case.html
[6] http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/57/314/case.html
[7] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/118/394/case.html
[8] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/10/when-corporation-freed-slave
[9] http://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1044&context=lawreview
[10] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/169/466/case.html
[11] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/320/591/case.html
[12] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/201/43/case.html
[13] http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/282/481/
[14] http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/430/564/
[15] http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/558/08-205/opinion.html
[16] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/424/1/case.html
[17] http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-354_olp1.pdf
[18] http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/07/hobby-lobbys-other-problem
[19] http://www.nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-86-number-4/guns-inc-citizens-united-mcdonald-and-future-corporate-constitutional

Life, Liberty, and Happiness

Have you read the Constitution? An amazing document. It starts out, ‘We the people… We the people, in order to form a more perfect union’.  What does that mean? It's about governance; governance that serves the people; all of the people, not just a privileged few, who happen to have money and influence.

That’s how it’s supposed to work.   We’re all supposed to have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.    Our government, the one we elect under our Constitution, is supposed to work for us. Job one for the people we elect is to work for us, and our right  to life, liberty, and happiness.

That’s not happening. It’s not happening. Not even close. Our government has lost its way.  It has become a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America.  Those who have the money have the influence and make the rules.  It’s that simple.

The word corporation appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution.   When Jefferson and the founding fathers wrote the Constitution in the 18^th century,  they knew well the threat posed by the power and wealth of corporations. In the 18th century, it took an act by the legislature to charter a corporation. They had to have a civic purpose, and by law,  they had a limited life. When they’d served their purpose, they were supposed to go away.

A lot has changed since then. Now U.S. chartered corporations can live forever. They no longer need to serve a public purpose.  They put profit and shareholder interest above pretty much all else. Most troubling of all,  they have finagled something for themselves that used to be, and rightfully should  be, only for human, flesh and blood people.  Corporations are now considered persons under the law.   When I said finagled, that’s exactly what I meant. There has never been a law passed that says corporations are people.  There’s nothing in the Constitution about corporations. They are and always have been artificial legal constructs that are chartered with the understanding that they are accountable ultimately to the people.  How did corporations become ‘persons’?  It turns out, the entire fiction of corporate personhood began with and continues to expand under a perverted precedent established by the United States Supreme Court.  It started in 1886 with a decision known as Santa Clara versus Southern Pacific. The court’s decision said nothing about corporate personhood. It was a clerk of the court, a former corporate lawyer, who inserted language in the notes that accompanied the court’s decision that said, corporations are considered to be persons under the law.   From that deceitful court clerk’s notes, a legal precedent was established.

Since then, things have only gotten worse. In 1976, the Supreme Court gave us the Buckley versus Valeo decision that said ‘money equals speech’. In 2010, the majority corporate conservatives on the  Supreme Court gave us Citizens United, which opened the floodgates for corporate political contributions. In 2014, the same court majority led by Chief Justice Roberts gave us McCutcheon vs. FEC, which expanded corporate political influence even further.   

Bottom line: Our elections are driven by influence money, and our politicians, too often, have become sociopaths, willfully feeding on obscene amounts of corporate cash  It is bribery on a massive scale, made legal by the U.S. Supreme Court.

It would be easy to point the finger at the Republican party. The GOP is the corporatist party. They get the lion’s share of corporate influence money, and they have rarely been shy about where their loyalties lie. That would be with Wall Street, multi-national corporations, and the like.  But there's no denying, the democrats are also part of the problem.  They too have become accustomed to trading their legislative votes for campaign cash.

These days, nothing much worth doing gets done in Congress because that’s the way the corporate minders and lobbyists want it. In Washington, meaningful change on pretty much anything of consequence is damned near impossible.  The same kind of thing is happening at the state and the local level. The corruption is nearly complete. Our political system is dysfunctional.  Too many of the people we elect to office are hacks, who are shamelessly willing to take the money and serve the rich and powerful interests that put them in office.

Every single challenge of consequence to the American people languishes because of bought and paid for political intransigence.

The mess we find ourselves in starts with two very bad ideas bolstered by the corrupt actions of the U.S. Supreme Court. One is the idea that corporations are people. The other is the idea that money is speech.

When money is speech, the only people politicians listen to are those who offer them wads of cash. Corporations have also used their deep pockets to capture control the print media, radio, television broadcasters, and they now working to consolidate their control of the internet.  As long as money is treated as speech, Wall Street and large corporations will decide public policy, not the American people. 

Moreover, when corporations are treated as persons under the law, they can use their ‘human’ rights to subvert the rights of  flesh and blood living citizens in a whole range of ways. A company like Monsanto can lie and withhold information about the impact of its genetically modified seed, and its herbicides that kill beneficial insects like honey bees. Personhood was the shield cigarette makers used to lie and deceive the public about the dangers of smoking. Personhood allows corporations guilty of criminal activity to use their ‘right against self-incrimination’ to avoid prosecution. Personhood bestowed on a corporation allows them to be unaccountable for their profit driven actions.  It is the fiction they hide behind to profit, while the consequences of their actions are left for taxpayers to cleanup. 

Fixing what’s broken about our country starts with the way we govern ourselves.  That means, we must focus our grassroots energy on a Constitutional remedy to our political malaise. In fact, anything short of that will hardly slow down the corruption in government.

If what I have written resonates with you, join the resistance. Become a part of the solution, Support Move to Amend’s initiative for a 28^th Constitution Amendment, a 'We the People'  Amendment' that will say ‘Corporations are not People’ and ‘Money is not Speech.’


Here is a link to Move to Amend...  www.movetoamend.org