When the Dust Clears…the Rich Have Been Redistributing $2.5 trillion Every Year for the Last Twenty-Five Years

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What will occur when the Covid-19 vaccine is fully distributed? What will happen if President Biden gets his stimulus? The assumed answer to both questions is that the economy will enter a business expansion, things will return to normal, and everything will be peachy. Maybe and maybe not.

Nearly 100,000 U.S. businesses disappeared from March to December 2020. Gross domestic product has dropped in the last three quarters. Despite the CARES Act and the last stimulus, the number of people applying for first time unemployment benefits has exploded to nearly one million people during each of the last two weeks, compared to less than 360,000 during the height of the Great Recession.

The underlying economy has been gutted by the billionaires, leaving a dying carcass in the place of a once healthy economy. According to a study by Carter Price of the Rand Corporation, the rich have been redistributing $2.5 trillion from the 99 percent to themselves on average for the last twenty-five years using their hired hands in government, which includes Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden and Wall Street’s favorite U.S. senator, Ron Wyden, who is appropriately the only U.S. senator to be called a “Useful Idiot” by a Nobel Prize winning economist in an op-ed in the New York Times.

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A perfect example of this political corruption is the CARES Act signed into law on March 27, 2020. Congressional leaders made certain the billionaires were due to receive $4.994 trillion from the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill. You read that right. The $2.2 trillion included $454 billion for large corporations, allegedly in loans. The rich receive 66 percent to 100 percent of their income and wealth from, you guessed it, corporations. The bill was written with a proviso that the Federal Reserve could print up to ten times $454 billion and lend the total of $4.994 trillion with a nod and a wink to large corporations ($4.54 trillion + $454 billion = $4.994 trillion). The real total amount of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act was $6.74 trillion ($4.994 trillion + $2.2 trillion – 454 billion). 

The combined profits of all US corporations in 2018 and 2019 were slightly over $4 trillion before taxes. The rich and their corporations, in other words, were getting more than two years’ worth of profits from the stimulus bill. Naturally, the stock market exploded as massive amounts of money was funneled to them through their corporations. The CARES Act, however, failed to authorize the Fed to loan money to those who truly needed it; to stay in the homes and put food on their tables, which would have also strengthened the underlying economy.

The CARES Act gave the 99 percent, numbering about 314,685,000 citizens, $1.75 trillion (about $5500 each on average) to help keep the economy afloat while the roughly 300,000 wealthiest shared close to $5 trillion, which comes out to a little over $16.6 million each.

Nearly 36 million people were thrown out of work from March to May 2020, and the best congress that money has bought saved the billionaires and threw crumbs at the rest of us.

There are numerous political ways the billionaires have used to redistribute income from us to them. Millions of U.S. jobs have been exported over the last forty years, for example, and the difference between the old high U.S wages and benefits and the new lower wages-only compensation in China, Vietnam, Mexico, Pakistan and elsewhere have gone straight into the pockets of the billionaires, thanks to their might-as-well-be-hired employees in the congress, the white house, and the supreme court.

Thus, there is no guarantee the economy will return to normal when the coronavirus is gone and the next stimulus has run its course. The impacts of every recession has gotten worse for the 99 percent because at least $50 trillion has been redistributed from 99 to the 1 percent over the last twenty-five years, depressing the demand for goods and services in the process. The top one percent are now stealing roughly 22 to 39 percent of all income produced in the United States, up from 8 percent in 1979. This trend has not been and will not be reversed with the political corruption in play. In reality, this trend has been exacerbated by the CARES Act.

So when the dust clears, and the virus is gone, there is no guarantee the economy will bounce out of this recession, which may prove to be another Depression. So maybe it will, but then maybe not.

• For more on the Carter Price study, click or copy and paste, https://www.rand.org/blog/2020/10/a-25-trillion-question-what-if-incomes-grew-like-gdp.html

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How Stupid Are the RepubliCons? It’s all about the economy stupid!

U.S. Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell must be as stupid as U.S. Senator’s Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. Paul and Cruz oppose the U.S. House of Representatives Heroes bill sponsored by the Democratic Party that will continue to provide $600 a week to the unemployed until January, as well as tens of billions of dollars to cities and states that are experiencing reduced tax dollars and will likely need to lay off tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or more, of public employees without further Federal aid.

Many Republican senators are opposed to the HEROES Act because it will not reward their billionaire owners to the same degree the CARES Act did, and which gave the superrich and their corporations $4.75 trillion in a $2.2 trillion bill. (Click here for that story.)

McConnell, appearing to be a dimwit, does not understand the issue that will decide the election in November. “It’s the economy stupid,” James Carville used to say. Carville was Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign manager in 1992. They won the election in 1992.

“We swears to serve the master of the precious.”

The U.S. economy is tanking big time. The only thing stopping the economy from further falling and moving into a Great Depression is the CARES Act, one of whose most important provisions for the 99 percent is about to expire. That provision is the $600 a week extra in unemployment benefits.

McConnell does not understand the economy needs people to spend money to keep it afloat. He opposes the $600 extra a week because some people are receiving more money than they were earning at their jobs, giving them an incentive to not look for work. Who cares? That $600 dollars is helping to keep the economy afloat, and there are not a whole bunch of available jobs out there right now anyway.

When cities, counties and states begin to lay off employees by the tens of thousands, along with those folks on unemployment who will stop receiving that $600 at the end of this month, the economy will likely move into a Great Depression, if we have not already done so.

The result will be a Democratic Party wave in November. Then it is likely the Republican Party will begin its fade into the history books as more and younger voters have become Bernie style Democratic Socialists, which is to say New Deal Democrats. McConnell and the rest of the Republican senators are about to send their political party into historical oblivion after voting to reward their billionaire backers $4.75 trillion while providing the vast majority of U.S. citizens crumbs with the CARES Act last March.

Meanwhile, U.S. House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi decided to placate her Party’s base by sponsoring the Heroes Act, but not that saving the base and the economy from ruin was something she actually wanted to do. The Heroes Act is the fourth stimulus package since March and her attempts to save the billionaires who control her Party and neglect the financial needs of the 99 percent is most obvious by this fact alone. Something must have clicked in her brain to come up with the HEROES Act.

She likely came to understand saving the economy and the billionaires from ruin means having to save the rest of us. McConnell, Rand Paul and “tiny hands” Ted Cruz have not figured out this basic economic issue yet even as Texas, the state Cruz represents, is rapidly turning blue along with Virginia, North Carolina, and several other states the Republican Party reliably once controlled.

When these states turn blue, this will eliminate the Republican Party as a factor in national politics. This has already occurred on several state levels. The Republican Party used to control California. Now it is the super minority party in both of California’s legislative houses. McConnell, Cruz and Paul are hastening the Party’s decline by their economic stupidity. It’s the economy stupid!

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The Coronavirus Recession; The Dictatorship of the Billionaires is Getting Richer at Our Expense

I wonder how bad this economic downturn is going to be. This recession just began in February 2020. The economy is opening up for the first time since the coronavirus struck the United States and people are saying the economy is going to pop right out of its slump. I doubt that.

This week, I saw all kinds of people standing in the soup line three blocks long, which was three blocks longer than two weeks ago. Facebook just laid off my friend across the street a couple weeks ago. Just a week ago, a long-time friend was furloughed from her job for the summer. My domestic partner has seen her hours reduced at work. Middle class families are rummaging through my garbage and recycle bins. The rich are getting richer. Maybe that was the big boys plan.

No, I just do not see an economic recovery around the corner. I see a deep recession. One of my local bicycle stores is closed, along with two bakeries, the coffee shop, the chocolate shop, my chiropractor and others. Four blocks away two Vietnamese restaurants have closed permanently along with a pizza parlor. Seven blocks away the Roseway Theater is shuttered. Next to it the wedding store is closed forever, and next door to that the appliance repair store is gone. All have closed permanently since March 2020. All have been open since at least the 1980s. The Roseway Theater had been open since 1924.

The coronavirus pandemic ignited this recession, but its depth and misery for Americans have been caused by 40 years of relentless class warfare by the rich. The opening shots of the war began in 1971 when a little known Republican tobacco attorney named Lewis Powell wrote what is known as the Powell manifesto urging the rich to combine their resources, establish a variety of organizations to turn back the clock to the era of the robber barons, take over the courts, and generally fight back against the Constitutional and democratic rights of the vast majority of people. The rich took his advice. They organized. Out popped the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Federalist Society, and a lot more. Two months after he wrote his manifesto, Powell was sitting on the Supreme Court bench serving the rich as a legalized guerilla fighter in their war against the rest of us.

The Roseway Theater is closed and that financially helps streaming corporations like Amazon and Apple and their rich shareholders become richer. The local restaurants are gone but that financially helps Walmart, Domino’s Pizza and other major corporations and billionaire owned private equity companies by eliminating the local competition, and their rich shareholders are prospering at the expense of local business people, the real entrepreneurs, people who are our neighbors. The local coffee shops are gone, and that helps the affluent shareholders of Starbucks and other major coffee corporations get richer.

A recent poll shows 62 percent of Americans think the United States is in the toilet. Political corruption on a massive scale has done that, with the billionaires in control of both major political parties, as well as the Supreme Court. (Click here for that story)

The CARES Act of March 2020 was supposed to help the economy with loans to small businesses, but apparently, the authorized money is not enough and perhaps deliberately so. Thank you Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. The CARES Act authorized $4.75 trillion to save the 1 percent who derive the vast majority of their income and wealth from major corporations.

Bloomberg reports the Federal Reserve is printing and giving billions of dollars to major corporations, such as Walmart, AT&T, and United Health. Technically, those are loans but will likely be forgiven. Meanwhile, those billions find their way into the hands of the rich via higher dividends and capital gains. Click here for that story.

If you count capital gains, the rich have gone from stealing 7 percent of all income produced in the United States in 1971 when Lewis Powell wrote the Powell Manifesto to at least 37 percent by 2016. It is likely closer to 40 percent in 2020. You can thank the corporate wing of the Supreme Court for much of that gain.

Don’t you think it’s time to forget about our petty differences on the social issues the rich have used their news organizations to get us to focus on, and unite to save ourselves against the depredations of the rich? If not for yourselves, why don’t you do it for future generations?

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The Rich are the Prime Beneficiaries of the $4.7 Trillion Coronavirus Relief ACT

Not only did legislators of both major political parties make certain when writing the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) in late March 2020 that the top 0.05 percent receive 80 percent of the benefits, but they also wrote the legislation so that more than 80 percent of a change in the tax law included in the bill benefited the top, as well. This is according to a non-partisan congressional committee.

The CARES Act was sold by the government and the corporate news media as providing worker and business relief for those suffering from the coronavirus quarantine. In fact, it was written to save the financial well being of the billionaires and multi-millionaires who have corrupted both major political parties, and the federal and likely all state governments in the process. The corruption clearly extended to much of the corporate news media since few of them reported on this.

The Guardian points out that the “change – which alters what certain business owners are allowed to deduct from their taxes – will allow some of the nation’s wealthiest to avoid nearly $82 billion of tax liability in 2020.

Nearly 82% of the benefits from the tax law change will go to people making $1 million or more annually in 2020, according to an analysis by the joint committee on taxation (JCT).

Taxpayers will lose nearly $90 billion from the change, which suspends a restriction introduced in the 2017 tax bill.

The change allows owners of businesses known as pass-through entities to lower their taxes by deducting as much as they want against income unrelated to the business.

Before, owners of pass-through entities could deduct a maximum of $250,000 in losses from non-business income such as stocks and bonds. This limitation was introduced in the 2017 law to offset other tax benefits going to firms.”

The rich lost trillions of dollars in paper profits with the stock markets down around 15 percent from their all-time highs. The billionaire owners of hedge funds (largely unregulated investment businesses with 99 or fewer clients) and big-time real estate investors will be the primary beneficiaries.

Currently, the top 1 percent steal 37+ percent of all income produced in the United States compared to 8 percent in 1980. Three people (Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates) own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of Americans. This lopsided distribution of both income and wealth has come about due to political corruption. Those at the top of the financial food chain are eating those at the bottom via corrupt politics and with deadly impacts. For example, the US white mortality rate has dropped three years in a row for the first time since the Spanish flu of 1918 struck.

I also want to point out that the CARES Act itself provides a little over $5000 to each member of the 99 percent while giving away an average of over $16 million each to the members of the top 0.01 percent, proving how rampant corruption is in the government. Click The CoronaVirus Stimulus Bill: The Rich Get 5 Trillion, We Get the Crumbs for more on that.

Click Tax change in coronavirus package overwhelmingly benefits millionaires, congressional body finds-Washington Post for more on the story.

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Did Trump Just Win the 2020 Presidential Race?

Donald Trump just secured the votes of millions of American citizens by renegotiating NAFTA. However, it has yet to pass congress and may never, just because it is a big-time body blow to the desires of Wall Street and the billionaires in their efforts to redistribute more income from working Americans to the rich by exporting jobs, thereby creating greater income and wealth inequality using U.S. taxpayer dollars in the process.

The millions of U.S. jobs currently occupied by Mexico’s $3 dollar per hour labor will almost certainly see some jobs returning to the United States, or more than likely, they may be exported from Mexico to Pakistan, China or Vietnam.

Regardless, Richard Trumpka, president of the AFL-CIO wrote of the renegotiated treaty, “The United States Mexico Canada trade agreement is a huge win for working people. After a quarter-century of suffering under the failed North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and 18 months of hard-fought negotiations, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) is now proud to endorse a better deal for working people: the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USCMA)…The USMCA isn’t perfect — no deal ever is. But it’s a far cry from the original NAFTA, and that is a huge win for working people in North America. While it won’t bring back every job lost under NAFTA, it will help stop the bleeding and add important new protections for workers across the continent.”

A few things need to be said about the agreement. It will slow the pace of income and wealth inequality that has occurred over the last forty years, but only a little bit. Nowadays, three men own more wealth than the bottom half of the U.S. population and the 1 percent now steal somewhere between 22 to 38 percent of all the income produced each year in the United States, up from 8 percent in 1980; much of this can be attributed to international trade agreements negotiated to export U.S. jobs by the tens of millions.

The difference between the old higher wages and the new third world wages goes directly into the bank accounts of the rich via higher corporate profits, dividends and share prices.

The USCMA passed through the Democratic Party-controlled U.S. House of Representatives last week. However, it now has to pass through the RepubliCon controlled U.S. Senate early in 2020. The RepubliCons and their Wall Street and other corporate masters are dead set against it.

U.S. RepubliCon Senator Pat Toomey, who represents Wall Street and some billionaires, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that he will vote against the trade agreement. Here are a few of his objections;

1. Car manufacturers will need to… “pay wages far above prevailing Mexican rates.” In other words, Mexican auto workers do not deserve to earn more than $3 an hour.

2. “First are the laws to facilitate unionization of Mexican factory workers.” Apparently, Toomey thinks that organized billionaires (shareholders in corporations) is something that has God’s blessing, but organized labor is evil. This is class warfare at its worse.

3. “Another flaw is the drastic reduction of the Investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanism. U.S. investors don’t always get a fair adjudication of their business disputes in foreign courts, even in Canada and Mexico.”

These were secret tribunals that were highly unconstitutional. The U.S. Constitution allows the rules of treaties to override U.S. laws. However, a treaty requires 67 percent of the U.S. Senate to approve of treaties. That was not the case for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was, and notice this, called an “agreement.”

NAFTA only required a majority vote since it was an “agreement.” Consequently, the always secretly held tribunals of the Investor-State clause of NAFTA has always been unconstitutional. Representatives of local government, citizen groups, labor groups, and others, were never allowed into the tribunals. Only lawyers for the governments of Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, as well as corporate lawyers, were allowed in. Local and state laws were overturned by this unconstitutional tribunal, but Senator Toomey thinks it unfair the power of the tribunals is no more.

Expect Wall Street and the entire RepubliCon party to reject this agreement in the United States Senate, but expect Donald Trump to benefit politically nonetheless.

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Bernie Sanders Cannot Be Bought: The Democratic Presidential Candidates and the Billionaires Who Support Them

According to Forbes Magazine, not a single billionaire shows any financial support for Bernie Sanders in his run for the presidency. What do the billionaires expect in return for their support of the other candidates? We will not know unless we elect the billionaire’s candidate. One thing is certain; some of the billionaires want to continue to redistribute more income and wealth from the 99 percent to themselves.

The list was last updated on August 13th. According to Forbes, “67 billionaires—including spouses and members of billionaire families—had donated to the 20 Democratic candidates that debated in Detroit last week. Some, like Lowercase Capital founder Chris Sacca and his wife, Crystal, have donated to as many as seven candidates. Others, like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, have instead chosen to donate to only one of the contenders, according to data from the U.S. Federal Election Commission.”

Below is a list of the candidates rated by how many different billionaires support their public and non-public positions (i.e. We do not know what was promised).

1. Pete Buttigieg: 23 billionaire donors
2. Corey Booker: 18 billionaire donors
3. Kamala Harris: 17 billionaire donors–no wonder she says one thing to the public and another thing to her campaign donors.
4. Michael Bennet: 15 billionaire donors
5. Joe Biden: 13 billionaire donors
6. John Hickenlooper: 11 billionaire donors
7. Beto O’Rourke: 9 billionaire donors
8. Amy Klobuchar: 8 billionaire donors
9. Jay Inslee: 5 billionaire donors
10. Kirsten Gillibrand: 4 billionaire donors
11. Elizabeth Warren and John Delaney: 3 billionaire donors each
12. Steve Bullock: 2 billionaire donors
13. Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, and Marianne Williamson: 1 billionaire donor each
14. Bernie Sanders, Julian Castro, Bill De Blasio, and Tim Ryan: 0 billionaire donors

We all knew Joe Biden has always been a servant of Wall Street. What we did not know was who were the other stealth candidates for the rich. Pete Buttigieg, Corey Booker, and Kamala Harris are at the top of the list of the billionaires. A vote for them is a vote for redistributing income from the 99 percent to the billionaires.

Bernie, Julian Castro, Bill De Blasio, and Tim Ryan are the least favorite of the billionaires. A vote for them is a vote for the 99 percent.

Elizabeth Warren is the surprise here. She is a consistently ardent supporter of the 99 percent and an avowed enemy of the billionaires of Wall Street. Warren has received contributions from the wife of GitHub founder Tom Preston-Werner and from Susan Pritzker, the spouse of Hyatt heir Nicholas Pritzker, II.

The Billionaires and their Democratic Presidential Candidates–Forbes

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Senator Elizabeth Warren Plans to Battle Political Corruption in the United States Government

Sen. Elizabeth Warren cited recent Pew Research Center polling that found only 18% of Americans say they can trust the U.S. government to do the right thing to unveil her Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act on Tuesday.

It is well known that the rich, their corporations, and their lobbyists have bought almost every member of the United States House of Representatives and almost every member of the Senate since 1981, which include such corrupt blowhards as RepubliCons Orrin Hatch, Mitch McConnell and Democrat Ron Wyden. Since 1981, every United States president has bent to the desires of the well-to-do on all matters having to do with redistributing income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent. Wyden, Hatch, and McConnell have voted to redistribute income and wealth from the 99 percent to the rich and powerful time and time again when they voted to export millions of jobs held by United States citizens via trade agreements.

The difference between the old higher US wages and benefits and the new three dollars a day jobs in foreign nations goes straight into the pockets of the super-rich via higher corporate profits, rising share prices, and surging dividends. The newly unemployed in the U.S. might get unemployment insurance for a few months if they are lucky.

Political corruption is precisely why income inequality has grown from the 1 percent receiving 8 percent of all income produced in the USA in 1980 to 37 percent today, and why three people own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of the U.S. population, and why the 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.

Warren’s plan provides a lifetime ban on lobbying by former members of Congress, Presidents, and agency heads and banning foreign lobbying and lobbyists donations to candidates and members of Congress.

Warren’s bill seeks to eliminate both the appearance and the potential for financial conflicts of interest by banning members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, federal judges, and other senior government officials from owning and trading individual stock, including requiring the Supreme Court follow the ethics rules applicable to all other federal judges. One study has found that members of the U.S. Supreme Court rule in favor of companies they invest in.

Warren advocates “locking the government-to-lobbying revolving door” and eliminating the “golden parachutes” that companies pay some executives when they enter public service, citing the instance of Goldman Sachs paying Gary Cohn more than $250 million when he left the firm to lead President Trump’s National Economic Council.

Warren’s legislation also aims to end what she characterizes as the corporate capture of public interest rulemaking by requiring disclosure of funding or editorial conflicts of interest when corporations and special interest groups pay for comments and studies that support rulemaking, as well as requiring elected officials and candidates for federal office to disclose more financial and tax information and making federal contractors – including private prisons and immigration detention centers – comply with federal open records laws.

A lot more can be done to end corruption in the U.S. government. Banning the paid speeches made by former presidents and high officials is a starter. Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama get $250,000 a pop for half-hour paid speeches. Who is to say the lure and promise of future profits do not influence the choices made by people in high office? In addition, the government could limit the amount of funding of political campaigns provided by political action committees, corporations, and individuals. However, the corporate wing of the United States Supreme Court has been so corrupted by the inflow of cash and favors and class warfare mentality in favor of their social and economic class, that they eliminated one hundred years of legal precedent in the Citizens United case of 2010 that limited contributions as outlined in the sentence above. Reversing that, and successfully impeaching the corrupt corporate wing of the Supreme Court would go a long way toward ending the massive wave of political corruption that has swamped the United States governments at all levels like rising tides of overflowing cesspools.

For the complete story, see Elizabeth Warren Proposes Ways to Fight Political Corruption–MarketWatch.

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What the US Corporate News Media Doesn’t Want You to Know: Nine Days of Riots in France Are Caused By Redistributing Income From the 99 Percent to the Rich

French President Emmanuel Macron is called “The President of the Rich” for a reason.

Paris has been in flames over Macron’s insistence to shift much of the tax burden from the rich and corporations to the 99 percent. Much of the US corporate news media would have you believe the riots are simply being played out because of an increase in fuel taxes of which the stated purpose is to cut greenhouse gas emissions by reducing consumption.

Now here is what much of the US news media does not want you to know.

Macron reduced taxes on the wealthy and corporations and then increased government investments, which included spending to reduce school class sizes, improve instruction in poor neighborhoods, add services for the learning-disabled, and bolster vocational training for the unemployed. Macron is also helping out his rich corporate buddies by having the government increase subsidizing research in the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence that promises to revolutionize transportation, health care, and defense, as well as increase corporate profits, dividends and share prices, most of which will redound to the richest of investors at public expense, and especially at the expense of the poor and working class who are now paying higher taxes to fund these programs.

Needless to say, reducing tax revenues while increasing government spending meant Macron had to do something to staunch the bleeding government coffers by increasing taxes on the 99 percent. He did this by raising taxes on fuel, allegedly to accelerate the shift from carbon-emitting fossil fuels that cause global warming. He also increased other taxes paid by the 99 percent.

“You are committing violence with your policy. It’s you that are going after the poor to give to the rich!” thundered François Ruffin, a firebrand of the leftist France Unbowed party.

Mr. Macron was guilty of a “heavy moral, economic, and historical sin,” the best-selling economist Thomas Piketty wrote in the newspaper Le Monde.

Notice the massive difference between what occurs when the tax burden is shifted from the rich to the poor in France and in the USA. We in the USA have become quite docile with our GMO sodas, beer, and cupcakes as our income and wealth has been redistributed to the 99 percent over the last forty years. The US affluent now steal around 37 percent of the total income produced in the USA compared to 8 percent forty years ago, and government policies have been the conduit by which the rich have achieved this at the expense of the rest of us. We in the USA do nothing about it but lazily buy into these policies.

Macron Economic Reforms Stronger Than Trump Tax Cuts–CNBC

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US Political Corruption, a UN Report, and the Economic and Political Policies of the Last 40 Years

The people of the United States lead the world in many categories, most of them, however, are not things to brag about. This is where the corruption of both major political parties, all three branches of the US government (that includes the corporate wing of the US Supreme Court) by the rich and their corporate dollars has brought us to during the last forty years.

All three branches of the government and both major political parties have fought tooth and nail to redistribute income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent during the last four decades. The corporate news media has been complicit in this rape and plunder of their fellow citizens by the 1 percent.

Studies show that the top 1 percent of the US now own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. The top 1 percent stole only 8 percent of all income produced in the USA in 1980, while studies show they are now robbing the rest of us blind by stealing anywhere from 23 to 37+ percent of the total income created in the United States. The shares of wealth and income of the 1 percent are still growing and at the expense of the rest of us.

Below are some of the findings from the United Nations study.

By most indicators, the US is one of the world’s wealthiest countries. It spends more on national defense than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United Kingdom, India, France and Japan combined.
US healthcare expenditures per capita are double the OECD average and much higher than in all other countries. But there are many fewer doctors and hospital beds per person than the OECD average. (OECD = Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which includes 37 nations)

• US infant mortality rates in 2013 were the highest in the developed world.
• Americans can expect to live shorter and sicker lives, compared to people living in any other rich democracy, and the “health gap” between the US and its peer countries continues to grow.
• US inequality levels are far higher than those in most European countries
• Neglected tropical diseases, including Zika, are increasingly common in the USA. It has been estimated that 12 million Americans live with a neglected parasitic infection. A 2017 report documents the prevalence of hookworm in Lowndes County, Alabama.
• The US has the highest prevalence of obesity in the developed world.
• In terms of access to water and sanitation, the US ranks 36th in the world.
• America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, ahead of Turkmenistan, El Salvador, Cuba, Thailand and the Russian Federation. Its rate is nearly five times the OECD average.
• The youth poverty rate in the United States is the highest across the OECD with one-quarter of youth living in poverty compared to less than 14% across the OECD.
• The Stanford Center on Inequality and Poverty ranks the most well-off countries in terms of labor markets, poverty, safety net, wealth inequality, and economic mobility. The US comes in last of the top 10 most well-off countries and 18th amongst the top 21.
• In the OECD, the US ranks 35th out of 37 in terms of poverty and inequality.
• According to the World Income Inequality Database, the US has the highest Gini rate (measuring inequality) of all Western Countries
• The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality characterizes the US as “a clear and constant outlier in the child poverty league”.
• US child poverty rates are the highest amongst the six richest countries – Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden and Norway.

Free trade policies that have made it easy for the billionaires and their corporations to export tens of millions of United States jobs to third world nations and the pocket the difference between the old high US wages and benefits and the super low third world wages with no benefits have caused much of the US crisis outlined in the UN Report. These same trade scams also pave the legal road for US corporations to create tens of millions of jobs overseas rather than here at home with the same result of increasing income and wealth inequality. There are other culprits in the current state of US political corruption; deregulation, monopolies, lawlessness on Wall Street, a US Department of Justice unwilling to take on Wall Street corruption, unfettered campaign contributions leading to the political corruption of both major political parties, a Supreme Court corrupted by the influence of the billionaires, such as the Koch Brothers.

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GMOs, Income and Wealth Inequality, and the Food Riots That Have Not Occurred

Income inequality and genetically modified foods (GMOs) are interrelated. Just like tumors and other health maladies, GMOs help income and wealth inequalities grow.

GMO’s entered the US food chain in 1994. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved GMO’s for the US food chain for humans in 1992. The GMO corporations provided the evidence of its safety, which, reportedly, were tests demonstrating that rats fed GMO food for three months did not develop health problems.

The folks at the FDA apparently did not care what happened to GMO fed rats after three months. What mattered is that pesticides and herbicides were genetically placed within the seeds of food plants, such as corn, canola, and soy. As the seeds grow into plants, so, too, do the pesticides and herbicides. When you eat corn, canola, and soy, you eat the pesticides and herbicides. More than 80 percent of corn, canola, and soy grown in the US today are GMOs. So are large amounts of many other crops.

Numerous studies show GMOs cause health issues. For example, a study in France found that rats fed GMO foods for over three months developed all sorts of health issues, such as tumors and other organ damage (Click here for more information). Also, see the video above.

Why are we eating this poison on such a massive scale? The answer is simple. GMO plants have the herbicides and pesticides in them. The pesticides kill bugs that bite into the plant, while the herbicides kill weeds that might otherwise grow within a few feet of the plant. That makes GMO crops less labor intensive, thereby reducing labor costs, and raising profit margins.

Increased profit margins mean higher corporate earnings and share prices than would otherwise be the case in the absence of GMOs. That’s why many corporations use GMOs, such as Kelloggs, McDonalds, Purina, Quaker Oats, PepsiCo, Swansen, Heinz, and on and on. The list is almost endless.

GMO’s are one of the reasons why income and wealth inequality are at such high levels. The rich disproportionately benefit from rising corporate profits and share prices. Currently, the top 1 percent own more wealth in the United States than the bottom 90 percent. For more information see The 1 Percent Own More Wealth Than the Bottom 90 Percent. The top 1 percent are stealing up to 37 percent of all income created in the United States nowadays, compared to just 8 to 10 percent in 1980. See The rich are now getting more than 36 percent of all income.

There is one more advantage the rich derive from GMO foods. Profits can be increased on GMO foods without raising prices. In some cases, prices might even decline while profits rise. In the face of rising inequality, the increase in food prices is slowed by using GMO crops. Otherwise, prices might rapidly increase, resulting in consumer dissatisfaction and even perhaps food riots. Cheap food depresses the discontent of the masses, helping to keep them in line even as the rich rob them of their health and money.

Ultimately, your health is being redistributed to the rich via GMOs, increased corporate profits, and rising share prices, and your government has approved this health and income redistribution scam.

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