Healing America - Implementing a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG), Basic Health Insurance and Fundamental Human Rights in the United States of America (ePub)

Let's be clear. The most important economic and political issues facing this country are the extraordinary levels of income and wealth inequality, the rapidly growing concentration of ownership, the long-term decline of the American middle class and the regression into oligarchy and kleptocracy.

We know how important these issues are because our ruling class works overtime to prevent them from being seriously discussed. They are barely mentioned in the halls of Congress, where most members are dependent on the campaign contributions of the wealthy and their Super Pacs. They are not much discussed in the corporate media, in which a handful of conglomerates determine what we see, hear and discuss.

Today we have more concentration of ownership than at any time in modern history. In sector after sector a handful of giant corporations control what is produced and how much we pay for it. Unbelievably, just three Wall Street firms (Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street) control assets of over $20tn and are the major stockholders in 96% of S&P 500 companies.

In terms of media, some eight multinational media conglomerates control what we see, hear and read.

In terms of political power, the situation is the same. A small number of billionaires and CEOs, through their Super Pacs, dark money and campaign contributions, play a huge role in determining who gets elected and who gets defeated. There are now an increasing number of campaigns in which Super Pacs actually spend more money on campaigns than the candidates, who become the puppets to their big money puppeteers.

In the 2022 Democratic primaries, billionaires spent tens of millions to defeat candidates who were standing up for working families.

Martin Luther King was right when he said: "We must recognize that we can't solve our problem now until there is a redistribution of economic and political power" in America. That statement is even more true today.

Let us have the courage to stand together and fight back against corporate greed. Let us fight back against massive income and wealth inequality. Let us fight back against a corrupt political system.

Let us stand together and create a world that works for all, not just the 1%.

Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/02/the-us-has-a-ruling-class-and-americans-must-stand-up-to-it

https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/foresight/basic-income-guarantee_en

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleptocracy

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality