The Top 1% Earn More Than the Rest of Us COMBINED! Blame Corporate Pirates!

America’s Rich are Getting Richer (and Richer and Richer!)

Next year, 2021, will be the first year in the history of the United States where the top 1% of Americans earn more than the rest of the 99%. I’m not talking about the upper class of Americans earning more, only the top 1%! They earn more than the poor and middle class COMBINED. If left unchecked, this extreme imbalance of power will lead to world war.

Reagan’s Terrible Economic Plan

I mostly blame Reagan for this economic crisis. It was his ridiculous trickle-down economic policy that encouraged taxpayer money to be invested in corporations instead of workers. So, instead of investing in better training for workers, better health plans, better education for the young, better child Care programs, etc. Reagan focused on investing in BIG businesses. His idea was that the more the business made, the better the economy. Somehow corporate profits would trickle down to all Americans.

WRONG!

What trickle-down economics fails to realize is that rich Americans are rich because they are greedy and usually squashed a few people along the way to their success. They already don’t have altruistic mindsets. And if those greedy, rich Americans own a corporation, they are focused on increasing their company profitability, which increases their company value, which increases their stock price, which means they can make MILLIONS on stock dividends.

In the corporate money-making equation, there isn’t a lot of motivation for investing in workers. In fact, on their path to increasing profitability, corporations cut expenses which often means cutting back on worker benefits, lowering wages, and eliminating worker training programs. Either Reagan didn’t understand the corporate business model and how it is AGAINST corporate interests to invest in American workers. Or, Reagan was corrupt!

The Insane Evil of the Hedge Fund Manager

There’s a name for the people who help corporations become as profitable as possible to increase stock prices — hedge fund managers. Back in the 70’s, when they first showed up, they were called corporate pirates. These pirates used hostile take-overs to acquire corporations and then went to work cutting expenses, streamlining production, etc. to increase profits so those hedge fund managers/pirates could reap the profits from the stock dividends.

The result of these hedge fund managers/pirates is they, and corporate management, make hundreds of times more than their own workers! They only pay workers the bare minimum, which often isn’t even a living wage. This is one of the main reasons the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer. It is also one of the main reasons the environment is in crisis.

Ideally, We Would All Get Paid EQUALLY

In an ideal society, people would be paid equally. There wouldn’t be rich and poor. There would just be people working to benefit their society and everyone would have equal access to housing, healthcare, childcare, etc. In my opinion, the best way to accomplish this is through shared resource communities.

That means that capitalism has to go!

As I’ve written about before, with capitalism there are always losers. And those losers are in every town and city across the United States living in horrid conditions where they don’t have adequate housing, access to quality food or medical care. What’s even worse is that families stuck in the poor class often raise children who are also stuck. It’s similar to indentured servitude that played out during colonialism. With indentured servitude, when someone died owing a debt to the company they worked for, the child inherited that debt.

In our society, the child inherits a nearly hopeless economic situation. No child should be born having to claw and work themselves out of the bottom barrel of society. All children should be born with equal footing and equal opportunity.

2020 is an incredibly sad year. I feel like we are reaching the point of no return. If people aren’t ready for shared resource communities, at the very least we have got to start taxing the rich at really high levels and reinvesting that money in the poor and middle classes. But as long as people keep voting for Republicans and pirates like Donald Trump are elected president, the rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer, and the suffering will only increase on the path to the next world war.