FLASH
Shkruar nga Bernie Sanders
This handful of corporations determines what is "important" and what we discuss, and what is "irrelevant" and what we should ignore...
It's hard not to notice. Our country is rapidly evolving into two Americas. An America that consists of less than 1,000 billionaires, who own an unprecedented amount of wealth and power, and who have never been better off than they are today.
Then there is the other America, where the vast majority of Americans live. It consists of tens of millions of families, who struggle every day to make ends meet, pay the bills, and worry that their children will have an even lower standard of living than them.
In America First, the rich buy $500 million yachts, equipped with helicopters, $270 million mansions with 30 luxury bedrooms, private islands, an entire fleet of planes to travel around the world, or even spaceships to travel to the outer edges of the Earth's atmosphere.
They can afford the best health care available, send their children to the best schools, and expect to live much longer than others. In this America, the 3 richest people (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg) own more wealth than the bottom half of our society: over 165 million people.
And their wealth is only growing. Musk alone currently owns over $450 billion, and together these three men have a fortune of $955 billion. And it's not just these three. The richest one percent of people own more wealth than the poorest 90 percent of people, and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider every day.
In the other America, the working class struggles only to secure the basic necessities of life. In this America, over 60 percent of our people live on welfare, millions more work for miserable wages. 85 million are uninsured, and more than 20 million families spend more than half of their limited income on rent or mortgage payments alone, and more than 60,000 die each year because they can't afford to see a doctor in time.
In this America, 25 percent of seniors struggle to survive on less than $15,000 a year, while parents struggle to raise their children in a nation that has the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any other country big.
And because of stress and inadequate health care, working people live far less than the rich. In this America, workers are deathly afraid that if their car breaks down, if their child gets sick, if their landlord raises their rent, if they get divorced, if their wife gets pregnant, if for whatever reason they lose their job, they will find themselves in the midst of a financial disaster.
But let's be clear. Our country is not only experiencing an unprecedented level of income and wealth inequality. Today we have more concentration of ownership than we have ever had. Sector after sector - from health care, agriculture, financial services, energy, transportation - a handful of large corporations control what is produced and how much and how we as consumers pay for their products.
Only 3 companies on Wall Street (BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street) control assets with a value of 22 trillion dollars. These 3 companies are major shareholders in about 95 percent of S&P 500 companies, exerting enormous control over the world's largest corporations.
Never before in American history have so few media conglomerates, all owned by the billionaire class, wielded so much influence over the public. It is estimated that 6 major media corporations now own 90 percent of what the American people see, hear and read.
This handful of corporations determines what is "important" and what we discuss, and what is "irrelevant" and what we should ignore. If you use a social media account to read news, chances are it's owned by billionaires Musk, Zuckerberg, or Trump.
If you read the Washington Post, Fox or the Los Angeles Times, then the news is owned by billionaires Bezos, Murdoch or Patrick Soon-Shiong. But what should concern you is not only the ownership and control of billionaires over the economy and the media.
The rich are also buying our government and destroying American democracy. Never before in US history have we seen a ruling class with so much political power. As a result of the Supreme Court's disastrous ruling against United Citizen, billionaires and their foundations can spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns.
And that is exactly what they are doing. During this year's election, 150 billionaires alone spent nearly $2 billion to buy politicians who support their agenda, and to defeat candidates who oppose their special interests.
So billionaires representing just 0.0005 percent of our population supported 18 percent of total campaign spending. This is not democracy. It is not respecting the "one person, one vote" principle. This is not what this country should stand for.
In his famous Gettysburg Address in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln spoke of "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people." Unfortunately, today we have "a government of the billionaire class, created by the billionaires, and which governs mainly for the billionaire class".
Today we are at a pivotal and unprecedented moment in American history. Either we will struggle to create a government and economy that works for everyone, or we will continue to speed down the road to oligarchy and rule by the super rich. The choice is clear. We must stand together to defend democracy and justice. /Adapted "Pamphlet" from "Fox News"
Note: Bernie Sanders, former Democrat, now an independent politician representing the state of Vermont in the US Senate.
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