America’s Billionaire Welfare State
Quite simply, the GOP and the ruling elite have created a monopoly/trickle-down economy, characterized by:
White supremacy, systemic racism, slave wages - a welfare state for billionaires - and failed for profit healthcare … while a pandemic rages.
By JM Hamilton (5-15-2021)
The financial news media was all abuzz with the I-word this week… the dreaded inflation that Wall Street has been warning about. Many will recall failed economist, Larry Summers, used inflation as an excuse to recommend withholding stimulus spending for labor, during the 2008 Wall Street crisis. Larry was wrong, of course, and the remnants of the middle class, and blue-collar workers, pivoted to Trump in 2016. Now, Larry is ringing the inflation alarm all over again.
What the financial media has not covered, in any detail, if at all, is the outsized role Wall Street and America’s monopoly economy plays in jacking up prices, arbitrarily and capriciously, and passing a monopolistic tax (i.e. inflation) onto consumers. Lumber prices have more than doubled, thanks in no small part to Wall Street commodity speculation. Wall Street sees a hot commodity, bids up the price, and those costs – complete with speculative markup - are passed onto the consumer (and of course, retailers must get their cut, as well, and marks up said commodity even higher). In this regard, Wall Street adds zero value and is pure overhead. Foreign supply chains, and globalism & monopoly, falls on its keister, and no new cars are built… consumers pivot to used cars and prices shoot up. Famed robber baron, and monopolist, Warren Buffett, recently said he has the pricing power to pass along increased costs to consumers, and has therefore, used monopolist pricing power to pass along an obscene tax upon the American people. That’s the power of unchecked monopoly. And the only thing that has the power to hold a monopoly in check is regulation, competition, and congress… but both parties are on the take, so don’t look for the duopoly to take on America’s monopoly problem or badly needed, structural economic reforms.
To be sure, there’s undoubtedly some increased demand in the inflation equation, but already there are signs that Trump/Biden stimulus are fading, along with consumer sentiment. Read here.
So why is Wall Street banging the inflation gong so hard, presently?
As usual, it has to do with crushing the largest cost component of the business community, and that is US labor.
The Wall Street, supply-side, inflation initiative has two simple aims.
One, eliminate all discussion on raising the minimum wage to $15. Status: Mission accomplished.
Two, shutdown any dialogue about congress passing any public works or new deal legislation. Status: Looking good.
Anything to help labor or give workers greater negotiating power with their employers must, per Wall Street, be cut off at the knees. This is what the republican party has stood for, since Reagan, and Larry Summers – establishment Dem & Clintonista – clearly stands for today.
This was made even more manifest when several right-wing governors cut off federal aid to workers, unilaterally, during a horrible labor market and in the middle of a global pandemic. Yes, you read that correctly: in order to perpetuate the slave labor economy, the monopoly/monopsony economy, White Supremacy party governors cut off aid to American workers, in an attempt to drive them back into the labor market. A US labor market characterized by: disease, a sky-high US body count, extraordinarily rude American consumers, and wage slavery (almost forgot, America’s failed for-profit healthcare system).
Clearly, the GOP and establishment Dems care very little about the bottom half of society, many of whom live in poverty or hand to mouth. Tens of millions of workers are unemployed, underemployed, given up looking for work, and are subjected to wage slavery (aka a nonliving wage). And the Dem congress has completely stalled out on Biden’s proposed infrastructure plans, essentially sabotaging itself in the run up to 2022 midterms.
So much for those hard won Georgia Senate seats.
When Wall Street ran into trouble in 2020, congress came forward in a rare display of bipartisanship to pass $4.4 trillion in welfare for Wall Street; but notice, when it comes time to give American workers aid or a government job… this is worthy of months of debate, stalling, and Washington games. The bottom line on all of this: The US runs a billionaire/multi-millionaire welfare state. All four branches of government - including the FED - are captured, owned, and controlled by billionaires & multinationals. Fiscal, monetary, regulatory, and foreign policies of the United States… It’s all trickle-down. You know, trickle-down, the very policy that POTUS Biden denounced in his speech before congress as a failure.
The FT reported this week that central banks dumped nine trillion in monetary stimulus into markets, and shockers… billionaires suddenly were eight trillion dollars richer? So nice of billionaires to somehow allow the extra trillion to escape their grasp. Someone screwed up!
All of this, of course, begs questions. Questions nobody in Washington - nor the MSM - is asking. Questions like:
How is it that the monopolists in the American economy, allegedly the greatest economy in the world, can’t meet a momentary spike in aggregate demand, w/out setting off inflation-mongering?
Why is an increase in minimum wages so threatening to American elites? Can the US economy, the monopoly economy, the slave wage economy, not rise to the occasion to meet increased aggregated demand w/out setting off paroxysms of inflation?
What does it say about the US today, that its elites will go to any extremes to crush labor, women, minorities, and homosexuals? Not only rigging the entire economy in their favor, but generating supply-side inflation to shut down any pro-labor reforms or progressive legislation?
What of the systemic misogyny, racism, and homophobia that is deeply ingrained within the US economy, and absolutely nothing has been done to address? (Sorry, a couple of tokens in boardrooms, does absolutely zero to address the plight of tens of millions of disenfranchised Americans. Zero.)
There are so many more questions that need answering; questions that the elites will do everything in their power to evade. The United States is, clearly, rotting from within. And at the center of that rot is the US slave wage/monopoly economy, a massive billionaire welfare state, and a highly corrupt US government.
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2021
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