Big business take warning: you are accused of knowingly sabotaging the welfare of Americans to extract an obscene share of our abundance. Your premeditated actions to disrupt federal economic policy, to abuse and indenture American workers, and to damage America's ability to secure itself, are documented below. American citizens should take notice now in order to prevent further erosion of their rights, before big business removes any remaining freedoms necessary to cauterize this metastasizing tyranny.
Sponsorship by corporations of neo-liberal economic policies implemented during the Reagan Administration generates an excessive business surplus (see Chart #1) that is incommensurate with traditional American values. A rising share of production allocated to business surplus has a necessary corollary in falling shares allocated to workers and government. Primary-school arithmetic can prove this1. Marginal business surplus is generated only through reductions to employee compensation and government revenue. This explains business animosity towards both workers and government. Neo-liberal ideology, hailed by big business, merely supports the selfishly base interests of big business to aggrandize workers and to starve popular government programs of funding. This selfish interest to increase business surplus serves as motive for big business to abuse American workers and sabotage rational government policy.
Big business has large power to shape the public's awareness and perception. Through outright media ownership and advertising, big business influences how Americans see both themselves and the world in which they live. By ridiculing simple truths about big business's unethical behavior, and by casting doubt on very demonstrable cause-effect relationships that are not favorable to the interests of big business, big business has created a country of citizens who are incapable of independent thought or assessment. This helps further the agenda of big business to acquire more American abundance as business surplus because incomprehension of this agenda by the majority of Americans makes it nearly impossible for defensive reaction to arise. Recent hijacking of widespread discontent with “Wall Street” and redirection of the anger against government is an instructive example how big business manipulates public perceptions to its advantage.
Workers in the USA are suffering from trauma and shock at the hands of big business. American jobs truly protected by the legal right to collective bargaining have already disappeared. Big business uses the multinational corporation (MNC) as a tool to achieve this. By moving production to locations where MNCs pay workers less, pay less taxes to support government programs, and circumvent national laws and regulations, international trade has exploded over the past twenty-five years. This trade occurs largely through internal movement of goods and resources within MNCs across national borders. This is popularly called “globalization” – an attempt by big business to increase business surplus. The intended effect by big business is to take from workers and governments in order to increase business surplus.
Big business now has powerful means at its disposal to punish workers who do not remain silent in the face of growing tyranny. At-will employment, denial of assured access to proper health care, administrative oversight by financial corporations: these and worse serve as retribution and warning when any worker challenges the status quo. Those willing to bend under this pressure are promised rewards of continued employment, pay or promotion. Woe to anyone who fails to understand the implied employment contract when one side, big business, has all the advantages. Collective bargaining's utter disappearance leaves atomized individuals to face the enormous resources of big business.
Big business promotes hatred of government through enormous public-relations campaigns. Traditionally understood as “We the People,” government has become the boogeyman who causes all America's problems. As real problems multiply because of big business's selfish agenda, linking these problems to government both achieves more, by further weakening government, and becomes more necessary to screen big business's actions. Citizens who are duped into choosing less government as the only solution to their problems confuse the interests of big business with their own. There are many important services that government is the most capable and efficient institution to provide. Today, big business alone has the necessary resources to provide the services it needs. Neither citizens nor government are capable any longer of independent action without directly confronting big business.
Big business has intentionally weakened government in order to realize its selfish agenda. As a traditional protector of America's citizens from big business, big business has a long and deep antagonism to American government. By playing on America's longstanding aversion to taxes, big business has reduced taxation to levels that cannot fund our popularly-enacted government programs. Big business does not attack openly most of these programs (e.g., Social Security, Medicare, veterans' programs, etc.), it merely supports lower taxes and then makes accusations of fiscal irresponsibility. This tactic has won many battles for big business against citizens and government. It now threatens American security unless our citizens awaken to the threat.
Recent reprehensible actions by big business intentionally weaken American economic activity. Although companies are reaping record profits, they are not rehiring Americans laid off during the period of economic decline. They are content to squeeze the remaining workers until they break, safe in the knowledge that there are plenty of unemployed workers who will take any job for much less. Because the American economy is funded largely through private consumption, an army of unemployed workers leaves effective demand too weak to generate strong economic recovery. It seems contrary to reason, but economic recovery is not a necessary condition for growing the business surplus, since this can be achieved at worker and government expense. As long as this business surplus grows, big business has no interest in economic recovery. The quick action big business lobbied government for at the beginning of the economic crisis was aimed minimally at fixing corporate balance sheets.
Government options to defeat this crisis are limited due to decades of starving government of tax revenue to pay for programs that government must by law fund and administer. This creates fiscal pressure that constrains government's available response to the economic crisis. Monetary policy has been sabotaged directly by big business. For all the recent talk about quantitative easing, the Federal Reserve's increase in holdings of financial assets and the monetary base has been castrated by premeditated action to hold more reserves (see Chart #2) by financial corporations. There has been no consequent increase in lending to consumers, which was the intermediate outcome desired by monetary policymakers to strengthen economic recovery. So far big business has defeated official American fiscal and monetary policy to revive the economy. For anyone suffering from this economic mess, big business obviously owes you something as reparation.
To recap, big business is guilty of: (1) premeditated abuse of America's citizens; and (2) sabotaging official American policy to combat the current economic crisis and to provide security to our citizens. As both cure and restitution for the many ills suffered at the hands of big business, citizens should demand the following:
1. Compensation to employees for lost benefits and earnings over the last 30 years.
2. Immediate reinstatement of capital gains taxes.
3. Reinvestment in popular government programs through adopting progressive income taxes commensurate with traditional American values.
4. Nationalization and incorporation into the Federal Reserve System of all banks holding assets or deposits valuing $10 million or more in one state or $5 million or more in two different states.
5. Confiscation and incorporation into Medicare of all health insurance policies.
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