Eric Zuesse – Who can NOW say America hasn’t become a mega corporate dictatorship?

11 februari 2020Businessplan, Home, Interview, Locatie, Media, Portretten, Zuesse0

Jon Hellevig posted on January 16th at The Saker, “Capitalism in America: How a Dismal Decimal is Robbing Americans Blind” the most extensive and up to date compendium anywhere, of data on economic inequality in America, and one fact especially stands out from it: “Today Top 1% are losers compared with Top 0.1% – the Dismal Decimal – who are where the music plays. Top 0.1% now holds as much wealth as Bottom 90% combined.” These top 0.1% people also donate the lions’ share of the money that finances political ads and organizations for their candidates and against the candidates who are financed instead by the other Party’s billionaires. Any candidate who isn’t backed by the billionaires of any Party is a rarity and (except for the independent Bernie Sanders, who is truly an exception) has no realistic chance of winning or keeping a seat in Congress.

That drastic inequality of wealth in America – “Top 0.1% now holds as much wealth as Bottom 90% combined” – is calculated by Deutsche Bank, in their January 2018 study “US Income and Wealth Inequality” (https://www.DB.com/newsroom_news/Inequality_Jan2018.pdf). Here’s more from that study.

On page 3 is shown that US is comparable to Chile, Israel, Mexico, Portugal, and Turkey, as being at the top of the nations studied, in “inequality in household disposable income.”

On page 6: “A record high 30% of households have no wealth” in the United States.

On page 7: All time high median net worth in constant dollars was 2007, at $ 119,000, declined to $ 67,000 in 2010, and rose to $ 78,000 by 2016.

On page 8: “US: Top 0.1% owns as many assets as the bottom 90%.”

On page 10: US has higher income inequality than any other OECD nation.

On page 11: Income inequality is rising faster in US than any other OECD nation.

On page 15: Top 1% in pre tax income in the US in 2014 was $ 1.3 million+.
Top 0.1% was $ 6 million+.

So if the top 0.1% in income in America are also the top 0.1% in wealth in America, then the individuals in America who draw $ 6 million+ annual income own as much as do all 90% who aren’t in the top 10%.

When a nation’s billionaires control not only its mega corporations but its government, that small group – who do business with one another – constitute a national dictatorship which is just as bad as in feudal times when a tiny aristocracy (who also did business with one another) controlled the government and were a collective dictatorship over the entire nation’s population. A king isn’t required in order for there to be a dictatorship. Most dictatorships are aristocratic, not monarchical. Furthermore, in almost all monarchies, the king represents, and comes from, his class – the aristocracy. A collective dictatorship is no better, or worse, than is a one person dictatorship.

There are, according to the latest count by Forbes (as of 2019), 607 billionaires in the US (https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/#63bad244251c), and these people include, for example, Jack Dorsey who controls Twitter (https://mashable.com/2015/10/05/jack-dorsey-twitter-ceo/?EUrope=true), and Eric Schmidt and John Doerr who mainly control Google (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/011516/top-5-Google-shareholders-goog.asp), as well as Mark Zuckerberg who controls Facebook (https://blueskyamazon.com/what-zuckerberg-would-do-differently-if-he-started-today/). Of course, Bezos, Buffett, the Waltons, the Kochs, and hundreds of others, are also among these 607: but, still, it’s this group of people (plus perhaps a hundred of the mere centi millionaires) who actually control mega corporate America including its government – they also hire and control millions of employees and other agents such as law firms and lobbyists (https://act.represent.us/sign/the-problem/) – and the other 330 million Americans do not possess such control, but instead only work for them, and sell to them, and buy from them, and view the world through their media. Most importantly, the other 330 million Americans receive their television and radio and newspaper and magazine ‘news’ from the country’s billionaires, and vote for the US President and members of Congress on the basis of that news, which is virtually entirely filtered by appointees of these 607 people, not only as being controlling owners of the media but as being (controlling) the largest advertisers in all of the major media. The largest advertisers participate, with the media owners, in controlling the media. It’s all the same group of fewer than a thousand individuals, who collectively control America.

Some of them – such as Trump, and Bloomberg, and Steyer – are also in politics or trying to be, because they want to be controlling America even more directly than they already do, so that their power will be even greater than it already is. Of course, Trump has already succeeded at this, and we can see from what he has been doing to America as its President, a fair representation of the billionaire class’s political intentions, though he is more blatant about it than, for example, Tom Steyer is, who was the biggest political donor in the 2016 campaign year, having given $ 91 million to help Hillary Clinton and other Democratic politicians (http://web.archive.org/web/20190116212412/https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/topindivs.php?view=fc&cycle=2016). He was the top donor that year to defeat Bernie Sanders, and thus help Clinton win the Party’s Presidential nomination; so, that’s the type of Democrat which this billionaire actually is: a neoconservative and a neoliberal. No matter what Tom Steyer and another Democratic Party Presidential candidate, Michael Bloomberg, might say in order to win votes, that’s what they all actually are: neoconservative, and neoliberal. They support American imperialism, and they support America’s billionaires – they are the actual beneficiaries from American imperialism, and from an American economy that funnels more and more of the nation’s wealth into their control.

Here are some recent studies which document this dictatorship:

“After US killing of Iran’s S–o–l–e–i–m–a–n–i, narrative control on social media is getting worse”
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/478241-narrative-control-social-media-S–o–l–e–i–m–a–n–i-twitter/

“Top Assange Defense Account Deleted By Twitter”
http://archive.is/gVf0p

“The US Police State Is Now Undeniable: The Assange Case”
http://archive.is/EN808

“America Is One Dollar One Vote, Not Really One Person One Vote.”
http://archive.li/Kuuux

“Trump Tax Cut Hands $ 32 Billion Windfall to America’s Top Banks”
http://archive.is/EAjkz

“Capitalism in America: How a Dismal Decimal is Robbing Americans Blind”
https://thesaker.is/capitalism-in-America-how-a-dismal-decimal-is-robbing-Americans-blind/

If America were a democracy, then there would be no “narrative control on social media,” because social media wouldn’t be allowed to censor whatever they want to censor. They wouldn’t have that power. The First Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits the Government from punishing anyone for any type of “speech,” but doesn’t say anything to limit America’s aristocrats from censoring out whatever they want to be censored out – using their “social media” so as to reduce the ability of anyone to say or to link to what those super rich don’t want the public to have access to. Censorship by the billionaires is accepted in America. And they do it (through their hired agents).

Consequently, Julian Assange is kept imprisoned (in one way or another) for around a decade and is now being drugged in a British maximum security prison while awaiting extradition to the US for final slaughter, and he has never been convicted of anything, but Americans – alone of all the world’s people in this regard – approve of this (https://theduran.com/what-public-opinion-on-assange-tells-us-about-the-US-government-direction/), and accept both a Democratic President Obama and a Republican President Trump perpetrating this illegal punishment of him for revealing truths about their dictatorship. Not only are Americans unique in being hostile toward Assange, but Americans are unique in being hostile to WikiLeaks (http://web.archive.org/web/20200209185702/https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/news_and_polls/2011-04/5202rev-ppt.pdf, that’s the only international study which has yet been done on these matters).

And, also consequently, the United States has a higher percentage of its people in prison than does any other nation – and virtually all of them are lower class, not the type of criminal who murders by giving an order or by signing a contract or by selling a dangerous or toxic product but by knifing or shooting someone. The crooks who do the most harm are the richest ones, and they don’t merely violate the laws, they (through their lobbyists etc.) also write the laws.

This working through agents, whom they pay, is how it comes to be that America is now scientifically proven to be one dollar one vote instead of one person one vote (http://archive.li/Kuuux).

And that is how it comes to be the case that the billionaire Trump can push into law a $ 32 billion taxpayer giveaway to the investors and top executives in America’s biggest banks, which then use the money to increase stockholder dividends and to cut their workforce.

And, as “Capitalism in America: How a Dismal Decimal is Robbing Americans Blind” (https://thesaker.is/capitalism-in-America-how-a-dismal-decimal-is-robbing-Americans-blind/) documents, it’s no longer the top 1% but now is instead the top tenth of one percent who are raking money in from the poorer 99.90% of the US population. You’ve now got to be pretty rich in today’s America in order to be robbing from virtually everyone else. “Top 0.1% now holds as much wealth as Bottom 90% combined.” The top 0.1% are now scamming even the rest of the top 1%. But, of course, in this nation where the top 0.01% have been writing the laws (via their lobbyists) for decades now, none of them is anywhere among the millions of Americans who are in prison. To be that rich is to have a stay out of prison card, no matter how many people you’ve harmed or even killed by your dangerous or harmful products or services, such as trick mortgage contracts or toxic pharmaceuticals.

America has a higher percentage of its residents in prison than does any other nation on this planet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate). Furthermore: they’re almost all poor people, and generally speaking not only convicts but even ex convicts are’t even allowed to vote in America – they are not allowed to vote (https://www.voanews.com/USA/US-politics/millions-ex-convicts-struggle-regain-their-right-vote) in this country that’s controlled by fewer than a thousand individuals, almost all of whom are obscenely wealthy and or are agents of individuals who are. So, since the richest thousand out of 330 million Americans basically write and enforce the laws which keep themselves out of prison, what chance will the very poorest Americans who are in prison get to rewrite the laws and enforcement that placed them there?

Realistically, now: Who can say that America hasn’t become a mega corporate dictatorship?

America’s billionaires have effectively replaced the formal democratic republic that America’s Founders produced in their Constitution, replaced it by today’s actual dictatorial republic, which is an insult to that Constitution, and to the individuals who wrote it.

Originally posted at Strategic Culture (https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/02/08/who-can-now-say-America-hasnt-become-mega-corporate-dictatorship/).

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910 – 2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

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