We can squander trillions on forever wars, and irresponsible tax cuts for billionaire parasites, and certainly just gave the DoD another $770 BILLION in this year's war bill.
Where is our healthcare?
Where is our dental care?
Where are the subsidies for childcare so parents can work?
Where is the K-12 system that should be so good it is the envy of the world?
Where is the affordable debt-free college for our kids and grandkids?
Oh...I forgot. Our corporate governance is about profits over people. The doctrine of shareholder primacy was born in 1919 with a MI Supreme Court ruling against Henry Ford. It seems that when Ford raised the wages of the people working in his factory so they could afford to purchase the cars they themselves built, the Dodge brothers, who owned shares in Ford sued on the basis that 'overpaying' his workers denied them profits to which they were entitled as shareholders.
And they won. Did you all know? This is why we have so much corporate misbehavior. Look at the Perdue Pharma debacle that is currently playing out - the Sacklers damned right knew Oxycontin was addictive and was ruining lives, but they lied their asses off and continued peddling their addictive opioids to keep earning PROFITS. When a significant number of Ford Pintos exploded when they got rear ended because of a gas tank defect, Ford decided to keep paying the claims of burn victims and their families because that would be cheaper, wouldn't eat so much into PROFITS as would recalling the Pinto and fixing the dangerous gas tanks. Decades this has happened.
And now we have MASSIVE corporate funds pouring into the coffers of our US Senators and Representatives through super-pacs created because of the Citizens United ruling and earlier rulings like Buckley vs Valleo that made it possible for massive amounts of 'soft money' to be collected for use in elections.
So...campaign finance reform, and forcing changes to corporate charters that call for a stakeholder rather than a shareholder primacy approach to corporate governance. Those two things would solve a bunch of the problems.
But how the hell will we as a species get rid of the greed gene? When will we grow up and start planning forward as a species, to use resources to meet human need instead of systematically routing massive amounts of money from the public treasury into the pockets of a few billionaire parasites?
I don't know...tune in next week...
= new reply since forum marked as read
