The blog may hold its own deep differences with Bernie Sanders but we do acknowledge his useful role in that he does occasionally brings to the US public some uncomfortable home truths.
He did so in a recent Senate speech.
“While the vast majority of people in our country are hurting emotionally, they’re hurting economically, these are not difficult times for everybody,” he explained. “If you are a billionaire in this country or a CEO of a large corporation… these times have not been bad; they have, in fact, have been very, very good.”
As people nationwide worry about “soaring” gas prices, fossil fuel giants “are making huge profits,” Sanders said, also noting it was the same in the food industry.
The senator pointed out that chief executives now make about 350 times more than the average U.S. worker.
“The top one per cent owns more wealth than the bottom 92 per cent. Rather amazingly, two of the wealthiest people in America now own more wealth than the bottom 42 per cent,” the Senate Budget Committee chair said.
“When we speak about oligarchy, we should all understand that we’re not just talking about massive levels of income and wealth inequality,” Sanders emphasized. “We should all understand that never before in American history have so few owned so much.”
“And this issue—the issue of the incredible concentration of ownership in our country—is almost never talked about here in Congress or in the corporate media,” he continued, “and that has a lot to do with the corrupt political system that we operate under, where many members of Congress receive huge campaign contributions from these very same people.”
Sanders took aim at three Wall Street firms, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street.
They collectively manage over $21 trillion in assets, or more than the gross domestic product of the United States, the world’s largest economy.
These three firms, Sanders explained, “are major shareholders in more than 96% of S&P 500 companies.” They “are the largest shareholders in some of the biggest banks in America” and “are among the top owners of the four major airlines.” BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street also “own an average of 20% of the major drug companies,”
He also said that a handful of firms “are now the major owners of rental housing” and ” control half of the newspapers” in the country.
He compared the conditions of ordinary American workers.
“The reality is that tens of millions of working-class people, lower-income people, in the wealthiest country on Earth, are suffering today under incredible economic hardship, desperately trying day to day to survive.”
While “half of the people in our country are living paycheck to paycheck and tens of millions of our people are an accident, a divorce, an illness, or a layoff away from economic devastation,” Sanders noted, “over 80 million Americas are uninsured or under-insured and tens of thousands die each and every year because they don’t get to a doctor when they should.”
“Many public schools throughout our country lack the resources to adequately educate our young people, or pay their teachers the wages those teachers deserve; at the same time we are the most heavily incarcerated nation on Earth,” he added. “Meanwhile, 45 million Americans who did go to college… are now drowning in $1.8 trillion in student debt.”
“[Americans]work long hours for low wages. They worry about their kids. They can’t afford healthcare. They see their jobs going to other countries.”
Polls show they are “giving up on democracy.” Faced with such conditions, Sanders said, voters are frustrated with elected officials and wondering: “Do they live in the real world? Do they understand what is going on in our lives or are they too busy going out raising campaign contributions from the rich and the powerful?”
“Maybe the time is approaching that we should offer a unanimous resolution congratulating the billionaire class for their enormous success in moving this country into the oligarchic form of society that they have long desired,” Sanders said.