Corporations, ultra-rich keep gaming the system ‘Greed is good’ killing us
The moment Ronald Reagan swept the nation and sparked the conservative revolution in the 1980s, Democrats and liberals became corporatized to compete for ultra-rich and Republican alignment.
This isn’t to blame or shame that generation of Democratic leaders. The right saw the end of the Cold War as a means to unleash private and unregulated capital to the world.
With a healthy middle-class hungry to climb the social ladder, Democrats, liberals, socialists and social Democrats did not have a resonating counterargument against this conservative revolution. Almost everyone bought into the “greed is good” culture.
After more than 40 years of the winner-take-all economics, our society is no longer sustainable and functional. Hard-working immigrants like my parents who once ran a small grocery store in upper Manhattan had no choice but to file for bankruptcy when I was growing up, live off credit cards, and fall trap to shortsighted xenophobia.
Instead of confronting unfettered capitalism and extraction of wealth, both parties doubled down on “free market” exploitation and value from the bottom. The net result, conservatives and corporate Democrats being reduced to managing wealth inequality instead of governing to end wealth inequality.
Deep inside, most elected officials do not want this system. We feel helpless when we see our most vulnerable and marginalized members dying of hunger and homelessness in our communities. Some moderates (recently coined as “brunch Democrats”) genuinely believe markets are the best way to bring social stability to our communities and think taming, or regulating capitalism, strikes the right balance.
Take for example, New York’s nursing home crisis — where 63 percent of them are for-profit businesses. What made their response a catastrophic failure is the same business-as-usual approach that trades people’s lives for profit. Instead of admitting that we cannot continue to outsource care to the private sector, Democrats looked the other way and handed out get-outof-jail-free cards for nursing home executives.
In situations like with nursing homes, we know that the solution is to fully fund home-care and establish quality government-run facilities to take profits out of the equation. But both parties are afraid to “socialize” anything that has been marketized, and walk on eggshells around corporate donors.
Instead, even in the middle of a pandemic, our political leaders double down on austerity, cutting Medicaid, refer to market experts for solutions, and dehumanize the elderly population so we can go back to “eating brunch.”
The result — more than 12,000 nursing home residents died of COVID in New York.
Whether you are a closet socialist pushing for public takeovers or a brunch Democrat who wants to tame the markets, there is no other way to achieve these goals under the corporate political umbrella. When the framework of the policy discussion is built around maintaining the market and conservatives and Democrats are merely discussing Band Aids, socialism and socialist solutions are the only path to change.
The only path to overcome the fear of using words like “socialism” is simple: Normalize it, wear it, and embrace it boldly.
Just like how Amazon unabashedly pitted cities and states against each other for corporate handouts, tax breaks and giveaways, while making a total mockery of our democracy, we need to be unashamed in pushing for solutions that prioritize people’s lives.
Likewise, Donald Trump had no hesitation in giving out massive tax cuts for corporations and capital gains, and lying to the American people that his policies are creating new jobs and bringing back innovation to our country.
The pathway forward is to move our leadership into a direction that adopts human-flourishing socialist policies. The last thing democratic leaders should do is reduce, shun, or demonize socialism.
When Donald Trump attacked Joe Biden during the presidential debate for supporting “socialized medicine,” Biden should’ve just repeated what President Harry Truman said almost 70 years ago, confronting the same fear-mongering around socialism: “Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.”
Poll after poll, our people are telling us they want Medicare for all, housing for all, better wages, Green New Deal, cancellation of student debts, and other socialist policies, but both parties use socialism to fearmonger the electorate away from these policies to protect their corporate and wealthy donors.
We need to boldly wear socialism to inoculate the right-middle attacks and deliver socialist results, starting with taxing the rich to break the concentration of wealth and political power structures of this country.
Whether you are a moderate Democrat or a socialist, if you are intellectually honest, you must admit that we can’t counter pro-corporate and billionaire messages by people like Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump under the current corporate-friendly Democratic Party.
All roads lead to, first, de-concentrate wealth in order to break up the pro-market political ideologies that dominate the major parties.
As long as corporations and the ultra-rich are gaming the system by pouring in billions toward both parties to ascertain continuous profit margins for private health insurance companies, fossil fuel corporations, real estate developers, and big banks, our people, community and planet will die. That isn’t a threat. It’s a scientific fact.
The pathway forward is to move our leadership into a direction that adopts human-flourishing socialist policies. The last thing democratic leaders should do is reduce, shun, or demonize socialism.