It’s fantastic that Biden is joining the UAW picket line. But he should go further

Kudos to Joe Biden for joining the United Auto Workers picket line on Tuesday. He’s the first president to join a picket line in living memory. But he shouldn’t stop there. He should criticize the CEOs of America’s big corporations who are now raking in more than 350 times what the average American worker is earning. Blast corporations that are monopolizing their industries. Condemn firms that are using their profits to buy back shares of stock, polluting the planet with carbon emissions and polluting our democracy with big money.

He wouldn’t be the first Democratic president to do this.

On the eve of the 1936 election, President Franklin D Roosevelt warned America that business and financial monopolies and war profiteers had begun to consider the US government

The US is again in a populist age, when a vast army of Americans have been shafted by big corporations, Wall Street and a government corrupted by monied interests.

The biggest change over the last three decades – the change lurking behind the insecurities and resentments of the working middle class – has nothing to do with identity politics, “woke”-ism, immigration, critical race theory, transgender kids or any other current Republican bogeymen.

It has directly to do with a huge upward shift in the distribution of income and wealth.

Although total wealth is much greater now than it was four decades ago, the distribution of that wealth isfarmore unequal. The bottom 50% hasn’t budged. Wealth at the top has exploded.

Meanwhile, a declining share of the nation’s wealth has been going to workers, and an exponentially rising share to CEOs and big investors.

This change didn’t happen because of so-called “neutral market forces”. It happened because of policy decisions made over the last four decades. For example:

To open the American economy wide to imports from China. To deregulate Wall Street and allow it to make bets with other people’s money.

To dramatically cut taxes on big corporations and the rich. To let corporations bash unions and fire workers who try to organize.

To encourage activist investors and private equity companies to take over “underperforming” companies and then promptly fire workers and sell off assets.

To allow big corporations to become far larger, monopolizing entire industries.

To allow pharmaceutical companies to extend their patents and jack up the prices of critical drugs. To allow oil companies access to federal lands and to benefit from special tax writeoffs.

To bail out the biggest banks but not homeowners who get caught in the downdrafts. To privatize higher education and force students to take out massive loans.

To encourage corporations to buy back their shares of stock rather than