If there is one thing that the
multi-trillion-dollar bank bailouts in 2008 proved beyond any doubt,
it is this: While the government rules over the people, the big banks
rule over the government.
How else to explain that trillions of
dollars of our money was quickly made available to rescue Bank of
America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and many others, while at the
same time no help at all was provided for the millions of people who
lost their homes, jobs, health care, pensions and futures? The banks
and their system caused the economic crisis but they got everything.
We got nothing. The popular chant “The banks got bailed out, we got
sold out” is entirely accurate.
The Wall Street banks are at the center
of the 1%, also known as the capitalist class. This class of
billionaires is not simply defined by income level, but by their role
in society. The capitalist class is made up of those who own the
means of production; i.e., the factories, mines, farmland, stores,
big corporations, etc. They do no work themselves, but simply own the
places we work.
The top power brokers are an even
tinier fraction of the population, maybe more like one one-hundredth
of 1%, who control the giant concentrations of wealth held by the
biggest banks and corporations. They are now sitting on top of
mountains of cash, more than $2 trillion.
What could a trillion dollars do?
A trillion dollars could put 20 million
people to work at $50,000 per year, and practically bring an end to
the unemployment crisis. The money is there, the unemployed who
desperately need work are there, and the need is there.
So why isn’t it happening? Because
it’s not the priority of the ruling 1%, the ruling class. Their
priorities have nothing to do with meeting people’s needs and
everything to do with maximizing their profits, regardless of the
cost to the people and the planet. And they get to decide what to do
with the great wealth of society, wealth that was created by working
people.
The corporate-owned media and
politicians claim we live in a democracy, but in reality we live
under the dictatorship of the 1%, the dictatorship of big capital.
The core of power today is an alliance of the big banks, oil
companies, military-industrial complex and other giant corporations.
From the White House to Congress to state and local governments, they
call the shots, regardless of whether it’s a Democratic or
Republican politician in office.
How did the capitalist class obtain
their incredible wealth? Are they really that smart or hard-working?
Could anybody be? The real answer is that they stole it by (1)
appropriating vast natural resources here and around the world; and
(2) exploiting workers, not paying us for the full value of what we
produce.
This kind of theft is, of course,
considered to be perfectly fine under the capitalist legal system.
Today, the richest 400 people in the
United States have more wealth than the poorest 3 billion people in
the world. And the super rich are getting steadily richer, while we
are getting poorer—that’s the built-in dynamic of capitalism. A
“fair economy” is a contradiction in terms under this unfair
system. The dictatorship of the 1% must go!
