by Jim Hightower
America’s political history
has been written in the fierce narrative of war. Not our country’s many
military clashes with foreign nations, but our own unending war for democracy
in the United States.
Generation after generation of
moneyed elites have persisted in trying to take wealth and power from the
workaday majority and concentrate both in their own hands to establish a de
facto American aristocracy. Every time, the people have rebelled in organized
mass struggles against the monopolists and financial royalists, often literally
battling for a little more economic fairness, social justice, and equal
opportunity.
And now, the time of a new
democratic rebellion is upon us again, for We the People are suddenly in the
grip of a brutish level of monopolistic power.
Corporate concentration of
markets, profits, workplace decision-making, political influence, and our
nation’s total wealth is surpassing that of the infamous era of robber barons.
Apple, which just became the first U.S. corporation to reach a stock
value of $1 trillion, is now larger than Bank of America, Boeing, Disney,
Ford, Volkswagen, and 20 other brand-name giants combined.
In fact, just four tech
superpowers raked in half of this year’s stock price gains by the 500
largest corporations. Indeed, the recent gold rush of corporate mergers has
created mega-firms, shriveling competition in most industries — including
airlines, banks, drug companies, food, hospitals, hotels, law firms, media,
oil, etc.
The result of fewer and bigger
corporations is that those few attain overwhelming power over the rest of us.
They are able to control workers’ pay, crush unions, jack up prices, squeeze
out smaller businesses, dominate elections, weaken environmental projections,
and generally become even fewer, bigger, and more powerful.
They’re waging all out
corporate class war on the American people and on our democratic
ideals — and they’re winning.
