[We now have more income and wealth inequality than at any time in
the last hundred years. And It’s not just income and wealth
inequality that is plaguing our nation. It is the maldistribution of
economic and political power.]
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BERNIE SANDERS: THE US HAS A RULING CLASS – AND AMERICANS MUST
STAND UP TO IT  
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Bernie Sanders
September 2, 2022
Guardian
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_ We now have more income and wealth inequality than at any time in
the last hundred years. And It’s not just income and wealth
inequality that is plaguing our nation. It is the maldistribution of
economic and political power. _

‘While the working class falls further behind, multibillionaires
like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are off taking joyrides
on rocket ships to outer space, buying $500m super-yachts and living
in mansions with 25 bathrooms.’ , image: DonkeyHotey, licensed under
CC BY 2.0

 

Let’s be clear. The most important economic and political issues
facing this country are the extraordinary levels of income and wealth
inequality, the rapidly growing concentration of ownership, the
long-term decline of the American middle class and the evolution of
this country into oligarchy.

We know how important these issues are because our ruling class works
overtime to prevent them from being seriously discussed. They are
barely mentioned in the halls of Congress, where most members are
dependent on the campaign contributions of the wealthy and their Super
Pacs. They are not much discussed in the corporate media, in which a
handful of conglomerates determine what we see, hear and discuss.

So what’s going on?

We now have more income and wealth inequality than at any time in the
last hundred years. In the year 2022, three multibillionaires own more
wealth than the bottom half of American society – 160 million
Americans. Today, 45% of all new income goes to the top 1%, and CEOs
of large corporations make a record-breaking 350 times what their
workers earn.

Meanwhile, as the very rich become much richer, working families
continue to struggle. Unbelievably, despite huge increases in worker
productivity, wages (accounting for real inflation) are lower today
than they were almost 50 years ago. When I was a kid growing up, most
families were able to be supported by one breadwinner. Now an
overwhelming majority of households need two paychecks to survive.

Today, half of our people live paycheck to paycheck and millions
struggle on starvation wages. Despite a lifetime of work, half of
older Americans have no savings and no idea how they will ever be able
to retire with dignity, while 55% of seniors are trying to survive on
an income of less than $25,000 a year.

Since 1975, there has been a massive redistribution of wealth in
America that has gone in exactly the wrong direction. Over the past 47
years, according to the Rand Corporation, $50tn in wealth has been
redistributed from the bottom 90% of American society to the top 1%,
primarily because a growing percentage of corporate profits has been
flowing into the stock portfolios of the wealthy and the powerful.

During this terrible pandemic, when thousands of essential workers
died doing their jobs, some 700 billionaires in America became nearly
$2tn richer. Today, while the working class falls further behind,
multibillionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson
[[link removed]] are off taking
joyrides on rocket ships to outer space, buying $500m super-yachts and
living in mansions with 25 bathrooms.

Disgracefully, we now have the highest rate of childhood poverty of
almost any developed nation on Earth and millions of kids,
disproportionately Black and brown, face food insecurity. While
psychologists tell us that the first four years are the most important
for human development, our childcare system is largely dysfunctional
– with an inadequate number of slots, outrageously high costs and
pathetically low wages for staff. We remain the only major country
without paid family and medical leave.

In terms of higher education, we should remember that 50 years ago
tuition was free or virtually free in major public universities
throughout the country. Today, higher education is unaffordable for
millions of young people. There are now some 45 million Americans
struggling with student debt.

Today over 70 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured and
millions more are finding it hard to pay for the rising cost of
healthcare and prescription drugs, which are more expensive here than
anywhere else in the world. The cost of housing is also soaring. Not
only are some 600,000 Americans homeless, but nearly 18m households
are spending 50% or more of their limited incomes on housing.

It’s not just income and wealth inequality that is plaguing our
nation. It is the maldistribution of economic and political power.

Today we have more concentration of ownership than at any time in the
modern history of this country. In sector after sector a handful of
giant corporations control what is produced and how much we pay for
it. Unbelievably, just three Wall Street firms (Blackrock, Vanguard
and State Street) control assets of over $20tn and are the major
stockholders in 96% of S&P 500 companies. In terms of media, some
eight multinational media conglomerates control what we see, hear and
read.

In terms of political power, the situation is the same. A small number
of billionaires and CEOs, through their Super Pacs, dark money and
campaign contributions, play a huge role in determining who gets
elected and who gets defeated. There are now an increasing number of
campaigns in which Super Pacs actually spend more money on campaigns
than the candidates, who become the puppets to their big money
puppeteers. In the 2022 Democratic primaries, billionaires spent tens
of millions trying to defeat progressive candidates who were standing
up for working families.

Dr Martin Luther King Jr was right when he said: “We must recognize
that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical
redistribution of economic and political power” in America. That
statement is even more true today.

Let us have the courage to stand together and fight back against
corporate greed. Let us fight back against massive income and wealth
inequality. Let us fight back against a corrupt political system.

Let us stand together and finally create an economy and a government
that works for all, not just the 1%.

_Bernie Sanders is a US senator from Vermont and the chairman of the
Senate budget committee_

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