The Only Sure Way for America to Become "Unbroke"

Big corporations hire the best tax lawyers & lobbyists, they pay little to no taxes, and some, like General Electric, work the system so well they pay no taxes and get billions back from the government in tax "benefits." They sit on trillions of money, employ cheap labor overseas, & their CEOs make more in one day than what the average worker makes in a year. 

So who's to blame for America being "broke"? 

"Broke" implies that the money is gone, but it's not gone.

It's being held by these big corporations that are refusing to let it trickle down to the regular American people. Money's not supposed to disappear; it's supposed to circulate, but instead of using their large profits to invest in something that would create jobs, corporations are holding on to it tightly.

Many people out there hate the phrase "spread the wealth" or "wealth distribution." The very words make their skin crawl. But please understand that unless you're one of the top CEOs of these big corporations, you're not the problem. Even if you own a successful small business, you're hardly the problem. The point here is not that you need to share your wealth. I think we can all agree for the most part that if you work hard for your money and pay your taxes, then yes, you deserve the money you earn. 

What we're talking about here are BIG corporations, the few that make up the corporate elite. We're talking about companies that make profits into the billions each year (even many millionaire companies don't make it into the corporate elite club).

It's these corporations (like Microsoft, Pfizer, Morgan Stanley/JPMorgan, Time Warner, and others) that are the culprit of America being "broke." Unlike you and me, they did not get to where they are by applying the principles of hard work. Their tax evasions are an example of this. Another example can be taken from Wachovia (or now Wells-Fargo), who laundered billions in drug money and got away with it. Not a single banker went to prison for it. Even worse, their bank was bailed out in 2008 by taxpayers' money.

Why are these corporations not being asked to make sacrifices? Why are they getting even more tax breaks? Of all things, it's these big corporations that should sacrifice more, not our schools, our health, our programs for the needy, our Medicare, our Social Security, or any of the other things the government is looking to cut. I don't care if you're a Republican, Democrat, or if you claim another political standing. We all want the same things in life, and that is happiness, real opportunities for success, and a sense of financial stability. We're being denied these things, because of the greed of big corporations.

So how did these big corporations get so powerful? It's been in the making for decades, of course. Our government and many of our politicians, who side with or have been bought by corporations, contribute to the problem. And it also did not get to this magnitude without the help of regular working class citizens. Yes, we ourselves had a hand in pushing it to this point, albeit not knowingly. 

It comes down to propaganda, the manipulation of public opinion in order for these big corporations to gain a political advantage. Historically, propaganda has been used successfully. Remember Hitler, Nazi Germany, and the question of "How did they get that many people to believe in their ideologies and to actually participate?" We're currently dealing with our own heavy propaganda in America, and yes, we (the working class) are contributing to our own economic genocide.

If you're interested in propaganda and the role it has played in the problem of America being broke, there's a documentary by Australian filmmaker, Taki Oldham, called The Billionaires' Tea Party. It shows just one example of how big corporations have used propaganda to manipulate us. And yes, it happens to be about the Tea Party, but it could very well be about any of the other political groups as well. I tend to think that no political group is free of being part of the problem.

So what can we do about this? Everybody seems to have their own opinion about what is the right solution. As for me, I don't know if or when the right political candidate will ever come along to do what's right for the common person. But I do know that the only sure way we can start overcoming it is if we in the working class cease fighting one another and come together. Perhaps this is too much wishful thinking. But whether you're a conservative or a liberal or whatever, none of it really matters. We're all going to end up in the same boat. We're all going to lose. If we can't come together for a common cause and have power in numbers against corporations and their money,...well, then the only winners are the big corporations. And that's exactly how they planned it to be.
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"Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness - and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling - their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."

          ~ Arundhati Roy ~