Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Tear Down the Iron Ceiling (part 1)



An open letter from The Millennial Generation's over-educated, under-employed to America’s corporate plutocracy:
           
From the Atlantic coast to the shores of Hawaii, an Iron Ceiling has descended across the country.  Beneath that Ceiling lies the production of America’s economy, democracy, foreign policy, health, technology, education and culture.  All these fields of endeavor, which once rightly made our nation famous, fall in the corporate sphere; and all are subject not only to corporate influence, but to increasing corporate control. 

We know that you bankrupted America’s economy. 

The principle of competition drives the free market.  Yet you quash competition.  In every major industry, production is increasingly consolidated and centralized.  Until World War II, small, family-run businesses were America’s bread and butter.  Today, they are relics of the past.  Even mid-sized corporations are disappearing, devoured by massive conglomerations.  Roughly fifty multinational conglomerations each gobble up tens of billions of dollars a year.  Together, these behemoths—such as Carlisle Companies, Honeywell International, Koch Industries, News Corporation, The Walt Disney Company, Tyco International and Viacom Inc.—control the majority of the economy. 

These conglomerations own interests in various industries that multiply their influence and create an unbreakable feedback loop of flattering publicity.  A conglomeration that owns a bath products company, a research institute and a cable news company recently began marketing a new deodorant, published research that the deodorant is good for you and reported the ‘research’ as news.  Under this concentration of business interests, control over the American economy has fallen into the hands of a few hundred people. 

In 2008, Wall Street, the White House and the Federal Reserve conspired to double down on this anti-competitive spirit.  Failed banks nearly brought the national economy to its knees.  But there were no investigations, no charges, no trials, no campaigns to root out the corruption.  Instead, the corporations rewarded themselves.  The American plutocracy picked the poor’s pockets and mugged the middle class.  They smashed America’s piggy banks full of mortgage payments, college funds and retirement savings.  Now they tally historic profits and record CEO bonuses.  Still, beneath the Iron Ceiling, they do not create new jobs other than McDonald's servers. 

This is not capitalism.  This is not free market economics.  This is inverse Marxism.  The American plutocracy turned the Communist Manifesto on its head and made that their mantra.  America’s corporate puppet masters orchestrated socialism for themselves: a welfare state in which the top 1% own more than the bottom 90%; a control economy in which the richest hog the profits while the laborers shoulder the risks and penalties.  This degree of divide between the rich and the rest has not been seen since the Great Depression.  Today, in America, all benefits rise above, and all costs sink below the Iron Ceiling the American plutocracy has created.    

Tune in next time for part 2: We know you are bankrupting America's democracy.