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Playing Monopoly With Our Economy, For Real

Playing Monopoly With Our Economy, For Real

Shouting “Down with big government,” today’s tea party Trumpateers claim to be tax rebels — direct descendants of the Boston bunch who boarded three British ships in 1773 and heaved their cargo of tea chests into the harbor. But wait! That historic Tea Party wasn’t actually a tax protest. The audacious colonists were rebelling against the British East India Company’s tea monopoly, which excluded local importers.

What the gutsy rebels were actually tossing was monopolistic corporate power. Get your heave-ho muscles in shape, for the monopolists are back, and they’re going for more than our tea; they’re rapidly locking up major economic sectors. The louder Donald Trump touts his commitment to competition and free markets, the faster his corporate operatives, lobbyists and congressional henchmen scheme to create cartels and combines. His Justice Department, regulatory agencies, monetary policies, tax rules, judicial appointees (especially Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch) and other inside players are all at work greasing the skids for the monopolization of America.

This era’s corporate dominance did not, of course, begin with Trump. The merger wave swelled in the Reagan years, but because his Federal Trade Commission stopped collecting industry consolidation data in 1981, its full extent is hidden. But we do know, thanks to public interest watchdogs, that a tsunami of monopoly power now threatens our economy at the very time Trump Inc. is dismantling consumer protections and facilitating the rise of dominating behemoths in airlines, banks, computer tech, pharmacies, groceries, hospitals, meatpacking, media, oil, online sales, pharmaceuticals, railroads, software, telecom services and other essential industries.

While Americans are told to worship the magic of the free market, real markets are being hogtied by a handful of crony capitalist oligarchs.

Two giants, Verizon and AT&T, controlled 69 percent of U.S. cellphone service last year. Two others, Facebook and YouTube (owned by Google) have 64 percent of social network visits, and another two, Android (launched by Google) and Apple, control 99 percent of smartphone operating systems.

Five Wall Street mega-powers now control nearly half of all U.S. financial assets; 20 years ago, the top five controlled only about 20 percent. In recent years six of the largest U.S. airlines merged into three, which now control 50 percent of U.S. flights.

Three decades ago, 50 conglomerates owned 90 percent of media outlets; today, just six mega-monopolists control 90 percent of the market. America’s two largest newspaper owners are not even media chains but GateHouse Media and Digital First Media hedge funds that now own some 670 papers, including dailies in Augusta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Phoenix, and St. Paul. And Digital First is now attempting to take over the Gannett chain of 100 more papers.

As of August 2018, Apple’s stock value was greater than that of Bank of America, Boeing, Ford, Volkswagen, Walt Disney, and 20 other colossal corporations — combined. In 2015, just 30 supersized corporations grabbed half the profits generated by all corporations listed on the stock market.

The two largest truck and bus manufacturers now control 62 percent of the market. The two largest drugstore chains, shipbuilders, and mattress makers have over 60 percent of each of those markets. And the two largest home improvement chains control about 80 percent of the market.

Periodically throughout American history, the tension between democracy and plutocracy has reached a breaking point, and people have risen up in great confrontations with elites who assert that their property rights and wealth must reign supreme over the majority’s interests and our nation’s common good.

And here we are again. A handful of corporate consolidators and property rights supremacists are dictating pay and conditions for America’s workers, crushing unions, jacking up prices, squeezing out independent businesses, controlling the media, suppressing the vote and public dissent, encouraging monopoly,  literally running our government … and becoming even bigger, richer and more powerful. That’s our real fight. We’re not merely up against the Little Tweeter Man in the White House — but against the unfathomable greed and oligarchic ambitions of the moneyed powers who are using him.

Populist author, public speaker and radio commentator Jim Hightower writes The Hightower Lowdown, a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America’s ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org.

IMAGE: 3D printed Apple logo seen in front of a displayed cyber code in this illustration taken February 26, 2016. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

Thanks To GOP Tax Cut, Bank Profits Rose $28.8 Billion In 2018

Thanks To GOP Tax Cut, Bank Profits Rose $28.8 Billion In 2018

Colorado resident Isadora Bielsky was recently brought to tears when she learned that, rather than getting a refund, she owed $8,000 in taxes this year, thanks to the GOP tax scam.

But while Republicans punish folks like Bielsky, federal data shows U.S. banks ended 2018 with $28.8 billion in extra profit because of the same Republican tax bill.

Banks saw their profits soar by more than $70 billion over 2017 levels, but the $28.8 billion was solely because of goodies and kickbacks Republicans inserted into the tax bill, which passed Congress in late 2017 without a single vote from a Democrat.

While Republicans lavished breaks on wealthy corporations, many families are now learning that the GOP left them out in the cold.“I don’t know who it’s helping, but it’s not helping the middle class,” a single mother told one Massachusetts television station.

She had just learned that she would be getting a significantly lower tax refund this year than she expected.But the tax law is greatly benefiting certain segments of America: banks and wealthy corporations. Amazon made $11.2 billion profit, but rather than pay any taxes, they filed for a $129 million refund. Other corporations like Goodyear, Netflix, and U.S. Steel each made hundreds of millions of dollars in profits, and each is seeking a refund.

When they set to work revising the tax code, Republicans did all they could to favor the wealthy and powerful. Trump and his congressional allies slashed the corporate rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, and kept plenty of loopholes to further reduce corporate burdens. But for families, Republicans made sure 80 percent of the benefits from their plan eventually flow to the richest one percent of families.

The issue for working families is exacerbated because of new tax withholding rules in the GOP tax scam. When Republicans bragged about bigger paychecks last year — even highlighting a woman who would only take home an additional $1.50 per week — they failed to mention that the new withholding rules would impact tax refunds this April.

Even for taxpayers like Bielsky who tried to do everything right, the GOP tax scam managed to pack a financial wallop. Bielsky has a Ph.D. in neuroscience, and her husband is a doctor. They went to the IRS website to make sure their withholdings were correct.

“If we can’t figure this out, and we can’t rely on the IRS and their calculators to give us the right information, what are we supposed to do?” she said, speaking with a local CBs affiliate.

As more Americans file their taxes, more are learning the extent of the damage wrought by the Republican Party. Early IRS data shows that if people are getting a refund, it is eight percent lower, on average, than last year. However, the same data shows 16 percent fewer people are even receiving a refund this year.

“It was a big scam that was put over on people that, ‘oh, these tax cuts are gonna be for everybody,’” Diane Masters told a local Massachusetts television station. “They are not for everybody at all,” she added.

Published with permission of The American Independent.

IMAGE: Steven Mnuchin testifies before a Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing on his nomination to be Treasury secretary in Washington, U.S., January 19, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts