Now it all makes sense from looking at the charts above. The defense, banking, finance and food industries along with other industries have become practically monopolies. Basic economics says monopolies are bad for the economy and bad for the average person. When there is plenty of competition in an industry it will drive innovation and lower the prices of products and services. This is simply because competing companies attract the consumer with better, cheaper products and services because it is the only way to stay ahead of the competition. All this constant innovation from multiple competitors in turn provides new jobs for all of us. Monopolies stagnate the improvement of products and services and monopolies lower the number of products and services available. This also means higher prices and less jobs available for the average person, sounds familiar?? Unfortunately our government has dropped the ball here because it has been tainted by corporate-sponsored politicians and lobbyists instead of breaking up these big conglomerates.
How to fix the economy? How to make government work for us again?
1) Move your money to your local bank and/or credit union. Break up the rest of these monopolies through legal action.
2) Re-instate what the Constitution of the United States already states: "We the people..." not "We the corporations". The decision from the Supreme Court to declare corporations as "people" must be brought down through legal action. Why? Because as put by
Trevor Potter, founding president of a nonpartisan group representing the public interest in the enforcement of campaign and media law:
Corporations exist solely to make money. Amassing economic power. They want, if they could get it out of government, monopolies. They want the ability to defeat their competitors. And if they can use government to do that, they will. Individuals have a whole range of interests. Individuals go to church, they care about religious and social issues, they care about the future of the country. They're voters.
So, they have a range of issues at stake that corporations don't have...
Therefore corporate influence must be taken out of government even if it means to
create an amendment for it.
3) This slow build-up of monopolies and how bad the economy was being affected would have been reported by true journalists had they not been
driven out of the current media industry. Replace names in these charts with those in the media industry and the charts will show the same pattern of monopolization. Here's a good idea of what it looks like:
How to fix it? Re-instate the
Fairness Doctrine an old law guaranteeing equal access to media sources. Also reinstate cross-ownership rules that prohibited companies from buying radio, TV and newspaper properties in the same city. These rules were taken out to help corporations consolidate power. Break up these monopolies through legal action as well. Most importantly we must protect the reason we, the average citizens, are able, despite everything, to communicate with each other right now: The Internet. The only way people realized
how bad the situation is for so many and the only reason people have been
able to organize quickly is the internet. Why is the internet effective? It is because of
Network Neutrality levels the playing field on who can transmit information to everyone else. Because of network neutrality the internet is the last bastion of free speech here and around the world. Thus network neutrality must be protected at all costs.
4)
Reform Congress to entwine its destiny to the people it is supposed to represent so no other types of influences can take hold of it ever again in the future. The problems we are experiencing first happened during the Great Depression and private powers were responsible for eroding government which caused these problems all over again. The two party system has guaranteed that only people with money or people being backed by big money can run a campaign and get elected. That's a conflict of interests if the same people elected to government by big money are supposed to represent the middle-class and the poor.
5) Finally we need to change how we view an economy. The old "trickle-down economics" concept is officially dead. The rich have been taxed less and there is corporate welfare with 0% tax for corporations. Theoretically these things were supposed to have helped the economy, not destroy it. Where we stand now this is a failed policy. What we need is what I will call "evaporation economics". If the government concerns itself in preserving a large, stable middle-class with disposable income, then the middle-class will be able to drive the economy. The wealth is spread thin and wide, much like an irrigation system spreads water. The middle-class will spend its money as it always does. This spending will in turn create a market for businesses to offer products and services again. The economy has to create new jobs in order to benefit the middle-class. New jobs cannot be created for the middle-class if new products and services are not locally produced using this same middle-class as the labor force. If the middle-class has new jobs then it will have the disposable income to buy the new products and services. It is a a large feedback system, exporting jobs overseas weakens this feedback system. Since the rich own the businesses that provide products and services they will benefit from this no matter what. The money from the middle-class will "evaporate" back to the the rich just like water does when sprayed thin on the ground. Everyone wins and gets what they need, the way it should be.
I hope you agree but if not I would like to hear your ideas/concerns as well. Thank you for taking your time to read this.
