Paul Buccheit writes in the Nation of Change that three industries have actively contributed to the collapse of well-paying middle-class jobs in America. Corporations that kill middle-class jobs, contribute to inequality.
The pharmaceutical industry is notable for tax avoidance.
The high-tech industry eliminates jobs and outsources jobs:
Just 25 years ago GM, Ford, and Chrysler generated a combined $36 billion in revenue while employing over a million workers. Today Apple, Facebook, and Google generate over a trillion dollars in revenue with just 137,000 workers. Apple makes over a half-million dollars per employee; Facebook and Google are both over $300,000….
The insidious rise of “philanthrocapitalism” has allowed tech titans like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg to reduce their taxes — thus depriving society of infrastructure and education funds — while they assume the right to make high-level decisions about GMO agriculture, charter schools, and Internet usage. Much of this lost tax money actually goes to partner corporations that do the bidding of their billionaire benefactors.
The new “sharing economy,” such as firms like Uber and AirBNB, has also killed jobs.
Free-market enthusiasts look to the sharing economy (or “gig” economy, or “day labor” economy) for salvation, with companies like Uber and Airbnb and TaskRabbit enabling the dreams of Millennials, who, according to Time’s Rana Foroohar, “want to be their own boss…any Uber driver will tell you that having totally flexible hours is the best part of the gig.” But at the same time, Uber workers have no pensions, no health care, and no worker rights protection. Thus, says Foroohar, “the company also captures all the fear of the broken social compact in America.”
Uber, with a market valuation of $50 billion, has 4,000 employees along with 160,000 drivers who are not considered by the company to be employees. This is not a horizontal sharing process, but rather a hierarchical control structure, with tens of thousands of American workers denied the traditional employee support system.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here’s my minimalist essay . . . I have no patience:
Philanthrocapitalism = Disguised Philanthropy = Villainthropy.
I will not/cannot mention what I think should become of the Gates and all these other beasts . . .
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A good recent example is Mark Zuckerberg’s “Free Basics” venture in India.
The motive is self, the goal is power.
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This is a good piece about a sharing economy worker:
https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/apploitation-city-instaserfs
I don’t worry that much about the business/political alliance to kill labor unions because US workers are treated so increasingly like garbage I think some kind of worker alliance is not just inevitable, but guaranteed. It may not be “labor unions” if they succeed in killing them off but it will be some kind of collective action or organization because huge, gaping holes have a tendency to get filled 🙂
There’s only two options for working people- government regulations or collective action. In the absence of a government that is at all interested in them and in the absence of labor unions something will fill that hole.
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I agree, Chiara . . . It will be a union, only it will use some other name. Human rights are human rights, regardless of the label.
American workers in general – blue or white collar – are treated like garbage, just like consumers. Small wonder, given our overclass.
Things are changing. . . . Too many people have discarded labels and are universally fed up with the overclass out there and the lack of collectivism.
I don’t know if things will change in my lifetime, but the USA is looking at big growing pains the next 20 years. College grads in horrible, parasitic debt, college kids who don’t go to college because they cannot afford it but crave higher learning, people who avoid medications or doctor visits because they cannot afford it (even with the failed ACA and its impossible deductibles and reduced coverage), people who have to rent and cannot afford to own housing, people whose rental laws favor landlords, people who consume adulterated, chemical ridden, GMO foods because of the laws that favor big agriculture, people who are victimized by Medicare not being permitted to negotiate drug prices, people who have no paid sick time or paid maternity leave . . . People who have died because of faulty ignitions in cars manufactured by companies that WE taxpayers have bailed out, people who are unlawfully spied upon by the NSA, people who have NO say in foreign policy and war campaigns but who pay for it with their money and their children serving in the armed forces, people whose public schools are being starved of funds in favor of vouchers and charters, people who have the Kardashians and Channing Tatum lip syncing to watch on television instead of the theatrical talents of Norman Lear, James L. Brooks, and Alan Burns, people whose mainstream media has been corrupted by corporate greed and its propaganda machinery, unarmed people who are shot at with guns in churches, malls, parks, and movie theaters, people who don’t pay women what men make and want to control women’s reproductive rights, people who are blamed for being poor, people whose Medicare and Social Security are threatened with means testing and privatization and who have paid into both programs all their life, people who have worked hard and paid into pensions, having their contracts breeched left and right with their resulting pensions being reduced or taken away because of the failures of government, people who are shortchanged improvements to infrastructure because Apple et al are too busy avoiding paying their fair share of taxes with offshore tax havens in Ireland and the Cayman Islands, people who are just plain being slammed by what has morphed into our establishment and institutions for the past 40 years.
I’m JUST getting started.
The list goes on.
Yes, we are a superior democracy . . . .
If you compare us to Uganda, Saudi Arabia, and the Ukraine.
Whoop-dee-doo.
But our democracy is inferior to Western and Northern Europe and Canada.
I have been saying and will repeated it ad nauseum: When the little people – that’s most of us – have had enough and we come to consensus, then we will be able to enact change in a systematic and organized way through voting, protest, and boycotting.
I invite all here to feel the Bern . . .
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Charter schools are a job killing scheme of corporate America. Much of the ire against public schools is a shrouded attack against unions, some level of due process rights, benefits, and and pensions. Much of the destabilization and undermining have been been directed against women, who comprise 75% of teachers and minorities that frequently work in urban schools. Charters attempt to replace stable careers with low paying right to work jobs that have little or no security for employees. “You’re only as good as your last test score,” should be their motto. The collective impact of such middle class destroying jobs, if continued, will be a significant contribution to greater income inequality. The irony of this is that charters are not getting better results; they are contributing to greater segregation, and they may even be costing us more. They are contributing to serious under funding of public schools which, in many cases, has led to large class sizes and unsafe conditions within schools. The partiality the government shows toward charter expansion is unfounded and not based on evidence while it is costing taxpayers and communities far more than any misperceived gain.
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“Robert Rendo, NBCT
January 9, 2016 at 12:54 pm
I agree, Chiara . . . It will be a union, only it will use some other name. Human rights are human rights, regardless of the label.”
The worse part of it is the inability to PLAN. The working class people I see in my practice cannot plan next week let alone 20 years down the road because they have absolutely no security at work- a lot of them don’t even have “an employer”- they are contract temps or “independent contractors”. That is a marked change over 20 years- they never made a whole lot of money but they could COUNT on a certain amount 20 years ago.
I have watched that insecurity increase every single year. It so impacts every aspect of their existence- not just their financial prospects but their family lives. It’s a kind of chaos we’ve inflicted on them, and they are the LEAST able to bear all that risk.
I’m shocked there hasn’t been any kind of serious political response- instead our moronic politicians are out promoting low wage “sharing economy” garbage.
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How can families plan to send children to college without being able to have some degree of economic security? Workers cannot save for the future if low wages force them to live paycheck to paycheck.
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C, Your description of working class people’s dilemma/change over time is one of the most potent statements you’ve made on this blog. IMHO you should work it into an OpEd piece and submit it to your Ohio papers or Huffington Post.
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“C, Your description of working class people’s dilemma/change over time is one of the most potent statements you’ve made on this blog.”
I agree. How about an article describing a typical working man’s situation from about 1970 on in ten year increments?
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“Uber über alles”
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The tax laws favor these corporations. Until this changes, I don’t see any one of these companies willingly agree to pay their fair share.
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Thank you for posting this, Diane. It’s all so sick.
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Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
Yes, all deigned to lower wages for the actual workers, and increase the profits of the companies and the obscene compensation of the executives at the top.
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Education reform was born out of these industries and their demand for competitive, desperate, adequately trained and minimally paid workers. A secure middle class means citizens with the resources to think, gather, and act (those “suburban moms” and “special interests” that keep getting in the way of these reformers. https://dmaxmj.wordpress.com/2016/01/08/part-iiib-an-attempt-to-wrap-it-up/
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Apple is currently holding nearly $200 billion in offshore accounts to evade US taxes.
It produces its products in places like China to exploit low-paid workers (including children) working long hours under poor (sometimes dangerous) conditions and lax environmental regulations (if any)
Apple is “American” only in name.
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