A reminder of why workers need unions. To reduce inequality. To give working people a voice. To establish a modicum of balance between haves and have-nots. To temper the greed of the wealthy.
From The American Prospect:
Meyerson on TAP
Corporate America’s Only Priority: Rewarding the Rich. The stock market may be tanking, but investors—make that, major investors—are doing great nonetheless.
How, you may ask, is this possible? It’s because corporations have showered them with heretofore unimaginable dividends and share buybacks.
According to a front-page story in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, “companies in the S&P 500 have spent nearly $421 billion on dividends through November,” which is more than they spent on dividends in all of 2017. And this doesn’t take into account the amount of money corporations are devoting to share buybacks, which is more than twice the amount they’ve shoveled into dividends this year. Indeed, both dividends and share buybacks have already broken their all-time yearly record—and the Journal predicts that next year’s levels will surpass this year’s, notwithstanding the downward direction of the market.
In recent months, both wages and domestic capital investment have inched up, but at nowhere near the level of the increase in the return to shareholders. As the terrific new study by Josh Bivens and Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute makes clear, the single most important factor in the past-four-decades’ diversion of business income from workers to shareholders and executives is the success of business’s assault on worker power, and the concomitant success of business’s insistence that government favor the rich over everyone else.
The last time I looked, the theory behind the government’s decision to tax capital gains at a lower rate than income from work was that investors bolstered the economy by investing. Now that corporation’s main mission is to reward investors at the expense of all other conceivable ways to spend its revenues, however, the capital gains tax has become purely a way to reward investors for extracting money from corporations, for siphoning funds from what otherwise might be productive enterprise.
Nice work if you can get it. ~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Diane Ravitch's blog 
While canvassing for Democrats this summer and talking to voters about social welfare goodies like Medicare for All, many asked me how we can pay for it. Everyone’s first thought is taxing the rich, which rubs many the wrong way. But, as Meyerson points out, there are other more palatable forms of wealth redistribution: e.g. forcing owners to take smaller profits by letting workers organize and obtain higher pay. Or mandating paid leave. Too much wealth is pooling at the top of the pyramid in America. We must make some of it flow downward. And we must teach our fellow citizens about the problem and how it can be solved. We must give them knowledge, not “21st Century Skills”.
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If you get a chance, you should watch “Bleed Out,” a documentary on HBO. It follows the sad journey of a retired teacher that injures her hip. For profit medicine is a vulture that attacks the sick and elderly. The worst is E-ICU where there is no doctor, only a video monitor, to help post surgery patients. You have to see it to believe it.!
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and when wealth pools, a truly dangerous offshoot is massively growing egos — egos addicted to and ever more dependent upon those Richy Rich Who Is The Richest lists found in financial magazines: the personal accumulation of money becomes the money-is-all junkie’s obsession
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Speaking as one of the great number of mid/ upper-mid corp workers forced from pension to 401(k) 20+ yrs ago– I benefit from favorable treatment of capital gains tax! Furthermore, as a long-ago annual recipient of a few shares of Kodak every Xmas [my gf was an employee], I happen to know cap gains were treated favorably even when US econ/ middle class was thriving. Heck “even teachers”– mid-class for sure– in GA, UT, RI, PA, & TN (w/ more to come) have been switched to ‘hybrid’ pension plans incl a 401(k) component. So don’t try to tell us deleting fav treatment of cap gains will help the middle class.
Fav treatment of cap gains has a long history, & was never about favoring shholders over workers/ gen public. It was about encouraging holding investments longterm thro ups & downs [as opposed to daytrading/ speculation], supporting economic stability.
For corporate contribution to economic volatility & increasing rich-poor divide over last 35+ yrs, look to dereg encouraging instability, like acctg changes [incl inventory rules] prizing qtrly gains over longterm gains, et al corp/ bank/ brokerage dereg resulting in rapacious mergers/ acquisitions, absurd salaries for temp hatchet-man CEO et al top admin.
& for more features exacerbating the hollowing-out of middle class, look to the cluster of tax features encouraging salting profits virtually tax-free offshore (gained by offshoring industry to cheaper foreign locales!). Let alone Trump admin’s tax giveaway, making corps so cash-flush-w/o-strings, there’s nothing for it but big-div handouts to investors & huge buybacks to keep stock prices artificially high.
Fav treatment of cap gains is a small piece of the pie which looks only to encourage longterm investment. An echo of stabler days.
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Politico reported that Justice Democrats (Ocasio-Cortez) are targeting Hakeem Jeffries for defeat by seeking to place an opponent on the primary ballot against him. Justice Democrats specifically singled out Jeffries’ support for charter schools as one of the reasons the establishment’s rising star is a DINO.
This makes it clear, real progressives support public schools and recognize, the lie that charter schools are public.
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Most of Hakim Jeffries money comes from Wall Street. Very few small donations. He is a corporatist Dem.
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With hope, Jeffries will be replaced by a real Democrat.
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It isn’t merely “Corporate American” that wants to reward the rich.
Rewarding the rich is the essence of supply-side economics, which is the economic centerpiece of the Republican party.
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We should not separate the avarice and greed of the billionaire class and it’s Congressional minions from the pro-charter forces assailing public ed. They are related. As Trump’s absurd “tax cut” showers the 1% in middle class money, public budgets are evicerated to pay for it, leaving the hole to be filled (temporarily) by billionaire “philanthropists” (I won’t name them, you know who). This way they look like moral people helping others less fortunate while taking over school operations from the inside out. At our school we used to have supplies until billionaires were given all our money so now (as “RISE partners”) we get a $100 gift card to Staples and an address in Greenwich to send our “thank you” letters. Privatization in sheep’s clothing.
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Good news- In Michigan, the GOPs effort to strip power from the incoming Democratic Secretary of State failed. We can relish the fist punch delivered to the Kochs and DeVoses.
In Kansas, a state rep. who recently left the Republican Party for the Democratic Party cited school funding issues as her reason- another punch to the party of Koch/DeVos/Trump/Pence.
If Gov. Northam in Virginia demands that the PUBLIC George Mason University reject Koch control, we’ll be able to enjoy another gut punch to Charles and David Koch.
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“Liberal” journalists like the NYT’s David Leonhardt who are MIA on the issue of unions and who side with the richest 0.1% on school privatization are DINOS.
The Koch’s ALEC has two new anti-union bills it wants passed. The Center for Media and Democracy describes the noxious legislation at its site. Will there be any establishment, “liberal” journalists or professors who condemn the bills? My guess- h_ll no.
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Ocasio-Cortez should be appointed to the Ways and Means committee to counter the influence of the manipulative American oligarchs.
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