By ED SCOTTCorporate America only succeeds if Capitalism works. Capitalism cannot work if the middle class is in debt, shrinking and can no longer be consumers.
America is still the wealthiest nation in the world and in world history … and America also has the greatest wealth disparity in the world and in world history. These are unsustainable conditions … and yet Donald Trump and much of the Republican Party want increase wealth disparity by decreasing federal income taxes for the wealthy class and corporations, resulting in even greater CEO salaries.
This will make American Corporate Capitalism an even more unsustainable system. Trade Policy based solely on the interests of Corporations while disadvantaging workers, the environment, devastating conditions like climate change, etc., etc, only exacerbates these problems. We will either fix a broken system based upon broken trade policies like NAFTA or we will see the whole system fail in worse ways than it did in 1929 when the Great Depression answered years of wealthy class advantage and ignorant policy.
You cannot have consumerism without consumers. A 1 percent wealthy class that does exceedingly well while the 99 percent continue in decline will not work … it will fail.
A good metric for how much difficulty we are in here in America is a working class that believes that Donald Trump, the “Blue Class Billionaire,” will save jobs in America. His primary concern is not building a wall or any other concern of the Rust Belt, but in seeing that his own personal and corporate taxes get reduced making him wealthier.
In a similar way, no matter what claims are made for trade policies like NAFTA and TPP, their ultimate goal is make corporations and the 1 percent even far wealthier. This is not a sustainable system. The longer it goes on, the harder the fall will be. And sadly, the wealthy class will probably survive, just as right now in Houston, Texas it is the poorer class people who are suffering the most and will do so for years to come.
Fair trade policy that can benefit all Americans is possible, but nothing that is occurring right now with Republican driven trade policy will achieve that result. Transparency is a necessary requirement for democratic governance. When working people succeed, America prospers and succeeds.
Thank you.
