Why You Should Care: Corporate Socialism

“This country has socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor” -Martin Luther King, Jr.

This quote from King is just as prophetic in 2020 as it was when he uttered it back in 1968. As wealth inequality and poverty grow at rapid rates, skyrocketing corporate profits are not “lifting all boats”. The lie of trickle down economics has once again been proven as a right wing fallacy. A perverse tale of prosperity for the majority of Americans. The booming stock market is being used by our current president as an analogous for a thriving economy, yet, austerity measures will see 700,000 people denied food assistance (SNAP benefits). Poverty numbers continue to grow as the middle class shrinks in this wake of oligarchic take over.

In that wake of what late political theorist Sheldon Wolin calls, “Inverted Totalitarianism” we’ve seen tax cuts and subsidies for the rich increase the wealth gap in this country to gilded age levels. In my lifetime, I witnessed 8 years of Regan, another 4 of Bush Sr., 8 years of Clinton, 8 years of Bush Jr., a hopeful 8 years of our first black president. Running on a sentiment of hope and change, he brought us much of the same as his predecessors. Donald Trump did not fall from the racist skies, decades of bipartisan tax cuts, forever wars, welfare cuts/reform, underfunding of HUD, corporate subsidies, laws put in place to give workers less rights, less unions, poverty rates climbing…the climate was ripe for authoritarian take over.