How the rich steal from you.
You may have seen this diagram before. Might even be why you’re here. Either way, hi! Glad your curiosity brought you here.
I’ll give you the long and the short of why I believe the rich take from the poor, and do so in shady untrue ways. And by “believe,” I’m about as sure as i am of this as i am of gravity.
Now, this isn’t the only way the rich steal from you. Others are using government lobbying to increase their companies profits- could be from reducing regulation, to increasing costs artificially.
One easy explanation, like in the video, is Greg Abbott adding loopholes in bills that are supposed to be for strengthening our infrastructure, so that it allows the power companies to not strengthen the infrastructure.
The short of it:
Some people are endlessly power and money hungry, and they wield every tool available to them to their benefit. Currently, the USPS is not ran for profit (and is one of the most essential foundations of this country), but somebody wants to buy it because it’s a well oiled machine that someone can become a CEO and make hundreds of millions of dollars running it.
Contrary to what some might think, competition isn’t dulled out by where the “best” business wins out. It’s the most powerful business that wins. Sometimes we get a monopoly because all the competition either gets snuffed out, or bought out. A monopoly makes sense when it’s a government program, because why have competing Social Security departments? That’d be redundant. But like the USPS, Social Security is not ran for profit, it just needs enough funding to run and pay it’s “customers” – the elderly and orphans. Neo-Conservatives have been trying to privatize Social Security, the USPS, and other departments as long as those services came to being.
Social security is incredibly efficient. There’s almost no overhead.
| 2020 | 0.6% | 0.4% | 1.7% | 6,303 | 3,748 | 2,555 |
| 2021 | 0.6% | 0.4% | 1.7% | 6,492 | 4,011 | 2,481 |
| 2022 | 0.5% | 0.4% | 1.9% | 6,746 | 3,999 | 2,747 |
| 2023 | 0.5% | 0.4% | 1.8% | 7,206 | 4,367 | 2,839 |
| 2024 | 0.5% | 0.4% | 1.6% | 7,447 | 4,939 | 2,508 |
If it ever goes private & then stock market public as a corporation, you could add tens to hundreds of millions in overhead just for paying a corporate suite. But then they would immediately start charging more than they do now, and they would cut wages, and fire employees who unionize, or attempt to unionize. They would also start denying coverage to people who got it (at least before trump took office). Millions of old people and orphans would immediately fall into poverty. Currently it keeps 60% of elderly out of poverty. You should feel proud when you see Social Security taking a few bucks from your check, because someday you will need it.
Here is Sam Seder, an exceptional advocate of Social Security and the USPS.
If you’re still with me, I’d like to ask you to check out The Majority Report. They cover all sorts of news and extremely insightful analysis of not only how things are going in politics, but more importantly why things are going the way they are.
Please consider supporting me through my Patreon.
The wealthy might sign your check, but they sign politician’s checks as well.
I have 2 case studies on corruption for you. One, Ted, the other, Chuck:
TED
Open secrets is a great resource for seeing who really owns a politician. Most of the time it aint you. Ever wonder why most of the time calling them feels helpless? Wonder why they don’t care or show up until they’re afraid of getting taken out of office? Remember how we had many years where Ted Cruz didn’t campaign, or barely did the minimal in campaigns? Only one Election did i see him actually make an effort in campaigning- only after Beto started peeling off counties one by one from him. He doesn’t need to care most of the time, because he gets so much money from super pacs, that he doesn’t need to come to you for anything except a reminder that he’s the devil you already know, and to make you too scared to try a devil you dont know.
Why is this bad? Because if he doesn’t need to go to you, why would he care what you want? Maybe he likes Wells Fargo’s offer to him more than he likes your offer to him. Maybe he’ll listen to Boeing about loosening safety laws, instead of listening to your concerns about unsafe flights.
Bringing it back to the topic, Say you didn’t want Social Security or the Postal Service to be privatized? Since Ted Cruz gets most of his donor money from large corporations, why would he care that you dont want that to happen? He doesn’t answer to you, he answers to his donors.
what can we do about that?
the first step is advocating for banning Super Pacs in politics, and only allow pacs with individual contributions under the legal amount of about $2,000 per person.
CHUCK
About 80% of Chuck Schumer’s money comes from large donations, from companies like Microsoft (just like Ted Cruz), Cisco, United Health Group. There have been protest after protest about Schumer not looking out for us, the voters. He hasn’t budged one bit. He has the same donors as Ted, and the other Republicans, and Corporate wing of the democratic party.
Chuck Shumer doesn’t work for you. He works for the corporate Wall St Donors. The only option to get rid of this cancer of corporate control, is to start with banning corporate money in politics. Will that solve everything? No. but it’ll be a MAJOR step forward in rooting out corruption from government.
In Conclusion (sort of)
There is much more to it than this. But I’ll save that for later. The main gist of what I hope you can get from this is, People use their wealth to take from people with less than them. It is in our best interests to defend ourselves from them doing that. I gave one example of how they (the hyper wealthy) accomplish their goals- but there are many other tactics they use, but the large donations are a good example to start with. The billionaires and media that is on the side of the billionaires will use Divide and Conquer tactics, (Wedge Issues) to get us fighting each other- getting straights fighting gays, whites fighting blacks, citizens fighting immigrants, Christians fighting Muslims, or Atheists… the list goes on.
But the real enemy are the billionaires. Musk, Trump, Zuck, Putin, Soros, Larry Ellison. 800 people control more wealth than the bottom half of earners in 2010, they actually control more than 50% of all wealth in America now.
There are a lot of great resources. This site does cover current events when possible, but I would really recommend checking out further resources here. There are tons of books, good media that analyzes what’s happening out there. While this isn’t a comprehensive list (yet, as of writing this) there will be more recommendations to be added to this in time)
I’ll continue writing this essay. To Continue, please go to page 2.