“High corporate profits are reflected in record stock market values, but only the richest are benefiting from the soaring stock market. That’s because the richest 1 percent of Americans own about half of the value of all shares of stock; the richest 10 percent own over 90 percent.” All of this while the, “rate of unemployment grew 0.2 percentage points in July, from 24.7 percent to 24.9 percent of the working-age population of the United States — the fourth consecutive month of these negative increases, which are up 0.8 percentage points since the start of the year.”
We used to have anti-monopoly laws. These laws seem to have been forgotten or weakened over time. The consequence being the markets are now dominated by a few corporations in their respective sectors; “Walmart now controls almost a quarter of the nation’s grocery market and dominates retail sales…Amazon…dominates e-commerce in general and many specific lines of business…about 80 percent of all e-books and 71 percent of all print books sold online….Four major companies — Tyson Foods, Cargill, JBS USA, and National Beef Packing Co. — now control about 85 percent of U.S. meat processing…” The list goes on. The point is that this is not healthy for the nation. It drives up profits for corporations and their shareholders, while also driving up prices for consumers, who keep running to get ahead only to get nowhere. This makes it clear, a portion of the profits need to go back to the workers, without whom there would be no corporation.
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