1}. Justice Brandeis: ”We can either have a democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentration in the hands of a few. But we cannot have both.”
2]. Barlett & Steele: ”We are no longer the democracy we once were. We have become a plutocracy.. In 2011, AdAge..declared the era of mass affluence over in America.. “Simply put, a small plutocracy of wealthy elites drives a larger and larger share of total consumer spending.” [ “The Betrayal of The American Dream” ]
3] Adam Smith: ”We can’t have free markets because the world is too complex and independent to let everyone run around doing whatever he or she wants to do. As a society, we have to regulate conduct when it interferes with other people’s freedoms or when it threatens damage to other people’s property.” [Oreskes &nConway: “The Big Myth”]
4]. John Ehrenberg: ”When allis said and done, the contemporary Right is about attacking equality and serving wealth..foundations, think tanks, newspapers, publishers, institutions..[developed].. this program..they’ve largely succeeded in getting th country to debate elementary principles of equality and democracy on their terms.”
[“$ervants of Wealth..”]
5]. Joe Stiglitz: The standard mantra of some: taxes stifle growth. ”..far from it. Over the period 2000 to 2010, high-taxing Sweden..grew far faster than the United States..taxes financed public expenditures – investments in education, technology, and infrastructure – and the public expenditures were what..sustained the high growth.”
[Nobel Prize winner in Economics]
6]. John Bogle: ”..late in the twentieth century, something went wrong..one more aberration.. What went wrong this time..was a “pathological mutation of capitalism.” The classic system – owners’ capitalism – had been based on a dedication to serving the interests of the corporation’s owners..But a new system..managers’ capitalism – in which, Pfaff wrote, ”the corporation [was] run to the profit of the managers, in complicity if not conspiracy with accountants and managers of other corporations..a corruption of capitalism itself.’
”The age of managers’ capitalism has had dire consequences for our notion of some sort of fairness in American society, and is a major cause of the increase in the gap between America’s rich and poor.”
[ “Battle for the Soul of Capitalism” ]
7]. Patricia Sexton: ”In most other Western democracies, the legal system has been somewhat sympathetic, or at least relatively impartial..often resisting employer demands, protecting labor at critical moments, and sometimes even embracing it..[Not America].. Rarely has the legal system been its advocate, protector, or even a neutral party, and more typically it has been an adversary.”
”In early U.S. history, the legal system treated unions as criminal conspiracies; still later, it accepted some strikes as legal in principle but often treated..activities associated with them..as criminal conspiracies.”
[. “The War on Labor and the Left” ]
8]. David C. Johnston: ”Wall Street..measures companies by their success in creating barriers to competition..The investment research firm Morningstar rates companies using a “moat index” to measure success at avoiding..rigors of market competition..: “The concept of economic moats is a cornerstone of our stock-investment philosophy..Moats are important to investors because any time a company develops a useful product..other firms try to capitalize..competition makes it difficult for most firms to generate strong growth and margins over an extended period of time.”
[ “The Fine Print” ]
9]. Lee Drutman & Steven Teles: ”More than three decades of disinvesting in government’s capacity to keep up with skyrocketing numbers of lobbyists and policy institutions, well-organized partisans, and an increasingly complex social and legal context,” have created “a power asymmetry crisis.”
”..weak government doesn’t mean efficient government. It means government that gives away the store to rent seekers far too often..government that must confront the most vital challenges facing it – facing us – with one habd tied behind its back.” [ “American Amnesia” ]
10] Oreskes & Conway: ”..in 1986, a new panic in the tobacco industry: ”The cause was a new Surgeon General’s report that concluded..second hand smoke could cause cancer even in otherwise healthy nonsmokers.” Fred Singer and the Tobacco Institute ”claimed..the EPA was doing “bad science.” To make this..seem credible..they began a smear campaign to discredit the EPA in general and tarnish any scientific results..any that any industry didn’t like as “junk.”
[ “Merchants of Doubt” ]
11]. Alec MacGillis: ”Brick and mortar retail was reeling by the end of 2017. Nearly 7,000 stores closed that year..”It’s not stores that are dying,” wrote business professor Scott Galloway, but the middle class – and it turn, the businesses that serve that once-great cohort and its neighborhoods.” [ “Fulfillment” ]
12] Hacker & Pierson: ”Financing the GOP was an investment. Business dollars nurtured a cadre of elected officials committed to advancing a deregulatory and tax-cutting agenda…Money to Democrats..was a form of insurance..destined for the powerful and “moderate,” with the goal of minimizing any prospect of distasteful legislation..help keep issues off the agenda,,add critical loopholes..provide valuable bipartisan cover for business-friendly Republicans.” [ “Winner-Take-All Politics” ]
With Justice For All 