SEN BERNIE SANDERS: Two Americas, the people vs. the billionaires
It’s hard to miss.
Our country is rapidly evolving into two Americas.
One America consists of less than a thousand billionaires who have an unprecedented amount of wealth and power and have never ever had it so good.
The other America, where the vast majority live, consists of tens of millions of families who are struggling to put food on the table, pay their bills and worry that their kids will have a lower standard of living than they do.
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In the first America, the uber-wealthy buy $500 million yachts with helicopter pads, $270 million mansions with 30 bedrooms, private islands, a fleet of jets to take them all over the world and rocket ships that blast off to the edge of outer-space. They receive the best health care money can buy, send their kids to the best schools and can expect to live very long lives.
In this America, the three wealthiest men (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg) own more wealth than the bottom half of our society – over 165 million people. And their wealth is skyrocketing. Musk, alone, is now worth over $450 billion and, combined, these three men are worth $955 billion.
And it is not just these three men. The top 1% now own more wealth than the bottom 90% – and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider every day.
In the other America, the working class struggles just to provide for the basic necessities of life. In this America, over 60% of our people live paycheck to paycheck, millions work for starvation wages, 85 million are uninsured or underinsured, more than 20 million households spend over half of their limited incomes on rent or a mortgage and over 60,000 die each year because they can’t afford to go to a doctor on time.
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In this America, 25% of our seniors try to survive on less than $15,000 a year and parents try to raise their kids in a nation that has the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth. And, because of stress and inadequate health care, working people live far shorter lives than the rich.
In this America, workers are scared to death that if your car breaks down, if your kid gets sick, if your landlord raises the rent, if you get divorced, if you become pregnant, if for whatever reason you lose your job, you will find yourself in the midst of a financial catastrophe.
But let’s be clear. Our country is not just experiencing an unprecedented level of income and wealth inequality. Today, we also have more concentration of ownership than we have ever had.
In sector after sector - health care, agriculture, financial services, energy, transportation - a handful of giant corporations control what is produced and how much we, as consumers, pay for their products. Unbelievably, just three Wall Street firms (BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street) control assets of more than $22 trillion. These three Wall Street firms are the major shareholders in about 95% of S&P 500 companies, exerting enormous control over the largest corporations in the world.
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And that’s not all.
Never before in American history have so few media conglomerates, all owned by the billionaire class, had so much influence over the public. It is estimated that six huge media corporations now own 90% of what the American people see, hear and read. This handful of corporations determines what is "important" and what we discuss, and what is "unimportant" and what we ignore.
If you use a social media account to get your news, chances are it is owned by billionaires Musk, Zuckerberg or Trump. If you read the Washington Post, Fox or the Los Angeles Times, your news is owned by billionaires Bezos, Murdoch or Patrick Soon-Shiong.
But it’s not just the billionaire ownership and control over the economy and the media that should concern us. The uber-rich are also buying our government and undermining American democracy.
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Never before in American history have we seen a ruling class with so much political power. As a result of the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, billionaires and their super-PACs can spend unlimited sums of money on political campaigns.
And that’s exactly what they are doing. During the 2024 election cycle, just 150 billionaires spent nearly $2 billion to buy politicians who support their agenda and to defeat candidates who oppose their special interests. Billionaires who represent just .0005% of our population accounted for 18% of total campaign spending.
That is not democracy. That is not one person, one vote. That is not what this country is supposed to stand for. In his Gettysburg Address in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln spoke about "a government of the people, by the people, for the people." Well, today, we have a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, for the billionaire class."
We are in a pivotal and unprecedented moment in American history. Either we fight to create a government and an economy that works for all, or we continue to move rapidly down the path of oligarchy and the rule of the super-rich.
The choice is clear. We must stand together for democracy and justice.