The Ruling Class Can Afford Whatever They Want. They Just Don't Care About You.

Just last week the Federal Reserve pumped $1.5 Trillion into the stock market in an attempt to help Wall St. withstand the the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. This isn’t anything out of the ordinary, on September 18th, 2019, the Federal Reserve pumped $128 Billion into the stock market, and $105 Billion more by the end of that same week.  

Did you hear any establishment politicians or pundits asking, “How are you gonna pay for it”?

No, you didn’t.

Unfortunately, this is how American society is set up. If the wealthy needs government assistance, the government has all the money in the world no questions asked. But if poor and working class Americans need government assistance, suddenly the government acts broke and advocates for fiscal responsibility.

The examples mentioned above prove this fact on their own, but American society is so corrupted there are multiple examples to point to.

Look at how much the federal government invests in programs relating to defense and the military compared to what we invest in social programs to improve quality of life for the public. This is a bipartisan issue due to the fact that the establishments of both the Republican and Democratic parties are corrupted by corporate influence, but since the Republicans currently hold the Presidency lets look at how they’d like to prioritize federal spending. 

When looking at how Congress and the President prioritize federal spending in the budget, we look at discretionary spending due to the fact that mandatory programs lie outside the budget process because they require a 60-vote majority in the Senate to change, resulting in them being nearly impossible to change.

According to Donald Trumps proposed budget for 2020, almost every non-military discretionary program received a cut in funding. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) received a 31% cut in funding, the Department of Transportation received a 19% cut in funding, the Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) received a 18% cut in funding, the Departments of Agriculture, Health & Human Services, Education, and the National Science Foundation all received a 12% cut in funding. The Department of Labor received a 10% cut in funding, the Department of the Interior received a 9% cut in funding, and NASA received a 2% cut in funding. The only discretionary programs that experienced increases in funding under Trumps proposed budget were the Department of Defense which was given a staggering $750 Billion, a 5% increase since 2019, the Department of Homeland Security which received a 15% increase in funding, and the Departments of Commerce and Veterans Affairs which only experienced increased due to the upcoming census, and rising costs of healthcare due to  the Trump Administrations undermining of the already weak Affordable Care Act.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Trumps 2020 budget, “…would make poverty more widespread, widen inequality and racial disparities, and increase the ranks of the uninsured.”. This budget advocates for cutting funding for vital social programs that poor and working class Americans rely on to survive. It cuts non-defense discretionary programs by a total $69 Billion after accounting for inflation. 

These cuts to social programs in the name of fiscal responsibility are happening at the same time as the Federal Reserve is dumping trillions of dollars into the stock market, and the Defense Department is receiving hundreds of billions of dollars in budget increases, all to help the wealthy donors of establishment politicians.

Why does this happen? That question hits the very core of the problem we are faced with. The free market has taken over government, and the free market doesn’t give a flying fu*ck about the interests of the public. Free markets are interested in profitability above all else, and they’re willing to put the public at risk if it means they could make a quick buck.

This has been proven throughout history when dealing with the tobacco industry and their denials that smoking caused cancer, and it can be seen more recently in the fossil fuels industry attempt to deny that they were aware that their business was responsible for climate change. This trend is also observed in the American healthcare and pharmaceutical industries which make hundreds of billions in profits off the backs of sick Americans. If you can’t afford healthcare in America, then the free market is perfectly fine with you dying. In fact, free market fundamentalists will say this is an effect of markets workings as they should.

The United States government has been successfully hijacked by the free market due to the complete and utter lack of regulations when it comes to the financing of political campaigns. Throughout history, corporations and wealthy individuals have always received preferential treatment from the government due to the fact that they have the disposable income to donate to political campaigns, or own businesses that the Government wants to contract with. Unfortunately, since the Supreme Courts ruling on Citizens United vs FEC, it’s been official policy in the United States that money equals free speech, thereby creating a gaping wound in democracy just waiting to be infected with the corruption of corporate influence and its free market obsessed ideology.

Due to the fact that corporations and wealthy individuals have successfully taken over the Government, ordinary poor and working class Americans struggling to survive are routinely ignored by the Government, or worse, they’re looked upon as sponges used to sop up profits for the bipartisan ruling class. 

As more than 45,000 Americans die every year because they can’t afford healthcare, as more than 500,000 Americans, many of them Veterans of our Empire’s endless wars for profit, sleep on the streets every night, as more than 130 million Americans are experiencing medical debt, as 44 million Americans are experiencing student loan debt, and as more than 100 million Americans make less than $20,000 per year, the bipartisan ruling class is more interested in giving trillions of dollars to their donors on Wall St, and increasing defense spending by hundreds of billions of dollars rather than invest that money in programs to help poor and working class Americans like single-payer healthcare, a universal basic income, universal housing, and a green new deal.

The United Staes of America is the wealthiest country in the world, if it can afford to do whatever the ruling class needs to protect their own interests, it can afford to establish the programs we need to help poor and working class Americans. The bipartisan ruling class just doesn’t think protecting the majority of the American pubic is a priority of theirs.