The Root of All Evil
Since I’m writing this on a Sunday, it seems fitting to start off with a Bible verse. This is from the Apostle Paul’s first letter to his disciple, Timothy. The verse is well known, but I want to write it out as it appears in the New International Version:
“People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap, and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”
I will resist using this verse to attack the President, who as of this writing is in Walter Reed Hospital in Maryland, being treated for COVID-19. Instead, I want to speak about the corrupting influence of money in our society as a whole.
We live in a capitalist society in which money is the main driver of activity. (Disclosure: In my own day job, I work in sales with a variable comp plan that rewards me for hitting certain targets.) The mad lust for money and its harmful effects on individuals and society is something we all need to be alert for.
Money, and the interests of the super-wealthy, have great sway in the United States, thanks to the Supreme Court case known as Citizens United. This decision equated political donations with free speech. In the years since that decision, money from corporations and billionaires flooded Washington, making running for office more expensive. Now, politicians of both parties spend much of their time in office fundraising. Even Congresspeople in safe seats fundraise to help others in their party.
This hurts our ability to reform our system. Whether we want to see greater regulations of Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry or the energy sector, we hit the same barriers. Lobbyists flush with corporate campaign money can stop any regulation that will harm the corporate bottom line.
Though I just said “corporations and billionaires,” please realize that I’m really talking about one group, not two. Our billionaire class are major shareholders in blue chip stocks. They control these companies and sometimes even force company leadership into doing things which benefit the shareholders but are detrimental to the company as a whole.
How often have you heard in the business news about two companies merging? Sometimes it goes well, but other times, the remaining company is weaker after the merger than before. It takes on too much debt in order to buy its rival, leading to layoffs and even bankruptcy. Workers, consumers, local communities are all harmed, but the shareholders made a big profit.
Another corporate practice that, until the pandemic, occurred regularly without question is the stock buy-back. Corporations with extra cash buy back some of the stock that’s in the marketplace, to the tune of billions of dollars each year. Money that could have been used for salaries and benefits, research and development, or charity, flowed instead to the billionaire shareholders. Only when the economy slowed dramatically did corporate leaders think it prudent to suspend buy-backs.
Thanks to Citizens United, these same shareholders completely control the Republican Party. The tax cut, one of the few legislative accomplishments our President can speak to, was in response to a demand from billionaire donors. As I pointed out at the time, it was not something we could afford to do. Think of how more robust our response to coronavirus could have been had we not given trillions of dollars to the people who were already the richest among us!
The Democratic Party is only slightly more independent. Bernie Sanders showed his fellow Democrats how to fund a multi-million dollar campaign with hundreds of thousands of small donations. But billionaires and corporate lobbyists still hold many Demmocratic officials in their sway.
That’s not all that this group controls. Corporations (and thus, billionaire shareholders) now own America’s media outlets from top to bottom: Newspapers, magazines, books, music, television and movies are now under the collective control of giant media conglomerates.
This consolidation has led many to seek out news sources that are “independent of the system.” Yet, some of those new sources of information, like Breitbart, are also owned by billionaires, and push the same pro-business, anti-everything-else agenda.
Billionaires’ influence stretches to our universities, where they fund foundations and business departments that push their low tax, low regulation vision.
They even control our churches with their charitable donations. How many working pastors are willing to give a sermon like this one? By attacking the wealthiest of their congregation, pastors threaten tithes that run programs and pay their own salaries.
If the wealth and influence of billionaires in our society are so overpowering, what can we do about it? I’ll cover that topic next week.
Thanks for reading. Remember to like, comment and follow!
KJ
“People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap, and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”
I will resist using this verse to attack the President, who as of this writing is in Walter Reed Hospital in Maryland, being treated for COVID-19. Instead, I want to speak about the corrupting influence of money in our society as a whole.
We live in a capitalist society in which money is the main driver of activity. (Disclosure: In my own day job, I work in sales with a variable comp plan that rewards me for hitting certain targets.) The mad lust for money and its harmful effects on individuals and society is something we all need to be alert for.
Money, and the interests of the super-wealthy, have great sway in the United States, thanks to the Supreme Court case known as Citizens United. This decision equated political donations with free speech. In the years since that decision, money from corporations and billionaires flooded Washington, making running for office more expensive. Now, politicians of both parties spend much of their time in office fundraising. Even Congresspeople in safe seats fundraise to help others in their party.
This hurts our ability to reform our system. Whether we want to see greater regulations of Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry or the energy sector, we hit the same barriers. Lobbyists flush with corporate campaign money can stop any regulation that will harm the corporate bottom line.
Though I just said “corporations and billionaires,” please realize that I’m really talking about one group, not two. Our billionaire class are major shareholders in blue chip stocks. They control these companies and sometimes even force company leadership into doing things which benefit the shareholders but are detrimental to the company as a whole.
How often have you heard in the business news about two companies merging? Sometimes it goes well, but other times, the remaining company is weaker after the merger than before. It takes on too much debt in order to buy its rival, leading to layoffs and even bankruptcy. Workers, consumers, local communities are all harmed, but the shareholders made a big profit.
Another corporate practice that, until the pandemic, occurred regularly without question is the stock buy-back. Corporations with extra cash buy back some of the stock that’s in the marketplace, to the tune of billions of dollars each year. Money that could have been used for salaries and benefits, research and development, or charity, flowed instead to the billionaire shareholders. Only when the economy slowed dramatically did corporate leaders think it prudent to suspend buy-backs.
Thanks to Citizens United, these same shareholders completely control the Republican Party. The tax cut, one of the few legislative accomplishments our President can speak to, was in response to a demand from billionaire donors. As I pointed out at the time, it was not something we could afford to do. Think of how more robust our response to coronavirus could have been had we not given trillions of dollars to the people who were already the richest among us!
The Democratic Party is only slightly more independent. Bernie Sanders showed his fellow Democrats how to fund a multi-million dollar campaign with hundreds of thousands of small donations. But billionaires and corporate lobbyists still hold many Demmocratic officials in their sway.
That’s not all that this group controls. Corporations (and thus, billionaire shareholders) now own America’s media outlets from top to bottom: Newspapers, magazines, books, music, television and movies are now under the collective control of giant media conglomerates.
This consolidation has led many to seek out news sources that are “independent of the system.” Yet, some of those new sources of information, like Breitbart, are also owned by billionaires, and push the same pro-business, anti-everything-else agenda.
Billionaires’ influence stretches to our universities, where they fund foundations and business departments that push their low tax, low regulation vision.
They even control our churches with their charitable donations. How many working pastors are willing to give a sermon like this one? By attacking the wealthiest of their congregation, pastors threaten tithes that run programs and pay their own salaries.
If the wealth and influence of billionaires in our society are so overpowering, what can we do about it? I’ll cover that topic next week.
Thanks for reading. Remember to like, comment and follow!
KJ
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