Let’s dispel some lies that keep being peddled by politicians and the punditry, the skyrocketing inflation and shortages we are witnessing have little to do with Russia invading Ukraine, Covid-19 or supply chain problems. Those are convenient excuses being used to distract us from the root cause of rising costs and scarcity which is directly related to market consolidation.
Where monopolies exist, prices always go up, supplies are intentionally curtailed to induce demand and workers are maltreated. We are witnessing this in real-time as most Americans are living in deficits unable to keep up with exploding expenses. Yesterday afternoon, I fuel my car only to watch in sheer disbelief once the pump stopped and I looked up at the final damage. I had to pay $75.77 to fill my tank!
The same is true when I go shopping, where my parents used to buy a grocery cart chock full of food and supplies for less than $100, I now pay that much for four bags. Adding insult to injury, I am forced to pay for the bags under the guise of caring for the environment when in reality we are saving Giant, Safeway, Whole Food and these huge chains overhead. I cannot keep up with the number of hands that are reaching into my pocket and I am sure you can attest to this same fact—we are being nickeled and dimed to death.
The problem is lack of competition, these huge multinational corporations are leveraging their scale and scope to erect barriers to marketplaces, drive out their smaller rivals by way of price-fixing schemes only to turn around and gouge consumers once they attain sector supremacy. The Federal Trade Commission and the government writ large have given up any semblance of regulating industries and have instead jumped in bed with them. The incestuous relationship being politicians, policymakers and multinational corporations has turned our Republic into a codified kleptocracy.
Unable to solve the problem because they are benefiting from this continued fleecing of Americans and the indenturing of humanity, Democrats and Republicans are left no choice other than to gaslight the heck out of us. President Joe Biden announced on Twitter “new actions and working with the private sector to get infant formula into stores as quickly as possible”, this is akin to working with Bonnie and Clyde to stop theft.
What Biden is not mentioning is that the very “private sectors” he is reaching out to are the cause of the infant formula shortage. Four companies—Abbot, Reckitt Benckiser, Nestle and Perrigo—control more than 89% of the market for baby formula. Instead of “working with the private sector”, Biden should channel the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt to break up these oligopolies in order to ensure competition. But he won’t do that because Biden and every politician in DC, irrespective of political party, is a wholly owned subsidiary of multinational corporations.
What is true of infant formula is true of almost every major industry and market sector. Four media companies control over 95% of the information we consume, which means that four men basically monopolize and manipulate the public discourse at their whim. The same is true of oil refineries, banks, health care, etc., by squeezing out competition, merging at every turn and eviscerating local economies, we are being enslaved by the 21st century’s plantation owners aka the globalist oligarchs.
While we are being squeezed by inflation, we are also being suffocated by regressing wages. The source for both is cronyism that gives rise to monopolies and prevents competition. When a plutocrat like Bezos owns more than 20% of Americans combined, he is able to weaponize his wealth and his empire to decimate mom and pop stores and artificially reduce demand for workers. This invariably leads to depressed wages and a downward mobility as lucrative careers dry up and are replaced by low-wage jobs.
If we have any hope of preserving our freedoms, restoring fairness for workers and small businesses and ensuring equality of opportunity for all, it is essential that we bring these multinational corporations and their billionaire owners to heel. This will require evicting every freeloading politician in DC who pretends to speak for justice and pays lip service to change when, in reality, they are benefiting from the status quo.
That is why I am running for the US House of Representatives as an independent and refusing to take a penny from corporations; we cannot depend on millionaires working for billionaires to save us, we must work for ourselves. We have a choice before us, we can keep protesting and demanding justice from narcissists in DC who are deaf to our struggles or we can empower ourselves and elect servants who know and live our struggles.
While my opponent Don Beyer is voting to lavish $40 billion to Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and the military-industrial complex using the suffering of Ukrainians as cover, I am focused on bringing relief to workers and small businesses who are being pummeled by inflation, shortages and depressed wages. This November, the choice could not be starker, more of the same or authentic change. I hope you will opt for the latter and I will work relentlessly to earn your vote to ensure that outcome.