I started watching this but will need to finish later. I’m excited about going to your class today and it is always uplifting to see so many young people being asked to think. There are always a million excuses and blame games from the republicans but all they need to do is study other countries to see how their line of thinking fails.
In terms of GDP, we spend about 1/3 as much on defense as we did in the 1950s. Social spending is four times higher than it was in the 1950s (again, in terms of GDP). I don't see that trend reversing.
Yes! One example: in many "developed" nations if a student has the intelligence to pursue a university degree, he/she is guaranteed this free of obscene monetary costs. Not so in the u.s. We eventually suffer as there is undoubtedly much talent that is not given the opportunity to flourish and contribute to the society.
Well, we all like to point out how great life is in other countries, so why does the US have the highest education cost in the OECD? Could it be overpaid administrators? Tenured professors who spend more time on "research" than teaching? Fancy architecture? Easy access to school loans for which universities are not accountable? What is it?
Possibly the commoditization of higher education. Long ago a friend from high school and I headed off to college. I to a decent university, and she to an Ivy League institution that fit her brilliance. The cost at that time was a little over 4 to 1: her Ivy League university cost a little more than 4 times my university. Now the disparity between those two universities is over 10 to 1.
This is spot on Robert. In college, I worked part time, qualified for a grant to cover some costs and came out with a 4 year degree without debt. Worked on a masters degree while working full time. Very little debt.
Other countries figured out the rewards of a highly educated public. There are other countries doing better than us in criminal justice, health care, affordable education, and now democracy itself! Republicans don’t value education because they prefer dictatorship style management. They like control more than input from workers.
I've watched this excellent documentary several times and learned something new each time. Not only is it eye-opening, it's funny, provocative and thought provoking. Even if you've seen it before, it's worth revisiting for the message today is even more relevant. Great movie!
It may be helpful to visualize where you and your family stand in relation to those who run corporate America and determine your standard of living. Get a carpenters tape measure and mark off 207 inches along your floor to represent the wealthiest person in America, according to the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List (Oct 12, 2021). Each “inch” of that total 17 ft 3 inches would represent 1,000 Million dollars, for a total wealth of 207,000 million dollars! An individual worth 1 Million dollars would be equivalent to a line only one, one thousandth of an inch wide at the very bottom, less than the thickness of a human hair. The rest of us wouldn’t even show up without the aid of a microscope. This shows at a glance why most Americans are falling behind and feel so insecure. We are invisible.
According to research compiled by Jonathan Haidt in his book “The Righteous Mind”. Everyone cares about fairness. To those on the Left it implies equality, but to those on the right it’s recognized as PROPORTIONALITY. He found that everyone, Left, Right and Center cares about proportionality; Everyone gets angry when they can see people taking more than they deserve, but conservatives actually care more. The 17 foot tall graph described above screams disproportionality and could be a unifying tool to focus attention on the Billionaires whose obscene wealth attributes them so much power and influence over how everyone else lives and works. Someone worth a couple million hardly counts anymore. I also wish journalists etc. would describe extreme wealth by how many “thousands” of millions they are worth. Most people still only recognize “millions” as signifying great wealth and have no clue what a billionaire represents. They only know it rhymes with millionaire and must be somewhat more.
Dave: here is a simple way to look at a million vs a billion: a million seconds is roughly 11 1/2 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion (seems to be a number tossed around a lot lately) seconds is 31,000 years.
When I was in 2nd grade, (1966) our teacher used to show science movies made by Bell Labs on Friday afternoons; I recall one titled "Hemo the Magnificent" - in that movie they discussed heart rate and how many times a heart beat in a lifetime - my first exposure to the concept of a billion.
Why not shine a spotlight on the Ultra Wealthy, the CEO’s, the titans of business and finance who Chose to send our factories and jobs overseas, including those that manufacture critical medical equipment.
Chose to enrich themselves while allowing their employees wages to stagnate decade after decade
Chose to shift healthcare and retirement costs onto employees
Chose to demand longer hours at the expense of their employees ability to spend time with family
Chose to hire for short term and temporary gigs that promote family instability
Chose to utilize corporate inversions and every other trick in the book to evade taxes that could have been used to strengthen our Nation
Chose to hollow out America’s proud middle class
Chose to lie about the effects of pollution
I object to those who accumulate unfathomable wealth at our expense.
Hey, I think CEOs are overpaid - esp when they get fired.
But I will answer your points - you took the time to post them.
Overseas jobs? That is a tough one. The world is a global economy - if something can be done cheaper somewhere else, that is where that job is going. You might recall that Trump was pretty bellicose about moving jobs overseas. The first guy I hired was a kid in Colombia, South America. He wrote some code for me; if I had not done that, I would have never started my business. He still works for us, as does another developer who used to live in Venezuela (I am not making this up) but fled to Buenos Aires because he was tired of lack of basic things like electricity (can't tell you how many times he dropped out of sight due to power outages) or even food (he despises anything remotely connected to socialism). But the other developers are in the US. Again, I could have never done this if I had not hired that kid in Colombia.
As for wages, I do know one thing that is causing wage stagnation is the rocketing cost of health care. I pay 100% of my employees premiums (if you don't need it, you get paid more, so I am not exactly benevolent - just easier this way). An employee in their late 50s with a spouse costs me over $24,000 per year for health insurance. What if that person in their 50s only made 50K per year? The increase in health insurance premiums the last ten years easily exceeds what it would cost to give that 50k/year worker a 5% raise. The cost of compliance and other government mandates has a real cost too.
As for retirement, defined benefits are a liability that just keeps growing; 401ks move that to the employee. Personally, I contribute 20% of my employees salary to a SEP. I started doing that because I did it for myself and I am required to match for my employees by law. This cost, like health care, is all part of the compensation pie. However, over the years I have noticed that those who hate it and bitch they would rather have the money and not fund their retirement have left for greener pastures. What that leaves me are dedicated employees who are in it for the long haul. I hired one kid out of college who has dumped his entire SEP contribution into the S&P 500 every time we fund his SEP. I did the math: the guy will retire with millions. BTW, he has had 10% pay increases every year - because he is worth it.
Longer hours? That is a choice.
Short term gigs? I can't answer that one.
Tax avoidance? Hey, Biden created an S corp to lower his tax bill for money he made from a book and speaking fees - $13 million. But because he rolled that through an S Corp and claimed only $800k as income (the rest were dividends), he avoided paying nearly $500K in additional Medicare tax. Where is the rage? HeIl, I took the R&D tax credits, even though i would have spent money on that anyway. As for inversions, like I said, it is a global economy.
I don't think anyone chose to hollow out the middle class.
Lie about pollution...well, if they did, let's prosecute them!
I don't think Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Sam Walton generated unfathomable wealth at our expense. Rather, they provided products that made all of our lives easier. My SW dev manager is a flaming progressive; at lunch the other day she couldn't wait to show me her new Tesla. It was interesting, but I am not a car guy. But it never occurred to me to let her know she was adding to Musk's "unfathomable wealth" by buying that car - she was super happy, and I was happy for her.
Incidentally, that woman grew up in a rat infested trailer house with a mother on drugs. She didn't have the advantages others had, but she was bound and determined to have a better life.
Not equality but equity, big difference. “Equality” is giving everyone the same boost, $35,000 in your pocket no matter who you are is EQUALITY. Universal health care and or post secondary education or training—is “equity.” (Don’t need to “give” me an opportunity—open the door and I’LL get it myself.”)
Another tool used by the "right" to justify the gross wealth inequality is: 'those very wealthy really don't have that much, their wealth is just a measure of the worth of their investments". This throws the average person off-balance.
Here is a better way: if you made a wage of $3600/hr ($1 every second or $86,400/day), and could work 24x7, you would earn a million dollars ever 11 days, 13 hours, and 41 minutes.
In other words, if you started making this amount on Oct1, you would have a million dollars today. At $1/sec, when would you have to start collecting in order to have a $196 billion, which is the net worth of Bernard Arnault, the world's richest person?
Answer: 4,194 YEARS BEFORE CHRIST WAS BORN - that is before Mesopotamia was founded, considered by most to be the first civilization - and more than 1000 years before the oldest Egyptian pyramid was built. But hey, Bernard is a Frenchman! Geez, there is inequality all over the world...say it isn't so!
Smiled when I saw this this morning. Enlightening and entertaining! Have watched I don't know how many times, and will so again. Hoping many will watch, share and encourage others to do the same.
Grateful that you have shared this video! I am recommending it to family and friends! Your mission and wisdom as teacher, mentor, advocate, and author give me hope in these hard times. I pray for you daily.
The nature of money is for the rich to become more rich and for the poor to become poorer. Money makes money while one sleeps and the moneyless never have time to do anything other than to struggle daily. We need a more humane culture.
thank you, prof. reich... i have been reading your writings for a number of years and have learned much. i appreciate your mention of the powell memo in "saving capitalism"--that doesn't get talked about nearly enough.
also, instead of only referring to the weakening of labor unions, we need to discuss labor relations from 1960s: how management from building and construction trades organized their considerable resources to suppress wages, especially after the nixon economic shock policy deployed in 1971. a nat'l wage freeze took effect and management never took their foot off the brake after that. as you well know, since 1973, hourly wages flatlined until today.
the point is, there has been a calculated and deliberate attempt to socially engineer income inequality and voters need to know about this history in order to remedy current economic/political conditions.
Robert, I saw the film in the cinema when it was initially released. So powerful -- I'll take the opportunity to watch it again! Thank you for this and for all of your work.
Haven't watched the film yet, but will soon. I also believe a big part of the increased division is when the income difference between the CEO (or highest paid person in a business) and the lowest paid employee in the company went from a difference of (I am guessing here on the exact amount) say 40 times to 500 times. If I am correct this happened during the early 2000 when I was still working for PG&E and in the union, IBEW 1245 (Walnut Creek). I was a Shop Steward so involved in these issues but the unions were loosing their strength and membership slowly but steadily. I also went from the physical side to the clerical side of the company, which had different contracts.
Also, wages for middle class workers has not increased for years. We are way behind. We may have received wage increases but the cost of living wiped that out.
What happened to the tax write off for companies putting money back into their business?? That is why the business tax rate was so high, because there was a total write off for improving their business. Now there is low taxes on businesses and still all the write offs so they pay zero in taxes.
This may be off your subject but it came to my mind when I read your question.
Inequality of income, I believe, has been cited by quite a few authors as a leading cause of the fall of Rome. The demise of unions just sickens one. You can almost feel it in your utter bones that it has been a primary goal of the rich and Republicans since 1933. We fail to adequately acknowledge that we are in a horrible civil war in this country. And the reds are winning. Lincoln outlined the challenge and task in a little place called Gettysburg. Curt Peterson
The demise of unions has no simple answer. Look at meatpacking, drywallers, painters, roofers, etc. These used to be good middle class jobs. Meatpackers made more in 1979 unadjusted inflation dollars than they do today. We know who performs this work today, don't we? You can't complain about the demise of middle class wages in jobs that today are largely performed by illegal immigrants. But hey, Biden is here to help: no more ICE employment roundups. Open borders. What makes you think what we are doing today is going to address this issue?
I remember it. Good documentary. I didn't really learn anything new. It did verify that my eyes were in fact seeing what the have and are seeing.
As for the laundry list of reasons, that's a long one and possibly wasted energy.
Everything that is born, dies. From the micro to the macro. Do you know of any dominant powers in the past that are still so? History is not over and to think so is insane.
Should we make the effort, of course. But at the heart of any effort made will be the fact that the average will have to take, yes I said take, a large sum of money from those who have it. This is unlikely.
Yeah, there was the new deal and it was amazing. But FDR is dead, that world is no more and the rich took notes about it as to how to prevent that from happening again.
And while the new deal helped, the final new deal, WWII, was the thing that propelled the U.S. into economic and political dominance.
You hit the nail on the head when you explained that politicians "listen to the money" rather than their constituents. But how is that ever going to change?
.....the true message: BOTH sides of the aisle have sold average joe down the river; therefore, the masses can't expect Biden to deliver. Probably the masses only hope: a beneficent, skilled orator willing to call a spade a spade regarding our true economic whiz bang, for third party candidate. Our systems have been hijacked.
Robert, your excellent educational presentation/video from 8 years ago is still timely, and more important now than ever; clearly a masterpiece documentary of the 21st century.
Thank you for your long-enduring, long-suffering activism and due diligence for our flawed democracy.
Terri, thanks for your thanks.
I started watching this but will need to finish later. I’m excited about going to your class today and it is always uplifting to see so many young people being asked to think. There are always a million excuses and blame games from the republicans but all they need to do is study other countries to see how their line of thinking fails.
Teaching young people is the happiest and most gratifying thing I can imagine doing.
You've educated a lot of us not so young Americans, too. Thankful you've never given up.
Thank you for doing that. It’s incredibly important work.
Another good reminder to republicans is to compare the wasteful military spending to half the amount being requested to help citizens.
In terms of GDP, we spend about 1/3 as much on defense as we did in the 1950s. Social spending is four times higher than it was in the 1950s (again, in terms of GDP). I don't see that trend reversing.
Yes! One example: in many "developed" nations if a student has the intelligence to pursue a university degree, he/she is guaranteed this free of obscene monetary costs. Not so in the u.s. We eventually suffer as there is undoubtedly much talent that is not given the opportunity to flourish and contribute to the society.
Well, we all like to point out how great life is in other countries, so why does the US have the highest education cost in the OECD? Could it be overpaid administrators? Tenured professors who spend more time on "research" than teaching? Fancy architecture? Easy access to school loans for which universities are not accountable? What is it?
Possibly the commoditization of higher education. Long ago a friend from high school and I headed off to college. I to a decent university, and she to an Ivy League institution that fit her brilliance. The cost at that time was a little over 4 to 1: her Ivy League university cost a little more than 4 times my university. Now the disparity between those two universities is over 10 to 1.
This is spot on Robert. In college, I worked part time, qualified for a grant to cover some costs and came out with a 4 year degree without debt. Worked on a masters degree while working full time. Very little debt.
Other countries figured out the rewards of a highly educated public. There are other countries doing better than us in criminal justice, health care, affordable education, and now democracy itself! Republicans don’t value education because they prefer dictatorship style management. They like control more than input from workers.
I've watched this excellent documentary several times and learned something new each time. Not only is it eye-opening, it's funny, provocative and thought provoking. Even if you've seen it before, it's worth revisiting for the message today is even more relevant. Great movie!
Thanks, Susan.
It may be helpful to visualize where you and your family stand in relation to those who run corporate America and determine your standard of living. Get a carpenters tape measure and mark off 207 inches along your floor to represent the wealthiest person in America, according to the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List (Oct 12, 2021). Each “inch” of that total 17 ft 3 inches would represent 1,000 Million dollars, for a total wealth of 207,000 million dollars! An individual worth 1 Million dollars would be equivalent to a line only one, one thousandth of an inch wide at the very bottom, less than the thickness of a human hair. The rest of us wouldn’t even show up without the aid of a microscope. This shows at a glance why most Americans are falling behind and feel so insecure. We are invisible.
According to research compiled by Jonathan Haidt in his book “The Righteous Mind”. Everyone cares about fairness. To those on the Left it implies equality, but to those on the right it’s recognized as PROPORTIONALITY. He found that everyone, Left, Right and Center cares about proportionality; Everyone gets angry when they can see people taking more than they deserve, but conservatives actually care more. The 17 foot tall graph described above screams disproportionality and could be a unifying tool to focus attention on the Billionaires whose obscene wealth attributes them so much power and influence over how everyone else lives and works. Someone worth a couple million hardly counts anymore. I also wish journalists etc. would describe extreme wealth by how many “thousands” of millions they are worth. Most people still only recognize “millions” as signifying great wealth and have no clue what a billionaire represents. They only know it rhymes with millionaire and must be somewhat more.
Dave: here is a simple way to look at a million vs a billion: a million seconds is roughly 11 1/2 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion (seems to be a number tossed around a lot lately) seconds is 31,000 years.
When I was in 2nd grade, (1966) our teacher used to show science movies made by Bell Labs on Friday afternoons; I recall one titled "Hemo the Magnificent" - in that movie they discussed heart rate and how many times a heart beat in a lifetime - my first exposure to the concept of a billion.
And by the way, who is to say how much anyone deserves? Did they steal it? Did they force anyone to do something they didn't want to do?
Why not shine a spotlight on the Ultra Wealthy, the CEO’s, the titans of business and finance who Chose to send our factories and jobs overseas, including those that manufacture critical medical equipment.
Chose to enrich themselves while allowing their employees wages to stagnate decade after decade
Chose to shift healthcare and retirement costs onto employees
Chose to demand longer hours at the expense of their employees ability to spend time with family
Chose to hire for short term and temporary gigs that promote family instability
Chose to utilize corporate inversions and every other trick in the book to evade taxes that could have been used to strengthen our Nation
Chose to hollow out America’s proud middle class
Chose to lie about the effects of pollution
I object to those who accumulate unfathomable wealth at our expense.
Hey, I think CEOs are overpaid - esp when they get fired.
But I will answer your points - you took the time to post them.
Overseas jobs? That is a tough one. The world is a global economy - if something can be done cheaper somewhere else, that is where that job is going. You might recall that Trump was pretty bellicose about moving jobs overseas. The first guy I hired was a kid in Colombia, South America. He wrote some code for me; if I had not done that, I would have never started my business. He still works for us, as does another developer who used to live in Venezuela (I am not making this up) but fled to Buenos Aires because he was tired of lack of basic things like electricity (can't tell you how many times he dropped out of sight due to power outages) or even food (he despises anything remotely connected to socialism). But the other developers are in the US. Again, I could have never done this if I had not hired that kid in Colombia.
As for wages, I do know one thing that is causing wage stagnation is the rocketing cost of health care. I pay 100% of my employees premiums (if you don't need it, you get paid more, so I am not exactly benevolent - just easier this way). An employee in their late 50s with a spouse costs me over $24,000 per year for health insurance. What if that person in their 50s only made 50K per year? The increase in health insurance premiums the last ten years easily exceeds what it would cost to give that 50k/year worker a 5% raise. The cost of compliance and other government mandates has a real cost too.
As for retirement, defined benefits are a liability that just keeps growing; 401ks move that to the employee. Personally, I contribute 20% of my employees salary to a SEP. I started doing that because I did it for myself and I am required to match for my employees by law. This cost, like health care, is all part of the compensation pie. However, over the years I have noticed that those who hate it and bitch they would rather have the money and not fund their retirement have left for greener pastures. What that leaves me are dedicated employees who are in it for the long haul. I hired one kid out of college who has dumped his entire SEP contribution into the S&P 500 every time we fund his SEP. I did the math: the guy will retire with millions. BTW, he has had 10% pay increases every year - because he is worth it.
Longer hours? That is a choice.
Short term gigs? I can't answer that one.
Tax avoidance? Hey, Biden created an S corp to lower his tax bill for money he made from a book and speaking fees - $13 million. But because he rolled that through an S Corp and claimed only $800k as income (the rest were dividends), he avoided paying nearly $500K in additional Medicare tax. Where is the rage? HeIl, I took the R&D tax credits, even though i would have spent money on that anyway. As for inversions, like I said, it is a global economy.
I don't think anyone chose to hollow out the middle class.
Lie about pollution...well, if they did, let's prosecute them!
I don't think Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Sam Walton generated unfathomable wealth at our expense. Rather, they provided products that made all of our lives easier. My SW dev manager is a flaming progressive; at lunch the other day she couldn't wait to show me her new Tesla. It was interesting, but I am not a car guy. But it never occurred to me to let her know she was adding to Musk's "unfathomable wealth" by buying that car - she was super happy, and I was happy for her.
Incidentally, that woman grew up in a rat infested trailer house with a mother on drugs. She didn't have the advantages others had, but she was bound and determined to have a better life.
Not equality but equity, big difference. “Equality” is giving everyone the same boost, $35,000 in your pocket no matter who you are is EQUALITY. Universal health care and or post secondary education or training—is “equity.” (Don’t need to “give” me an opportunity—open the door and I’LL get it myself.”)
Another tool used by the "right" to justify the gross wealth inequality is: 'those very wealthy really don't have that much, their wealth is just a measure of the worth of their investments". This throws the average person off-balance.
Here is a better way: if you made a wage of $3600/hr ($1 every second or $86,400/day), and could work 24x7, you would earn a million dollars ever 11 days, 13 hours, and 41 minutes.
In other words, if you started making this amount on Oct1, you would have a million dollars today. At $1/sec, when would you have to start collecting in order to have a $196 billion, which is the net worth of Bernard Arnault, the world's richest person?
Answer: 4,194 YEARS BEFORE CHRIST WAS BORN - that is before Mesopotamia was founded, considered by most to be the first civilization - and more than 1000 years before the oldest Egyptian pyramid was built. But hey, Bernard is a Frenchman! Geez, there is inequality all over the world...say it isn't so!
Smiled when I saw this this morning. Enlightening and entertaining! Have watched I don't know how many times, and will so again. Hoping many will watch, share and encourage others to do the same.
Grateful that you have shared this video! I am recommending it to family and friends! Your mission and wisdom as teacher, mentor, advocate, and author give me hope in these hard times. I pray for you daily.
The nature of money is for the rich to become more rich and for the poor to become poorer. Money makes money while one sleeps and the moneyless never have time to do anything other than to struggle daily. We need a more humane culture.
For the poor in our culture to break free from poverty is like trying to go up a down-going escalator.
It doesn’t need to be updated; because things have continued to get worse, it actually increases the films impact.
thank you, prof. reich... i have been reading your writings for a number of years and have learned much. i appreciate your mention of the powell memo in "saving capitalism"--that doesn't get talked about nearly enough.
also, instead of only referring to the weakening of labor unions, we need to discuss labor relations from 1960s: how management from building and construction trades organized their considerable resources to suppress wages, especially after the nixon economic shock policy deployed in 1971. a nat'l wage freeze took effect and management never took their foot off the brake after that. as you well know, since 1973, hourly wages flatlined until today.
the point is, there has been a calculated and deliberate attempt to socially engineer income inequality and voters need to know about this history in order to remedy current economic/political conditions.
European viewers can watch this film at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry20-e5SBmE&ab_channel=ThePremiumChannel
This also works in New Zealand
Robert, I saw the film in the cinema when it was initially released. So powerful -- I'll take the opportunity to watch it again! Thank you for this and for all of your work.
Thanks for your thanks, Elise.
Haven't watched the film yet, but will soon. I also believe a big part of the increased division is when the income difference between the CEO (or highest paid person in a business) and the lowest paid employee in the company went from a difference of (I am guessing here on the exact amount) say 40 times to 500 times. If I am correct this happened during the early 2000 when I was still working for PG&E and in the union, IBEW 1245 (Walnut Creek). I was a Shop Steward so involved in these issues but the unions were loosing their strength and membership slowly but steadily. I also went from the physical side to the clerical side of the company, which had different contracts.
Also, wages for middle class workers has not increased for years. We are way behind. We may have received wage increases but the cost of living wiped that out.
What happened to the tax write off for companies putting money back into their business?? That is why the business tax rate was so high, because there was a total write off for improving their business. Now there is low taxes on businesses and still all the write offs so they pay zero in taxes.
This may be off your subject but it came to my mind when I read your question.
Inequality of income, I believe, has been cited by quite a few authors as a leading cause of the fall of Rome. The demise of unions just sickens one. You can almost feel it in your utter bones that it has been a primary goal of the rich and Republicans since 1933. We fail to adequately acknowledge that we are in a horrible civil war in this country. And the reds are winning. Lincoln outlined the challenge and task in a little place called Gettysburg. Curt Peterson
The demise of unions has no simple answer. Look at meatpacking, drywallers, painters, roofers, etc. These used to be good middle class jobs. Meatpackers made more in 1979 unadjusted inflation dollars than they do today. We know who performs this work today, don't we? You can't complain about the demise of middle class wages in jobs that today are largely performed by illegal immigrants. But hey, Biden is here to help: no more ICE employment roundups. Open borders. What makes you think what we are doing today is going to address this issue?
I remember it. Good documentary. I didn't really learn anything new. It did verify that my eyes were in fact seeing what the have and are seeing.
As for the laundry list of reasons, that's a long one and possibly wasted energy.
Everything that is born, dies. From the micro to the macro. Do you know of any dominant powers in the past that are still so? History is not over and to think so is insane.
Should we make the effort, of course. But at the heart of any effort made will be the fact that the average will have to take, yes I said take, a large sum of money from those who have it. This is unlikely.
Yeah, there was the new deal and it was amazing. But FDR is dead, that world is no more and the rich took notes about it as to how to prevent that from happening again.
And while the new deal helped, the final new deal, WWII, was the thing that propelled the U.S. into economic and political dominance.
You hit the nail on the head when you explained that politicians "listen to the money" rather than their constituents. But how is that ever going to change?
.....the true message: BOTH sides of the aisle have sold average joe down the river; therefore, the masses can't expect Biden to deliver. Probably the masses only hope: a beneficent, skilled orator willing to call a spade a spade regarding our true economic whiz bang, for third party candidate. Our systems have been hijacked.
Robert, your excellent educational presentation/video from 8 years ago is still timely, and more important now than ever; clearly a masterpiece documentary of the 21st century.