Paul Buccheit writes in the Nation of Change that three industries have actively contributed to the collapse of well-paying middle-class jobs in America. Corporations that kill middle-class jobs, contribute to inequality.
The
pharmaceutical industry is notable for tax avoidance.
The
high-tech industry eliminates jobs and outsources jobs:
Just 25 years ago GM, Ford, and Chrysler generated a combined $36 billion in revenue while employing over a million workers. Today Apple, Facebook, and Google generate over a trillion dollars in revenue with just 137,000 workers. Apple makes over a half-million dollars per employee; Facebook and Google are both over $300,000….
The
insidious rise of “philanthrocapitalism” has allowed tech titans like Bill
Gates and Mark Zuckerberg to reduce their taxes — thus depriving society of
infrastructure and education funds — while they assume the right to make
high-level decisions about GMO agriculture, charter schools, and Internet
usage. Much of this lost tax money actually goes to partner corporations that
do the bidding of their billionaire benefactors.
The
new “sharing economy,” such as firms like Uber and AirBNB, has also killed jobs.
Free-market
enthusiasts look to the sharing economy (or “gig” economy, or “day labor”
economy) for salvation, with companies like Uber and Airbnb and TaskRabbit
enabling the dreams of Millennials, who, according to Time’s Rana Foroohar,
“want to be their own boss…any Uber driver will tell you that having totally
flexible hours is the best part of the gig.” But at the same time, Uber workers
have no pensions, no health care, and no worker rights protection. Thus, says
Foroohar, “the company also captures all the fear of the broken social compact
in America.”
Uber,
with a market valuation of $50 billion, has 4,000 employees along with 160,000
drivers who are not considered by the company to be employees. This is not a
horizontal sharing process, but rather a hierarchical control structure, with
tens of thousands of American workers denied the traditional employee support
system.
