Excellent work, Corbin. Americans live under the most efficient propaganda machine ever developed, and that includes economic propaganda. Thanks for helping to pull back the curtain via a dose of reality.
This is the best, most important Substack I’ve read in a while. The abundance narrative is naive at best and it’s important to point out that financialization is the real problem, not regulation. Underlying the advantages of extraction over production are the low to negative tax rates on capital gains and wealth generally.
Thank you for your unvarnished truth telling! I have learned more this morning than I did in Economics 101. However, it is distressing, and I think I now need a nap.
Corbin, this may sound a little weird, but I think you should write a book about this, then do a lot of interviews. I will bet you anything that Anand Giridharadas at The Ink will interview you. The book club he just started read Abundance as our first book. I hope you will consider this suggestion seriously.
I don't know if you're paid by the column-inch, but this is very well presented and needs to be condensed for people to reiterate in table talk. Corporations have all the leverage, and are up to their grins in hedging bets. Inflation is another way of describing wage theft, as every transaction cuts the prime slice for the top. We're not getting our money's worth, nor our labor's worth. As you say, corporations LIKE scarcity and inflation -- they hide a multitude of corrupt practices.
Neoliberalism is just plain predatory and they know it. It is the default economy that leads to over privatization, monopolies, and upward mobilization of wealth, as we have seen since Reagan’s tax cuts. I am reading about Bretton Woods and will post on Substack when I can.
Another solutions promise with no solution. There is ONE SOLUTION. TAX GOD DAMN WEALTH. No issue is going to have the oxygen it needs until we start taxing the people who can afford it and put them on their heals so the "extraction" you talk about endlessly - without mentioning the real problem - has a chance of happening. What happened here? Why are you sounding more and more like a neoliberal apologist? Can you please just say it? We have NO TIME to support anyone who isn't an ideological enemy of the wealthy and their agenda? We have NO TIME to support anyone who isn't full-throated in their support to tax wealth in this country? For the love of god!
The solution is right there in the piece: government as builder, not just banker. Take healthcare, housing, childcare back from private hands. Same with space exploration - rebuild NASA instead of making Elon Musk a trillionaire off government contracts.
Look, wealth taxes would help. But this isn't just about redistributing money. It's about how we structure production. You can't fix extraction by pouring more money into extractive systems.
But here's the bigger problem - we've handed over core government functions to private companies. NASA to SpaceX. Healthcare to insurance conglomerates. We privatized what used to be the state's job, then act shocked when they extract billions from it.
And if you're asking for the political solution - that's a mass movement willing to primary incumbent Democrats and take on existing power structures. Your Bernie Sanders, your AOCs could fund it. But the economic solution and political solution are different things, even though they go together.
The point is we've given private actors control over public functions. Tax them more, absolutely. But stop handing them the keys to everything and expecting different results.
Nobody trusts the government and the majority opinion is that the government doesn't have any money and it shouldn't have any money. Trying to convince people that the government could be good will never go above a minority unless ... unless the powerful "decide" to graciously allow their wealth to be taxes from 0% to 70% - which not coincidentally was the last time people actually had significant trust and faith in the government and it was exactly because it had money to help people, create jobs and build roads and infrastructure. My point is we have to tax the wealth first and if you agree (but it doesn't sound like it) I would appreciate it if you would start with that point and end with that point because nothing else really matters. FDR was able to get tax rates where they were because elites knew war was coming and it was either pay for it or go team fascism - and frankly they would have gone full Nazi but American core values are not that of Germans and the racism here among the rank and file middle class - while deep - wasn't so easy to mobilize, and our indoctrination and devotion to freedom would have been awful costly and bloody to suppress. What we got was Nazi-light. None of the official government racism but total corporate control over the messaging and the economy with partial control of the military and government. Americans loved it because after the war they had more money, more education and more leisure time than any serfs/slaves/working class in history. The middle class was massive. But there was never a real committment to make it last, just a few people hoping they could push back the powerful when they came to take it all back. Well - its all gone plus a hell of a lot more. Its time to wake up.
Privatization isn't the core problem - it is a symptom. It is one of many methods the elite use to extract wealth and assets from the government and exploit people because the people have no representation. This problem is easily corrected if the powerful were put on their heals. The support for making the elite pay is much more acceptable and trending up than "restructuring the government to be more effective" especially while the puppets of the elites still control the government.
You're not wrong about the FDR era - when government had money and built visible things, people trusted it. But I don't think the trust issue is really about the tax code.
The bigger problem is competency and abdication of responsibility. We're already spending massive amounts - more on healthcare than any country, billions in housing subsidies, constant infrastructure funding. But we hand it all to private extractors instead of delivering directly.
Your point about taxation is fair. Tax wealth, absolutely. But if we tax the wealthy and then hand that money to the same private healthcare companies that waste 30% on administration, to the same private developers who inflate housing costs, to the same contractors who turn NASA into Elon Musk's personal ATM - what exactly changes?
The way you build trust back is for government to actually deliver something visible, useful, and quickly. Not by funding private actors to deliver it badly. When people see government building housing that works, healthcare that doesn't bankrupt them, transit that actually moves them around - that's when trust comes back.
The structural changes aren't separate from building trust - they're how you build it. People trust government when it works for them directly, not when it just shuffles money to private extractors.
No trust is not about the tax code. Trust is doing something the people want done and solving problems. I feel like this discussion now is all what came first chicken or the egg. Obviously I agree its not all about raising taxes - I'm saying that must come first. Nothing good will last if that is not the case. You can't get government to do something good while the people with the power control the government. They simply will not let it happen unless it is performative and short lived. People/voters have to show they will replace representatives who do not go along with the agenda of making the wealthy pay right now. This will create the space to make the government better. I'll repeat it - please reach out to Gary Stevenson or message me if you need help, if you are serious about having this conversation. You should do with someone who feels the same as me who has a MUCH bigger platform.
I don't know why you are treating these issues as mutually exclusive, and I would think you could shake on being on the same page. I, too, think taxing the rich bigtime is essential. And, it's also essential to change our ideology. I like Marianne Williamso describing the shift we need to make, “from an economic bottom line to a humanitarian bottom line."
We cannot tax the wealth when a corporate-friendly SCOTUS would label it a ‘taking’ and fallaciously declare it unconstitutional.
Only way out of this mess: passing a constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood and the concept of money as speech (HJR-54 … MoveToAmend.org) by electing enough independent socialists (Kshama Sawant), real progressive Democrats (Rashida Tlaib), and libertarian-leaning Republicans (Thomas Massie) sufficient to form an anti-corporate coup coalition strong enough to legislate passage.
My assessment of the main the problem - we're not competing with the MAGA movement because Democrats keep offering procedural tweaks instead of transformation.
Constitutional amendments? Come on. 51% of voters went for Trump, and the Electoral College was worse. We need to win hearts and minds with a vision that's actually bigger and clearer than what we're offering now.
"Rebuild NASA instead of making Elon Musk a trillionaire off your tax dollars." "Build public hospitals instead of letting insurance companies extract $2 trillion from sick people." That's the kind of message that cuts through - not "pass HJR-54 to end corporate personhood." I am with it. It needs to happen but I think it's not the kind of goal that gets folks excited.
I reckon we need a vision that is more transformational than constitutional amendments. Restructuring how we produce and deliver everything from healthcare to space exploration. But you have to message it in ways people who don't obsess over politics can understand and get excited about.
We need spokespeople and infrastructure that can win at the federal level, not more grassroots movements electing local auditors. Go after the big party leadership. Set the direction.
Government as builder beats constitutional amendments every time. One shows people what they'll get, the other shows them more paperwork.
You can’t get government as builder when people think the government is corrupt and incompetent, and it is both.
If you give people a simple message:
1) government is corrupt because politicians are bought and paid for by corporate money
2) the legal system is corrupt because corporate money has paid our judges to say corporations are people and money is speech
3) the way to fix this is with a constitutional amendment, the We The People Amendment - HJR-54
That will resonate more with American voters of both parties, independents, and potential voters, imo, than any series of policy Rx fixes you can come with, if for no other reason than the public is sick of them being promised and never delivered.
It might not happen quickly, but my opinion, is that it at least has the potential to galvanize the public into a broad-based movement for change that any attempt to reform the duopoly via policy based fixes sorely lacks.
HJR-54 is the ultimate transformation you seek. Due respect, but trying to message NASA or public hospitals as campaign aspiration is settling for Obamacare instead of single-payer, which is what you continually critique the Dems for doing.
+ Eugene Debs: “I’d rather vote for something I want and don’t get it, than vote for something I don’t want and get it.”
You can have a government which is not corrupt, but still incompetent, or inefficient.
Frances Perkins nailed the point of government here: "The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to facilitate the means by which all the people under its jurisdiction can access the best possible life."
Um, I didn't say Trent or me or you PERSONALLY should tax wealth. I said we shouldn't waste time hiding around it or supporting anyone else who isn't clear in their desire to tax wealth and solve problems. For example ignoring people making mealy mouth excuses wagging their fingers while they screech "we can't do that because supreme court" YES TOM, WE CAN TOTALLY SUPPORT PEOPLE WHO OPPOSE THE AGENDA OF THE WEALTHY. And if you are not there yet, they just say that. Fine. Don't put ME into your WE if you are not with me.
Um, I think we should kill all the billionaires. Happy now?
Fyi, using all caps for emphasis in a comments section is weak sauce. And I can guarantee you’ve voted for/supported far more candidates that demonstrated corporate fealty over the people’s welfare than I.
Just chill and quit being so damn defensive with your fallacious assumptions.
My name is actually Corbin Trent.(I know, man with two first names) I haven't worked to elect any class traitors that I'm aware of.
Have I helped elect people with smaller visions than what I think we need right now? Sure. People who don't fight tooth and nail for their policy agenda? Probably. But we all learn as we go.
If you're referring to Justice Democrats or Brand New Congress work - those were steps in the right direction, even if they weren't the full transformation we need. The alternative was leaving the same corporate Democrats in place doing nothing.
Yup. I think Robert Reich says it best. We need a party--Dems or a third party--whose CENTRAL THEME is, "Who is government for?" Government needs to be for the lower 90% of voters, not government for monied elites.
I do apologize for getting your name wrong. It wasn't on purpose. :) I never have actually said it that way. I am actually a huge fan of yours ever since I got involved in politics. I was a national delegate for Bernie in 2016 and the state volunteer organizer. I got their campaign to contribute 80k to one of our state races here in South Dakota (Clara Hart). I've been asked to manage campaigns at state and federal level and advised in many. I would ask you to reach out to Gary Stevenson. I have a lot in common with him. We both spent decades in investment banking and studying the economy and like you - we both come from lower middle class backgrounds and have watched the elite strip the economy and leave a mess in its place. What you guys have in common w each other, that I do not, is a large platform. I think his messaging is more what we need. You should have this discussion with him and then help me find the candidates we need to run in South Dakota!
Son, you’re just projecting and being a hypocrite when you critique via a problem/solution straw man, when that is exactly what you’re doing here. Sure, tax god damn wealth (note the lower case).
I really have no interest continuing a discussion with someone who suggests/implies I want to murder people when told they are a coward. You have learned how to twist, deflect, and project from political masters and there isn't a shred of good faith left.
Klein and Thompson acknowledge all this in Abundance--exactly once, on page 98, where they acknowledge we need a change in political culture. It's one sentence.
You're right about all this, Corbin, the problem (as I know you know) is who's going to force this change? It's not going to come from the executives at these companies. It's not going to come from the politicians, in either party. It certainly isn't coming from the lobbyists. So, who? And how? How do we organize? I *know* there are a lot of people out there who get this, people who don't even write Substacks or make a living on the speaking circuit. You'd actually have to be blinded (or monetarily incentivized) not to see it.
But all those people right now are like castaways on their own little islands. How do we link them up? That's the real challenge, because that is where the pressure on the existing system is going to come from. There and nowhere else. If that movement happens to end up including some current politicians, some current executives, who believe, who genuinely believe in the movement, then that's great. But we can't sit around listening to the flavor-of-the-month populist/progressive who comes out and rails on "the system" and then retreats back into the luxury of that system with absolutely no intention of doing anything about it.
How do we organize our currently diffuse power into something that can force the changes we all know are needed?
Now, that's the question to be dealing with. That should be our conversation. It could be held by all the people on our wavelength. Each pundit could call sessions that are just for breakouts of a few people brainstorming what would get us to be a cooperative humanity. It’s the modern era. A national convention in bits and pieces, that hooks us all up via our technology. We can ooze our way to the future. Nobody tells evolution where to go -- it oozes its way.
First we have to get the message right and get it out. The grassroots need to have a clear understanding of this and how important it is. Then we take grassroots action.
"The problem is unions demanding too much, environmentalists blocking progress, and government red tape strangling innovation."
"The problem isn't that we're stingy with money — it's what that money buys. We get extraction instead of capacity, middlemen instead of builders, financial engineering instead of actual production."
BOTH are true.
Until we leave behind the either or mentality, we will forever cycle through the same problems under different times and wording.
Both/And beats Either/Or, hands down, always, yet we are obsessed with either/or thinking.
Why can't we just make solid, simple language, distilled to the gist, legal contracts between complementary, opposing forces? Eg. Employers and employees working together in integrity instead of each seeking to screw the other over.
Look, I get that both seem true, but here's where I disagree: unions demanding more isn't the problem - that's what they should do. Workers should fight for better pay and conditions.
The real issue is that the industries profiting from scarcity are often the same ones funding the groups that slow things down. They capture regulatory processes, they fund opposition groups, they leverage environmental reviews to kill competition. Then they turn around and blame unions, environmentalists, and red tape for the mess they created.
I remember reading about why it costs so much more to build subway miles in places like New York compared to other countries. Yeah, there were multiple factors driving up costs. But think about who benefits from expensive, slow infrastructure projects - the contractors getting cost overruns, the consultants billing by the hour, the financial firms arranging the debt.
It's not that we need "both/and" thinking. It's that the powerful interests creating scarcity are the same ones pointing fingers at everyone else. They've gamed these systems, then blamed the systems instead of their own capture of them.
When China wanted Apple to actually build stuff, they cut through all that.
Busy at moment, so allow me to just comment on the union thing in order to make the point. Yes, that is what unions should do, however, I lived around union workers the first 20-30 years of my life, and they went way beyond sane demands. It got to the point where the company was forced into stagnation that later blew up in their face. It got to the point where really awful employees could not be fired, that should have been fired - one of whom was a relative, so I also saw it up-close. In essence, we have a problem of going too far, then NOT self-correcting, but continuing to push beyond what is sensible. It had a profound effect on me that I never forgot.
I can explain both/and, better, but when I have more time. I promise you, though, it's like the physics of the atom: The atom only exists and works when two polar opposites work together, both/and style, otherwise, it becomes a free radical that stays a free radical. Either/or leads to war. Both/and leads to peace.
I hope you’ve read Abundance! I wouldn’t describe it as a narrow assessment of the problem and I bet they would agree with you on being disappointed about what govt money actually buys. And about many of the other points - they make similar arguments. What strikes me about your language is that it sets up an us/them yet again which is less interesting than finding a way to work with what exists - collaborating. I’d agree that there are people that we can’t collaborate with in good faith in the government. Abundance is more about finding a new mindset to move forward, in my reading
You're right that Klein and Thompson aren't narrow - they do identify real problems with what government money buys. But here's where we fundamentally diverge.
I think one of the keys is understanding who you can actually work with. I don't believe it's possible to work with folks who fundamentally want to take advantage of you. During the abolitionist movement, it wasn't useful to work with people who wanted to maintain slavery - they weren't on your side.
The thing is, the way this system is currently structured, there already IS an us-and-them. There are very few ways to truly collaborate toward a common goal because we don't even have common goals. Everyone says they want affordable housing or healthcare, sure. But when you drill down to how it gets done and how it impacts personal wealth, the stock market, the bond market - suddenly there's no consensus. The thinking isn't deep enough and the solutions aren't holistic enough.
That's where Klein and Thompson and I really diverge. Their concept is government as funder and regulator, then backing off on the regulatory part and letting markets do their thing. That's why they hold places like Texas up as great examples. They're not talking about government as builder, as general contractor, as actual employer of the workforce. They want government to get out of the way and let the market do its magic.
My vision is government back in the construction business - rebuilding NASA instead of making Elon Musk a trillionaire, building public hospitals instead of funding insurance and healthcare extraction.
Reading this I can’t help but recognize similarities to the challenges I experience as a parent to young teenagers. I started replacing the word government with parents, and corporations with teenagers/kids and the similarities were astounding. This is at the same time that culturally kids are described as having become soft. The superpower of our species seems to be persistence and resolve in finding and securing ease and efficiency in living and expansion of dominance. It makes sense that that way of being manifests in business culture. It is curious how culturally we are vocalizing despair at the state of our children being soft, lazy, without work ethic, etc when that behavior is the natural end result of this way of living— we can see it and be frustrated by it right in front of our faces, but collectively we can’t comprehend it as applied to business culture…because of the real or promised monetary rewards we are all chasing?
I don’t know. These are just my initial thoughts after reading this article as I drink coffee on the porch before I go to work. Anyone else see this as the same side of the coin? Is there a way that this growing awareness or discontent with “soft” kids can be expanded and pivoted to the top down culturally driven practices that mirror this in the business world? It does seem apparent that this is hydra that requires a multi-pronged simultaneous approach. Kind of what the current administration is doing, except with a goal to move away from this self destructive way of being rather than potentiate it😕
That's actually a brilliant analogy. We complain about kids being "soft" while we've created an entire economy that rewards the corporate equivalent of never leaving your parents' basement.
Think about it: Delta makes more money from credit cards than flying planes. Apple promises American factories but delivers PowerPoints. Healthcare companies extract $2 trillion annually from administrative bloat. These are the business equivalent of your teenager getting an allowance for doing nothing.
And just like with parenting, the problem isn't the kids - it's that we've stopped being parents. Government stopped being the adult in the room. Instead of saying "you want our contracts? You actually have to build something," we hand out money and hope for the best.
The cultural frustration with "soft kids" could absolutely be redirected toward "soft corporations." People get that you can't reward your teenager for half-assing their chores and expect them to develop work ethic. Same principle applies to giving NASA contracts to SpaceX and wondering why Elon Musk becomes a trillionaire.
Government as builder, not enabler. Make them actually produce to get paid, just like making your kid actually clean their room to get their allowance. It's the same basic principle scaled up.
Thanks so much for digging below the surface. You are so good at perceiving and at describing causal realities. To change what’s going on, we need to know what’s going on, and tuning humanity into what impels our behavior, with nature bearing down on us putting a time crunch on getting on with it, is my top to-do. This is great for that, and, unless a new crisis bumps it, I’ll do some quoting from it in my post next week.
Yes! This is the article everyone needs to read! Klein and Thompson are misleading us and getting away with their nonsense. Thank you for this excellent rebuttal.
Excellent work, Corbin. Americans live under the most efficient propaganda machine ever developed, and that includes economic propaganda. Thanks for helping to pull back the curtain via a dose of reality.
Thanks for reading.
This is the best, most important Substack I’ve read in a while. The abundance narrative is naive at best and it’s important to point out that financialization is the real problem, not regulation. Underlying the advantages of extraction over production are the low to negative tax rates on capital gains and wealth generally.
EVERYONE SHOULD READ THE ABOVE COMMENT. It hits the nail on the head!
Thank you for the kind words.
Another excellent piece of truth telling.
Thanks!
Thank you for your unvarnished truth telling! I have learned more this morning than I did in Economics 101. However, it is distressing, and I think I now need a nap.
Yes, Corbin, this is an even shorter, more succinct summary than Matt Stoller's! Love you both!
Thank you for saying so!
Corbin, this may sound a little weird, but I think you should write a book about this, then do a lot of interviews. I will bet you anything that Anand Giridharadas at The Ink will interview you. The book club he just started read Abundance as our first book. I hope you will consider this suggestion seriously.
Thanks for the vote of confidence.
I don't know if you're paid by the column-inch, but this is very well presented and needs to be condensed for people to reiterate in table talk. Corporations have all the leverage, and are up to their grins in hedging bets. Inflation is another way of describing wage theft, as every transaction cuts the prime slice for the top. We're not getting our money's worth, nor our labor's worth. As you say, corporations LIKE scarcity and inflation -- they hide a multitude of corrupt practices.
Neoliberalism is just plain predatory and they know it. It is the default economy that leads to over privatization, monopolies, and upward mobilization of wealth, as we have seen since Reagan’s tax cuts. I am reading about Bretton Woods and will post on Substack when I can.
Exactly!!!
Another solutions promise with no solution. There is ONE SOLUTION. TAX GOD DAMN WEALTH. No issue is going to have the oxygen it needs until we start taxing the people who can afford it and put them on their heals so the "extraction" you talk about endlessly - without mentioning the real problem - has a chance of happening. What happened here? Why are you sounding more and more like a neoliberal apologist? Can you please just say it? We have NO TIME to support anyone who isn't an ideological enemy of the wealthy and their agenda? We have NO TIME to support anyone who isn't full-throated in their support to tax wealth in this country? For the love of god!
The solution is right there in the piece: government as builder, not just banker. Take healthcare, housing, childcare back from private hands. Same with space exploration - rebuild NASA instead of making Elon Musk a trillionaire off government contracts.
Look, wealth taxes would help. But this isn't just about redistributing money. It's about how we structure production. You can't fix extraction by pouring more money into extractive systems.
But here's the bigger problem - we've handed over core government functions to private companies. NASA to SpaceX. Healthcare to insurance conglomerates. We privatized what used to be the state's job, then act shocked when they extract billions from it.
And if you're asking for the political solution - that's a mass movement willing to primary incumbent Democrats and take on existing power structures. Your Bernie Sanders, your AOCs could fund it. But the economic solution and political solution are different things, even though they go together.
The point is we've given private actors control over public functions. Tax them more, absolutely. But stop handing them the keys to everything and expecting different results.
Nobody trusts the government and the majority opinion is that the government doesn't have any money and it shouldn't have any money. Trying to convince people that the government could be good will never go above a minority unless ... unless the powerful "decide" to graciously allow their wealth to be taxes from 0% to 70% - which not coincidentally was the last time people actually had significant trust and faith in the government and it was exactly because it had money to help people, create jobs and build roads and infrastructure. My point is we have to tax the wealth first and if you agree (but it doesn't sound like it) I would appreciate it if you would start with that point and end with that point because nothing else really matters. FDR was able to get tax rates where they were because elites knew war was coming and it was either pay for it or go team fascism - and frankly they would have gone full Nazi but American core values are not that of Germans and the racism here among the rank and file middle class - while deep - wasn't so easy to mobilize, and our indoctrination and devotion to freedom would have been awful costly and bloody to suppress. What we got was Nazi-light. None of the official government racism but total corporate control over the messaging and the economy with partial control of the military and government. Americans loved it because after the war they had more money, more education and more leisure time than any serfs/slaves/working class in history. The middle class was massive. But there was never a real committment to make it last, just a few people hoping they could push back the powerful when they came to take it all back. Well - its all gone plus a hell of a lot more. Its time to wake up.
Privatization isn't the core problem - it is a symptom. It is one of many methods the elite use to extract wealth and assets from the government and exploit people because the people have no representation. This problem is easily corrected if the powerful were put on their heals. The support for making the elite pay is much more acceptable and trending up than "restructuring the government to be more effective" especially while the puppets of the elites still control the government.
You're not wrong about the FDR era - when government had money and built visible things, people trusted it. But I don't think the trust issue is really about the tax code.
The bigger problem is competency and abdication of responsibility. We're already spending massive amounts - more on healthcare than any country, billions in housing subsidies, constant infrastructure funding. But we hand it all to private extractors instead of delivering directly.
Your point about taxation is fair. Tax wealth, absolutely. But if we tax the wealthy and then hand that money to the same private healthcare companies that waste 30% on administration, to the same private developers who inflate housing costs, to the same contractors who turn NASA into Elon Musk's personal ATM - what exactly changes?
The way you build trust back is for government to actually deliver something visible, useful, and quickly. Not by funding private actors to deliver it badly. When people see government building housing that works, healthcare that doesn't bankrupt them, transit that actually moves them around - that's when trust comes back.
The structural changes aren't separate from building trust - they're how you build it. People trust government when it works for them directly, not when it just shuffles money to private extractors.
No trust is not about the tax code. Trust is doing something the people want done and solving problems. I feel like this discussion now is all what came first chicken or the egg. Obviously I agree its not all about raising taxes - I'm saying that must come first. Nothing good will last if that is not the case. You can't get government to do something good while the people with the power control the government. They simply will not let it happen unless it is performative and short lived. People/voters have to show they will replace representatives who do not go along with the agenda of making the wealthy pay right now. This will create the space to make the government better. I'll repeat it - please reach out to Gary Stevenson or message me if you need help, if you are serious about having this conversation. You should do with someone who feels the same as me who has a MUCH bigger platform.
I don't know why you are treating these issues as mutually exclusive, and I would think you could shake on being on the same page. I, too, think taxing the rich bigtime is essential. And, it's also essential to change our ideology. I like Marianne Williamso describing the shift we need to make, “from an economic bottom line to a humanitarian bottom line."
Very well said, Corbin :)
We cannot tax the wealth when a corporate-friendly SCOTUS would label it a ‘taking’ and fallaciously declare it unconstitutional.
Only way out of this mess: passing a constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood and the concept of money as speech (HJR-54 … MoveToAmend.org) by electing enough independent socialists (Kshama Sawant), real progressive Democrats (Rashida Tlaib), and libertarian-leaning Republicans (Thomas Massie) sufficient to form an anti-corporate coup coalition strong enough to legislate passage.
My assessment of the main the problem - we're not competing with the MAGA movement because Democrats keep offering procedural tweaks instead of transformation.
Constitutional amendments? Come on. 51% of voters went for Trump, and the Electoral College was worse. We need to win hearts and minds with a vision that's actually bigger and clearer than what we're offering now.
"Rebuild NASA instead of making Elon Musk a trillionaire off your tax dollars." "Build public hospitals instead of letting insurance companies extract $2 trillion from sick people." That's the kind of message that cuts through - not "pass HJR-54 to end corporate personhood." I am with it. It needs to happen but I think it's not the kind of goal that gets folks excited.
I reckon we need a vision that is more transformational than constitutional amendments. Restructuring how we produce and deliver everything from healthcare to space exploration. But you have to message it in ways people who don't obsess over politics can understand and get excited about.
We need spokespeople and infrastructure that can win at the federal level, not more grassroots movements electing local auditors. Go after the big party leadership. Set the direction.
Government as builder beats constitutional amendments every time. One shows people what they'll get, the other shows them more paperwork.
Corbin, your comment here can easily be expanded into a Substack post. It's terrific :)
This is his Substack post, no? What's different?
You can’t get government as builder when people think the government is corrupt and incompetent, and it is both.
If you give people a simple message:
1) government is corrupt because politicians are bought and paid for by corporate money
2) the legal system is corrupt because corporate money has paid our judges to say corporations are people and money is speech
3) the way to fix this is with a constitutional amendment, the We The People Amendment - HJR-54
That will resonate more with American voters of both parties, independents, and potential voters, imo, than any series of policy Rx fixes you can come with, if for no other reason than the public is sick of them being promised and never delivered.
It might not happen quickly, but my opinion, is that it at least has the potential to galvanize the public into a broad-based movement for change that any attempt to reform the duopoly via policy based fixes sorely lacks.
HJR-54 is the ultimate transformation you seek. Due respect, but trying to message NASA or public hospitals as campaign aspiration is settling for Obamacare instead of single-payer, which is what you continually critique the Dems for doing.
+ Eugene Debs: “I’d rather vote for something I want and don’t get it, than vote for something I don’t want and get it.”
The point is for the government not to be corrupt.
You can have a government which is not corrupt, but still incompetent, or inefficient.
Frances Perkins nailed the point of government here: "The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to facilitate the means by which all the people under its jurisdiction can access the best possible life."
Um, I didn't say Trent or me or you PERSONALLY should tax wealth. I said we shouldn't waste time hiding around it or supporting anyone else who isn't clear in their desire to tax wealth and solve problems. For example ignoring people making mealy mouth excuses wagging their fingers while they screech "we can't do that because supreme court" YES TOM, WE CAN TOTALLY SUPPORT PEOPLE WHO OPPOSE THE AGENDA OF THE WEALTHY. And if you are not there yet, they just say that. Fine. Don't put ME into your WE if you are not with me.
Um, I think we should kill all the billionaires. Happy now?
Fyi, using all caps for emphasis in a comments section is weak sauce. And I can guarantee you’ve voted for/supported far more candidates that demonstrated corporate fealty over the people’s welfare than I.
Just chill and quit being so damn defensive with your fallacious assumptions.
Have fun watching Trent Corbin find the next class traitor and get them elected to congress
My name is actually Corbin Trent.(I know, man with two first names) I haven't worked to elect any class traitors that I'm aware of.
Have I helped elect people with smaller visions than what I think we need right now? Sure. People who don't fight tooth and nail for their policy agenda? Probably. But we all learn as we go.
If you're referring to Justice Democrats or Brand New Congress work - those were steps in the right direction, even if they weren't the full transformation we need. The alternative was leaving the same corporate Democrats in place doing nothing.
Yup. I think Robert Reich says it best. We need a party--Dems or a third party--whose CENTRAL THEME is, "Who is government for?" Government needs to be for the lower 90% of voters, not government for monied elites.
I do apologize for getting your name wrong. It wasn't on purpose. :) I never have actually said it that way. I am actually a huge fan of yours ever since I got involved in politics. I was a national delegate for Bernie in 2016 and the state volunteer organizer. I got their campaign to contribute 80k to one of our state races here in South Dakota (Clara Hart). I've been asked to manage campaigns at state and federal level and advised in many. I would ask you to reach out to Gary Stevenson. I have a lot in common with him. We both spent decades in investment banking and studying the economy and like you - we both come from lower middle class backgrounds and have watched the elite strip the economy and leave a mess in its place. What you guys have in common w each other, that I do not, is a large platform. I think his messaging is more what we need. You should have this discussion with him and then help me find the candidates we need to run in South Dakota!
Son, you’re just projecting and being a hypocrite when you critique via a problem/solution straw man, when that is exactly what you’re doing here. Sure, tax god damn wealth (note the lower case).
Your solution as to how that happens is…. ?
C’mon Einstein. Pony up.
I really have no interest continuing a discussion with someone who suggests/implies I want to murder people when told they are a coward. You have learned how to twist, deflect, and project from political masters and there isn't a shred of good faith left.
Klein and Thompson acknowledge all this in Abundance--exactly once, on page 98, where they acknowledge we need a change in political culture. It's one sentence.
You're right about all this, Corbin, the problem (as I know you know) is who's going to force this change? It's not going to come from the executives at these companies. It's not going to come from the politicians, in either party. It certainly isn't coming from the lobbyists. So, who? And how? How do we organize? I *know* there are a lot of people out there who get this, people who don't even write Substacks or make a living on the speaking circuit. You'd actually have to be blinded (or monetarily incentivized) not to see it.
But all those people right now are like castaways on their own little islands. How do we link them up? That's the real challenge, because that is where the pressure on the existing system is going to come from. There and nowhere else. If that movement happens to end up including some current politicians, some current executives, who believe, who genuinely believe in the movement, then that's great. But we can't sit around listening to the flavor-of-the-month populist/progressive who comes out and rails on "the system" and then retreats back into the luxury of that system with absolutely no intention of doing anything about it.
How do we organize our currently diffuse power into something that can force the changes we all know are needed?
Now, that's the question to be dealing with. That should be our conversation. It could be held by all the people on our wavelength. Each pundit could call sessions that are just for breakouts of a few people brainstorming what would get us to be a cooperative humanity. It’s the modern era. A national convention in bits and pieces, that hooks us all up via our technology. We can ooze our way to the future. Nobody tells evolution where to go -- it oozes its way.
First we have to get the message right and get it out. The grassroots need to have a clear understanding of this and how important it is. Then we take grassroots action.
"The problem is unions demanding too much, environmentalists blocking progress, and government red tape strangling innovation."
"The problem isn't that we're stingy with money — it's what that money buys. We get extraction instead of capacity, middlemen instead of builders, financial engineering instead of actual production."
BOTH are true.
Until we leave behind the either or mentality, we will forever cycle through the same problems under different times and wording.
Both/And beats Either/Or, hands down, always, yet we are obsessed with either/or thinking.
Why can't we just make solid, simple language, distilled to the gist, legal contracts between complementary, opposing forces? Eg. Employers and employees working together in integrity instead of each seeking to screw the other over.
Look, I get that both seem true, but here's where I disagree: unions demanding more isn't the problem - that's what they should do. Workers should fight for better pay and conditions.
The real issue is that the industries profiting from scarcity are often the same ones funding the groups that slow things down. They capture regulatory processes, they fund opposition groups, they leverage environmental reviews to kill competition. Then they turn around and blame unions, environmentalists, and red tape for the mess they created.
I remember reading about why it costs so much more to build subway miles in places like New York compared to other countries. Yeah, there were multiple factors driving up costs. But think about who benefits from expensive, slow infrastructure projects - the contractors getting cost overruns, the consultants billing by the hour, the financial firms arranging the debt.
It's not that we need "both/and" thinking. It's that the powerful interests creating scarcity are the same ones pointing fingers at everyone else. They've gamed these systems, then blamed the systems instead of their own capture of them.
When China wanted Apple to actually build stuff, they cut through all that.
Busy at moment, so allow me to just comment on the union thing in order to make the point. Yes, that is what unions should do, however, I lived around union workers the first 20-30 years of my life, and they went way beyond sane demands. It got to the point where the company was forced into stagnation that later blew up in their face. It got to the point where really awful employees could not be fired, that should have been fired - one of whom was a relative, so I also saw it up-close. In essence, we have a problem of going too far, then NOT self-correcting, but continuing to push beyond what is sensible. It had a profound effect on me that I never forgot.
I can explain both/and, better, but when I have more time. I promise you, though, it's like the physics of the atom: The atom only exists and works when two polar opposites work together, both/and style, otherwise, it becomes a free radical that stays a free radical. Either/or leads to war. Both/and leads to peace.
I hope you’ve read Abundance! I wouldn’t describe it as a narrow assessment of the problem and I bet they would agree with you on being disappointed about what govt money actually buys. And about many of the other points - they make similar arguments. What strikes me about your language is that it sets up an us/them yet again which is less interesting than finding a way to work with what exists - collaborating. I’d agree that there are people that we can’t collaborate with in good faith in the government. Abundance is more about finding a new mindset to move forward, in my reading
You're right that Klein and Thompson aren't narrow - they do identify real problems with what government money buys. But here's where we fundamentally diverge.
I think one of the keys is understanding who you can actually work with. I don't believe it's possible to work with folks who fundamentally want to take advantage of you. During the abolitionist movement, it wasn't useful to work with people who wanted to maintain slavery - they weren't on your side.
The thing is, the way this system is currently structured, there already IS an us-and-them. There are very few ways to truly collaborate toward a common goal because we don't even have common goals. Everyone says they want affordable housing or healthcare, sure. But when you drill down to how it gets done and how it impacts personal wealth, the stock market, the bond market - suddenly there's no consensus. The thinking isn't deep enough and the solutions aren't holistic enough.
That's where Klein and Thompson and I really diverge. Their concept is government as funder and regulator, then backing off on the regulatory part and letting markets do their thing. That's why they hold places like Texas up as great examples. They're not talking about government as builder, as general contractor, as actual employer of the workforce. They want government to get out of the way and let the market do its magic.
My vision is government back in the construction business - rebuilding NASA instead of making Elon Musk a trillionaire, building public hospitals instead of funding insurance and healthcare extraction.
Reading this I can’t help but recognize similarities to the challenges I experience as a parent to young teenagers. I started replacing the word government with parents, and corporations with teenagers/kids and the similarities were astounding. This is at the same time that culturally kids are described as having become soft. The superpower of our species seems to be persistence and resolve in finding and securing ease and efficiency in living and expansion of dominance. It makes sense that that way of being manifests in business culture. It is curious how culturally we are vocalizing despair at the state of our children being soft, lazy, without work ethic, etc when that behavior is the natural end result of this way of living— we can see it and be frustrated by it right in front of our faces, but collectively we can’t comprehend it as applied to business culture…because of the real or promised monetary rewards we are all chasing?
I don’t know. These are just my initial thoughts after reading this article as I drink coffee on the porch before I go to work. Anyone else see this as the same side of the coin? Is there a way that this growing awareness or discontent with “soft” kids can be expanded and pivoted to the top down culturally driven practices that mirror this in the business world? It does seem apparent that this is hydra that requires a multi-pronged simultaneous approach. Kind of what the current administration is doing, except with a goal to move away from this self destructive way of being rather than potentiate it😕
That's actually a brilliant analogy. We complain about kids being "soft" while we've created an entire economy that rewards the corporate equivalent of never leaving your parents' basement.
Think about it: Delta makes more money from credit cards than flying planes. Apple promises American factories but delivers PowerPoints. Healthcare companies extract $2 trillion annually from administrative bloat. These are the business equivalent of your teenager getting an allowance for doing nothing.
And just like with parenting, the problem isn't the kids - it's that we've stopped being parents. Government stopped being the adult in the room. Instead of saying "you want our contracts? You actually have to build something," we hand out money and hope for the best.
The cultural frustration with "soft kids" could absolutely be redirected toward "soft corporations." People get that you can't reward your teenager for half-assing their chores and expect them to develop work ethic. Same principle applies to giving NASA contracts to SpaceX and wondering why Elon Musk becomes a trillionaire.
Government as builder, not enabler. Make them actually produce to get paid, just like making your kid actually clean their room to get their allowance. It's the same basic principle scaled up.
Thanks so much for digging below the surface. You are so good at perceiving and at describing causal realities. To change what’s going on, we need to know what’s going on, and tuning humanity into what impels our behavior, with nature bearing down on us putting a time crunch on getting on with it, is my top to-do. This is great for that, and, unless a new crisis bumps it, I’ll do some quoting from it in my post next week.
Yes! This is the article everyone needs to read! Klein and Thompson are misleading us and getting away with their nonsense. Thank you for this excellent rebuttal.