Big Money Politics Is Evil—It Screws & Kills Us

After getting fabulously rich on our education and infrastructure, billionaires don’t want to pay it forward.

 

  • Over 100 of our largest and most profitable corporations often pay little or no taxes, like Amazon, Fed Ex, AT&T, Verizon, Tesla, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, General Electric, Boeing, Ford, General Motors, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Fox News, Dow Chemicals, Nike, 3M, and Netflix. Corporations hid nearly $1 trillion in profits to tax havens in 2022 alone.
  • Even billionaires like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloombert, George Soros, and Warren Buffett often pay little or no taxes in some years.
  • Just Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates got $400 billion richer between 2020 to September 2025.
  • Just $25 billion would end all hunger in the US.

 

The richest 1% stole $79 trillion, most the economic growth over the last 50 years, from the bottom 90% of us.

 

  • The Rand Corporation proved this. If not for this, regular Americans would be earning way over twice what we do now.
  • Big Money has made us the MOST UNEQUAL nation in the developed world—with by far the most and richest billionaires and the most poverty, hunger, and struggling.
  • Now our middle class has shrunk from 65% of us in 1980 with just one parent working to only 47% of us now with both parents working.
  • Now 60% of us are living paycheck to paycheck, in fear of health issues, accidents, emergencies, or unexpected expenses.

 

Big Money Politicians have been cutting money for elementary school, high school, college, infrastructure, job training, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Post Office, welfare, and social services for decades to give the superrich ever more tax breaks.

 

Because of Big Money cuts, now:

  • On average, poor people in the US die 12 to 13 years earlier than rich people.
  • We have the highest rates of child, senior and overall poverty, hunger, and birth mothers dying of any developed nation.
  • Americans have worse health and die younger than people in most other developed nations.
  • In 93% of US counties, people working a full-time, minimum-wage job can’t even afford a one-bedroom apartment without hardship for other needs.
  • No other country suffers from massive student debt like we do.

 

More equal developed countries with good social services have:

 

  • lower murder rates
  • less bullying in schools
  • less addiction
  • less obesity & chronic illness
  • longer lives
  • more opportunity
  • more trust in others

90 Years of Democratic Kindness & Republican Meanness

Ever since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s, Democrats have generally agreed we need to take care of old, sick and poor people.  Only since Bill Clinton have many Democrats become puppets of Big Money.

 

Republicans have constantly tried to cut:

  • health care
  • Social Security
  • Medicare
  • Medicaid (which saves lives, increases employment & reduces disability)
  • childcare programs
  • food stamps
  • the Centers for Disease Control
  • WIC (healthy foods for low-income moms, infants & kids)
  • aid to the disabled
  • the Children’s Health Insurance Program
  • Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for the blind, disabled & even children

Republicans FIGHT the AMERICAN DREAM.  They fight against:

  • paid sick leave, parent leave, and vacation leave for all
  • increases in the minimum wage
  • free college
  • lower medicine prices
  • money for childcare and education
  • money for housing & the internet
  • money for childcare & elderly & disabled care
  • consumer and worker safety protections
  • unions
  • laws that protect health and the environment
  • laws stopping corporations from stealing wages
  • rules making companies classify workers as employees and forcing them to provide benefits, instead of calling them outside contractors
  • money for manufacturing, infrastructure, and replacing lead water pipes
  • money for veterans’ hospitals

 

The Deadly Consequences of Billionaire Puppet Politicians

 

  • Republicans are trying to stop people from suing for cancers from toxic chemical exposure.

 

A study by Harvard and 7 other universities of deaths in all working-age adults from 1999 to 2019 found Republican policies in all the following areas kill more people than progressive policies do:

 

  • the environment
  • gun safety
  • criminal justice
  • health and welfare
  • minimum wages
  • paid leave
  • disability insurance
  • unions
  • income taxes
  • taxes on tobacco

 

The only area in which conservative policies save more lives is marijuana.  Marijuana can help with chronic pain but can cause motor vehicle accidents, help trigger schizophrenia, and cause problems in pregnancy and in children later in life after exposure in the womb.

 

  • If states followed progressive policies in all the above areas, more than 170,000 lives would have been saved in 2019 alone.
  • If states followed fully conservative policies, over 217,600 extra people would have died in 2019 alone.
  • This suggests an estimated extra 387,600 people dying with all conservative policies versus all progressive policies each year.
  • The very best result used progressive policies on everything except marijuana. That saves about 201,000 lives each year.

 

So progressive policies on increasing minimum wages, earned income tax credits, paid leave, health care, housing, pollution, and taxing tobacco saves lives.

 

Compared to Democratic states, Republican states on average have:

 

  • more gun deaths
  • less care for pregnant women and more babies dying
  • more child poverty
  • more people dying before they are 65 years old
  • more hunger
  • less health insurance
  • less education
  • more gun deaths

 

A 2024 study by Harvard & Drexel Universities studied data from 2012 to 2024 and controlled to eliminate the effects of poverty.  It found when Republicans are in charge, states have:

 

  • more infant mortality
  • more overall early deaths
  • more food insecurity
  • less health insurance
  • less care for pregnant women and new mothers
  • less covid and flu vaccination for children and the elderly

 

Republican states are deteriorating in education, while Democratic states are reaching higher education levels.

 

  • The 15 states with the worst drops in education levels are all Republican.
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