the price is right episode today gretchen

It was the centerpiece of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign for president. You know the theory if you cut taxes on the wealthy, while cutting government, the economy will take off, money trickling down and creating millions of jobs. In the 1970s, he was a young Republican congressman from Michigan and an early proponent of supply-side economics - some call it trickle down. So let’s hear from two people who have closely watched how cozy ties between Wall Street and Washington are perverting capitalism and subverting democracy. We’re deep now into what will be the most expensive election in our history, much of it funded by crony capitalists. And we pay in the loss of political equality, because one person, one vote means very little when those we elect do the bidding of donors instead of voters. We pay in tax rates higher than those of the billionaires who fund the SuperPacs. We pay with the loss of jobs because of trade deals bought and paid for by multinational companies. We pay for it in lowered returns on pension plans bailed out banks speculate with taxpayer money. We pay for it at drug store because politicians rented by giant pharmaceutical firms block competition. We pay for it at the grocery store because of sweetheart deals in Congress for the dairy industry and sugar lobby. Crony capitalism – using government to deliver favors to your pals in the business world - is alive and well. “You send us to Congress we pass laws under which you make money…and out of your profits you further contribute to our campaign fund to send us back again to pass more laws to enable you to make more money.”īoies Penrose would be right at home in politics today. “I believe in the division of labor,” he told his wealthy paymasters. They could count on him to deliver the goods. Programs like this one: the second of our broadcasts investigating Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.īack in the first Gilded Age following the Civil War, with its huge concentration of wealth at the top and abject misery at the bottom, Boies Penrose was a United States Senator from Pennsylvania bought and paid for by the railroad tycoons and oil barons. This is the time of year when we keep reminding public television viewers, viewers like you, that you can’t find the kinds of programs you see right here anywhere else. You and I don't have a lobbyist and so we are not represented. The big powered, moneyed institutions are in control in Washington, there's no doubt about it.

We have some kind of - we have crony capitalism. And as a result we have neither capitalism or democracy.

The price is right episode today gretchen