How corporate zillionaires could prove Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren wrong [View all]

[Uncle Joe]

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1) Raise taxes on themselves and their businesses. The last decade has been absolutely fantastic for corporate executives and the investor class. Corporate profits' share of GDP has been at or above historic highs since 2009. The ultra-wealthy are seeing enormous income gains while the middle class stagnates. CEO compensation has grown 980 percent since 1978, while the typical worker salary has grown only 12 percent.

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2) Help extirpate Big Carbon. The world dependence on fossil fuel energy is threatening the future of human society — and that includes business. What's going to happen to the Miami real estate market, for one, if it's 50 miles out to sea? Who will buy soybean futures if half the agricultural land on earth becomes a desert? Think of all the rich investors with houses in fire-prone Malibu! Not to mention that seawalls and one weather disaster cleanup after the next are going to cost lots of tax money.

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3) Break their companies into pieces. One enormous factor in the above-mentioned profits bonanza is how vast swathes of the American marketplace have been rolled up into oligopolies. Retail, banking, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, hospitals — if you can name it, there's likely very much less competition than there was 40 years ago.

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Nothing could prove Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren more correct about their acerbic view of American business than by this new Business Roundtable effort turning out to be mere wind — if Jamie Dimon et al. continue to plow their profits into dividends and share buybacks, only now hidden behind some progressive rhetoric and maybe a few quarters dribbled out to the rest of society. But I have confidence. Business is the foundation of American society — and CEOs will surely prove it very soon by ceasing to devour it from the inside.

https://theweek.com/articles/859800/how-corporate-zillionaires-could-prove-bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren-wrong