Living in A Fake Free Market Society

Living in a fake free market society, is like living through a pandemic of wealth inequality. It's getting worse, fast.

As professionals we assume we live in a free society, where free market capitalism and equality opportunity prevails. However for minorities, women and young people, that simply isn't the case. Life is not just unfair, it's stacked against us.

Every crisis for society, is a tremendous opportunity for those who control the board rooms of our biggest corporations and who are the major shareholders of our top companies. The Coronavirus situation of 2019-2023 is such an example. BigTech is doing incredibly well.

Employees at these corporations are slowly understanding where the value of their talent is driving society and capitalism and ethics in technology. The vacuum of true leadership means America is profiteering off of the pandemic, as it did in the 20th century with the war machine. With anti-trust violations and unfair competition at an all time high, American innovation is fading.

Conspiracy theories around why the pandemic was unleashed and why measures in the United States were so poor have easy answers. Who stood the most to benefit? It's not very complicated. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but as an amateur futurist, anyone on the street knows what's happening. Share this article if this concerns you too, so we can have some debate about the situation.

The 1%, or the Billionaire class have truly been fortunate and profiteered on the misfortune of others. If digital transformation was accelerated "5 years in 5 months" of the pandemic, the stock market has unleashed extraordinary profits for the true owners of Capitalism.

We have an "owner class" of all technology, innovation and artificial intelligence and then we have a churning Middle Class. We have a decline in opportunity, social mobility and equality. What do you suppose this means for the future of Capitalism? Capitalism and future prosperity for our children and grandchildren is eroding.

New data available from the U.S. Federal Reserve shows that the wealth gap in America has widened and economic inequality increased in 2020 amidst a coronavirus pandemic that has disproportionately impacted low-wage service workers and people of color. Donald Trump had real incentives to do the worst possible job for the coronavirus, and it all comes down to money.

When humanity has suffered due to deaths and economic shutdowns, for the super rich, however, it's been a profitable year - with the planet's billionaires adding a combined ￡7.8 trillion to their fortunes. Does this bother anyone?

Wealth inequality accelerated at this extent could be the global downfall of both democracy and capitalism. In the U.S. antitrust against the super corporations has been non-existent. So what has now occurred? A report by Swiss bank UBS found that billionaires increased their wealth by more than a quarter (27.5%) from April to July, at the height of the crisis, just as millions of people around the world lost their jobs or were struggling to get by on government schemes.

Something is going terribly wrong in corporate America and the future of equality in the United States.

While the coronavirus may have benefited China, the world's financial elite stood a lot to gain. A pandemic is likely more efficient in today's world than a war for the ultra-wealthy to acquire more wealth. In the U.S. wealth inequality looks very bad, looks almost to the point of no return.

We are talking about a dystopian burden for the future of capitalism. Your children are more likely to live in a less free world, worse off economically, with lower life expectancies, at least if you live in the United States.

According to the latest Fed data, the top 1% of Americans have a combined net worth of $34.2 trillion (or 30.4% of all household wealth in the U.S.), while the bottom 50% of the population holds just $2.1 trillion combined (or 1.9% of all wealth).

There's not much honesty in the U.S. media about how this could have occurred. The figures stand in stark contrast to those at the other end of the wealth spectrum. In the U.S. total unemployment claims have risen to 39 million since mid-March, affecting about a quarter of the U.S. labor force.

The very people who preach about using their wealth for good have profited from the pandemic. By the end of July, the cumulative wealth of billionaires stood at around US$10.2 trillion, according to a study by Swiss bank UBS and accounting giant Price Waterhouse Coopers. Talk about a conflict of interests.

As just a few people and corporations continue to centralize economic power, it's a very dangerous time for humanity. This may be the real crisis of the 21st century, not the environment or other major obstacles.

Capitalism and democracy cease to function properly when winner-takes-all rules apply more and more in shaping our institutions, decision making and the destruction of the middle class and free market capitalism. Those American values we once held dear have been fabricated compared with the dystopian reality of the many. Historically that's when revolutions typically occur. The world's financial elite may actually side with China, in the future of technology, surveillance states and population control.

As of July 2020, America had 800 Billionaires. Globalization effectively allowed American and is allowing Chinese companies to abuse their power. The incredible rise of the billionaire class is made stark in a new report that paints their financial might in the most complete picture yet. It also serves as a vivid snapshot of American income inequality at a time when anti-billionaire sentiment is on the rise and fueling global backlash against ultra-wealthy elites from both the left and the right. Within our lifetime the middle class is highly likely to be destroyed.

The rules of democracy and capitalism begin to lose their meaning as wealth inequality spirals out of control without checks and balances. New corporate empires will rise in India and China that will one day make the American corporations look small. That's why Silicon Valley has been buying a stake in them.

A study published earlier this week by Swiss bank UBS and accounting firm PWC found that the total wealth of the world’s 2,189 billionaires soared to a record-setting high of $10.2 trillion in late July, obliterating the previous record of $8.9 trillion recorded at the end of 2017. Wealth inequality is out of control and will lead to a kind of technological slavery that is depicted in literature and cinema and that even a few years ago seemed the land of fairy tale dystopia.

How severe is wealth inequality in America? The Fed estimates that the wealthiest 10% of Americans hold more than 88% of all available equity in corporations and mutual fund shares (with just the top 1% controlling more than twice as much equity as the bottom 50% of all Americans combined). The stock market is a vehicle of spectacular results for those that manipulate the entire financial and political system.

The pandemic's global impact has been 'good for business' by the financial elite of the world. The rise of Silicon Valley — and its tech giants, which have skyrocketed in value in the years since — has built the American billionaire class. It has also become corrupt. It's no secret that these companies have abused their power and favored their own products and cheated to stay ahead. The America we once knew is an illusion. 

Wealth inequality and not just Climate change is a significant enemy of the world and for the next generation. It might take decades to reform capitalism, but there's a window to do something before it's too late. That window is closing in the 2020s. Every employee at every major BigTech company and successful business has a role to play.