Corporate Greed & Inflation

We need to end the rampant price inflation cause by corporate greed. We can do this by enforcing existing laws to break up the massive monopolies dominating every industry from food & grocery, to media, to appliances & home goods.

Companies must once again compete for your dollars by offering high-quality products at a competitive price.

What we can do now

We must enforce existing laws including the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to break up companies in all sectors:

• Groceries and Home Goods

• Agriculture

• Healthcare (hospital groups and insurers)

• Finance & Banking

• Media & Telecom

• Energy & Utilities

What we can do next

Put in place administrators for ALL agencies who are willing to regulate instead of cozying up to industry.

• FDA (food/drugs)

• FAA (aviation)

• EPA (environment)

• FCC (communications)

• FTC (business competition)

We will make the revolving door between industry, regulating, and lobbying illegal, by passing legislation prohibiting ANY registered lobbyists from holding a posistion in a regulatory agency for a period of 5 years.

The problem arises because share buy-backs provide a short term sugar high for a business, without changing it's fundamentals.

For example, a company could open a new production line to grow it's revenue 10%, which in turn grow it's share price. But this is risky, and complicated. It would have to invest in staff and equipment.

Alternatively, a company could buy back 10% of it's shares, and it would also see a gain in it's share price.

Over decades, this decision to choose share buy-backs over re-investment has been catasrophic for the economy.

Make Share Buy-backs Illegal Again

For all of US History, companies could do 2 things with their profits -- (1) Re-invest in their business (2) pay dividends to shareholders.

That all changed in 1982, when under Reagan, a third option was introduced - Share-buybacks. This allowed companies to artificially juice their own stock price by buying back their own shares on the public market -- limiting the supply and so pushing up the price for the remaining shares on the market.

This made investors very happy -- but the price was paid by employees. Since this date, companies have under-invested in their own employees.

Put Long-Term Incentives in Place for Companies to Provide better Products -- Not Bigger Profits.

Decades of under-investment in employees & innovation has left real-wages stagnant for the last 40 years, and American companies to lose their compentitive edge to China and other countries.

Just look at the old giants of American industry that used to dominate all sectors: GE, Sears, Kmart, Kodak, General Motors, IBM & More -- All shadows of their former selves and many gone entirely thanks to under-investment & corporate greed. The executives were all fine, they had golden parachutes (huge bonuses for closing down the companies and consolidating) -- but their carelessness has led to the suffering and devestation of communities accross America.