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Business out for itself

Here’s a question: Why are extremely rich people getting so much richer while the rest of us are so broke? Answer: not taxes, that’s for sure, since big business pays way lower tax rates than, say, you do. Plus, they shackle unions to drop wages, find ways to dodge environmental regulation (think Freedom Industries), and are taxpayer-subsidized up the kazoo. Shouldn’t they be hiring people and updating plants with all that extra dough?

But why bother, when you can buy back your own stock to inflate your business’s worth, use that money to pay chief executive officers gargantuan bonuses and cut fat dividend checks for wealthy stockholders? Oh, and bolster the old bank account in case of public-relations emergencies; you know, when the mine caves in or your wellhead blows out in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a perfect system: All it needs is a little cash flow from us poverty cases going to Wal-Mart.

Let’s get something straight. Big business doesn’t hire your fellow Americans for its own selfish reasons. Big business doesn’t care about the public good. And big business is engaged in a creepy dance with the Republican Party, where citizens pay and the high rollers play. Unforgivable.

Nancy Runyan

Spokane Valley

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