Today's Both Sides Don't

Let's be clear - our system was built on consumer demand, leveraged by an ever-lower profit margin, propelled by and dependent upon volume sales, which has forced a downward spiral of costs and wages.

Large companies have benefited greatly; have grown enormous; and have become powerful enough to own coin-operated politicians outright.

Those politicians have seen to it that even companies that aren't the biggest and most powerful have paid little or no taxes for many years.

We could ride out the COVID-19 thing if we provided each American a minimum basic income, financed by requiring companies like Amazon to pay up for all the benefits they've derived.

Democrats want everybody to pony up and share the burdens as well as the benefits.

Republicans are saying they prefer to see many thousands more dead Americans in order to prop up a way of doing things that is at least partly responsible for having led us to this disaster in the first place.