Taking on the Greed Machine (+Español)
To make this article comprehensible, let’s start by defining the Greed Machine. First, it is not a game or an actual machine. Rather it is a composite of all the different industries that have made a habit of maximizing profits without consideration to serving or benefiting people. A prime example is the healthcare industry. The USA spends 16% of its GDP on healthcare in the richest country in the world, but we have 30 million uninsured Americans and another 40 million who are underinsured. Every other developed country and many developing countries have universal healthcare. And with better outcomes like life expectancy and maternal mortality rates spending much less of their GDP than the US does.
In the US, those who have insurance are saddled with so many variants like co-pays and deductibles that most U.S.household bankruptcies are due mainly to medical bills—and most of those households had health insurance. Corporations that make tons of money denying medical care are now under the public eye due to the assassination of former United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The mindset that rules this industry is the one applying to all others that entertains maximizing profits at the expense of service and benefits provided.
Another related industry that is a leading component of America’s Greed Machine is the pharmaceutical industry. Our prescription drug prices are the highest in the world. According to researchers from the Rand Corporation after analyzing data for all prescription drugs available in the United States and comparing those data with that from comparison countries, the researchers found that the makers of prescription drugs set gross prices in the United States in 2022 at 278% of prices for the same drugs in the comparison countries. In other words, prices in other countries were 36% lower than those in the United States, the researchers added.
The Greed Machine components are expanded to all industries that can maximize profits no matter the cost of production, consequently, we have these tremendous profit margins that we see in the armament industry, food, housing, energy, etc. These people together make up the Greed Machine that comes together to set the tone to govern our country. No wonder we are seeing now what we didn’t see two generations ago, a bunch of billionaires and the largest income inequality in our history.
Our political life is mainly perceived through the two main parties that shape our political discourse. One (Republicans) is overtly catering to the nation’s top corporations and the billionaires who set the tone for the ideology behind the political discourse, even though, this Party hides its intentions through a populist language that has been very successful in the electoral arena thanks to the lameness of the other Party, the Democrats, who are supposedly the Party of the working and middle classes but has been permeated by corporate thought, and has been or perceived to have been the precursor of many pernicious measures that help the upper classes while creating no gains for the working and middle classes. For example, those instruments of financial destruction that helped create the Great Recession of 2008 known as derivatives, the financial deregulation during the Clinton years, and the trade agreements that have been faulted as causing the immense loss of jobs that mainly affected America’s Midwest. (I don’t particularly agree with that assessment, but that’sanother story).
The bottom line is that the working and middle classes do not have a Party that is focused on defending their economic interests. Now, the idea is being floated that the government should be treated like a business. This idea might sound chic and clever but is not real to daily living. The goal of business is to make a profit. The goal of government is to serve the people. This idea is mainly being spread by Republicans, and it seems the essential mindset guiding the formation of the newly proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) where Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will direct operations. Musk, the world’s richest man, has already expressed his view that his work in the DOGE “will be to plunge the US into hardship and a severe economic downturn as the Trump administration will be showering the ultrarich with government handouts” as stated by Branko Marcetic in his article “So much for Pro-Worker Conservativism” in the 2025 winter issue of Jacobin.
BTW, Progressives and Labor better take this seriously, what is being proposed by Musk and the other billionaires is very much like what is being done in Argentina where the popular classes are being squeezed to the max so the very wealthy can enjoy life to the max. That’s why it is so important to be on top of foreign affairs. Ideas tend to spread like wildfire. Also, this is another powerful indication of why Musk, Bezos, and others are adamantly opposed to labor unions.
What is to be done? Progressives and Labor can’t rely on the Democrats to put up a fight. As stated before, Democrats are permeated with corporate-minded thought, and they are viewed by the populace as the Party of the Elites. Democrats consider it to be ‘statesman-like” to cave into the wishes of the very wealthy.
Progressives and Labor need to carve out their path to fight for peace and the economic well-being of the regular Joe and Jane. This is exactly what is happening in Mexico, France, and Sri Lanka where the Left and Labor have joined hands to fight for a better tomorrow and are winning. I mention peace because this is a major component of any people-minded program due to the inordinate amount of money spent on the military, the corruption that goes together with it, and the fact that those composing the armed forces are almost entirely the sons and daughters of the popular classes.
The American people are looking forward to progressive forces coming together to fight for measures that benefit the people, as seen in the last election that in spite of a right-wing victory at the top of the ticket, there were many progressive victories at the State level that benefit the people, including States that are considered Red States.
The base for a broad coalition is already there – The progressives in the Democratic Party, the many left parties, and the giant of them all, the Labor Movement. Only that broad coalition will have what it takes to defeat the Greed Machine.
