Cenk Uygur: evaluation

Transcript context

…That’s actually a really interesting way to put it, because when everyone is equal, nobody is in power, and human nature is such that there’s everybody [inaudible 00:10:33] that there’s a will to power. So when you create a power vacuum, somebody’s going to fill it. So the alternative is to have people in power, but there’s a balance of power, and then there’s a democratic system that elects the people in power and keeps churning and rotating who’s involved. That is exactly it, Lex. You got it exactly right, in my opinion. Okay, so that’s why communism never works and can never work. So it’s an idea of we’re all going to work as hard as we possibly can and take only what we need. Where? When has that ever happened in the history of humanity? We’re just not built that way. So we can get into that debate with my friends on the left, et cetera. Now, corporatism is just as extreme and just as dangerous, and that is basically what we have in America now. What we have in America now, and this is another giant trick that the Matrix played on everybody, that they did a shell game, and all of a sudden extreme corporatists like Manchin, and almost every Republican in the Senate, are moderates. Oh my God, Mitch McConnell, all of a sudden, is a moderate and et cetera, as long as you’re not a populist, populists are never moderate. But if you love corporations and corporate tax cuts and everything in favor of corporations, you’re magically called a moderate when you actually, according to the polling, have super extreme positions that the American people hate. And by the way, that’s part of the reason for the rise of Trump. We can come back to that. But the second shell game is taking out capitalism, putting in corporatism, but still calling it capitalism. Okay, so what is corporatism? It is when corporations slowly take over the system and create monopoly and oligopoly power. So that snuffs out equality of opportunity. So how do they do that? When people say the system is rigged, they oftentimes can’t explain it that well. And then mainstream media goes, “Oh, you sound conspiratorial. It was rigged, yeah. I wonder how.” Yeah, super easy to explain it. Here’s one of dozens of examples: carried interest loophole. So that is for hedge funds, private equity, the top people on Wall Street, that’s part of their income. They get 2 and 20, right? So 2% is a flat fee no matter what happens to the fund. And 20% of the profits of the fund goes back to the people who invested it. It’s not their money, it’s not their investment. What they’re getting is actually just income, and should be taxed at the highest rate. But it’s because of this loophole, it’s taxed at a much lower rate, at around 20%. So do you know at what income level you go above 20% if you’re a regular Joe? It’s at $84,000 a year. So these billionaires are getting the same tax rate as people making $84,000 a year. It’s unbelievably unfair. And that’s corporatism taking over and starting to rig the rules. I’m going to pay less taxes. You are going to pay more taxes. same tax rate as people making $84,000 a year. It’s unbelievably unfair. And that’s corporatism taking over and starting to rig the rules. I’m going to pay less taxes. You are going to pay more taxes. So again, I can give you dozens of those examples. So in mergers so that they get to oligopoly power, that’s how you rig a system. Lowering the corporate tax rates, making sure that there is no real minimum wage, making sure there’s no universal healthcare. We all become indentured servants of corporations. They take away power from the average guy, give it to the most powerful people in the world. But the most important distinction, Lex, is that corporatism hates competition. It wants monopoly and oligopoly power. Whereas capitalism loves competition and wants the free markets. And I remember we started Young Turks back in 2002, so we’ve been around for 22 years, longest running daily show on the internet ever. And so we were pre Iraq war and the Iraq war starts, and Dick Cheney starts handing out no-bid contracts. I’m like, what part of capitalism is a no-bid contract? You can’t negotiate drug prices. That’s the most anti-free market thing I have ever heard. It’s almost like communism for corporations. They get everything and you get nothing. So it’s preposterous, it’s awful, and it kills the free markets, and it’s killing this country, and it is the main ideology and religion of the establishment.…

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