Ethics experts and Democrats express alarm as Trump uses office to grow his personal fortune to ‘unprecedented’ level

  • tangeli@piefed.social
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    5 days ago

    What you say is also true and makes the problems worse, but changing the president won’t suddenly produce a well educated public resistant to misinformation and manipulation or legislation that serves the interests of the broader public, or take money out of politics, or hold the corrupt oligarchs accountable for their crimes, or remove from power the many other corrupt politicians who accept bribes for legislation against the public interest, do insider trading or otherwise abuse their power, or restore law and order generally so that all are equal before the law, regardless of wealth and power (not that this ever was the case, but it is worse now than it has been), and it won’t rein in corporations, to hold them accountable for their actions and treat them as organizations to serve the public interest, rather than as ‘people’ above the law, to be served according to their wealth.

    As Bluescluestoothpaste said: the ‘checks and balances’ have been proven ineffective, and changing the president won’t fix them.

    The GDP is growing. There are more billionaires than ever. But the middle class is devastated and there is less opportunity for ordinary people to enjoy a bit of success and security and some small reward for their hard work than there was decades ago. The share of the wealth that goes to working people has been decreasing for decades. That’s wealth that society produces as a whole. Individuals don’t produce it in isolation. But changing the president will not change the economic system or fundamentals of power structures.

    The problems that lead to Trump being in power are systemic and pervasive. They existed before he gained power to abuse them and they will continue to exist after he is gone. They are much harder to fix than removing a single, corrupt president from power.