Whole Foods says it prides itself on keeping its workers happy so they don’t need a union, but the corporation just announced a round of layoffs coupled with wage cuts – presumably under pressure from Goldman Sachs, its single largest shareholder, to increase profits. (See the excellent piece below by Mother Jones’ Tom Philpott.)
Meanwhile, I met today with a group of family farmers in central Missouri who have formed the Missouri Rural Crisis Center.They told me that a handful of giant food processors and supermarkets are cutting the farmers’ profits to the bone, while also making it harder for them to sell high-quality produce. “American consumers are paying too much for lousy food,” they told me. “The monopolists in the middle are raking it in while both we and consumers get screwed.” They also thought genetically modified food was a disaster in the making. I asked them why neither the federal nor state governments was doing anything about this. “Power and money,” they said.
It's the same story all over America -- workers, small businesses, farmers, everyone I meet. They're being squeezed tighter and tighter in order to expand the profits of big corporations and Wall Street, that have a chokehold on Congress and state legislatures. The result is a giant upward distribution of income and wealth that's fanning the flames of the new populism.
What do you think?
The TRUTH will set you FREE.
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