Corruption
A common theme here at blog central is that your currency issuing government is your most powerful and important institution.
Its job is to marshal and deploy all available real resources in our best interests. Our interests include the environment, and other life forms. You get the idea.
I know you didn't vote for one of these governments.
Federal governments create money out of thin air when they spend. They don't borrow the money they spend. They destroy tax money as soon as they get it. It's accounting. It's fact.
Banks are licensed and lightly regulated by the currency issuing government. They also create money out of thin air, this time, when they lend in the government's currency. They didn't borrow. They didn't use the money in savings accounts. It's just accounting. It's fact.
Your Federal government is nothing like a household or business or even a local or state government. It creates the currency. You use it. You need it to pay your taxes.
For racketeering to occur, a complicit government is required. If government is complicit, it's not acting in your interests. It's acting in the interests of its donors, the parasitic rentiers who are feeding on you.
Corruption seeps out of the pores of every neoliberal government.
If you need convincing, Jon Morse has shared his records of US corporate fines and settlements here. Oz hasn't got a Jon Morse. Sorry.
Big Pharma is well represented for those of you who are still thinking that your government is driven to save you from Covid.
"The pharmaceutical industry has the by far largest lobbying departments in the world (and you thought it was Big Oil). In Washington alone there are hundreds of lobbyists working for Big Pharma. Who not only support the politicians’ election campaigns, they also pay huge amounts to the same medical experts that advise the same politicians. Moreover, lobbyists often even write the laws for the politicians, who are not experts."
"Anything goes and nothing matters1" is the top end's mantra.
But don't worry. Oz hasn't missed out. Our insignificant little PR man takes his orders directly from those who awarded him his legion of merit2. That's why we're in lockstep with the good old US of A.