The effects of our current de-regulated, free-market capitalistic society are all around us. They range from daily inconveniences to our ability to survive.

• Large companies do not even pretend to offer good customer service anymore. To save on staffing costs: Bathrooms are dirty in stores. It takes an extreme amount of time to call most any customer service number. There are too few cashiers. It’s not possible to speak to a real person when calling CVS pharmacy anymore. One must leave a message and wait for a callback from a regional representative that is not even from the store that is filling your prescriptions. In 2024, the CEO of CVS Health made $17.8 million dollars in total compensation.¹

It took my area pharmacies a while to get a lunch break. When I go to my local pharmacy, the gate is down during their 30-minute lunch period. Initially, they were taking a well-deserved lunch break. Now, when I go to that same store, I see pharmacy staff working in the dark, through their lunch break. Are they getting compensated for those 30 minutes? I bet the shareholders are being compensated well enough.

The Dollar General stores are understaffed and disorganized. There are always boxes of merchandise lined up through the entire store waiting for someone to shelve it. Even the fire exits have merchandise in front of it. Where is OSHA? Don’t these employees and customers deserve protection from fire? The employees are overworked and underpaid. There are normally 1 or 2 employees in the entire store that have to stock, clean up spills, and run the cash register. In 2020, the chief executive of Dollar General was quoted as saying, “We do very good in good times, and we do fabulous in bad times.”

• By the way, that CEO made $182,750,913 between 2015 and 2021.²

HP wants to rent you a printer now, for a 2-year contract. Are there limits on how many pages can be printed per month before more fees accumulate? You bet there are. Good idea or yet another way for corporations to rip hard working Americans off?

Corporate America does not want us to have families. They want us to work long, hard hours for low pay. It’s not easy to balance working 2-3 jobs, paying for daycare, and still getting kids to after school activities. Staying home with a sick child for even a few days can cause financial difficulty as well as disciplinary action from their jobs. And ask any mother that pumps breast milk at her job whether corporate America is for families.

Wages are not livable. Working conditions are poor. There’s a German phrase amerikanische verhltnisse which means “American conditions” that workers use in debate as a warning to not let American working conditions happen there.

All of this for what? So CEO’s can make millions every year? So stock holders can make quarterly profits? This economy only works for the 1%, the millionaires, the billionaires, the oligarchs, the Bezos and Zuckerburgs. The prosperity does not trickle down. This has been tried since Ronald Reagan was president. It has been a failed experiment.

The rich are getting richer, everyone else is getting poorer. Is any one person’s work worth $1 billion dollars a year? I certainly don’t think so.

Also, this version of capitalism is bad for the earth. Our planet’s resources are precious and finite. So why then, does our economy run on exponential quarterly growth and profit from the sale of so many products?

This campaign wants to bring back the middle class. We want workers’ rights, we want work life balance, we want a livable wage for all American workers. Let’s take our economy back from the wealthy. Let’s take our earth back from the wealthy. Let’s take care of each other.

1. https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/cvs-healths-highest-paid-executives-2024/

2. https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2024/02/dollar-stores-show-capitalism-at-its-worst
   
   

Dispatch RELEASE — October 1st, 2025