quinta-feira, 7 de novembro de 2024

Presidential elections are about money, not votes



mpr21.info
November 4th

The US presidential and legislative elections are a very expensive luxury. At 16 billion dollars, they are the most expensive in history [FW: except for the special circumstances of the 2020 election].

The votes are almost always won by the candidate who best invests the most amount of money. Therefore, the winner tends to be whoever has the most generous donors. These are sponsors who, instead of speculating on the stock market with shares, speculate in elections with candidates.

At the beginning of this year, the Federal Election Commission lifted a long-standing ban on candidates coordinating with groups, such as super PACs, which can spend unlimited funds on elections.

Super PACs (Political Action Committees) are organisations that raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to support or oppose candidates, but until now they could not coordinate directly with their electoral campaigns. They were created after the Supreme Court ruling in the case “Citizens United v. FEC” in 2010, which allowed companies to spend money on electoral campaigns.

They can receive contributions from individuals and companies, allowing them to accumulate large sums of money. However, they must publicly report their donors and their spending. This has led to a significant increase in election campaign spending, as super PACs can influence elections through advertising and other forms of promotion.

Funders are like a backpack loaded with stones that the winner has to drag along his term in the White House. The reason is very simple: in a capitalist society nothing is free and the sponsors want to get their investment back.

In the current race for the White House, the big monopolies face two different financial futures, separated by a whopping $250 billion a year. The potential amount is due to the divergent tax policies of both candidates.

Kamala Harris promised to partially reverse Trump's huge corporate tax cut, while Trump says he will reduce it even further.

The $250 billion figure is based on estimates by Goldman Sachs, which said Trump’s proposal to cut the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 15 percent would add 4 percent to the S&P 500’s earnings.

Harris’ plan to raise it to 28 percent would have cut earnings by 5 percent, according to Goldman Sachs, and her other corporate tax proposals would have cut another 3 percent.

Money has never been bigger or bolder than in this year’s presidential election, Bloomberg says, and “failing to rein it in could further strengthen the already overwhelming influence of billionaires over the political system.” 

 

Source: https://mpr21.info/las-elecciones-presidenciales-no-son-cuestion-de-votos-sino-de-dinero/

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