The robber barons of Silicon Valley

[guillaumeb]

From the article:

AMONG THE many lamentable "highlights" of 2017, the Guardian reports the following: "The world's super-rich hold the greatest concentration of wealth since the U.S. Gilded Age at the turn of the 20th century, when families like the Carnegies, Rockefellers and Vanderbilts controlled vast fortunes."........

There are many candidates for the status of robber baron in our own day. But perhaps the most notable examples can be found in the world of Silicon Valley.
The leaders of companies such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple offer striking parallels to the robber barons of the late 19th century. As Rob Cox, writing in Newsweek in 2012, put it:
Behind the hoodies and flip-flops lurk businesspeople as rapacious as the black-suited and top-hatted industrialists of the late 19th century.

As unions weaken and as working class incomes have stagnated for nearly 40 years, the super rich control more and more of the wealth and workers see less job security, less ability to own homes, suffer from greater indebtedness, and are increasingly unable to contemplate a secure retirement.

Welcome to 1930, updated for 2018.

To read more:

https://socialistworker.org/2018/01/08/the-robber-barons-of-silicon-valley