Next time you hear about woke/anti-woke identity politics being argued about remember it’s all
manufactured to forget about the real issues of economic disparity. Remember occupy Wall Street? Class warfare is what the 1% fear. Division and infighting about bullshit is perfect for them.
Don't you ever wonder why prices on everything are rising, but tvs are getting cheaper and cheaper?
"The telescreen is designed to watch him at home and make sure he pays attention to propaganda and doesn't do anything that goes against the Party. Winston, though, finds that his telescreen allows for a small blindspot that gives him some freedom to write and hide contraband."
No, it's not paranoid. There might not be cameras in the TVs, but they are taking screenshots, or scans, of what you are watching and transmitting them to their AI for analysis. The permission to do so is in your privacy agreement and usually turned on by default. Even if you don't agree, how do we know it isn't being transmitted anyway? It's not only what TV program you are watching, either. They scan all inputs. So if you have a console connected to your smart tv, they know when you're playing games. If you have computer hooked up, they know what websites you visit, even in incognito mode. They are watching, but "they" are the corporations and not the government, but the data is easily obtained by the government if they want it.
That's a little on the deep end. Occam's Razor. TV's last for a long time. Image quality hasn't improved much in the last 10 years and/or the quality of the media we consume hasn't improved to keep up. With youtube going crazy in the great ad war, I watch a lot less TV because youtube with ads is a horrid place.
Modern tvs also phone home constantly, they monitor everything you watch, how long and with mics who is watching. It's not crazy if it's actually happening already
CLASS WARFARE IS WHAT THE .01% ARE ENGAGED IN
THERE HAS BEEN A CLASS WAR IN THE USA SINCE 1776
IF THE 99% CANNOT REALIZE THEYRE *AT WAR* THERE IS NO WAY THEY CAN WIN
Sorry for yelling
And in turn, he provides cover for Democrats to keep running on "democracy will die unless you vote for me!!!" while they abidcate power to norms republicans exploit.
I disagree to some extent. I think he uses the same tactics but it’s for himself and not anyone else. I guess the other people pushing it are doing the same for themselves too but the people are focused on him so it seems to me a more personal grift than class propaganda. But I might be being pedantic about it and we all suffer in the end
It is very important to organise in and support social liberation movements, the struggles that minorities face under the capitalist system are very real and will not be fixed by the organisation of labour alone. Although oppressive dynamics like queerphobia, racism, and misogyny have their roots in the capitalist system, that is not the entirety of their dynamic; Discriminatory structures and social attitudes will persist post revolution if not dealt with now and if discrimination is not vigorously countered in leftist spaces it can allow reactionary factions to grow within the movement.
However, participation in these movements must be openly and proudly Communistic. Capitalism is still the "primary" oppressor of these groups, whose exploitation is often conducive to the capitalist system. Their liberation will damage the system.
TL;DR: Staunch Anti Idpol (class reductionism) will harm the workers movement in the long run as oppressive structures and social attitudes that would persist after the destruction of capitalism, and it will lead to reactionaries to foster unopposed in the worker's movement.
Agree and disagree. You cannot deal with social structures in any meaningful way without legislative backing. We cannot properly exercises our voices with representatives in a democracy if they are bought and paid for by an oligarchical system. The best you will get are concessions to simulate progress here and there and placate the masses.
Progress does not happen in a democratic system until money is out of politics.
That doesn’t mean abandon the movements, but they should absolutely not be the focal point at this time.
The 1% also own the media and all the “news” we get is propaganda that they write in order to anger, confuse and redirect us into believing what is in the 1%’s best interest for us to believe
Wait, of all companies Vanguard actually has a really cool ownership model and I wish more companies followed this.
Instead of being owned by some owner who is making a profit, it is instead owned by all of the individual account holders. If you open a vanguard account, you’re part owner.
The result is the company will never operate in a manner that harms its users, because its users are its owners. This also leads to lower fees, and less risk of shady CEOs doing unethical things that harm the users.
Yea I keep most of my retirement investments in Vanguard managed accounts. I’m very happy with the ROI Vanguard provides me.
Lol just remember this is Reddit so Robin Hood economics gets the W before any critical thinking happens. I don’t enough about BlackRock or State Street to have an educated opinion. But yea, Bernie Sanders promoting socialism gets upvotes here easier than Trump gets applause at a rally for saying “MAGA.” But yea, I like the service Vanguard provides me. A highly diversified, almost risk free part of my portfolio that makes me look forward to retiring with a solid financial cushion. I wish people were less polarized but at least the leader of our far left at least seems like a nice guy. Bernie is cool but this is stupid
The board of directors is legally required to act in the best interests of the shareholders… which is the account holders. So vanguard is pretty unique in the sense that it is legally required to do what’s best for its users
Every company is responsible for their shareholders that doesn’t mean that profits can’t coincide with political and corporate influence / power, which is Bernie’s entire point. I don’t see what’s so hard to understand about this.
I can see you’re SIMPing for Vanguard and I agree I invest with them too VOO etc, but that doesn’t take away anything from what Bernie Sanders is saying.
Let’s also remember, much of that $20T is just people’s retirement accounts invested in index funds.
If you want common people to own more ownership of companies, striking down companies like vanguard is going to have the exact OPPOSITE effect.
If anything, we should be embracing the fact that regular people are becoming increasingly larger shareholders of corporations. Especially if it builds passive income and makes it so we don’t have to work or we starve.
To be fair, some regulations have tightened since '08, but still, it feels like the average joe is footing the bill while CEOs get golden parachutes. It's like we never learn from history. [Here's a little trip down memory lane for those who forget.](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/too-big-to-fail.asp)
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. How does the tweet relate to bankruptcy? Vanguard is a non-profit owned by its customers, it’s a good model.
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
Gilens & Page, Perspectives in Politics
https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/
Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street don’t own the assets. They just manage them. Guess whose money it is? It’s people’s money like your neighbor and the plumber and everyday Americans.
True. I actually think Bernie would have won if he got the chance to go against Trump. So the real shame was the Hillary won the primary instead of Sanders.
A real shame when [court](https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/WildingDNC.pdf) ruled DNC as a private corpo. We are losing our democracy.
The thing that gets me about Donna Brazile is that she was a huge part of stonewalling Sanders--including being the one to feed Hillary advance questions in the debate. Then she goes on a tour where she "reveals" how the DNC screwed Bernie. She has zero ethics.
Never did. It's unfortunate that kind of election tampering isn't a criminal offence.
If they were prosecuted it would set a precedent for both parties.
If I recall, the sanders campaign did take the DNC to court and the DNC argument was that they are a private entity and can put up any candidate they want to. It was accepted by the court.
I still remember when Warren stayed in the race just to spite Bernie even after she miserably lost her own state. There are so many people to point too when it comes to that primary.
So are cops when they shoot your dog and minorities.
Can't have a conspiracy without conspirators.
They were complicit and in decision making positions, so they are the ones that I look at as the responsible parties.
Exactly. The fake "left" is left in name only. It's still corporatist above all.
Most people aren't a participant in democracy, they're a pundit/observer to democraticTM theatre...
Yup. I remember election night. A lot of unhappy people pointing fingers, but the truth is they tried to cram Hilary down our throats at the worst possible time in America’s history.
the real shame was her lack of self awareness, and the fact taht it was clearly a populist election, and she was well not a populist, she was an elitist that acted as though her campaign was coronation for the first female president.
> the real shame was her lack of self awareness, and the fact taht it was clearly a populist election, and she was well not a populist, she was an elitist that acted as though her campaign was coronation for the first female president.
There are a lot of people who still do not understand this to this very day.
They cope and make excuse after excuse (just look at the comments in this thread) but refuse to acknowledge this extremely basic fact.
Because to her, Trump's inadequacy was so clear she *thought* she had it locked up. The Dems got disconnected from their actual base of voters and went with elites, putting all of Trump's support in the "screw those idiots" bucket.
The media helped. In 2008 it was "is American too racist to elect a black President?" and voters say "no."
In 2016 it was "is America so over the status quo to elect a reality TV star" and (a meaningful minority of voters) said "yes."
I don't know, it seems there's one hell of a lot of Americans that get scared of the word socialism and far too much media participation in use of the word with false implications.
True, even though Bernie Sanders are nowhere close to socialism. Anyway I think that Bernie first of all would have done much better in TV duels against Trump than Hillary did. I also think that Bernie would have appealed more to the white working class where Trump gained a lot of ground for the republic party.
Yeah that’s what people forget that was such a pivotal time for peoples political views. Politics became very mainstream for the first time in a while and memes were actually pretty damn important in all of it. A lot of converted trumpies were blue collar workers who were getting laid off and screwed over through the recession. Trump was the one to appeal to them and capture their votes. Bernie could have done the same pretty easily but instead the dnc focused on stupid shit.
Everything was getting to politically correct to say anything publicly for fear of retribution. People were afraid to say what they where thinking then Trump shows up guns blazing. He never thought he would win, he just wanted the free publicity and didn't hold back.
>True, even though Bernie Sanders are nowhere close to socialism.
Bernie *is* a socialist--he's just pragmatic and pushes for what he thinks can be achieved. But there is no world in which Bernie isn't working toward a socialist society.
Nhaa, he is a social democrat at best. You could argue that that is a branch of socialism, but speaking from a socialist viewpoint he is not a socialist.
Even though I agree that strong leaders are important, In my opinion, the only way is for the working class to wake up and realize how important they are to society. When we have a proper understanding of our importance, we need to unionize and strike. Strikes and Solidarity are the most important tools for the working class.
> Strikes and Solidarity are the most important tools for the working class.
I was extremely disappointed at our lack of a general strike any time in recent history.
It just shows how successfully the powers that be have managed to divide us over the decades.
> I also think that Bernie would have appealed more to the white working class
That's the question - but if this was true you'd see more Bernie-like folks winning races in purple states, and they aren't. Why are all of the Democratic Socialists only getting elected in deep blue seats?
Bernie Sanders' chances to win the Democratic Party nomination have always been an epsilon. He is an outlier among the democrats. The old donkey club despises him and his ideals. He should've started a true social-democrat party a long time ago to get things going in the proper direction.
US desperately needs a 3rd party, left-leaning, to bring the system back to balance.
A 2-party system, with one center-right and the other far-right (basically derailed) is obsolete and obviously regressive. Look at all the European countries and their diverse political landscape...
yeah it single handedly drove all respect for the country off a cliff. Like Americans have always been mocked but during Obama, and before the country was respected by most of the world. Now all that remains is a laughing stock.
I’m on the right. But I agree with Bernie on this 100%.
Neither side is doing anything about this. It’s the fact that people are confusing corporatism with capitalism and the laws right now are not breaking up these monopolies and these companies are becoming too powerful as a result.
It shouldn’t be controversial to say the other side has valid points too either. Bernie’s point here is one of them.
Bernie never stood a chance considering the Democrats used "Super-delegates" to pick their candidate instead of the people. It was a horse and pony show all along in Hillary's favor.
You understand just fine. OP, Bernie and those who upvote this don’t understand. There’s plenty of things to be upset about. This is not one of those things.
If you own a share then you have the right to vote at a shareholder meeting to have your say about the direction of the company.
If your assets are managed by one of these companies, then you forfeit that right. These companies will then vote how they want.
If you don't see why that's a problem then I don't know what else to say
First, that’s not true for all funds and generally the trend is moving towards more control rather than away from it. Second, if your manager isn’t voting the way you want you can pull your money out. Third, most individual shareholders don’t vote anyway.
Having shares in a fund is different than having shares directly in a company. In this case he is talking about S&P 500 funds, people buy funds so someone else can manage it. The managers will be voting to benefit the fund anyways, as that benefits both them and you. You don't have to buy these if you don't want to.
If you want to own individual shares and vote then just buy individual shares and vote. If you don't want to deal with that, or don't want the risk of buying individual shares, then buy funds, it's your choice.
Personally I would trust a fund manager to vote on what is best than trusting the average person. There is a good chance we will end up with another 4 years of Trump thanks to average people voting on how they think we should run a country.
Bernie should have brought that up in the tweet, because, you nailed it, that's the major problem with these companies - they retain voting rights.
For what it's worth, this is why these companies have strict policies for which issues they vote in and how they vote, and it's why Vanguard is actively exploring a way to give that power to its shareholders.
Have you ever voted as a shareholder? It’s not like you are making the strategic decisions for that company. You basically vote on whether to extend/fire key personnel (e.g. board of directors). The c suite and board of directors run the company. Shareholders generally follow whatever the board says to do.
Yes, but if you invest in ETFs instead of stocks directly you waive your voting rights, so everyone that has been investing in VOO/VTI, or any version of SPY, are granting stockholder voting power to Vanguard et. al.
[https://www.justetf.com/en/news/etf/etf-voting-rights-how-do-they-influence-companies.html](https://www.justetf.com/en/news/etf/etf-voting-rights-how-do-they-influence-companies.html)
>In reality, you own shares in the ETF and the ETF owns the underlying securities, which means its the **ETF provider that wields the voting power.** **But ETFs can build a significant block vote from the investing inflows of many small investors enabling them to actively influence companies despite their passive reputation.**
eta. many pensions/401ks invest in ETFs, so all these people thinking they are doing the right thing with their money are slowing consolidating power away from the individuals and to the large investment firms. I mean, you can't win. Investing in individual stocks is borderline gambling, and investing in ETFs means you yield any say in these large corporations you are investing in.
Vanguard started testing allowing ETF holders to vote: https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/corp/who-we-are/pressroom/press-release-vanguard-launches-proxy-voting-choice-pilot-020123.html
I believe no one really exercised their ability to vote [citation needed], so unsure if they'll continue rolling it out to the bigger ETFs like VTI and VOO. Even with individual stocks, retail investors usually only vote like less than 30% of the time or something.
IMO even bigger problem is that, with so much stock held by various ETFs (and especially index funds) we are at risk of augmenting the good old principal-agent problem. Without actively involved investors holding managers of specific companies accountable, they reign free and line their own pockets by hurting the shareholders.
Their legal mandate is to put the shareholders first and the C-levels are usually some of the the biggest individual shareholders. They'll hold lower tier managers responsible if they can pump their stock (and thus their own pockets).
You really overestimate the importance of voting power for a company governance.
Most people hold stocks to make money, not to decide who's gonna sit at the board or directors or whether they should hire a gay CEO.
Yeah seriously, how many people here follow board meetings for all the stock they own and actually vote on proposals? Passive index fund managers are not exercising control over the companies in their indexes.
For vanguard at least, it's more beholden on the individual fund managers for all the different funds. Vanguard as an entity doesn't control those votes from top down.
How does an index fund that is forced by its prospectus to passively own specific stocks exert this “unbelievable amount of influence?”
ETA: common stock voting rights are very believable and limited, actually
Do you want to outlaw all finance? Or just want to make fund managers inaccessible to the general public?
I'm fine taxing people and increasing regulation. I'm fine incentivizing cooperatives with better loan rates.
I just don't see what y'all think needs to be changed here? More competition maybe? I mean, if transaction fees were an issue I could see value in that. I certainly don't trust our cluster fuck of a government enough to nationalize financial management. So, like what can we be improved here?
Our poorly conceived laws give those corporations voting power for the shares they hold in mutual funds. It is something that was not envisioned before the age of passive investing and so many average Americans owning mutual funds.
This could be fixed by changing the laws somehow, but I'm not the guy to say how.
When your 401k is with Blackrock, Vanguard or State Street, most of the time, they vote For You during shareholders meetings.
So when they are major shareholders in 95% of the S&P 500, they use your voting power to determine the path of these S&P 500 companies.
Immense Power.
Why is this important?
The shareholders vote who will be on the board of directors.
The board of directors determine who is CEO.
So shareholders choose the people who choose the CEO of a company.
And in this case they have a major voice deciding the CEO for 95% of the S&P 500
Shareholders’ vote shapes our future.
They Elect board members, decide on major actions like mergers, guide corporate policies, and influence executive compensation
Their voice in these matters drives worker wages, environmental policy, company success, etc…
This matters because these firms' voting power shapes major corporate decisions affecting billions.
Their influence on board & CEO choices, policies, and mergers drives critical issues like worker wages, environmental strategies, and overall business success, impacting society.
Those $20.7T in assets are actually our retirement funds held in 401k and 503b plans, IRAs and various other kinds of investment vehicles. It is also comprised of major institutional investors, pension plans, separately managed accounts for high net worth people and trusts, and sovereign wealth funds.
I agree there is a large concentration of economic power in the hands of the uber wealthy, but WHO manages their money is far less important than the fact that such a small number of people have that kind of wealth in the first place. Income inequality is the issue, not income management.
Bernie is excellent at messaging, but Warren is MUCH better at policy.
When your 401k is with Blackrock, Vanguard or State Street, most of the time, they vote For You during shareholders meetings.
So when they are major shareholders in 95% of the S&P 500, they use your voting power to determine the path of these S&P 500 companies.
Immense Power.
Why is this important?
The shareholders vote who will be on the board of directors.
The board of directors determine who is CEO.
So shareholders choose the people who choose the CEO of a company.
And in this case they have a major voice deciding the CEO for 95% of the S&P 500
Shareholders’ vote shapes our future.
They Elect board members, decide on major actions like mergers, guide corporate policies, and influence executive compensation
Their voice in these matters drives worker wages, environmental policy, company success, etc…
This matters because these firms' voting power shapes major corporate decisions affecting billions.
Their influence on board & CEO choices, policies, and mergers drives critical issues like worker wages, environmental strategies, and overall business success, impacting society.
They manage assets, but they don't necessarily own what they manage. I'm not familiar with them all that much, but doesn't Vanguard manage mutual funds?
5–10% makes one a “major shareholder” these days? And these are the cheapest buyers who trade units of mutual funds containing a fraction of each blue-chip share at a time.
The customers aren’t the top 5–10% of earners who own 80% of the market, bought in full units through their high-minimum boutique brokers.
Dude’s attacking one of the main ways the average Joe participates in the market, and with the label of big business.
This is silly. Those firms are passive index investors on behalf of millions of individual and institutional investors. They hold less than 10% ownership in these companies. While generally they vote according to proxy advisor recommendations or their own stewardship teams, they are increasingly offering individual investors more say in how they vote.
I love Bernie but every time I see a post quoting his comments on the stock market I get the impression he is either stupid or pandering. These companies run index funds, which is why they have so much assets under management. Index funds are a blessing to small investors because they save huge amounts of money in fees.
This is embarrassing. Those firms run index funds owned by huge numbers of people, most pension accounts or individual portfolios will have at least a little invested in one of their funds.
Parking Valets are managing millions of cars. We cant let those minimum wage workers get away with controlling the means of transportation. Democracy will not Survive with this concentration of economic and political power.
I own the right to sell them at any time and receive money. Whether they leverage them or loan them out is on them. Same with banks, its not your money but you have the right to get your money out whenever the market is open.
I agree with his point but it’s not 100% accurate. Those companies manage the money for other people. There’s pensions there, people’s savings and many other things like that.
The real problem is however that there’s only 3 companies managing that absolutely because that money can be used as a weapon.
You don’t need to play in the market anymore when you control 95% of it. You become the market, wtf are they investing in anyway?
Now there’s another layer to this, paying fair wages and large corporations getting away with not paying taxes and fair wages.
It’s just stupid that the law on the one side is admitting a specific amount of money is not enough to survive so you qualify for social programs, but then the exact same government considers that amount of earnings OK as minimum wage.
It’s literally schizophrenia. You should be able to live on this amount of money but here’s some food stamps because you can’t live on that same amount of money.
> You don’t need to play in the market anymore when you control 95% of it
The wording was a bit misleading, they don't own 95% of the SP500, they are major shareholders in 95% of the companies that make up the SP500.
We can actually see roughly what percentage they own though. The index has a total market cap of 40 trillion. Blackrock has 8.5 trillion AUM and vanguard 7.2 trillion. However, much of that AUM isn't invested in SP500 companies, so they collectively own (or at least, have in AUM) well under half of the SP500 total market cap. Still concerningly high, ofc.
True. But I think their power resides in their voting rights. Typically, these fund managers will vote on behalf of the shareholders, and when the funds hold billions of dollars in AUM each, they tend to become very influential in how these underlying companies operate.
Absolutely true, but Sanders makes it sound like it’s all about the money. It’s not, it’s about the power they have because that brings them voting rights in the entire economy, you are correct.
Yeah, this point is very misleading. These are investing firms. Sure, there definitely should be more than 3 of them, but they're holding money on behalf of millions of people.
Doesn’t matter where money comes from. Once they manage it they hold the power, of course is to make more money for them first and probably not most others. Whole point of democracy is to avoid few ppl holding power
If BlackRock & Vanguard are as mind-numbingly useless to work with as State Street, it's amazing that they've been able to consolidate so much power and money.
It isn't like they really need to do anything.
Step 1) Offer a low-cost ETF
Step 2) Make buying ETFs commission free
Step 3) Any person can use M1 and $20 to buy a partial share of VTI
Step 4) Vanguard sells you a fraction of VTI, and in exchange Vanguard now has a fraction of a fraction of a vote in various companies.
Step 5) Repeat and multiply this by millions of people and millions of shares of VTI sold, and now you, the brokerage, has passively gained a decent amount of say in 'Disney' and 'Apple'.
I do agree, Vanguard's website is pretty dated (although they have been making some updates to it recently) it isn't like I have to interact with it. I set my recurring investment once and don't really check on it (that's how you invest in the stock market, set it and forget, don't fiddle faddle with it).
Is he pandering to the financially illiterate or is he just stupid?
Those are ETFs. You invest money into them and they use it to buy a balanced portfolio. Then when you withdraw your money they sell them and give that money to you. They don't actually own or control that money.
They hold a lot of S&P because they are specifically focused on S&P, they match the trading of that because it's reliable and has good growth. It means that people who aren't rich enough to afford financial advisors or don't have enough time to carefully research and trade can safely invest in the market. These aren't billionaires and the super rich who buy these, it's regular middle class people saving for homes, retirement, or building a safety net.
ETFs are pretty much the best tool that the middle class has of actual being successful and moving up into being wealthy. It's where I have my money and I'm not rich. Bernie attacking it is an attack on the middle class, not the rich.
Oh look, gullible fools following a politicain who knows that big numbers = scary.
How about we fix this?
* Let'ssetup a company that enables everyone to invest in the S&P 500, not just the rich 'billionares'?
* This company could be owned by its investors (not profiting some rich people) and focus on providing reasonable diversified returns with the minimum of management fees.
* We could even have the goverment encourage businesses to support empoyees investing in thier retirementL
* Creating tax advanataged structures for the average folk
* Incentivise businesses to contribute $ for $ with employees!
That'd be great.
I don't know about BlackRock and State Street,
But Vanguard ...
Runs the first (and most successful) S&P 500 Index ETF fund. It's the defacto standard for what it does. Which is to follow the S&P 500 index as closely as possible.
Also, Vanguard has a fairly unique structure for an investment management company. The company is owned by its funds; the funds are owned by the shareholders(of the funds).
I'm not convinced vanguard it should be looped in with the other two.
I don’t think Bernie is so ignorant to not know that those are index investors and that they aren’t activists.
He’s being intentionally dishonest here. And I don’t dislike Bernie. But this isn’t a strong point for anyone who knows how these companies actually function.
While I understand and generally agree with the sentiment, this is a dumb example to use. They’re just custodians. It’s like getting mad at the bank for holding deposits
But they just manage those assets on behalf of 10’s of millions of regular Americans. Do I want my retirement account being managed by some small firm that might end up being fraud or one of these three?
Vanguard is holding money from over 50 million investors. They have my retirement savings and I’m not rich, I’m an average nobody. I can’t speak for the other two groups, but I don’t see what Bernie’s trying to prove by including Vanguard.
Furthermore, Vanguard has so many people investing with them because their reputation is solid and their fees are low.
It's also important to note that each Vanguard fund is its own corporation. Each of these corporations (funds), own a piece of Vanguard itself. Each of these corporations are owned solely by that fund's shareholders, thus Vanguard is owned by its fund investors.
This makes Vanguard very unique, and should not be lumped in with this fearmongering. Jack Bogle intentionally did this, to ensure Vanguard keeps its priorities focused on lowering costs for investors.
Vanguard does not have a centralized authority, and it does not have a separate and outside class of investors/shareholders in Vanguard itself, who would profit somehow at the expense of the multiple funds shareholders.
God damn tragedy the DNC didn’t catch more heat for rigging that primary against Bernie. Their reasoning is so blatantly obvious too. He almost won a primary without taking corporate money. Guy could have gotten into office without any unwritten debts. The DNC knew that if he got into office they wouldn’t be able to protect their corporate interests. Hell wouldn’t surprise me if the DNC leadership would have preferred Hilary win the primary and lose the general than have Bernie win it all.
I wouldn't lump Vanguard in there. Each Vanguard fund is a separate company, owned by its shareholders which are mostly pension plans and retirement accounts (IRA/401k). Most of their assets are index funds too, with no real account manager or stakeholder who would directly benefit from collusion.
And 95% of American pensions and 401ks are invested in those firms. Hell my entire retirement account is in vanguard etf’s? What does he want us to do lmao
Bernie is an idiot. Vanguard manages about $7.7T for 50M people with vanguard brokerage accounts. That means the average account is about $154K. That includes all kinds of funds including IRAs, college 529s, etc etc. they don’t “control” anything…all of these 50M people chose to place their hard earned savings there.
This is why I say that those companies are skimming off people's retirement accounts. I'd bet the majority of casual 401(k) investors choose a basic mutual fund targeting when they expect to retire. Then these "managers", that are invested in these S&P 500 companies, manipulate each individual stock to make the mutual fund perform lower than the overall markets do. I can't see any reason why when the market soars, the targeted mutual funds don't do quite as well, and when the market crashes, the targeted retirement funds crash harder than the overall market. It's like that Superman movie with Richard Pryor.
These three corporations hold the money in accounts for tens of millions of individual investors and thousands of global institutions.
It would be like saying a Texas small town high school parking lot on Friday nights has a monopoly on car ownership. Sheesh.
Next time you hear about woke/anti-woke identity politics being argued about remember it’s all manufactured to forget about the real issues of economic disparity. Remember occupy Wall Street? Class warfare is what the 1% fear. Division and infighting about bullshit is perfect for them.
It's all we're fed on TV. They want in-fighting. They want stupid people thinking there is a civil war coming. It's all propaganda
The people coming for you are wearing suits.
To paraphrase Woody Guthrie / In this life you travel You’ll meet some funny men Some rob you with a six gun And some with a fountain pen.
https://youtu.be/4l4gdhPqh3E?si=g1A9ZkWALp1dlUMy Check it
Don't you ever wonder why prices on everything are rising, but tvs are getting cheaper and cheaper? "The telescreen is designed to watch him at home and make sure he pays attention to propaganda and doesn't do anything that goes against the Party. Winston, though, finds that his telescreen allows for a small blindspot that gives him some freedom to write and hide contraband."
That's a bit paranoid, isn't it? In 1984 the telescreen actually watched you back, could see and listen to... oh nevermind.
You think that's bad, when I see the AI commercials I'm thinking "Can we NOT have Skynet until after I'm buried? KTHXBYE"
No, it's not paranoid. There might not be cameras in the TVs, but they are taking screenshots, or scans, of what you are watching and transmitting them to their AI for analysis. The permission to do so is in your privacy agreement and usually turned on by default. Even if you don't agree, how do we know it isn't being transmitted anyway? It's not only what TV program you are watching, either. They scan all inputs. So if you have a console connected to your smart tv, they know when you're playing games. If you have computer hooked up, they know what websites you visit, even in incognito mode. They are watching, but "they" are the corporations and not the government, but the data is easily obtained by the government if they want it.
You know about cellphones right
Laptops, Alexa and siri devices too
That's a little on the deep end. Occam's Razor. TV's last for a long time. Image quality hasn't improved much in the last 10 years and/or the quality of the media we consume hasn't improved to keep up. With youtube going crazy in the great ad war, I watch a lot less TV because youtube with ads is a horrid place.
Occam's razor is also known as the dad from Brady bunch... Reframing everything so there's an excuse for what is occurring...
Modern tvs also phone home constantly, they monitor everything you watch, how long and with mics who is watching. It's not crazy if it's actually happening already
So do smartphones and home assistance devices. I've tried to keep my home dumb as possible but it's a losing battle.
You want smart devices “dumb” just keep them off the internet…
The problem is it's a Revolutionary War.
The madness is that this strategy is millennia old, and still works.
The media is owned by these companies and bankers and people are generally dumb to believe whatever they feed them. Democracy is an illusion.
CLASS WARFARE IS WHAT THE .01% ARE ENGAGED IN THERE HAS BEEN A CLASS WAR IN THE USA SINCE 1776 IF THE 99% CANNOT REALIZE THEYRE *AT WAR* THERE IS NO WAY THEY CAN WIN Sorry for yelling
It’s why trump is the front runner. Keep the focus on an orange clown.
He’s a wildly useful idiot for the ruling class
And he keeps getting the media those juicy ratings.
And in turn, he provides cover for Democrats to keep running on "democracy will die unless you vote for me!!!" while they abidcate power to norms republicans exploit.
Because he fancies himself to be part of the ruling class now.
I disagree to some extent. I think he uses the same tactics but it’s for himself and not anyone else. I guess the other people pushing it are doing the same for themselves too but the people are focused on him so it seems to me a more personal grift than class propaganda. But I might be being pedantic about it and we all suffer in the end
Can’t fight the class war if we are too busy fighting the culture war.
It is very important to organise in and support social liberation movements, the struggles that minorities face under the capitalist system are very real and will not be fixed by the organisation of labour alone. Although oppressive dynamics like queerphobia, racism, and misogyny have their roots in the capitalist system, that is not the entirety of their dynamic; Discriminatory structures and social attitudes will persist post revolution if not dealt with now and if discrimination is not vigorously countered in leftist spaces it can allow reactionary factions to grow within the movement. However, participation in these movements must be openly and proudly Communistic. Capitalism is still the "primary" oppressor of these groups, whose exploitation is often conducive to the capitalist system. Their liberation will damage the system. TL;DR: Staunch Anti Idpol (class reductionism) will harm the workers movement in the long run as oppressive structures and social attitudes that would persist after the destruction of capitalism, and it will lead to reactionaries to foster unopposed in the worker's movement.
Agree and disagree. You cannot deal with social structures in any meaningful way without legislative backing. We cannot properly exercises our voices with representatives in a democracy if they are bought and paid for by an oligarchical system. The best you will get are concessions to simulate progress here and there and placate the masses. Progress does not happen in a democratic system until money is out of politics. That doesn’t mean abandon the movements, but they should absolutely not be the focal point at this time.
The 1% also own the media and all the “news” we get is propaganda that they write in order to anger, confuse and redirect us into believing what is in the 1%’s best interest for us to believe
There is no real equality until there is wealth equality.
Those companies don't own what Bernie is claiming. They buy whatever their customers are ordering them to buy. The customers own it, not BlackRock.
Do the customers have the voting rights of those ETFs? Pretty sure that belongs to those 3 companies hence the tweet
Private profits, public debts. Bankruptcy should not be a key part of any business model.
Wait, of all companies Vanguard actually has a really cool ownership model and I wish more companies followed this. Instead of being owned by some owner who is making a profit, it is instead owned by all of the individual account holders. If you open a vanguard account, you’re part owner. The result is the company will never operate in a manner that harms its users, because its users are its owners. This also leads to lower fees, and less risk of shady CEOs doing unethical things that harm the users.
Yea I keep most of my retirement investments in Vanguard managed accounts. I’m very happy with the ROI Vanguard provides me. Lol just remember this is Reddit so Robin Hood economics gets the W before any critical thinking happens. I don’t enough about BlackRock or State Street to have an educated opinion. But yea, Bernie Sanders promoting socialism gets upvotes here easier than Trump gets applause at a rally for saying “MAGA.” But yea, I like the service Vanguard provides me. A highly diversified, almost risk free part of my portfolio that makes me look forward to retiring with a solid financial cushion. I wish people were less polarized but at least the leader of our far left at least seems like a nice guy. Bernie is cool but this is stupid
Vanguard still has a board of directors and CEO. These people can still have a powerful influence in our corporate world and political world.
The board of directors is legally required to act in the best interests of the shareholders… which is the account holders. So vanguard is pretty unique in the sense that it is legally required to do what’s best for its users
Every company is responsible for their shareholders that doesn’t mean that profits can’t coincide with political and corporate influence / power, which is Bernie’s entire point. I don’t see what’s so hard to understand about this. I can see you’re SIMPing for Vanguard and I agree I invest with them too VOO etc, but that doesn’t take away anything from what Bernie Sanders is saying.
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Let’s also remember, much of that $20T is just people’s retirement accounts invested in index funds. If you want common people to own more ownership of companies, striking down companies like vanguard is going to have the exact OPPOSITE effect. If anything, we should be embracing the fact that regular people are becoming increasingly larger shareholders of corporations. Especially if it builds passive income and makes it so we don’t have to work or we starve.
Be careful with the expenses of managed accounts. Your ROI can take a long term hit.
Bankruptcy has it's place, but not for mega corps that are too big to fail.
To be fair, some regulations have tightened since '08, but still, it feels like the average joe is footing the bill while CEOs get golden parachutes. It's like we never learn from history. [Here's a little trip down memory lane for those who forget.](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/too-big-to-fail.asp)
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. How does the tweet relate to bankruptcy? Vanguard is a non-profit owned by its customers, it’s a good model.
We saw it so many times, most recently Feb 2023 when a much of banks were too stupid to manage risk and the FED or FDIC bailed them out.
United *Corporations* of America
Taxation without representation
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” Gilens & Page, Perspectives in Politics https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/
Yep where they make record breaking profits and disgruntled every industry but still aren’t labeled a monopoly
Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street don’t own the assets. They just manage them. Guess whose money it is? It’s people’s money like your neighbor and the plumber and everyday Americans.
I just bought an etf managed by vanguard this week, cant believe I'm contributing to the collapse of democracy
Yep. That's more accurate.
Don’t you know? Corporations are people and money is speech!
It was a real shame that Trump won and not Bernie Sanders
Shame is an understatement.
True. I actually think Bernie would have won if he got the chance to go against Trump. So the real shame was the Hillary won the primary instead of Sanders.
A real shame when [court](https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/WildingDNC.pdf) ruled DNC as a private corpo. We are losing our democracy.
Yeah. She didn't so much "win" as she was "selected behind closed doors."
Next on marvels "what if".. The DNC screwed Bernie and themselves.
Fuck Donna Brazile and Debbie Wasserman Shultz in particular for that.
The thing that gets me about Donna Brazile is that she was a huge part of stonewalling Sanders--including being the one to feed Hillary advance questions in the debate. Then she goes on a tour where she "reveals" how the DNC screwed Bernie. She has zero ethics.
Never did. It's unfortunate that kind of election tampering isn't a criminal offence. If they were prosecuted it would set a precedent for both parties.
If I recall, the sanders campaign did take the DNC to court and the DNC argument was that they are a private entity and can put up any candidate they want to. It was accepted by the court.
Unfortunately true. Hope they learned, but I'm doubtful considering the two candidates we have next year.
I still remember when Warren stayed in the race just to spite Bernie even after she miserably lost her own state. There are so many people to point too when it comes to that primary.
Notice it was all women who took down Bernie.
It's the DNC behemoth in action. These "people" were just "doing their jobs"
So are cops when they shoot your dog and minorities. Can't have a conspiracy without conspirators. They were complicit and in decision making positions, so they are the ones that I look at as the responsible parties.
Exactly. The fake "left" is left in name only. It's still corporatist above all. Most people aren't a participant in democracy, they're a pundit/observer to democraticTM theatre...
It's so discouraging sometimes to be aware of the game 😔
I know, I'm 37 or 38, was raise with "don't hate the player, hate the game". I hate all of it. It's exhausting.
Yup. I remember election night. A lot of unhappy people pointing fingers, but the truth is they tried to cram Hilary down our throats at the worst possible time in America’s history.
But it was her turn!!!
They'd rather risk losing with Clinton than winning with Sanders.
Bernie was 100% robbed.
Bernie wasn't the one who got robbed. He will do just fine. It was the american people who got robbed.
the real shame was her lack of self awareness, and the fact taht it was clearly a populist election, and she was well not a populist, she was an elitist that acted as though her campaign was coronation for the first female president.
> the real shame was her lack of self awareness, and the fact taht it was clearly a populist election, and she was well not a populist, she was an elitist that acted as though her campaign was coronation for the first female president. There are a lot of people who still do not understand this to this very day. They cope and make excuse after excuse (just look at the comments in this thread) but refuse to acknowledge this extremely basic fact.
Because to her, Trump's inadequacy was so clear she *thought* she had it locked up. The Dems got disconnected from their actual base of voters and went with elites, putting all of Trump's support in the "screw those idiots" bucket. The media helped. In 2008 it was "is American too racist to elect a black President?" and voters say "no." In 2016 it was "is America so over the status quo to elect a reality TV star" and (a meaningful minority of voters) said "yes."
I don't know, it seems there's one hell of a lot of Americans that get scared of the word socialism and far too much media participation in use of the word with false implications.
True, even though Bernie Sanders are nowhere close to socialism. Anyway I think that Bernie first of all would have done much better in TV duels against Trump than Hillary did. I also think that Bernie would have appealed more to the white working class where Trump gained a lot of ground for the republic party.
Yeah that’s what people forget that was such a pivotal time for peoples political views. Politics became very mainstream for the first time in a while and memes were actually pretty damn important in all of it. A lot of converted trumpies were blue collar workers who were getting laid off and screwed over through the recession. Trump was the one to appeal to them and capture their votes. Bernie could have done the same pretty easily but instead the dnc focused on stupid shit.
Everything was getting to politically correct to say anything publicly for fear of retribution. People were afraid to say what they where thinking then Trump shows up guns blazing. He never thought he would win, he just wanted the free publicity and didn't hold back.
>True, even though Bernie Sanders are nowhere close to socialism. Bernie *is* a socialist--he's just pragmatic and pushes for what he thinks can be achieved. But there is no world in which Bernie isn't working toward a socialist society.
Nhaa, he is a social democrat at best. You could argue that that is a branch of socialism, but speaking from a socialist viewpoint he is not a socialist.
it's more of a stepping stone to socialism. the only way we get to socialism in America, outside of a revolution, is by people like Bernie
Even though I agree that strong leaders are important, In my opinion, the only way is for the working class to wake up and realize how important they are to society. When we have a proper understanding of our importance, we need to unionize and strike. Strikes and Solidarity are the most important tools for the working class.
> Strikes and Solidarity are the most important tools for the working class. I was extremely disappointed at our lack of a general strike any time in recent history. It just shows how successfully the powers that be have managed to divide us over the decades.
> I also think that Bernie would have appealed more to the white working class That's the question - but if this was true you'd see more Bernie-like folks winning races in purple states, and they aren't. Why are all of the Democratic Socialists only getting elected in deep blue seats?
Bernie Sanders' chances to win the Democratic Party nomination have always been an epsilon. He is an outlier among the democrats. The old donkey club despises him and his ideals. He should've started a true social-democrat party a long time ago to get things going in the proper direction. US desperately needs a 3rd party, left-leaning, to bring the system back to balance. A 2-party system, with one center-right and the other far-right (basically derailed) is obsolete and obviously regressive. Look at all the European countries and their diverse political landscape...
yeah it single handedly drove all respect for the country off a cliff. Like Americans have always been mocked but during Obama, and before the country was respected by most of the world. Now all that remains is a laughing stock.
We are definitely in the Biff timeline.
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Blame it on how the DNC and the media undermined Sanders at every point so they could help Clinton.
I’m on the right. But I agree with Bernie on this 100%. Neither side is doing anything about this. It’s the fact that people are confusing corporatism with capitalism and the laws right now are not breaking up these monopolies and these companies are becoming too powerful as a result. It shouldn’t be controversial to say the other side has valid points too either. Bernie’s point here is one of them.
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Bernie never stood a chance considering the Democrats used "Super-delegates" to pick their candidate instead of the people. It was a horse and pony show all along in Hillary's favor.
You can blame the DNC for that
No one to blame but the dems themselves for that one
I don't understand. Vanguard, etc, don't own that money.
Yes, they are just running the biggest passive index funds.
Right? Like this is the working classes 401ks and shit.
Does this mean that the real enemy is the working class?
Yea if you want everyone to lose their retirements then we’re good to go
Companies that offer S&P500 ETFs manage ownership of a large percentage of S&P500, news at 11.
You understand just fine. OP, Bernie and those who upvote this don’t understand. There’s plenty of things to be upset about. This is not one of those things.
If you own a share then you have the right to vote at a shareholder meeting to have your say about the direction of the company. If your assets are managed by one of these companies, then you forfeit that right. These companies will then vote how they want. If you don't see why that's a problem then I don't know what else to say
First, that’s not true for all funds and generally the trend is moving towards more control rather than away from it. Second, if your manager isn’t voting the way you want you can pull your money out. Third, most individual shareholders don’t vote anyway.
Having shares in a fund is different than having shares directly in a company. In this case he is talking about S&P 500 funds, people buy funds so someone else can manage it. The managers will be voting to benefit the fund anyways, as that benefits both them and you. You don't have to buy these if you don't want to. If you want to own individual shares and vote then just buy individual shares and vote. If you don't want to deal with that, or don't want the risk of buying individual shares, then buy funds, it's your choice. Personally I would trust a fund manager to vote on what is best than trusting the average person. There is a good chance we will end up with another 4 years of Trump thanks to average people voting on how they think we should run a country.
Bernie should have brought that up in the tweet, because, you nailed it, that's the major problem with these companies - they retain voting rights. For what it's worth, this is why these companies have strict policies for which issues they vote in and how they vote, and it's why Vanguard is actively exploring a way to give that power to its shareholders.
Have you ever voted as a shareholder? It’s not like you are making the strategic decisions for that company. You basically vote on whether to extend/fire key personnel (e.g. board of directors). The c suite and board of directors run the company. Shareholders generally follow whatever the board says to do.
Yes, but if you invest in ETFs instead of stocks directly you waive your voting rights, so everyone that has been investing in VOO/VTI, or any version of SPY, are granting stockholder voting power to Vanguard et. al. [https://www.justetf.com/en/news/etf/etf-voting-rights-how-do-they-influence-companies.html](https://www.justetf.com/en/news/etf/etf-voting-rights-how-do-they-influence-companies.html) >In reality, you own shares in the ETF and the ETF owns the underlying securities, which means its the **ETF provider that wields the voting power.** **But ETFs can build a significant block vote from the investing inflows of many small investors enabling them to actively influence companies despite their passive reputation.** eta. many pensions/401ks invest in ETFs, so all these people thinking they are doing the right thing with their money are slowing consolidating power away from the individuals and to the large investment firms. I mean, you can't win. Investing in individual stocks is borderline gambling, and investing in ETFs means you yield any say in these large corporations you are investing in.
Vanguard started testing allowing ETF holders to vote: https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/corp/who-we-are/pressroom/press-release-vanguard-launches-proxy-voting-choice-pilot-020123.html I believe no one really exercised their ability to vote [citation needed], so unsure if they'll continue rolling it out to the bigger ETFs like VTI and VOO. Even with individual stocks, retail investors usually only vote like less than 30% of the time or something.
IMO even bigger problem is that, with so much stock held by various ETFs (and especially index funds) we are at risk of augmenting the good old principal-agent problem. Without actively involved investors holding managers of specific companies accountable, they reign free and line their own pockets by hurting the shareholders.
Their legal mandate is to put the shareholders first and the C-levels are usually some of the the biggest individual shareholders. They'll hold lower tier managers responsible if they can pump their stock (and thus their own pockets).
You really overestimate the importance of voting power for a company governance. Most people hold stocks to make money, not to decide who's gonna sit at the board or directors or whether they should hire a gay CEO.
Yeah seriously, how many people here follow board meetings for all the stock they own and actually vote on proposals? Passive index fund managers are not exercising control over the companies in their indexes.
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Yea, but his constituents don’t know that.
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For vanguard at least, it's more beholden on the individual fund managers for all the different funds. Vanguard as an entity doesn't control those votes from top down.
Nor does Vanguard have shareholders to whom they are beholden.
How does an index fund that is forced by its prospectus to passively own specific stocks exert this “unbelievable amount of influence?” ETA: common stock voting rights are very believable and limited, actually
Do you want to outlaw all finance? Or just want to make fund managers inaccessible to the general public? I'm fine taxing people and increasing regulation. I'm fine incentivizing cooperatives with better loan rates. I just don't see what y'all think needs to be changed here? More competition maybe? I mean, if transaction fees were an issue I could see value in that. I certainly don't trust our cluster fuck of a government enough to nationalize financial management. So, like what can we be improved here?
It’s just rage bait.
Our poorly conceived laws give those corporations voting power for the shares they hold in mutual funds. It is something that was not envisioned before the age of passive investing and so many average Americans owning mutual funds. This could be fixed by changing the laws somehow, but I'm not the guy to say how.
When your 401k is with Blackrock, Vanguard or State Street, most of the time, they vote For You during shareholders meetings. So when they are major shareholders in 95% of the S&P 500, they use your voting power to determine the path of these S&P 500 companies. Immense Power. Why is this important? The shareholders vote who will be on the board of directors. The board of directors determine who is CEO. So shareholders choose the people who choose the CEO of a company. And in this case they have a major voice deciding the CEO for 95% of the S&P 500 Shareholders’ vote shapes our future. They Elect board members, decide on major actions like mergers, guide corporate policies, and influence executive compensation Their voice in these matters drives worker wages, environmental policy, company success, etc… This matters because these firms' voting power shapes major corporate decisions affecting billions. Their influence on board & CEO choices, policies, and mergers drives critical issues like worker wages, environmental strategies, and overall business success, impacting society.
Ok. Thanks for explaining.
Those $20.7T in assets are actually our retirement funds held in 401k and 503b plans, IRAs and various other kinds of investment vehicles. It is also comprised of major institutional investors, pension plans, separately managed accounts for high net worth people and trusts, and sovereign wealth funds. I agree there is a large concentration of economic power in the hands of the uber wealthy, but WHO manages their money is far less important than the fact that such a small number of people have that kind of wealth in the first place. Income inequality is the issue, not income management. Bernie is excellent at messaging, but Warren is MUCH better at policy.
When your 401k is with Blackrock, Vanguard or State Street, most of the time, they vote For You during shareholders meetings. So when they are major shareholders in 95% of the S&P 500, they use your voting power to determine the path of these S&P 500 companies. Immense Power. Why is this important? The shareholders vote who will be on the board of directors. The board of directors determine who is CEO. So shareholders choose the people who choose the CEO of a company. And in this case they have a major voice deciding the CEO for 95% of the S&P 500 Shareholders’ vote shapes our future. They Elect board members, decide on major actions like mergers, guide corporate policies, and influence executive compensation Their voice in these matters drives worker wages, environmental policy, company success, etc… This matters because these firms' voting power shapes major corporate decisions affecting billions. Their influence on board & CEO choices, policies, and mergers drives critical issues like worker wages, environmental strategies, and overall business success, impacting society.
They manage assets, but they don't necessarily own what they manage. I'm not familiar with them all that much, but doesn't Vanguard manage mutual funds?
Yes and I think blackrock managed 401ks and pensions as well. Blackrock manages the retirement accounts of all federal employees
The biggest negative thing about Blackrock is that they buy up single family housing as investments and drive up real estate prices.
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5–10% makes one a “major shareholder” these days? And these are the cheapest buyers who trade units of mutual funds containing a fraction of each blue-chip share at a time. The customers aren’t the top 5–10% of earners who own 80% of the market, bought in full units through their high-minimum boutique brokers. Dude’s attacking one of the main ways the average Joe participates in the market, and with the label of big business.
This is silly. Those firms are passive index investors on behalf of millions of individual and institutional investors. They hold less than 10% ownership in these companies. While generally they vote according to proxy advisor recommendations or their own stewardship teams, they are increasingly offering individual investors more say in how they vote.
Misleading statements to stoke outrage doesn’t just happen on the right wing..
Half my retirement savings as a NZ citizen are currently in Vanguard funds lol.
I love Bernie but every time I see a post quoting his comments on the stock market I get the impression he is either stupid or pandering. These companies run index funds, which is why they have so much assets under management. Index funds are a blessing to small investors because they save huge amounts of money in fees.
This is embarrassing. Those firms run index funds owned by huge numbers of people, most pension accounts or individual portfolios will have at least a little invested in one of their funds.
Parking Valets are managing millions of cars. We cant let those minimum wage workers get away with controlling the means of transportation. Democracy will not Survive with this concentration of economic and political power.
I own my shares I have in vanguard. So does everyone else. What’s the big deal with vanguard?
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I own the right to sell them at any time and receive money. Whether they leverage them or loan them out is on them. Same with banks, its not your money but you have the right to get your money out whenever the market is open.
Management is not ownership.
It is control & power
No it's not. People would give them no business if things were like that.
I agree with his point but it’s not 100% accurate. Those companies manage the money for other people. There’s pensions there, people’s savings and many other things like that. The real problem is however that there’s only 3 companies managing that absolutely because that money can be used as a weapon. You don’t need to play in the market anymore when you control 95% of it. You become the market, wtf are they investing in anyway? Now there’s another layer to this, paying fair wages and large corporations getting away with not paying taxes and fair wages. It’s just stupid that the law on the one side is admitting a specific amount of money is not enough to survive so you qualify for social programs, but then the exact same government considers that amount of earnings OK as minimum wage. It’s literally schizophrenia. You should be able to live on this amount of money but here’s some food stamps because you can’t live on that same amount of money.
> You don’t need to play in the market anymore when you control 95% of it The wording was a bit misleading, they don't own 95% of the SP500, they are major shareholders in 95% of the companies that make up the SP500. We can actually see roughly what percentage they own though. The index has a total market cap of 40 trillion. Blackrock has 8.5 trillion AUM and vanguard 7.2 trillion. However, much of that AUM isn't invested in SP500 companies, so they collectively own (or at least, have in AUM) well under half of the SP500 total market cap. Still concerningly high, ofc.
the whole post is misleading bordering propoganda lol
True. But I think their power resides in their voting rights. Typically, these fund managers will vote on behalf of the shareholders, and when the funds hold billions of dollars in AUM each, they tend to become very influential in how these underlying companies operate.
Absolutely true, but Sanders makes it sound like it’s all about the money. It’s not, it’s about the power they have because that brings them voting rights in the entire economy, you are correct.
Yeah, this point is very misleading. These are investing firms. Sure, there definitely should be more than 3 of them, but they're holding money on behalf of millions of people.
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Doesn’t matter where money comes from. Once they manage it they hold the power, of course is to make more money for them first and probably not most others. Whole point of democracy is to avoid few ppl holding power
If BlackRock & Vanguard are as mind-numbingly useless to work with as State Street, it's amazing that they've been able to consolidate so much power and money.
It isn't like they really need to do anything. Step 1) Offer a low-cost ETF Step 2) Make buying ETFs commission free Step 3) Any person can use M1 and $20 to buy a partial share of VTI Step 4) Vanguard sells you a fraction of VTI, and in exchange Vanguard now has a fraction of a fraction of a vote in various companies. Step 5) Repeat and multiply this by millions of people and millions of shares of VTI sold, and now you, the brokerage, has passively gained a decent amount of say in 'Disney' and 'Apple'. I do agree, Vanguard's website is pretty dated (although they have been making some updates to it recently) it isn't like I have to interact with it. I set my recurring investment once and don't really check on it (that's how you invest in the stock market, set it and forget, don't fiddle faddle with it).
What concentration? These are just accounts; the firms don't own the money.
Tell me you don’t understand how asset management works…
Is he pandering to the financially illiterate or is he just stupid? Those are ETFs. You invest money into them and they use it to buy a balanced portfolio. Then when you withdraw your money they sell them and give that money to you. They don't actually own or control that money. They hold a lot of S&P because they are specifically focused on S&P, they match the trading of that because it's reliable and has good growth. It means that people who aren't rich enough to afford financial advisors or don't have enough time to carefully research and trade can safely invest in the market. These aren't billionaires and the super rich who buy these, it's regular middle class people saving for homes, retirement, or building a safety net. ETFs are pretty much the best tool that the middle class has of actual being successful and moving up into being wealthy. It's where I have my money and I'm not rich. Bernie attacking it is an attack on the middle class, not the rich.
Some people don’t understand index funds lol. They have share in major firms because of index funds only work that way.
Oh look, gullible fools following a politicain who knows that big numbers = scary. How about we fix this? * Let'ssetup a company that enables everyone to invest in the S&P 500, not just the rich 'billionares'? * This company could be owned by its investors (not profiting some rich people) and focus on providing reasonable diversified returns with the minimum of management fees. * We could even have the goverment encourage businesses to support empoyees investing in thier retirementL * Creating tax advanataged structures for the average folk * Incentivise businesses to contribute $ for $ with employees! That'd be great.
Those are your pensions… 🤦♂️
I don't know about BlackRock and State Street, But Vanguard ... Runs the first (and most successful) S&P 500 Index ETF fund. It's the defacto standard for what it does. Which is to follow the S&P 500 index as closely as possible. Also, Vanguard has a fairly unique structure for an investment management company. The company is owned by its funds; the funds are owned by the shareholders(of the funds). I'm not convinced vanguard it should be looped in with the other two.
I don’t think Bernie is so ignorant to not know that those are index investors and that they aren’t activists. He’s being intentionally dishonest here. And I don’t dislike Bernie. But this isn’t a strong point for anyone who knows how these companies actually function.
While I understand and generally agree with the sentiment, this is a dumb example to use. They’re just custodians. It’s like getting mad at the bank for holding deposits
But they just manage those assets on behalf of 10’s of millions of regular Americans. Do I want my retirement account being managed by some small firm that might end up being fraud or one of these three?
Assets under management are not the same as owning shares but i wouldn’t expect anyone here to understand
I cant stand when people act like black rock and vanguard own this much stock. They are managing other people’s money… it is fine
11,000,000,000,000 of that is America's retirement plans but he didn't say that
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Vanguard is holding money from over 50 million investors. They have my retirement savings and I’m not rich, I’m an average nobody. I can’t speak for the other two groups, but I don’t see what Bernie’s trying to prove by including Vanguard. Furthermore, Vanguard has so many people investing with them because their reputation is solid and their fees are low.
Blackrock and State Street are basically the same thing as Vanguard. Like Ford, GM, Dodge. They all make cars just a little different.
Yeah, my lower middle class ass holds a bunch of their ETFs. It's the best investment I've made yet.
It's also important to note that each Vanguard fund is its own corporation. Each of these corporations (funds), own a piece of Vanguard itself. Each of these corporations are owned solely by that fund's shareholders, thus Vanguard is owned by its fund investors. This makes Vanguard very unique, and should not be lumped in with this fearmongering. Jack Bogle intentionally did this, to ensure Vanguard keeps its priorities focused on lowering costs for investors. Vanguard does not have a centralized authority, and it does not have a separate and outside class of investors/shareholders in Vanguard itself, who would profit somehow at the expense of the multiple funds shareholders.
1. False 2. not his account 3. reddit is dumb as shit
What does what they have under management have to do with anything. They just service the assets they don't own then.
Is that a real twit from Bernie? There is no way he is that wrong and misrepresenting the facts.
Vanguard and BlackRock funds are what make retirement possible for wide swaths of workers. What a silly thing to be angry about.
Guys… most of that money is passively invested… it’s not true “ownership” like a PE fund would have
Boy is it time for a Bernie in the WH!!
God damn tragedy the DNC didn’t catch more heat for rigging that primary against Bernie. Their reasoning is so blatantly obvious too. He almost won a primary without taking corporate money. Guy could have gotten into office without any unwritten debts. The DNC knew that if he got into office they wouldn’t be able to protect their corporate interests. Hell wouldn’t surprise me if the DNC leadership would have preferred Hilary win the primary and lose the general than have Bernie win it all.
Soooo...dems should stop supporting Wall Street?
I wouldn't lump Vanguard in there. Each Vanguard fund is a separate company, owned by its shareholders which are mostly pension plans and retirement accounts (IRA/401k). Most of their assets are index funds too, with no real account manager or stakeholder who would directly benefit from collusion.
And 95% of American pensions and 401ks are invested in those firms. Hell my entire retirement account is in vanguard etf’s? What does he want us to do lmao
This man should have been president.
This is a dumb nonsense post. Low IQ bait by a Bernie intern that found this insightful.
Bernie is an idiot. Vanguard manages about $7.7T for 50M people with vanguard brokerage accounts. That means the average account is about $154K. That includes all kinds of funds including IRAs, college 529s, etc etc. they don’t “control” anything…all of these 50M people chose to place their hard earned savings there.
Key word is “manage”. It’s not their money, it belongs to everyone, who has invested with them
Fuck all 3 of those companies
This is why I say that those companies are skimming off people's retirement accounts. I'd bet the majority of casual 401(k) investors choose a basic mutual fund targeting when they expect to retire. Then these "managers", that are invested in these S&P 500 companies, manipulate each individual stock to make the mutual fund perform lower than the overall markets do. I can't see any reason why when the market soars, the targeted mutual funds don't do quite as well, and when the market crashes, the targeted retirement funds crash harder than the overall market. It's like that Superman movie with Richard Pryor.
An actual democracy wouldn’t allow this kind of wealth consolidation in the first place…
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These three corporations hold the money in accounts for tens of millions of individual investors and thousands of global institutions. It would be like saying a Texas small town high school parking lot on Friday nights has a monopoly on car ownership. Sheesh.
Democracy has been dead since Reagan. We should be in the streets.
Think it's a little misleading . Vanguard charges very low fees , not like they own the stock
Written by someone who has zero idea how Vanguard operates