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By Bob Hennelly

Courtesy of InsiderNJ

It’s everywhere and impacting everything — and yet we rarely discuss it because we have come to accept it as the natural order of things, a kind of Machina ex Deus conveyor belt to a “profitable” tomorrow no matter how miserable that future might be. Yet, we still have free will and when something isn’t working, or it could work better, we have to summon the character to act.

For decades, encouraged by the U. S. tax code that promotes capital concentration and corporate consolidation. We’ve watched as practically every kind of business — whether it be a bank, utility, drug company, supermarket, meat processor, beer producer, or hospital — has been absorbed by some larger entity. This means that the beneficial ownership of something as vital as your local water utility may well reside outside your state, indeed outside the United States. And as the controls flows outward, so does the capital.

It’s ironic, considering that the United States came into being as part of the time-released deconstruction of the British Empire, now has spawned so many multinational behemoths.

This Bud’s for you—not really—it’s owner is Anheuser-Busch InBev, a multinational based in Belgium. Our tax system likes big companies, the bigger the better. It can help itself at pyramid building. Once you get it, there’s no mystery to why we continue to see the widening of income inequality. For a couple of generations as corporations grew, wages remained flat or declined relative to the real cost of living.

Our dysfunctional Congress is no match for these global corporate giants especially since so many of our elected representatives have their hand out for donations from them or their lobbyists agents.

Consider the scramble in Congress to prohibit the distribution or hosting of the app TikTok here in the U.S. unless the Chinese-based ByteDance sells off its stake in it. At issue is whether the data of 170 million American subscribers held by the private company could be somehow leveraged by the Chinese government. The Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act sailed through the House by a lopsided 352-65 bi-partisan vote.

Earlier this week, Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora had to fire off a quick letter to Starbuck CEO Laxman Narasimhan entreating the multinational executive to reconsider the closure of its state capital location because it would deal “a significant blow to the progress….made in fostering a more equitable and vibrant city.” Gusciora recounted Starbuck’s propitious opening in 2017 as part of the global brand’s commitment to distressed cities to uplift at-risk youth by providing them their first job in what was described by the chain as a “Community Store.”

Starbucks, with over $36 billion in annual revenue, has close to 36,000 stores most of which are in 79  countries other than the United States. After years of dinging its own ‘socially conscious’ branding with its union busting activities, last month the global coffee giant and Workers United agreed on a “path forward” after close to 400 Starbucks locations on 43 states voted to go union.

Gusciora is hoping for another change of heart on the closure. He told this reporter via text that he “had a productive meeting with them [Starbucks] today” and that they met with Gov. Murphy yesterday. The location was slated to be closed at the end of this month.

Pastor Rupert Hall leads the Turning Point United Methodist Church in Trenton. He’s hoping for a reprieve even though two brand new independent coffee shops have opened, the Orchid House and the Slammin Brew.

“Being a neighbor of Starbucks this would be a real blow to our effort of rejuvenating downtown Trenton,” Hall told InsiderNJ. “The Starbucks has hosted a number of community events, specifically open MIC nights, which have drawn an intergenerational audience and participants. Starbucks has become a central meeting place for informal meetings for various businesses and political leaders.”

Hall said the Starbucks’ survival took on added significance because unlike so many other businesses in the central business district, it endured despite the “drop in foot traffic” during the mass death event known as COVID. 

It’s hard to overstate Trenton’s significance during the American Revolution. At the site of the now vacant First Trenton National Bank, a marker commemorated that it was the place where New Jersey ratified the U.S. Constitution in December of 1787. More than a decade earlier in December of 1776, New Jersey’s capital was the scene of the Battle of Trenton, where after a high stakes crossing of the Delaware River, General George Washington “defeated a garrison of Hessian mercenaries” setting “the stage for another success at Princeton a week later, and boosted the morale of the American troops.”

Trenton’s population was at its highest in 1950 at almost 130,000. Today, it’s dropped to 90,000. Coming out of the WWII production boom, there were over 70,000 private sector jobs with companies like Lenox, Boehm, American Standard, and Roebling located in the city. 

“With its strategic location on the Delaware River, as well as its rail and canal access, Trenton developed into an industrial and manufacturing hub early in this country’s history,” according to Trenton.250, the city’s longterm master plan. “Ironworks and potteries flourished first in Trenton, with steel and ceramics developing into iconic Trenton businesses, followed by rubber manufacturing….After the city’s chamber of commerce had held a contest for a civic slogan, ‘Trenton Makes…The World Takes’ was selected to reflect the city’s manufacturing prowess.”

Our tax policy actually incentivized U.S. corporations to expand outside of the United States, setting into motion the deindustrialization of places like Trenton. Now, as President Biden noted in his State of the Union address, their rate of taxation lags far behind what working households have to pay Uncle Sam. We need a realignment to this lopsided prosperity that leaves tens of millions of Americans behind.

Close to two thirds of Trenton’s households are living in poverty or struggling month-to-month to make ends meet, according to data from the latest United Ways ALICE (asset limited, income constrained, and employed) Report. The per capita income is $25,633, as compared to over $51,000 statewide. With a median household income of $52,508, Trenton’s is roughly half of the state’s over $96,000 median household income.

In the aggregate, the United States has posted some strong economic gains of late, yet there are a lot of places like Trenton that systemic racism, health disparities, wealth concentration and longterm disinvestment have left behind. These zip codes fared the worst during COVID and when Sen. Joe Manchin and Congressional Republicans pulled the plug on social supports like the Expanded Child Tax Credit, millions of children fell back into poverty including thousands in Trenton. Similarly, the ending of the eviction and foreclosure moratoriums, along with the purging of the Medicaid rolls pulled the safety net on families in freefall before COVID.

Mayor Gusciora says he saw it in his city.

“They are absolutely stressed,” he told this reporter. “People are losing the security of their homes in that landlords are increasing their rents. They are not affordable anymore. The prices for houses in Trenton have grown astronomically. I could probably get double for my house, but that doesn’t do any good for people that need affordable housing.”

Trenton’s Mayor worries about the 3,000 vacant homes, many of them so-called row houses, where during the winter the city’s homeless population find shelter in. “We have squatters living in these abandoned homes and the only option they have is to start fires inside them” which jeopardizes the lives of the homeless, firefighters and “those in the legally occupied homes literally next door,” he said.

Like so much of the rest of the country, Trenton has problematic vacancies in critical municipal jobs like that of plumbing inspector.

“It’s hard to get plumbing inspectors because you really need to have plumbing skills — and a municipality can’t possibly pay the same rate as a plumber could make on his own, so that’s a real challenge,” Gusciora said. “Get a backlog in inspections and that affects economic development. We have developers calling me all the time saying when are we going to get the building inspected so we can move the project forward?”

This week, the Washington Post reported President Biden came to a Black and Latino neighborhood in Milwaukee that was emblematic “of racist urban policy” that resulted in it being “cut off from the nation’s growing prosperity” when “17,000 homes and 1,000 businesses were destroyed in the 1960s to make way for an interstate highway.”

“In conjunction with the Midwestern swing, the White House unveiled $3.3 billion in federal grants to remove or retrofit highways that separate minority neighborhoods in many cities from jobs, entertainment centers, hospitals and other services,” the Washington Post reported.

“Too many communities across America faced the loss of land, wealth and possibilities that still reverberate today. Today we’re recognizing that history to make new history,” Biden said, according to the newspaper. “For communities too often left behind, we’re rebuilding the roads, we’re repairing cracks in the sidewalk. We’re creating places to live and play safely and to breathe clean air.”

Gusciora told this reporter he would welcome a Biden visit.

“He would be welcomed, actually — when I went to the Mayor’s conference I met him in the White House. When we had the closing reception, which the president hosted, I went up to him and told him I was from Trenton, and he said we were neighbors, and that we had a lot of history in Trenton,” Gusciora said.

But what about its future, Mr. President?