Feudalism is back, with a vengeance.

Right now, the Wisconsin legislature is considering a bill that would make Wisconsin the nation’s 25th right-to-work-for-less state. All signs point to this bill becoming law. The state senate passed it by a margin of 17 to 15 last week, and Republican Governor Scott Walker, who supports right-to-work-for-less laws, said he will sign it if it reaches his desk.

This is a disaster in the making for Wisconsin. Workers in right to work-for-less-states make less money, get skimpier health benefits, and are more likely to die on the job than their workers in non-right-to-work-for-less states.

The line from Wisconsin Republicans, of course, is that the proposed right-work-for-less law will improve their state’s economy and help build the middle-class. But in reality, the exact opposite will happen. That’s because right-to-work-for-less laws bring capitalism a lot closer to its natural, unregulated state, and capitalism, in its natural, unregulated state tends toward massive levels of inequality that we usually associate with feudalism.

It looks a lot like this:

At the top, there is a very small class of superrich oligarchs and financiers. They’re the monarchs of capitalist society.

Below them, there is a slightly larger, but still very, very small, class of professionals and mercantilists - doctor, lawyers, shop-owners - who help keep things running for the superrich and supply the working poor with their needs. They’re nobles or knights of capitalist society.

And at the very bottom there is the great mass of people who make up the working poor. They have no wealth - in fact they're typically in debt most of their lives - and can barely survive on what little money they make. They’re the peasants of capitalist society.

So, for average working people, there is no such thing as a middle class in "natural” capitalism. Wealth accumulates at the very top among the elites, not among everyday working people. Inequality is the default option, just as it was in Medieval Europe under feudalism. The only ways a true middle class can emerge in a capitalist society are by massive social upheaval - a middle class emerged after the Black Plague in Europe in the 14th century - or by government intervention.

Read more here.

-Thom

Tonight on The Big Picture on RT TV at 7pm and 10pm... Obamacare opponents should be careful what they wish for (check your local listings for stations or stream at RT or Free Speech TV, and catch past shows on Youtube)

Be sure to check out our new videos: CARBON, LAST HOURS & GREEN WORLD RISING - narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio

Need to Know: Obamacare opponents should be careful what they wish for
- Wendell Potter, Deadly Spin

Big Picture Rumble:
- Andrew Kloster, The Heritage Foundation
- Bev Smith, The Bev Smith Show (radio)
- Sean Noble, American Encore

Best of the Rest: Boehner blinked...will DHS be his Waterloo?
- Eleanor Clift, The Daily Beast

Community Square

"Where Are Businesses with "Interests" in the Middle East?"

Wednesday's Daily Stack

Hour One: Obamacare Subsidies Argued at the Supreme Court
- Shane Farnan, U.S. Supreme Court correspondent for the Talk Radio News Service / Associate Producer for The Thom Hartmann Program

Article: "Preview – Obamacare Returns to the Supreme Court" by Shane Farnan.

Article: "Obamacare Subsidies Argued at the Supreme Court" by Shane Farnan.

Article: "The Odds That Each Justice Will Vote To Destroy Obamacare" by Ian Millhiser.

Article: "10th Amendment" "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people".

Article: "Constitutional Avoidance" by LII.

Case: "Bush v. Gore", 2000.

Case: "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission" (2010).

Article: "Two sides enter the ring for another Supreme Court battle over health care" by Robert Barnes.

Live from the Families USA / SCOTUS radio row
- Wendell Potter, Deadly Spin / Center for Public Integrity / Center for Media and Democracy

Article: "Obamacare opponents should be careful what they wish for" by Wendell Potter.

Article: "Confederate States of America - Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union", 1852.

Article: "Jimmy Kimmel Asks Pedestrians If They Prefer Obamacare Or The Affordable Care Act" by Ross Luippold.

Law: "Clean Air Act", 1963.

Article: "2nd Amendment". A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Case: "AZ State Legislature v. AZ Independent Redistricting".

Live from the Families USA / SCOTUS radio row
- Eleanor Clift, Daily Beast

Article: "Why Jeb Wouldn’t Pull The Plug On Terri Schiavo" by Eleanor Clift.

Hour Two: Live from the Families USA / SCOTUS radio row
- Representative Jan Schakowsky (D - IL)

Video: 2015 Resolution: Protect and Expand Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid.

Bill: "United States National Health Care Act" by H.R. 676 - Rep. John Conyers.

Law: "Taft-Hartley Labor Act", 1947.

Article: "Justice Dept. could sue Ferguson for racial discrimination" by Evan Perez and Alexandra Jaffe.

Live from the Families USA / SCOTUS radio row
- Karen Davenport, National Women's Law Center

Article: "Supreme Court chief justice likely to back healthcare law" by Brianne J. Gorod.

Article: "Scott Walker Comes Out in Support of 20-Week Federal Abortion Ban" by David Knowles.

Article: "Supreme Court to Weigh In On Protections for Pregnant Workers" by Tierney Sneed.

Article: "The racist roots of 'right to work' laws" by Chris Kromm.

Article: "4th Amendment". "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.".

Article: "5th Amendment" (double jeopardy, witness against self, due process, taking clause, due compensation).

Hour Three: Live from the Families USA / SCOTUS radio row
- Sister Simone Campbell, Attorney / NETWORK (a National Catholic Social Justice Lobby)

Book: A Nun on the Bus: How All of Us Can Create Hope, Change, and Community by Sister Simone Campbell.

Bible: "Matthew 25:31-46 (New International Version)". "All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats."

Quote: "There is no such thing as society" Margaret Thatcher.

Article: "In film, Walker talks of 'divide and conquer' union strategy" by Jason Stein and Patrick Marley, May 10, 2012.

Article: "Disgorge the Cash" by J.W. Mason.

Live from the Families USA / SCOTUS radio row
- Congressman John Sarbanes (D-MD, 3rd District)

Article: "Americans Rally Around The President As Obama Approval Jumps 5 Points Thanks To Netanyahu" by Jason Easley.

Site: Haaretz.

Site: Jerusalem Post.

Article: "Obama signs funding bill for Homeland Security" by Ben Kamisar.

Article: "State Children's Health Insurance Program" (CHIP).

Article: "Leaked cables show Netanyahu’s Iran bomb claim contradicted by Mossad" by Seumas Milne, Ewen MacAskill and Clayton Swisher.

Article: "Retired Israeli veterans warn against speech" by Ruth Eglash and William Booth.

Thursday on The Thom Hartmann Program, 3-6pm ET

We'll have the latest news and information...everything you need to know to win the water cooler wars...

And, the best of the rest of the news along with your calls right here on...

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Will SCOTUS rule that tax subsidies only apply in state-run exchanges?

Vote here!

Why Economists Are Demanding Universal Health Care

Politics Panel: ObamaCare - People will Die if SCOTUS sides w/GOP

The Good - The Bad - and the Very Very Appetently Ugly

Crazy Alert - Our New Vegetable Overlords

Politics Panel: Why is anybody listening to Bibi about Iran?

War...brought to you by climate change

How Did WI Become Ground Zero For Right-Wing Union-Busting?

Full Show 3/3/2015: America Needs a Single Payer Healthcare System

In tonight’s show, Congressman Mark Pocan (D-WI) joins Thom on set to discuss the DHS funding bill and Gov. Scott Walker’s war against unions.

The Big Picture politics panel discusses Israeli PM Netanyahu’s address to congress, Arizona GOP fighting for more gerrymandering, the King vs. Burwell Supreme Court case, Right-to-Work Laws, Corporate Dems shift away from Sen. Warren, and the Department of Homeland Security bill. Hughey Newsome of Project 21 Black Leadership Council, Mike Malloy, host of “The Mike Malloy Show” and conservative commentator for The Blaze and the Washington Times, Jennifer Kerns, join Thom on set.

Thom gives his Daily Take – America Needs a Single Payer Healthcare System. Plus, Your Take My Take Live, Crazy Alert, Geeky Science, and The Good The Bad and The Very Very Ugly.

Jeb Bush and Where the Republicans are Going in 2016...

ObamaCare Opponents: Careful What you Wish for...

Another ObamaCare Challenge Before SCOTUS...

Caller: I got Screwed by a For-Profit College!

Universal Health Care takes Away the Fear Factor...

ObamaCare has Improved Medicare...

What Happens if Insurance Exchanges go Away?

Boehner Caves on DHS Funding...

Patients over Politics: Health Care for All...

Could One Sentence Derail ObamaCare?

Bill Bratton: People are Killing Each Other over Pot...

Sen. Sherrod Brown: Our Health Care System isn't Serving us.