In my opinion, there are 3 huge, long-festering, potentially catastrophic challenges to our nation that stand out above a number of other serious problems we face: climate change & environmental degradation, poverty & the huge & growing wealth gap between rich & poor, and our gigantic debt. But upon examining these problems, why they keep getting ignored, and how we might achieve their solution, it soon became clear to me that we face another extremely dangerous challenge that makes it difficult to tackle these problems. In general it is the corruption of our democracy in various insidious ways, and specifically how giant corporations are controlling our government and our national policies in a way that is very detrimental to the well-being of our country and world.
We are losing our democracy primarily because our congressmen are responding far more to the wishes of giant corporations than they are to the needs of citizens. We have become a Plutocracy/Corporatocracy. The Citizens United decision allowing unlimited and undisclosed financial contributions to political candidates only accelerated this process which was already well under way and had done much harm to society.
Simply repealing the Citizens United decision will not be sufficient. We must completely ban corporate money from elections: make separation of corporation & state as important a principle of our democracy as separation of church & state. Is it advisable that just a few individuals of a corporation that employs hundreds or thousands be allowed to spend millions of the company's money on certain candidates or issues that many, possibly even the majority, of the members of that company don't support? A large corporation's decisions affects far more than just the executives of that company. Certain shareholders might prefer that the money go to research & development to make better products and help the company become more competitive. Employees of the company might like that money to give them more decent wages. Consumers of that company's products might prefer that those products be made better and more affordable. Citizens of the communities where the company resides might prefer that the money be spent on reducing pollution & waste & toxins that the company produces, or that the company hire more people from their community. Instead that money is often used for policies that actually harm most of these people. The results of corporate influence on government has been to craft bills that increase government support (subsidies) for their industry (if not the company specifically),.reduce or eliminate their taxes (including creating tax loopholes), reduce or eliminate environmental & other kinds of regulations, and to reduce or in effect eliminate their competition, at the expense of the public at large.