If you were asking how it gets fixed, that I do not pretend to know.

I guess I like to pretend. The fix is social democracy, and this is why: The more people you have actively participating in government, the stronger your democracy, and the lower the corruption.

Corruption is at the heart of these issues. It is what causes a ripple effect of an alternative reality just so some wealthy person can exploit the labor market a tiny bit more, or make their stock value jump a few percentage points. We may not ever be able to fully remove money from politics, but we can at least work to make it irrelevant to politics...and we can only do that through regulating the ever living **** out of campaign donations, striking down poison pills like Citizens United, and get back to building a strong and verdant democracy. Because without that, we're looking at this incoherent song and dance for generations to come.