In Lybia they can't express their political opinions and here we don't! That is so strange. More people vote for American Idol than in our elections. What the heck is going on? Life was easier when we had 10% at the bottom of the heap and 10% wealthy, something in our dreams we could aspire to. In those day (1950's and early 1960's) the very rich paid a lot of taxes, the more they made, the more they paid, and it was only the very poor, that bottom 10% that received some kind of assistance from the government. The Middle, that huge workhorse of our population, had jobs, worked hard and carried the "American Dream".
How did all this get derailed? Mostly what we like to do and find it easiest to do is to be critical of what we can closely see. Now we are after the Unions and their pension funds. The same arguments were applied to Women's Liberation. If women were allowed into the workplace it would reduce money paid to the men. They would work for less and destroy it for the men! and the same argument for immigration, they will work for less and destroy it for everyone. There is some merit to this argument and everything we do is not done necessarily for the reasons we claim to do them. For instance, at the end of World War II there was a huge problem of what to do with all the returning servicemen. What would happen with millions of people entering the workforce and competing in the job market? What will we do with the thousands of servicemen in our current wars when they return? That is why the GI Bill was created. Keep them out of the workforce and send them to school. At the same time we extended mandatory public education from 16 years old until 18 years old. Manipulation of the work force! There are lots of good things that came from this, it is just that we did not necessarily do them for good reasons.
What is happening now is the bottom of the heap is getting huge and as hard as we might be working we are finding ourselves there. The "bottom" is closer to forty percent! These are people that need assistance, the "working poor" and those without work at all. We see no way out but to lower the standards of those just above us, only one rung up this ladder, the union workers. We quickly forget the benefits that have trickled down to us, the forty hour weeks, the paid breaks, the vacations, any health benefits and other's.
It seems that in losing our ability to climb we want to destroy those that have.
This is only the beginning of a process, pulling down the rungs of a ladder of those just ahead of us. We will attempt other methods, easy things in response to what we see around us. Their will be attempts to reduce minimum wage. Instead of thinking maybe we should earn more we will think that "Hamburger flippers" deserve less! And we will go after small businesses with a furry. They are all around us, in every neighborhood and we never seen the 70 hour weeks and hard work they do and the risks they are willing to take. They too are just "one rung up" from us and there will be attempts to bring them down.
Personally I don't think any of this is necessary. All the cuts that are being made by various governments amount to pennies and every one of them is from this lower end of the ladder. The first thing local governments always do is close the parks!
The math is all different now because there is no "top 10%". The highest rungs of the ladder now belong to the top 2% and they control over 40% of everything. The bottom 40% control nothing and the rest of us are scrambling, eating each other, destroying what is around us to keep our foothold.
We are, for the first time in history, fighting two major wars without any increase in taxes! The theory behind this is pretty simple math. If we had to really pay for these wars we might rethink them, find a different way or just get out. So our wars, costing Trillions of dollars.and taking care of those wounded costing even more Trillions of dollars, is all borrowed money. You think our National Debt is serious? Each of us owes over $45,000, man, women and child, each of us!
Truly this is all pretty simple math and has nothing to do with what a person believes. You may have any political persuasion that you want and the math remains the same. You can chop at the bottom rungs of this ladder as much as you want and it may make you feel better but you are still going to owe $45,000. It won't make a dent. It is like making the minimum payment on a visa bill.
If there were serious effort at getting our house in order, serious effort to reduce our National Debt, we would get out of these wars and then return to a fair taxing strategy. In the meantime it seems we are piranha in a fish bowl eating each other. We have become this cancer!
My Other Blog is Here.
How did all this get derailed? Mostly what we like to do and find it easiest to do is to be critical of what we can closely see. Now we are after the Unions and their pension funds. The same arguments were applied to Women's Liberation. If women were allowed into the workplace it would reduce money paid to the men. They would work for less and destroy it for the men! and the same argument for immigration, they will work for less and destroy it for everyone. There is some merit to this argument and everything we do is not done necessarily for the reasons we claim to do them. For instance, at the end of World War II there was a huge problem of what to do with all the returning servicemen. What would happen with millions of people entering the workforce and competing in the job market? What will we do with the thousands of servicemen in our current wars when they return? That is why the GI Bill was created. Keep them out of the workforce and send them to school. At the same time we extended mandatory public education from 16 years old until 18 years old. Manipulation of the work force! There are lots of good things that came from this, it is just that we did not necessarily do them for good reasons.
What is happening now is the bottom of the heap is getting huge and as hard as we might be working we are finding ourselves there. The "bottom" is closer to forty percent! These are people that need assistance, the "working poor" and those without work at all. We see no way out but to lower the standards of those just above us, only one rung up this ladder, the union workers. We quickly forget the benefits that have trickled down to us, the forty hour weeks, the paid breaks, the vacations, any health benefits and other's.
It seems that in losing our ability to climb we want to destroy those that have.
This is only the beginning of a process, pulling down the rungs of a ladder of those just ahead of us. We will attempt other methods, easy things in response to what we see around us. Their will be attempts to reduce minimum wage. Instead of thinking maybe we should earn more we will think that "Hamburger flippers" deserve less! And we will go after small businesses with a furry. They are all around us, in every neighborhood and we never seen the 70 hour weeks and hard work they do and the risks they are willing to take. They too are just "one rung up" from us and there will be attempts to bring them down.
Personally I don't think any of this is necessary. All the cuts that are being made by various governments amount to pennies and every one of them is from this lower end of the ladder. The first thing local governments always do is close the parks!
The math is all different now because there is no "top 10%". The highest rungs of the ladder now belong to the top 2% and they control over 40% of everything. The bottom 40% control nothing and the rest of us are scrambling, eating each other, destroying what is around us to keep our foothold.
We are, for the first time in history, fighting two major wars without any increase in taxes! The theory behind this is pretty simple math. If we had to really pay for these wars we might rethink them, find a different way or just get out. So our wars, costing Trillions of dollars.and taking care of those wounded costing even more Trillions of dollars, is all borrowed money. You think our National Debt is serious? Each of us owes over $45,000, man, women and child, each of us!
Truly this is all pretty simple math and has nothing to do with what a person believes. You may have any political persuasion that you want and the math remains the same. You can chop at the bottom rungs of this ladder as much as you want and it may make you feel better but you are still going to owe $45,000. It won't make a dent. It is like making the minimum payment on a visa bill.
If there were serious effort at getting our house in order, serious effort to reduce our National Debt, we would get out of these wars and then return to a fair taxing strategy. In the meantime it seems we are piranha in a fish bowl eating each other. We have become this cancer!
My Other Blog is Here.
No opinions here? That is my point exactly!
ReplyDeleteI read this with great interest and it helped me in so many ways to understand the USA a bit more. I feel sad about what I read here because I am aware that where I live our government looks over the pond towards the USA and want to do just the same. I find that really frightening and more so after reading this post. Thanks jerry.
ReplyDeletethanks, Ralph, the frightening part isn't in the statistics. It is the fact that were are so silent about it all, not willing to investigate anything, form opinions based on emotions and sound bites and don't seem to understand our own history.
ReplyDelete