It occurred to me that this anger is completely misplaced. It is as if the wealthy capitalistic culture of America has convinced the average middle class person in this country that their unfulfilled desires and their shrinking wallets are the fault of tax dollars going to the poor. That is just not the case! I wish that knowledge and wisdom could be conveyed to others through the publication of facts… But, our culture buys into the pictures and stories provided to us on TV and on the internet. Facts are not purveyed with the same fervency as “the story”.
For example: The average American does not have less because of healthcare provided to the poor, the average American does not have less because of food stamps given to the poverty stricken. The average American has less in this society because we worship capitalism above all else and thus put profit making before human beings. Instead of assuring that everyone who needs health care gets health care, we legislate massive wealth to drug production companies by allowing them to charge obscenely marked up drugs to Medicare(taxpayer dollars). Durable medical equipment is but another, in a long list of ridiculously priced “health care” products that the American public pays for. The American public pays dearly for these items – not because they are valuable, but because we have allowed our system to become perverted with a goal and end product of profit rather than health for human beings.
This perversion runs rampant in our culture. Insurance companies have been profitable in America for decades. When the profitability was threatened by numerous hurricanes, all of those decades of wealth and plenty were forgotten and insurance companies were allowed to close down and leave the state. After all, if there really were going to be a lot of claims then that would be Florida’s problem – not the grossly profitable insurance industry’s problem. This is the thinking that has gotten us to where we are today. Any interruption of profitability is to be plugged up by the government. Who is the government? Why, none other than the taxpayers – that is who – you and me. Instead of understanding our fundamental error, we are attacking the poor, disenfranchised children of the Americas.
I think we should be angry, I just think we are aiming it into the wrong direction. There are those who want us to believe it is ‘the poor’ who suck from the rest of us and thus make us poorer. A more accurate picture is that our culture is finally catching up with us. We forgot that the point of capitalism is for humans to make living better, humans being the key word here. When capitalism becomes a weapon that is consumed by only a few, then it becomes a poisoned concept.