The Republicans are once again crying “budget” as they are called upon to help the American people with Covid relief. They have blamed all of their inaction on the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi. Tax dollars and the budget are apparently meaningless words for this Congress.
I have to say that I am actually livid – not mad – livid. The Republicans know that the Feds are dumping money into the stock market. They are fully aware that our military budget is beyond any military budget in the world. The congress is aware of where all of our tax dollars are going. The congress is simply not going to help the American people by allowing them to have their own money to get them through the tough times of this pandemic.
Did you know – and lots of people don’t know this: Jerome Powell, Federal Reserve chairman has been pumping money into the stock market in order to “stabilize” it? Take a guess at how much he has dumped into the stock market? Initially the budget was 1.5 trillion dollars. Reuters reported a 3 trillion dollar investment as of July 13, 2020. Lest you not see what trillions mean, it’s 1,000 billions.
This is a direct transfer of taxpayer money to the wealthy owners of the stock market.
This is not “fine and dandy” because the Feds borrowed the money to make these investments: According to Ben Winck quoting Carmen Reinhart writing for Markets Insider 10-16-20:
Major economies may be well on their way to recovery, but outsized government borrowing runs the risk of fueling a financial crisis, the World Bank’s chief economist, Carmen Reinhart, said Thursday on Bloomberg TV.
Ben Winck goes on to say:
The path of governments’ fundraising and bond-buying is not sustainable and could spark debt crises should they continue, the economist said.
“This did not start as a financial crisis, but it is morphing into a major economic crisis with very serious financial consequences,” she said.
The results are staggering and Americans are suffering.
While Wall Street bailouts are an endless expense, help for human beings is not available. Nowhere is the Republican-way more clear than here: According to the New York Times, 8 million more people have slipped into poverty since May. Add that to those already in poverty, add that to the number of unemployed and we are seeing a disaster of epic proportions. It’s an unseen and unknowable disaster. Those in poverty, rarely speak out and rarely protest. However, there are consequences for all of us.
Is it really necessary to maintain a military budget that *by itself* is more than all other militarized countries combined?
The military industrial complex continues to fuel its own life while dousing the light of others. Why can’t our budget include humanistic endeavors like eradicating poverty and homelessness? How about healthcare for all?
JB Collection
America, what is your future? Will America return to feudalism? Will America always be known as having the biggest and most guns? Is that the America you would choose?
The Trump Boat Parades are the greatest examples of ignorant white privilege.
I have to say ignorant because if you are woke, you could not, would not participate in a Trump boat parade. With wisdom you could see that a boat parade is screaming “look at me and my money”.
Boats come from two types of homes: where dad does what he wants, mom says “don’t question him” and the boat payments are his way of saying “my money, I’ll spend it as I want”. The other home that a boat comes from is, the home where a boat is easily afforded and no one is deprived just because someone bought a boat.
No matter which home the boat comes from, a boat screams “I have excess dollars, look at me”. Boats are excessively expensive and the care of them is even more expensive.
Bernie’s Campaign
It’s not a good message in our economy. Not right now. There are millions of people without jobs, millions of families who don’t know where the next meal is coming from. Showing these families your money is like rubbing pepper on a kitchen cut; or rubbing salt onto a burn.
The Trump boat parades are indicative of an attitude that says “we don’t care about you and your suffering, we don’t care that you are starving, we have enough money and we can burn it”. What Trumpers don’t realize is that the people who don’t have enough money are the majority of people in this country. Pre-pandemic over 75% of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck. The country is hurting economically, more than anything else. More than anything else, we are facing economic deprivation.
It’s clear to a feeling person that showing off with money has been out of style since the nineties. No one appreciates ostentation.
The Trump boat parades are a way of identifying with Trump. It’s a way of saying “hey, greed and even racism is okay”. The wealthy are obsessed with the idea of not allowing anyone to take their own money – which is fair.
However, they (the wealthy) also want one other thing and that is to worship on the altar of capitalism. Capitalism is the thing that makes all stealing, raping and looting justified. After all, it is done for the almighty dollar.
Racism serves the purpose of having a handy victim so that no white has to feel “less than”. By having an entire race of humans that can be subjugated and told that they are less than, whites are able to keep their heads up high.
By identifying with Trump, whites are able to justify their greed. They are also able to be “better than” and to subjugate an entire other race. This is also why it is so hard for Trump supporters to give up on supporting Trump. White men can thoroughly identify with Trump. Old men whose values are under attack by the up and coming generations that cannot agree with their values.
Lots of people don’t want to give up the nineties, it was okay to be greedy and even condescending. It was especially gratifying to keep their boots on the necks of others. Feeling superior was a national pastime. Every working supervisor in America was busy grinding their feet onto the backs of working Americans.
None of this has changed. We are still a group of people that want to feel superior and one up on everyone else. Who doesn’t walk into a room trying to figure out how to present as smart, or moneyed or cool?
All Americans are complicit in the racism dance. We never did enough to resolve racism. We gave the concept a lot of lip service, but never enough real effort to eradicate racism. We could have outlawed racism decades ago. We didn’t. Just like the minimum wage, we sat complicitly allowing awful things to happen to others.
People see behind the lies they were taught in Government class.
Federal Capitol Building: Public Domain
My immature understanding of government from my Civics class and from my reading of John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize winning book Profiles in Courage was essentially flawed.
I learned that as a citizen, it was my duty to read about legislative candidates. I was told to understand the issues and vote on the candidate that I believed in. Based on the voting base, the successful congress member would then vote to benefit their own home base population. Always, congress was directed to work for the benefit of the people.
Because of something called “politics” politicians are doing things that are not good for the people. While we may call it politics, it is truly all about money. The politicians are in pursuit of money, vote on all matters big and small, only as a result of being paid to do it.
Public Domain
Currently, in this country, there appears to be no reason to stop a public mandate for “Medicare for All”. Yet, no political platform will get on board and fight for this important public right to healthcare. In fact, we are in a country, where one person, yes, that’s right, ONE person makes life and death decisions for everyone in America. (This is definitely not what the founding fathers planned.)
One man causes so many deaths, Mitch McConnell who has stopped all legislation as it sits on his desk. Untold numbers of new legislation proposed by the Democrats sit on this man’s desk (collecting dust). Caused deaths how, you ask…
“Your morning reminder that Mitch McConnell refused to take up any legislation to help states respond to COVID the whole month of June because he wanted to ram through as many conservative judges as possible.” @ChrisMurphyCT
Many attempts to legislate equal rights, if passed would prevent much of the rioting in this country. Relief efforts for the Corona virus disaster all sit on his desk. An increased minimum wage sits on Mitch McConnell’s desk.
What possible justification would there be for paying tipped workers $2.13 per hour (minimum wage)? The only justification that I know is that the legislators are lining their pockets with the blood of these same workers and taking millions in bribes to keep the status quo – status quo.
What possible justification is there for a minimum wage that no one can survive on ($7.25)?
In a different example, at the state level: One man has prevented so much wellness, Rick Scott who blocked the Medicaid expansion in Florida. How many deaths did Rick Scott cause by blocking the Medicaid expansion in Florida?
“A report by the Center on Budget and Policy Prioritiesreleased last week said states that expanded Medicaid showed significant reductions in death rates for older adults who fell into the income brackets that allowed them to gain the coverage.”
This isn’t the country that I learned about in my high school. The country I learned about included in the design a balance of power. How did we get to a point where one person can cause the death of others through legislative action or inaction?
How many of these legislators are taking money for some very specific purposes? For example, the world financial crisis caused by the banks:
JP Morgan is worth $2.4T, and only paid a $13B fine for their role in the ‘08 financial crisis. Our predatory capitalist system rewards greed, and punishes those who try to play by the rules. #BreakUpTheBanks#BreakTheDuoploly Quote Tweet Ryan Knight @ProudSocialist
JPMorgan quarterly earnings?
BREAKING: @JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. bank, just reported its highest quarterly revenue EVER during a pandemic that’s seen 40 million Americans lose their jobs and small-businesses decimated. I cannot stress this enough: #FuckCapitalism. It is killing everyone besides the top 1%. @4apeoplesparty
How many legislators did it take to keep JPMorgan Chase from suffering any dire consequences as a result of the 2008 financial crisis? How many legislators does it take to keep them from paying taxes and one step further from using those taxes to provide relief to millions of Americans who are suffering from the Coronavirus crisis?
Please help me understand why “Medicare for all” is not real, right now, today?
Health insurance statistics are not what we are being told. Medicare and Medicaid are the largest payers of healthcare in America and have been for decades. The balance of national health care dollars are spent by for profit insurance companies on healthy cherry picked people who insurers chase after for their healthcare dollars. Why? Because insuring them is cheap – they don’t file claims.
At this time, we are being bombarded with false information about who has lost healthcare as a result of the Covid crisis. Each research facility gives a different number or attempts to extrapolate a number of uninsured. Since the 90s, the uninsured number always stayed at around 38 million. Obama was able to reduce that number by half. Not only are we back up to 38 million, but we have surpassed it now. Trump kept peeling away at the Affordable Care Act and replaced it with nothing. Most people in America depend on their jobs to provide health care insurance, therefore coverage. So where are we now? The loss of jobs, the loss of health insurance.
I’ve never been an advocate for charities, because I see so few of them doing the right thing. Add that to the fact that charities are nothing more than a third party between you and the person who needs your donation.
That’s a fact, but beside the point. The point of this essay is that so many are coming forward with large and even mega donations for the Black Lives Matter movement. I think giving away money is just a way to assuage the guilt of not being a good human. Not being a good human, is this idea that “I have mine and you get yours, and if you don’t get yours, too bad”.
We Americans have been living like rugged individuals for hundreds of years. As Americans, we have not done the hard work that is involved in gaining equality for all. We have fallen far short of our forefathers goal: equality.
We have taken advantage of our myth of rugged individualism and have allowed all “others” to fall to the wayside. And let’s admit, we are at the wayside. The middle class is so small now as to be irrelevant.
What is the hard work of gaining equity for everyone and not just some? Well, let’s begin with economics. How have the large corporations and the legislature of this country been able to keep the minimum wage so low? It’s clear to everyone that the minimum wage is not a living wage.
All of the large corporations take advantage of the minimum wage laws. They may not pay the minimum, minimum, but they are paying so little that those who do these jobs cannot subsist. Take a look at McDonald’s, look at Walmart and look at Amazon. These are among the biggest employers in the United States. Not only are they taking advantage of the small wages, but the employee benefits are minimal as well.
The big employers play a game called “seasonal worker” or “temporary worker”. You can be a “seasonal worker” or a “temporary worker” for YEARS. Because you are a seasonal worker you can work forty hours and NOT be a full time employee. This allows the large employers to cheat you out of any benefits that you would be entitled to as a full time worker.
Papa John’s Pizza (the owner is a renowned racist) owns and lives in a 40,000 square feet house. He pays his staff $8.00 an hour with no benefits. This is an awful statement about our country. We have designed a country wherein it is okay to live on the backs of others, without compensating them.
Public Domain- John Schnatter’s Home
Why haven’t we forced our legislature to increase the minimum wage to a livable wage? Why haven’t we done the work to make companies pay a living wage?
Why are Managed Care CEOs making millions and millions in bonuses when 80 million people cannot get health care? Regular people are fighting to keep health insurance companies in the mix. Why? Insurance companies have no goal except passing profits to shareholders. It’s an incongruent goal and doesn’t match with healthcare.
If eighty percent of the country is living paycheck to paycheck that is 264,000,000 people. How can this country be so ineffective? Where did we go wrong? We created a capitalist society whereby all the money goes to a very few, while millions suffer without support: no living wage, no health care and no access to education.
How is it even possible to be in a democratic society, when so few are being represented by our legislature? Our legislature seems to represent those who have money to donate to campaigns and no one else. This is a limited group of people.
This is what I mean by the work of this country. We live here, we owe it to ourselves and to our children to make this country a place of prosperity. We cannot afford to allow this country to be run by those few who have the money to pay for legislator’s campaigns. Because those with the money are not looking out for anyone else. That is why after three decades, the minimum wage has not changed very much.
We want to go back to running the country for the people. We’ll need to overhaul everything because it’s been too long. Virtually anything that benefits human beings has been done away with: living wage, education, health care and even banking.
America is not a country that has done well for its people. Charity and donations won’t help, we’ve gone too far in the wrong direction.
We continue to get so many opinion pieces on the internet. Everyone wants to weigh in on what the World Wide Web is doing to us. I read today about TikTok, I read about Youtube, I read about Instagram and Twitter.
So much of what I read was about how the internet is changing us — but not for the better. Lately I have read a lot about politicizing the Internet. There are loud and compelling complaints about Facebook, and Twitter, and Instagram and now TikTok.
Gaming — JB Collection
I’ll never forget years ago; I was standing in the hallway of a convention center complaining loudly about the lack of service and the lack of coffee. I was the hostess of the event and I was dealing with a broken agreement. One of my trainers asked me “so do you really think this hotel should do things your way?” That put me in check for a second and he continued with “do you believe that the world should act according to your rules?” It was food for thought and it made me think hard.
I never did get coffee that day, but I did learn the lesson of my frustration. If I want to live more peacefully, I’ll have to accept that people don’t always do what they say and things never go just right when you’re planning a huge event, or any event, for that matter.
It is this conversation that I think about when I read articles about the Internet. From the beginning, when my colleagues were complaining about texting, I would always respond differently. Colleague “my kid is always on his phone, he won’t stop texting”, Me “he’s learning how to read quickly and how to spell, all good”.
What I find interesting is that so many believe that the Internet should be controlled. Even the Facebook Staff.
First, I don’t believe the Internet is controllable. That is what is so amazing about it. The Internet has given those without a voice, a real voice: including a place to meet and a place to talk and all online! Secondly, how will 7 billion people ever come to any agreement about the way that the internet “should” be? Yes, no and maybe.
Clay Banks on Unsplash
We the people have responsibility for what we understand, we cannot pass that responsibility to another.
Right now, Trump is trying to change the narrative about who he is and what he stands for.
Trump is going after those who disagree with him.
Imagine a world where there was only one story: Trump’s.
I would even go back to my earlier conversation. That is, that the world won’t go the way that you want it to go. If you want peacefulness, accept the mess. Fifteen years ago, not any of this was possible and now it’s here. Just Imagine where we are going…
Everything I read, no matter what the source, discusses Mr. Trump’s madness. He continually rejects common goodness and concern for Americans. And yet, many follow his directions and many even defend him. I’m not sure I understand this. Over and over again, this man claims American headlines and keeps his name in front of Americans. I cannot identify any reason why Trump is in the headlines.
In the meantime, he has behaved so badly, that no other person known, could survive the press associated with his bad behavior. How has he survived? Any other public figure would be condemned, rejected and forgotten about. Given all of his bad behavior and the condemnation of millions all over the world: Who follows his direction? Who does his bidding?
Let’s address Trump’s latest controversy. Trump decides (with the help of outraged aides) that he wants to visit the Episcopal church across the street of the White House. In order to do this, peaceful protestors have to be removed from the area that Trump wants to walk to and pose for a picture.
Who decides that it is okay to disperse the peaceful protestors with the use of violence, flash grenades and tear gas (Bill Barr)? Then, who, who would actually do this? Who would throw tear gas and a flash grenade into a crowd of peaceful protestors? The curfew was passed, and that curfew is possibly what gave the brutes an excuse for violence.
Doug Mills / New York Times
If you are an American soldier it is against the law to raise a weapon on an American. If you are an American policeperson, it is against the law to use a weapon except in defense of yours or another’s life.
People follow this madman’s orders, preferences, dictates, etc. suggestions. Why, who, how?
Madness: no one believes that Trump is a spiritual man. No one believes that he knows what is inside a Bible. There he stands in front of the Episcopal church with a Bible in the hand. No one has been able to give us a hint of what the point was of that entire exercise.
The police dispersed peaceful protestors with violence, then Trump was staged with a Bible in front of a church. What was the point? Who followed his orders? Who made the orders? Why? Madman.
The wealthy in this country have been working with your legislator to keep you poor, no matter what you do.
Every single inequality can be defined with money. Money is the great equalizer.
We’ve been placated for a long time and each time, we the American people, gave to peace, we lost our dignity. Now we must take it all back.
You have a role and you have power in the coming Revolution, but it’s not the role you may think.
We gave our power away. It is our time to simply take it back.
Without Violence — we take our power back, in the same way that our power was taken from us. We change our legislators. We change our laws. We commit ourselves to economic equality.
Banning together is a number one priority: equality, in every way, for every human.
Shared Values:
Economic Equality — human beings must share all resources with each other.
How do we get to it without violence, hatred and anger?
1. Ban Together
2. Organize, agree on specific measurable goals.
a. spend 5–50 days working on campaigns to ensure the November elections of Progressives.
b. all workers strike from McDonald’s for 2 days, until the minimum wage is increased to 17.00 per hour
3. Communicate with each other and support each other’s efforts.
4. Scream power to the elite.
5. We are not here to fight, we are here to make right.
For you who work for the government: every chance you get, every request that is made for the good of another, use all of your power to give to the good of others.
1. Give food stamps, give support and give aid.
2. Every wounded person in your care, will not fear you because they see and feel your compassion.
3. Interrupt when others are injuring humans. Call out when behavior injures others.
4. Make grants to all that it is possible to do so.
5. No blame necessary, only change.
For you in poverty-stricken communities, power is in numbers, striking is very effective, coming together in numbers is powerful. We have to change the story.
Make everything you do count for the Revolution:
1. Vote for the progressive candidate and then keep that candidate accountable.
2. Workers’ Unions have been effective for keeping workers safe and paid well.
Unknown Source
3. Whatever you do, stay strong: No is not an answer.
14.7 unemployment rate 10 times the worst month ever (CBS News)
Watching TV, America looks normal. “Advent health” talks about storybook healthcare, personalized for everyone…people are singing.
And yet, America has hit the crazy number of 33 million unemployment claims.
It’s a surreal world. One in which the TV goes on as if nothing is happening outside. The commercials talk endlessly about “we are in this together”. And yet, nothing can be further from the truth. This is simply a tag line that businesses are using to continue the business of making money. The businesses have no intention and no plan to help the unemployed, the sick or the hungry. The businesses use the tag line to keep customers immersed in this idea of togetherness.
Eclipse JB Collection
We live in a world where one man has more power than anyone else, one man, who represents no one except himself. Mitch McConnell. The Democrats can and do put legislation on his desk, legislation that is good for Americans, an expansion of food stamps — for example — and there it sits, on Mitch McConnell’s desk, never coming to fruition. When confronted about his in-action, McConnell will say that the President won’t consider it, so why should he bother?
How is that possible? We were so careful in the crafting of our country, and yet, look where we are now. Powerless and more needy than ever. We have 33 million unemployed human beings with no chance of getting what they need. The latest unemployment statistics are 10 times worse than any other time in history.
Our governing body will do nothing for the unemployed human beings, nothing. We received our $1,200.00 stimulus check and that is the end of that. If more is even considered for us human beings, the idea will be shot down by Mitch McConnell and the republican senate. It’s as easy as that. Wall Street received a two trillion and a half dollar stimulus, but no such stimulus is being considered for human beings.
This is my Alice in Wonderland feeling right here, in America. Advent Health singing their own praises with the hymn of “we are in this together” and yet I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Advent Health will do NOTHING for the homeless human being who is uninsured, NOTHING. The point of Advent Health is the CEO’s salary and the shareholders’ dividend ONLY. No humans are considered. I know this. The world is not how it presents itself to be. The world is some other nameless and selfish monster consuming everything and everyone in the name of capitalism. Predatory capitalism has run amuck and is eating human beings now.
Marcus Spiske — Unsplash
Professor Scott Galloway asks
“What is our trillion-dollar bet — where are we spending the trillion our kids will be saddled with? Simple: rich people. Lower tax rates on the wealthy and corporations (84% owned by the top 10% income earning households) were supposed to inspire growth and investment. They haven’t.”
“The tax cut will pay for itself.” — Steve Mnuchin
1/31/20 Galloway blog
“Allowing companies to fail is the first regulatory principal of capitalism” Matt Taibbi states. Why aren’t we allowing the stock market to self stabilize? According to Taibbi “the Greatest wealth transfer ever, S&P are partying.”
The Federal Reserve keeps throwing money at the stock market — to the tune of 2.5 trillion dollars (in the name of the pandemic) and the press is saying nothing. Why, how is that even possible? The Fed = Rich people giving rich people money = Jerome Powell
Austin Distel — Unsplash
The stock market is worth more now even though 20 million people have lost their job (in April). There is no connection between wall street and main street USA. No one can see it?
I’ve just watched the news and nothing is being stated about this thievery. It’s as if nothing has happened. We are all satisfied that although the average American has received very little recompense and the wealthy have received a huge transfer from our tax money, nothing is being said on the news. Am I in an alternate reality? Is this the Twilight Zone?
There is no way that 33 million unemployed people are going to be okay without help. The taxpayer bail out of $1,200.00 is gone. What will all of those families do without an income? Why hasn’t any investigative reporter pursued this story? What do we think is going to happen when all of these human beings become homeless and hungry?
And yet we keep thinking that America is the best. The bread lines are miles and miles long. American food lines.
People received stimulus checks into overdrawn accounts.
I see all of the charities and I think “please don’t donate there, the only thing American charity does is make their CEOs rich, they don’t do enough for those who are suffering.” Why do we need so much charity in America?
With all of the welfare organizations going on in America, why aren’t we doing better on behalf of the poor and poverty stricken? Why aren’t we doing better for the compromised middle class?
With the current Covid stimulus package, can we really say that we have helped? Today, on TV, I watched an “old white man” talk about how the new stimulus package had to be about supporting businesses so that people could be tied to their jobs. (Trickle down economics for everyone?) That’s the problem, jobs in America do not support Americans. We don’t have a livable wage in America, we don’t have affordable healthcare, we don’t have corporations making sure that workers benefit from employment.
Do you want a billion dollars? “Of course, but only if you own an airplane, cruise ship, bank or mega-business. You are only a human being in America? Oh, well, hmmm, I don’t know if we have anything for you. Okay, how about $1,200.00? What will that buy you? I don’t know, one month of rent?”
Trump and his cronies have, literally, pumped billions into the stock market. This is money that should have gone into healthcare, human beings and the welfare of those who are waiting in food lines with starving kids.
We aren’t paying people enough; they are not earning a livable wage. These folks cannot withstand what is happening in this country now. If people aren’t earning a living wage, how could they possibly have savings?
To my shame and mortification Motherjones.com writes: “Was anyone aware of this? “More than 80 percent of the benefits of a tax change tucked into the Coronavirus relief package Congress passed last month will go to those who earn more than $1 million annually” The middle-class picks up the bill! “
No America, it’s not enough for the everyday earner. When will we learn to give to people instead of organizations? When will we stop the corporations from owning America?
No one wants to admit that they are in poverty; and that’s at least part of the problem. The 75% of Americans who are working paycheck to paycheck do not want to admit that they cannot handle a $1,000.00 crisis. All of us want to believe that we have it made and that we can manage any challenge. That’s why Amscot, “The Money Superstore” is so successful. And they rape us for our hard earned dollars.
I am not sure how or when it started, but greed has a very rich and a very long history. Sociologists’ will tell you that greed and jealousy over property did not evolve until the concept of property ownership became a human law.
A History of Greed
Once the laws of property ownership came into being, everything about humanity changed. Suddenly, men are concerned that their offspring by their very own and only their very own. Marriage evolved into a much stronger social institution once property ownership was established. Men only wanted to leave their hard won properties to their very own offspring.
The history doesn’t quite matter when the concept under discussion is social greed. Social greed is a term for two reasons, often people think of greed in terms of the effect it has on their neighbors. They want neighbors to know that they can be “better”. The other reason for the term social greed is that, at least in this country, social greed has an effect on others and our society. Our society suffers as a result of this combined sense of righteousness to attain wealth over any other human value, including our neighbor’s health.
The Coronavirus Demonstrates
The coronavirus shows us irrevocably the current tragedy that is the United States of America.
It is the mirror held up to the ugly witch’s face showing her that her once remarkable beauty is lost.
It all seems impossible. Covid-19 is a pause, an interruption, a change in everything and everyone, a change in life as we knew it.
The virus comes at us like a tornado, with a deadly wind ripping and tearing through the lives of all humans on Earth. This novel coronavirus has no bias.
What America Needs to Fix
1. Healthcare – America is the only first world country in the world that doesn’t have universal healthcare. We need it and we should have it. It’s been more than forty years since economist’ showed that healthcare doesn’t respond to the principles of economics. Healthcare doesn’t respond to supply and demand.
Violet Johnson
Uwe Reinhardt, Princeton economist, conducted massive studies decades ago and demonstrated that economics does not work with healthcare. When you put two physicians across the street from each other, prices go up, they do not go down because of “competition”. These are known facts and yet, the ignorant senators and representatives insist on letting the “market” regulate healthcare. How can they dare be so ignorant when 330million people depend on them?
2. Jobs with a living wage – it’s a fact that lawmakers allow themselves to gain wealth from their position. This allowance has given them the motivation to keep minimum wages at a minimum. Our capitalist society has convinced Americans that having wealth is a matter of merit. We merit wealth by working hard and making money. We use the principles of supply and demand to demonstrate the making of a better mouse-trap as a means to wealth. The belief is, if you aren’t wealthy, it’s because you haven’t worked hard enough or long enough. Or perhaps you are not creative enough to have built the best mousetrap.
America promotes this myth about meritocracy, that says something to the effect of “if you are a janitor, you don’t deserve to make a living, only people who go to school and earn degrees deserve a living wage.” When read like this, the concept seems absurd and that is because the concept is absurd.
Everyone; deserves to make a living wage, Everyone.
3. Lawmakers who belong to the wealthy class simply manipulate their own positions to gain more wealth. In the meantime, because they are out of touch with anyone who lives in America, they continue to make laws that will benefit themselves, as in only, me, myself and I. The wealthy want Americans to believe that they have gained wealth through their own merit and hard work. But can you say that it is hard work, when the wealthy have been bribing Senators and Representatives to keep the minimum wage, minimum. Scott Galloway commented in his blog (2/7/20) “It’s difficult for our elected leaders not to shape public policy around the concerns and priorities of the super wealthy when they have more access to their senators.” How is that meritocracy?
We can and do, what we want to gain wealth. As history tells us, this is rarely legally or morally correct. Americans have used the philosophy “the ends justify the means”. What we are missing, right now, today, is the tyranny of what Capitalism has done to us. It is dire.
The recent wealth tax breaks are clear proof of this. In what country, besides America, could someone like Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, pay zero in taxes?
Ben White on Unsplash
4. Student loans: who can believe that in America, the Secretary of Education, Betsy Devos, is also an owner of a student loan collection agency? For comparison, I don’t mean the corrupt countries that we are all familiar with, I mean in the Western democracies.
What’s Next for America
Americans have no reason to remember the French Revolution, which they call Bastille Day. Bastille Day is the day that the French stormed the Bastille (a military base and a prison) thus starting the French Revolution. The French were very tired of being poor. The story has it that when Marie Antoinette heard that the French peasants were asking for bread and that there was no bread anywhere, she said “Let them eat cake!” According to Wikipedia, such a statement: “in context would thus reflect either the princess’s disregard for the peasants or her poor understanding of their situation if not both.”
Which is the point of this writing. Washington D.C. no longer serves the people, nor do they understand the people. Indeed, we are back to “taxation without representation” as no one in Washington represents the poor and middle class.
We are in a deep crisis in America and we are headed for a future that no one wants. Grieving families, and a majority of Americans that are starving, that is all it will take to create the American Bastille Day. The beginning of a Revolution that will end the tyranny of the wealthy in America.
