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Professor Richard D. Wolff explains it very eloquently...
FACT: Wages have been flat for two generations
FACT: Productivity has been rising for two generations
FACT: Corporate profits have been rising for two generations
FACT: Househeld Debt has been rising for two generations.
So how is the GAP narrowed between what people make and what people spend?
Its called CREDIT.
CREDIT is just as bad for countries as it is for individuals.
In other words THE RENT IS JUST TOO DAMN HIGH!!!!!
I know two families, both on food stamps and one with Federal (former military) disability payments for the time he spent in the military. The first one is a married couple with one child living in a modest house, with one car, two cell phones, no cable TV, one average sized flatscreen TV which they've had for several years, one car, and one job. The wife has had jobs here and there but even with her college degree, jobs with an income of more than $15/hr are very hard to find. Their child is loved and time is taken every day to read to her and play with her. I've helped them with their finances and with everything taken into consideration, their take home cash isn't even $600/month.
The other family gets food stamps and disability payments. They have 3 kids, a very large two story house, neither parent works, they have multiple new flatscreen TV's, gaming consoles in every room, and live their life bouncing from drug fueled party to drug fueled party. Their children are abused and neglected while parents take more meth to stay up for the next few days. When school starts, they will be happy to have their kids gone for a few hours a day so they don't have to deal with them. Their medical care is paid for and they have over $2000/month spendable.
Who deserves benefits? The ones trying hard but stuck due to economic conditions or the ones abusing themselves, their children, and the system? How do you identify which is which?
Many thanks to the site and all the contributors. Great source of info.
Unfortunately, the government is incapable of determining the difference between the two.
Bureacracy ensures that policies made at the pie/sky level are rigid and inflexible and political and legal fallout from controversial policies ensures that benfits will go to both family types.
Again, this is why the government is a bad vehicle for help and assistance and the Federal government is the worst level to handle it.
"A dumb man never learns. A smart man learns from his own failure and success. But a wise man learns from the failure and success of others."
Nor will it ever make the case to determine the difference, much in the same manner it doesn't care to figure out how to tax profitable corporate entities that make billions upon billions of dollars a year. The Federal, or state gov'ts, don't care. Retaining power is all they care about. Give the "poor" their economic assistance and they'll vote for you and give billion+ dollar corporations their tax breaks and the managers of those corporations as well as corporations themselves will donate millions to the re-election fund.
Perhaps this is why now off-shore corporations are allowed to donate to American re-election campaigns, because so many profitable entities that actually are physically headquartered in the US manipulate their books as to show tax regulators they are non-US companies. So sad, so very sad.
Many thanks to the site and all the contributors. Great source of info.
This is probably why the founding fathers had a small Federal government in mind. Governance is best handled at the state level, at least the elected crook is closer to home and states and local governments can tailor laws and policies that suit their needs. This is exactly why in FL, you're entitled to "stand your ground" and you're perfectly within your legal rights to defend yourself and your property (with deadly force if necessary) and other states, not only do you not have a right to defend yourself, doing so places you in criminal jeopardy. That's exactly what the founding fathers intended, a collection of states, with a unifying flag and Federal government playing referee. That's why we're not "America" we're "The United States of America."
Every politicians number one goal is re-election. Period. They're secondary goal (in the House/Senate) is representing the members of their state (and their voters). Thus, Senators and Congressmen don't vote as Americans, they vote as state rep's.
When you expand the role of the Federal government to the point of having MASSIVE budgets for things like education, transportation, FEMA etc....that money gets allocated inefficiently and is largely a product of how powerful/tenured the politician who sits on the committee happens to be. It's also how the Federal government unconstitutionally influences states using the carrot of money (and the threat of not getting their share).
This is how you end up with lobbyists convincing the Feds to withold road money to force LA to increase their drinking age from 18 to 21, or how you get Montana to lower their speed limits, or how you get states to submit to all sorts of regulatory mandates, many of which serve lobbyists, corporations, more powerful states, etc.
The system works best when states do the most governing.
That way, if you want to live in a state where what few are poor are in true poverty, poor education, panhandling on every corner, etc....but enjoy low property taxes, low income taxes, a low, businesses love to operate there because it's cheap, etc.
giving citizens a "choice" when it comes to their flavor of government would cool a lot of the heated rehotoric and discontent. When you try to rule everyone out of one town halfway across the country, you get 100% of the people entirely pissed off because they get 40% of what they want. When you let states govern, you increase that amount. AND, politicians are closer to home and under the more watchful eye of their constituents, home media, etc, etc.
People cringe when you say "states rights" because they envision the civil rights era, but I'm not talking about rights...I'm talking about fiscal and monetary policy, business regulation, taxes, social safety nets and entitlements, school vouchers, illegal immigrants, government and private unions, etc, etc, etc.
"A dumb man never learns. A smart man learns from his own failure and success. But a wise man learns from the failure and success of others."
There would be sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much less political discourse and dis-content, if people could appreciate the sentence above in red.
How awesome would it be, that if you didn't like the polices of your legislatures in your state assembly, that you could simply pick up, and move to another state? As it stands today, your only choice is to attempt to seriously change what goes on in Washington for everyone else not interested in your brand, or move out of the country. Those two choices suck. It's much easier to be able to just move to a location where governing environment you prefer exits.
If you are afraid of guns, move to another state that outlaws them completely. If you like being taxed at a higher rate, move to a place like NewYork. If you want to live in a nanny state and are too dumb to decide for yourself that you can't have people smoking cigarettes in bars, move to a place like Illinois.
Just about EVERY issue we have amongst ourselves today could be fixed if we could decentralize most of the power in Washington, as it was meant to be in the first place.
If you ask people what the most significant thing about the founding of this country is, you'll get all types of silly answers. Often grandiose talk of 'nation of laws,' or 'helping your fellow man.....'
All nonsense, the most significant thing about the founding of this country was the diffusement of power. Both in the branches of the federal government, and federalism that should keep most of the power in the hands of the states.
