dorminWS wrote:Skeptic wrote:
Spot on
I grew up poor, some due to bad luck my parents had, and a lot due to a series of bad choices they made after that.
I was active in protests and in liberal politics, because I was raised to be quite liberal and see things in terms of class struggle, especially by my honors teachers.
But that just simply ignores the facts. It took a while for me to "get it". We truly live in a world of miracles.
The Occupiers in Richmond say that our society has had hundreds of years to get our act together, so they need to "have a conversation" to "decide the new systems to replace this failed one".
It is sad, they see what we have gained in the past 200 years and deem it a failure. We have health measures from sanitation to thousands of wonder drugs that even most of the poor in our nation can afford. We have expanded our food production (not always for the best) and our ability to share, communicate, and to travel. Electricity. Simple things like running water , hot water on demand! I thank God for those simple things every morning.
Look at the wealth of the average American turn of the 20th century and compare it to today. We have telephones, TVs, radios, computers, mp3 players, good shoes that don't fall apart, we have refrigerators and freezers in almost every household. People have more than one or two sets of clothing Many if not most have washing machines and cars, etc. Starvation is so rare it makes the news, obesity is the biggest health problem for the poor (perhaps second after smoking)
How did this wealth spread? Was it through redistribution? Did we storm the mansions of the rich and cast down the walls of the nobility and shoot the idle elite in their county manors and take their stuff?
No, it was through INDUSTRY. We made MORE stuff. and BETTER stuff. and NEW stuff.
As I said, it is sad, they live in a world of miracles and they see it as a failure. Somehow all these riches are not enough because someone else has more.
Is this world perfect? No. Does it suck that others might have so much more than they cold ever spent. Perhaps. But I grew up poor, and now I am well into the top 20%, income wise. Where else in the world has that kind of mobility from economic classes?
The answer isn't having the government or the mob knock down the rich. It is to get the government out of the business of picking winners and losers. If they don't have the power to make and break, then they aren't worth buying.
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BRAVO! ABSOLUTELY TRUE AND VERY WELL SAID.
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Yes it was well said but somewhat incomplete, let me add what's missing.
Skeptic wrote:" It was through INDUSTRY. We made MORE stuff. and BETTER stuff (that one I don't know about). and NEW stuff." Here's something to add, and there was an unwritten agreement between capital and labor that as productivity increased the worker's wages would also increase. About 30 plus years ago that bargain disappeared. With increases in productivity, capital stayed at the top and wages remained pretty much where they were. Now it seems that corporations have found new customers in emerging nations, so they no longer need the buying power of the American middle class to drive corporate profits. Today without middle class spending many multi-national corporations are doing a booming business. Corporate profits are up, while wages of the average worker has barely ticked upwards.
Skeptic also wrote: "It is getting the government out of the business of picking winners and loser." In theory and in an ideal world I could agree with that. However, our government,and governments everywhere have ALWAYS been in the business of picking winners and losers. It has always picked the elite over the masses. The Constitution was set up exactly that way. In fact many of the founders talked about who should rule. The Senate was intended to be a legislative body of elites who would act as a brake on the impulses of the masses in the House of Representatives.
One glance at the thousands of pages of tax code and other legislation is an often an exercise in government which winners and losers the government chose. The subsidies I mentioned earlier were exactly that, a list of government picked winners. Earmarks which name specific organizations to do a project are handpicked winners. In times past, railroads were considered winners so they were granted millions of acres of free land. Much of the wealth of private railroads today comes from what they did with that free land. No railroad was profitable until government stepped in and controlled prices, and rights.
Petroleum companies were picked as winners, so they were also subsidized. Homeowners are winners because government writes special tax rules for them, but nothing for renters. Families and families with kids are winners, families without kids, or people who just live together are not. Again there's special treatment. People who owe their income to capital gains and dividends are winners because their income is treated more favorably than the income of the average worker.
In the early years of the Republic business owners were winners, workers were not. Thousands died or were injured on the job and government did nothing to stop it. In fact, when workers said enough, government sided with owners to suppress workers often through the use of violence.
Am I arguing against all subsidies, or things like interest deductions on mortgages? No I'm not passing judgment. Governments every where use their tax codes to promote certain things and discourage others, at least that's what they say they are doing. Look at the airline industry, without government subsidies Air Bus Industries would have never gotten off the ground (They were subsidized by several European countries) without massive government subsidies. If you start a new airline today, government will assist you in that effort. They will bar older airlines from some competitive practices. They will literally take airport slots from older legacy airlines to give to the newbie airline
If it's one thing Americans have never begrudged others, or complained about it's the wealth of others. However, when Americans sense that the system is unfair they have always protested. What we see now is absolutely nothing new, it's the story of America.
What I do find upsetting, is the attempt to blame the ills of America on average Americans, the poor and the working poor. They become the whipping boy. If we just stopped supporting shiftless, lazy people, these free loaders, and others who want something for nothing, the economy would be fine. There would be full employment, everyone would have health insurance, a great education, and no child would go to bed hungry.
Many of the posters talked about growing up poor and the efforts they took to make a better life. Why would we think that there aren't millions just like you, who are trying to do the same thing, and are working every bit as hard as you did. Conversely, why would we assume that people in the 1% work any harder than anyone else, or should have advantages from government that everyone else does not have. The common thread is they are better off, simply because they are better. That to me is an elitist attitude, and is exactly what some want us to believe.
To that group, of which Donald Trump is the embodiment of, they do think they are better than you or I. Trump in everything he does and says makes sure that we should know he is a cut above the average working smuck. They try to convince you that they succeeded on merit alone, and if you didn't it's simple, you are not as smart as they are, and you didn't work hard enough; therefore you got what you deserved. Nothing is farther from the truth, but it's absolutely essential for the masses to believe the propaganda for unfairness to continue.
Some historians subscribe to the great man theory of history. For the U.S. that says you will find all you need to know about the U.S. by following the actions of the Great men. Others say, that's only half the story, and in some cases not even half because it misses out on, and does not tell the story of what the average people were doing, and how their actions affected what the Great men did.
The so=called elite and the so-called smartest men in the room got us into this mess, and now they want to go blameless? I don't think so.
Gat6
