Focus

Madame M,

Eradicating diseases? I am not following the connection. The general advance in disease control, water and food hygienic improvements, and general public health improvements, has been across the board, regardless of economic system. Communication and transportation have made many advancements under capitalism, and have a bit more standing there than public health, but again, are not system dependent. However, some technological advancements can certainly claim that capitalism is the system that allowed/encouraged them to flourish, and with such rapidity. Of course, capitalism has also been the dominant system in that period, so there is the ever-present data dilemma of distinguishing causation from just correlation.

The disconnection you so ably speak on is another sub-area which I will include in a future post that we can expound on. Very important subject!

Genuine solutions that leave things in better condition for the next generation? Capital idea! But the Anaconda/Boa Constrictor bunch who hold power (economic/political/social/communicative) don’t care about that.

Observe how they seed the discussions in America. From the top of the big businesses and their allies come carefully formulated planted comments about anyone or anything that could truly be a potential threat to their power, wealth, or influence. Those comments trickle down until they infuse the lexicon of everyday America and so shade most discussion. The comments are reinforced powerfully with a media they largely already influence, channel, or even control, and so they secure their power. Add the anonymous assassins of forwarded emails across the internet. All this keeps people both off-balance and misdirected, and furthermore, and perhaps most telling, keeps them either angry with little articulable concrete substantiation at someone or something (often a president or party in power), or keeps them divided against each other. And so those people are in reality easily “conquered.” Appeals are made to selfishness, and cleverly. While those people “fight” amongst themselves about all sorts of ultimately near-meaningless things, the controlling owners of this country take satisfaction that their own positions are secure. And it doesn’t matter what “side” gets “the blame,” because the whole thing is just designed to be cyclically repeated to keep the focus off the real roots. Especially because those people that aren’t “conquered” are often so discouraged they become disempowered. And the enfeebling continues…

If we got away from our manic buy and rebuy consuming economy, we would bring a new way to how we relate to our society. It would be a far better one I think. THAT has the seeds for remaking capitalism for the better, perhaps even supplanting it with a better system (or a better hybrid). Changes in the human condition have always been the greatest promise for the general advancement of humankind.

In the interim, we are going to have to get smarter about how we are manipulated. Mindless mantras like “cut taxes, cut taxes,” when our taxes are already pretty low compared to the rest of the developed world, and which tax cuts benefit intensely disproportionally the already super-wealthy, are simplistic…and irresponsible. We have instituted this utterly disconnected-from-reality delusional pattern of too much spending, too little revenue. You can’t keep revenue low, lower taxes, and still have big government. That’s not reality. Vague prescriptions for cutting spending are also useless and irresponsible. No taxes should be lowered without corresponding decreases, specific ones, in spending. And the rub of it is: we need to cut spending far deeper than anything imagined, to not only erase deficit spending, but to create focused surpluses solely to pay off the debt.

Yes, you see a little more growth if you cut taxes, but after a while, the structural deficits you create overwhelm all that (as well proven repeatedly). We have let things get too big. The usual remedies will NOT apply. We have screwed ourselves. There is going to be pain.

Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, “Defense.” Government-wise, those are the Big Four, and they are NOT sustainable at anything even approaching present levels. Hard, realistic talk, from people who are going to go down in flames from angry, parochial publics who will punish them for speaking ugly truth, may be a necessary first step. Fringe diversion about other entitlements at this point are not only diversionary, but droplet-focused instead of bucket-focused. At this stage in Medicare for instance, we likely in the interim should switch to something like a budget-voucher system where we pay the individual a certain amount to get what they can (direct care or insurance) with, and no more. Watch the howl-meter go off the scale with that one! But the alternative is to keep chugging on in denial like Rome, until reality transforms you painfully, dramatically, and permanently.

Americans need to show they really can handle the truth. Because that truth is often ugly—and painful. We will start finding politicians who speak the truth, rather than carefully constructed evasions or pacifications, when we show we can handle it without becoming parochial.

All is not painful gloom, however. There are positive prescriptions we can take. Put simply, we need to tax things which are harming us as nation, society, and even individuals, and reduce (and preferably stop entirely) taxing things which are beneficial. That would be a sea change! Government should also be out of the business of regulating strictly personal behavior: if people want to make (often foolish or selfish) decisions that affect only themselves and their gene pools, why is government involved in that? That would eliminate a fair number of government programs right there. And certainly no more subsidizing of personal or societal harmful behavior! People and businesses are free to make their (again, often foolish or selfish) decisions, but not to ask us to pay for them.

We can also put the spotlight where it belongs. Ask the questions. Have the corporations explain why there is a greater than 7-10 times disparity between the highest paid worker and lowest one. “The market” is an evasive and deceptive response to that, btw.

Perhaps call into question anyone not already employed by an established (two+ years old) corporation who does or try to own more than 1% of that corporation. That would go a ways toward disentangling the interlocking boards we have today.

Dangle the carrot in front of the corporations: they pay no corporate tax if they satisfy the above conditions of ownership and compensation parity spread.

The above are only examples, and not particularly well mapped ones at that. There are a plethora of prescriptions from people, often academics or think tankers, about how to correct our corpocracy. Right now however, doing that’s not on the public mind. Too often, angry survival, aimless or misinformed discontent, and red herring fixation, are. That’s why I respond, when I do respond, to right-left baiting, with: “You and I are smart enough to know things are more complicated than that. I am more interested in talking about those who have the real power. Are you?”