I kinda like the title even though I know and remember little of my Civics class of 1963. Some things just seem so common sense that I can’t help thinking that title somehow makes sense but then, it’s probably my simple opinion on a simple “common sense” approach to politics as I see them. Those of you who will read the hard copy should be warned that my “approach” here is not sunshine and daisies, I’m more than a bit pissed off and very much in the dark as to how we the people voted ourselves into feudalism or what currently passes for such in our corporate owned society.
Item : “Capitalism requires inequality of wealth, runs a right-of-center argument, to stimulate risk-taking and effort; governments trying to stem it with taxes on wealth, capital, inheritance and property kill the goose that lays the golden egg. ” (*)
Thomas Piketty deploys 200 years of data to prove them wrong. Capital, he argues, is blind. Once its returns – investing in anything from buy-to-let property to a new car factory – exceed the real growth of wages and output, as historically they always have done (excepting a few periods such as 1910 to 1950), then inevitably the stock of capital will rise disproportionately faster within the overall pattern of output. Wealth inequality rises exponentially. (*)
There appears to be a growing consensus that our political system is a fraud, in that we have a 2 Party system where each takes its’ turn at the front and does only what is needed to maintain the status-quo for the rich owners of property and stocks and the CEO’s of international corporations. With laws in effect to ensure that inheritance of enormous wealth is not taxed excessively, thus ensuring that the wealth of the empire is transferred nearly intact,
laws written by lawyers employed by corporations that protect profits from taxation and allow them to create an un-level playing field for other competitors,laws that make it more profitable to rent property than own, including the very creation of artistic and intellectual content, laws in place to protect elected officials, bureaucratic management, law enforcement members and military or in other words, every component of a government that fears reprisals from its’ citizens is protected from prosecution of one form or another.
Then you have the socially based attacks on the basic concepts of democracy wherein, you neighbor is suspect if they receive medical,housing or food assistance from the State. After all, these are the people who are driving up the costs of living but, don’t bother to look at the amount of government assistance in all its’ deliberately vague and confusing language that is handed out to corporations who already pay next to nothing thanks to the tax ‘incentives’ and expense-of-doing-business write-offs they enjoy that most small businesses can never employ at tax time. They tell you our poor cost of millions but, they won’t ever tell you about the billions the corporations receive.
So, what do we do ? We deny it matters, we listen to “pundits” who blame one Party or the other for all the ills created from too much Federal government as the blame for no jobs and wages that don’t buy enough to live on. We tear each other apart for or race or our sexual life or our disabilities. We do everything we’re told is important but, we never seem to be able to focus on what we know in the backs of our minds is the truth.
That frightens me no end because we’re rapidly approaching a point at which it will end and that place is not one anyone not wealthy enough to live in a gated community protected by police and armed guards wants to live in.
Consider also that the conditions we experience here are becoming more universal across the planet as the concentration of wealth escalates world-wide. That tells me there will not exist any place to hide when this house of cards is torn down by those who have become unwilling to watch as their children die and they have no hope for the better. History, as Mr. Piketty points out, does not lie, People do.
RelibarRag 