I’m sure you realize, SIADT, the question wasn’t mine. I think it’s being ‘tried out’ to see how it floats by whatever party is interested in inciting US citizens to accept its ‘budget plan.’ In this case, it’s probably the Democratic Party.
The thing is everyone is bending over backwards to not admit that the US is a socialized country. We must hang on to the erroneous idea that our belief in free enterprise is what rules–it goes along with our myth of all that’s needed to be successful is a good work ethic. It isn’t true any more.
Sure, it isn’t your question, it’s one you hear in a lot of countries. It is hypocritical in most of them, and most hypocritical in the US.
I’m not sure that it was ever true in the US that ‘all that’s needed to be successful is a good work ethic’, or indeed anywhere else. But I know what you mean - the myth of the free market, free enterprise, the American dream - is desperately clung to by many in the West. It’s the same here, trust me, though the rhetoric is more ‘living in a free society’ than ‘living in a free market economy’. The US is socialised, but it is primarily socialism for the rich.
But let’s say it was once true in the US that all you needed for success was a good work ethic (and, presumably, some intelligence). That’s in part because the US, and the Americas in general, were a huge untapped resource bed. Sure, you had the natives but they didn’t have the numbers or the type of society that demanded digging gold or oil out of the ground or fencing in tracks of land for agriculture. All that land, that gold, that oil. The land has mostly been privatised, much in the private hands of state and federal governments. The oil is only worth pumping out in quantities that make up less than a third of US consumption. Indeed, US consumption of oil has fallen since 2005, which essentially coincides with when global oil production peaked.
So, regardless of the economic system, the extent to which it is socialised and regulated, the US economy cannot fundamentally grow from this point onwards. The opportunities that were there for the hard working 2 centuries ago or 1 century ago just don’t exist anymore.
Lizbeth I work harder than anyone I know. I have to stay up all day and night and I get to live an ok life but I risk prison for it. If I wanted to be legal I’d have to live with roommates and carpool and seriously reconsider what kind of food I was going to eat working the kind of jobs that are available. Oh yeah and I’d have to completely shed my dignity. Yeah work ethic gets you nowhere.
Iron Man Quicked by one. Future and Past mixed, logical segments thrown all over the place, mixed all up, chunks of future and past and present, all stories mixed, all logic upside down, all things unknown and known, all colors showed. Pieces of past, remote past thrown together with pieces of present and far off future, the oldsmobile 98 in ancient rome, the mars computer in New Jersey of 1950,the star man in the year 23444556 comes to you and tells you his news, watch TV: you see your mom when see was young and you are old, but then, it is all mixed up you become young again, or mixed, and all elements of reality mixed disregarding any logic, any story line, all things together all things disjoint, you get the idea, wild and crazy combinations, the brain gets mixed up and mixes up all of its categories, and such then the outside world mixes up, or is it the outside world that observes the brain machine and such, and so on and if 0 is the brain observer and 5666 is the outside world, what is 56 ? what IS WERREMTTN ? what is the mountain and then mixed, segments, logical segments thrown on the ground, in the air, mix past and future, mix it all up, you win become free and happy and crazy, deny logic, and win…
I saw a reporter asking our leaders if they would be willing to take a significant paycut. All but one said no, others ignored the question or boasted about cutting staff and how it would be hard. I have no problems with the private sector. I do have problems watching a representative getting into a car that costs half a mil. and having a driver. It really pisses me off when I see them wearing clothes that cost more than any three of us make in a month, then they get retirement after 4 years? What really chokes me is that we let this farce go on and blame the private sector.
That’s not their salary if a congressman has a half million dollar car and 10 houses, that’s the private money they already had when they bought the office, (john mccain/budweiser, john kerry/heinz, george bush/conoco). OR, it’s the private companies hiring lobbyists to give them kickbacks to essentially corrupt your democratic system and devalue your vote.
Congressmen get higher salaries than most of the working class, but nothing like the bankers and barons that buy them and sell them and me and you in the process day in and day out with that private money.
That is my point, why do they need that salary and why do they get retirement and why do they get to vote themselves raises? Ok not you smears, but, we generally can’t tell our bosses that they are going to give us a raise.
That’s a whole other issue. I think they justify their pay by doing some kind of cost of living analysis and keeping it somewhere near where they want it to be.
But at least they don’t want half million dollar cars. Maybe 100k cars but not 500k for a congressman. Plus they don’t own those private jets they fly in. They get this card that they load that lets them travel and use an old jet that everyone has to use.
The business people, the exploiters, the free marketeers, are the ones who want to own their own plane and own 10 500k cars and its because they came up with the idea and anything that stops them from being filthy rich is immoral and wrong and they’re just like horrible little children who never learned to share and got so good at hoarding up all the toys that all the rest of the kids hate them now.
We are lucky in that respect every year or so they vote for higher wages in the the house of commons, every year at least recently, it is voted down by a wide majority. You might consider it as a hollow vote, but I kinda like it. They tend to get pay rise only when the country is doing well (and even then rarely), and more or less a pay cut year in year out when it is doing badly. Although anyone in a ministerial position is going to leave the cabinet at some point and coin it, at least 90% of parliament are voting with their conscience, if only they did that all the time.
It’s perhaps the only case in government where the term public servant still exists…
Smears the true exploiters are those that corner the market on what we think of as necessity. Everyone else charge what the market bears. Utility companies, oil/ fuel companies and food. , I should add insurance companies too. But, they are not hired as servents to the people. Our servants are supposed to be in bed with us not the above mentioned. That makes them worse than the exploiters.
You wouldn’t be surprised if you expected the most common base nature to be not very good.
Most people think that common base natures of humanity, the democratic spirit, is a purely good thing,
then they get frustrated when they find out that people are allowing all kinds of corruption and untruth.
Well, I don’t feel surprised. It is something I have come to expect.
Right now I’m thinking that the best government would be a theocracy built around some sort of alien visitors. Maybe that was the golden age for humanity before history. But even this could be complete crap. How can I take crap and make it into non-crap? That is the big mystery.
If I was king, this kind of crap would be a crime. It is the waste of money, which is actually the waste of time, energy, resources, nature, thought, and even waste of the human soul. That seems to be the nature of the physical realm. Energy just burns and radiates, and everything burns out. The infinite power goes nowhere and does nothing for sentience. If the universe was truly God-made, it would not be wasting all its energy. If a perfect God made an atom for example, it would be immortal, efficient and stable. Instead we have atoms that are all, everywhere, breaking down and slowly dieing. Maybe God took a shit. So now I will realize some shitism. Maybe that is the key.
Why do you see it as waste? Seems to me energy has purpose. Not knowing, not seeing, not feeling, not hearing does not mean there is not. For all the death in this world there is life in abundance. Life learns, changes and grows. We feel pain, pain is life from extreme pain a baby is born and extreme joy is felt somewhere. We evolve on this world or mutate. All life does change even an amoeba. Purpose? Change.
