The American people are looking down the barrel of the most daunting challenge to our values and our way of life since World War II. We are being told that our economic system is on the brink of collapse and our social safety net for our elderly, poor, young and sick is teetering on the edge of insolvency.
However, we must ask this question: Can we truly believe the purveyors of these ominous messages?
We need to look at the facts.
The American worker is still the most productive globally but has not directly profited from his/her work for the first time in nearly 100 years. In the past 30 years the American worker’s pay has been stagnant at best. As a result, they have been lagging behind the increasing prices they must pay for goods and services. At the same time corporations, CEOs and other corporate bigwigs have reaped the harvest of the worker’s productivity. The average compensation of a CEO in 1980 was about 40 times that of the average worker in his company. In 2004 that rate was more than 500 times and that disparity has grown larger ever since.
During that same period, the tax rates asked of individuals in the higher income brackets fell precipitously and the actual amount these fortunate individuals actually paid dropped like a brick. Today, wealthy individuals and huge corporations are paying far less in taxes than ever before. Loopholes in the tax laws allow those with the most to pay the least. As our country has literally given away our national treasure to the well-to-do over the past three decades, our need to spend on such items as Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare is constantly rising.
As we gave away our wealth to a few privilege individuals and corporations we have committed our military to multiple wars. Wars that we were told in one instance would be paid for in full by the people we were liberating. Where is that nearly one trillion dollars?
With our mounting national debt we enacted a much-needed prescription drug benefit package that prohibits us from utilizing the power of the government to buy drugs as a group purchaser, which would have driven down the cost of drugs. As a result, our precious treasury has enriched huge multi-national pharmaceutical companies along with their officers and shareholders. You see, for the past 30-years it seems our government has been on a mission to bankrupt our national treasury and as a result we are now facing an unprecedented fiscal crisis. And how are our leaders planning to deal with this crisis they manufactured? By slashing programs aimed at allowing those of us with the least real opportunity to earn a piece of the American dream.
Article comments
1 - Shelia Alvarez
This is GREAT. I'm passing it on.
2 - Marvin Jones
Thanks for your insight!
3 - Glenn Contrarian
Ronald -
Your article is spot on...which is why there is a dearth of BC conservatives responding to it.
4 - Clavos
So what's the reason for the dearth of liberals responding, Glenn?
5 - Glenn Contrarian
Because the article is well-written enough that the BC conservatives see that they'd be fighting a losing battle, and the article's well-written enough that liberals don't need to add more to it.
Clavos, this isn't the first time I've noticed the phenomenon that, if an article is written well enough, if the arguments and proof contained therein are enough, then few people will respond to it.
Of course this is not the case in every instance of well-written articles, nor is it by any means the main reason that many articles get few or no responses, but I have seen it before.
6 - Clavos
Crap, Glenn, crap.
Piss poor response because you don't hasve a good one.
GOTCHA.
7 - Boeke
6-Clavos resorts to scatology when he has no real argument.
8 - Clavos
6-Clavos resorts to scatology when he has no real argument.
And when he wins...
9 - zingzing
clavos is a regular dude.