I do a lot of watching, listening, learning, and trying to understand everyone’s point of view. At this point, I’m having a hard time understanding the opposition from lower and middle class Americans toward economic change. Personally, I’m tired of working harder and harder every day, every week, every year…for nothing. I spent years in college just to find that my efforts were just as worthless as working all those years. Now I’m making just as little as I was before I went to school, only now I have $50,000 worth of debt looming over my head. Every time I do something to try to make my life better, easier, more manageable…you know…reach for “the American Dream,” my legs get swiped out from under me before I even take the first few steps. I know I’m not the only one. I’ve heard stories far worse than mine. Corporate America and the super wealthy are choking the life out of the rest of us.
Wealth inequality in this country is staggering, and it is growing.
Our middle class is falling into the lower class. Each year, more and more people find themselves making less than what is necessary to live. Eventually, if nothing is done, American will resemble a medieval oligarchy with one wealthy ruling class and one peasant class who has no power whatsoever. Think about that. The money is still out there, it’s just that the vast majority of people have no access to it.
Why is that, and what can we do about it?
There are many reasons. To begin with, many of our jobs are being shipped over seas. We can start to resolve that by creating a tariff on all finished goods. If it costs manufacturers just as much to make goods overseas as it does to make them here in the US, they may as well keep the jobs here. We can also create new jobs here. As Bernie Sanders has suggested, there are plenty of jobs just waiting for ordinary people…as soon as we start to rebuild our infrastructure. All over the country there are roads, bridges, dams, aqueducts and many other such neglected structures necessary for our cities to function properly. By repairing these structures, we can create thousands of jobs.
Of course, the biggest issue is how the ultra wealthy and major corporations are able to avoid paying their fair share into our economy. They are more than happy to take your money from you, but when it comes to contributing to the society as a whole…
Now keep in mind, three trillion is just the amount of money these guys avoid paying into the system. It’s hard for me to even imagine a number like that…$3,000,000,000…and that is what they are supposed to contribute to our society, but don’t. Imagine what that kind of money could do for schools, for our police departments, for rebuilding infrastructure…heck, use your imagination! The first step to ensuring these people pay their fair share and can longer slip through their loopholes is to pull the money out of politics. We need to get the lobbyists out of Washington, overturn Citizens United, and bring democracy back to our political system. To ensure that our democratic system remains sound, we really need to impose term limits on senate seats. (“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”-John Emerich Edward Dalberg.) Since the ultra wealthy and big corporations will have been stripped of their power and influence at that point, politicians could then create laws to close those loopholes without the fear of retribution.
In the end, the only thing that will save this economy is to stop the flow of money from the lower and middle class into the ultra wealthy and major corporations. As long as the money that we lose to the wealthy and corporations remains out of reach, and never makes its way back into our economy, this system is doomed for failure. Many of these corporations do business all over the world, so they really don’t care if we all fall into extreme poverty, because they have plenty of customers in elsewhere who are ready, willing, and able to buy their products. The only way they can continue to do this to us is if we let them get away with it. We’ve been letting them steal from us, use us, and treat us like we’re disposable for far to long. This country was built on the backs of hard working people like us. It’s time that we take back our economy, take back our country…time that we show wealthy billionaires and corporations that if you want to do business in the US, you need to contribute to our society…plain and simple.
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