I can't take it anymore.
I know this blog will either be ignored, or generate more heat than light. But there are some things I just need to say, even if no one understands.
I voted for hope and change in 2008, and as the two year mark approaches, my hope is hanging by a thread. I know I'm not alone in this. The change we've got so far has left the same plutocrats in charge as before, and the Supreme Court's affirmation that money equals speech probably has strengthened their control. To them a recession is just an opportunity to cut expenses (i.e. workers) and make even more money.
So at this point, if you're an MSNBC sort of person, you're probably thinking that I'm your kind of people, and expecting to hear how I think the government should take money from those rich S.O.B.'s and use it to create jobs for the middle class in green energy. Or something like that. On the other hand, maybe you're a FOX News fan, in which case I'm quite surprised you're still reading, given that I surely must be some kind of pinko liberal socialist to talk about rich people that way.
But actually I don't think it's possible to take the money from the ultra rich. They'll simply leave and take their money with them. Most countries, even the US, just love immigrants with money. And with so many countries' economies circling the drain right now, they surely love them all the more. Heck, some of these people probably can buy some countries.
The thing is, I grew up middle class, and it's really hard to watch it being murdered. But capitalism is the sword it lived by, and the invisible hand now wields the sword by which it dies. Capitalism works, you see. If there's cheaper labor available in the world, that's the labor that will get the jobs. Of course the people who get those jobs will develop a more expensive standard of living over time, and get raises, while salaries for the remaining jobs in the US stagnate or fall.
But there's always another third world country with people hungry enough to work cheap. And if not, third world countries are easy to make - just destroy a country's infrastructure and watch it roll back to the Middle Ages. Come to think of it, there's solar activity predicted for around 2012 that could take out large parts of the US electrical grid for months or even years. The US could be that next third world country. (There is a relatively easy fix for this, but there's a good chance it won't happen.)
For a long time, I've regarded people who want "smaller government" as completely ignorant of what is in their own best interest. What we really need, I thought, is government that regulates free markets for the common good. That is, government that is effective at reigning in the excesses of capitalism. To me, whether such a government is big or small is not the issue.
But I see now that these small government people are at least focused on where the problem is, even if the solution they propose would only make things worse. Our government is badly broken though. On that I certainly agree with them. The difference is that I want it fixed, and they want it to go away. I guess that will be the epitaph of our throw-away society: Our government was broken, so we threw it away and bought a new one. Well, the people who had the money bought a new one.
It's not just the government that's broken though. Our culture and our values have been shaped by decades of television to the point where we buy whatever we're told. And the best things we can buy are distractions, things to take our minds off our credit card balances and our jobs that are going nowhere. Our education system is a joke. Even the kids who stay in school, go to college, and somehow get a job that requires a college degree, start off with huge student loan debts that virtually require their fealty to The Man.
But people still "make it" sometimes. There's the lottery, and some people get lucky with each economic bubble. If you have the stomach for it, you can schmooze your way up the management ladder to the corporate management level, where you and your buddies can decide how much salary, stock and bonuses your souls are worth. Or there's inheritance, if you have rich parents and they don't try to buy their souls back before they die. But chances are, none of these are you.
You probably have a job (or memories of a job). When you're not working, you just want to be entertained or distracted. The money you make disappears to taxes and supporting what seems to you a modest lifestyle. If you're older, you wonder what happens when you can no longer work. If you're younger, you think ten years should be enough time to become a multi-millionaire - somehow. Surely those older people who are holding you down will be gone by then.
So I've come to think that politics as currently practiced is nothing but another distraction. We have the government we deserve. If we want better, then we need to be better. It's not so much about how you vote. It's what you value, how you spend your precious free time, what you do to make the world better after you're gone. We need to stop the useless bickering about politics and make a culture we can be proud of. In such a culture, honest political debate would be the norm, and we would stand a much better chance of having a serviceable government.
In future posts I'll talk about the values of such a culture.
