I dont care about wealth disparity if its done through free market principles.
...I think that might be the root of the problem.
America can't remain a cohesive society during a tough recession if such wealth disparity persists. Civility ends when people start to go hungry.
Most Americans know that the government absolutely sucks at delivering quality services at a decent cost to the taxpayer.
...This is a misconception.
France delivers a better healthcare system (and all-inclusive too) than any other country in the world and does it for a fraction of what Americans spend to have a crappy semi-inclusive system. So obviously it can be done.
Again, who benefits?
The same people who make huge profits from the privatisation of America lobby and pressure the American government to cut funding and otherwise sabotage state agencies in order that they can more easily convince Americans that government itself is the problem.
It's always the same pattern:
Failing state function paralleled by a shadow corporate monopoly which actively sabotages government efforts to erode either their monopoly or profits.
Healthcare:
...the private sector healthcare monopolies, the HMO's, skim the profits and pass the costly patients on to the state service which then becomes unable to cope. The HMO's take all the healthy young people and dump those unable to get coverage (the poor; invalid; handicapped; old etc) onto the state system while simultaneously lobbying Congress to undercut the funding of the state system. HMO's have record profits, the taxpayer gets screwed. Americans then blame the state system.
War:
...the private sector war monopolies Blackwater/Haliburton skim huge profits during wartime at the expense of the state sector, the American military. They actively place politicians in office that will encourage conflicts for them to profit from (Cheney; Bush; Rumsfeld; Guliani etc), and when these engineered fundraiser conflicts do erupt these monopolies actively prolong them... in Iraq for example Blackwater troops have been exempted from the Geneva Convention and any possible criminal prosecution so that they can more easily perpetrate the atrocities necessary to inflame Muslim groups.
Stock Market:
...the SEC (Securities Exchange Comission) is essentially a captured regulator. The SEC is grossly underfunded and overworked because the large investment groups want less regulation in order to better manipulate their Pozi schemes. They offer mega-salary jobs to SEC investigators once they leave the SEC, so long as they never investigated any of the big boys. That's why none of the Bailout Boys were found out till the market collapsed... that's why Bernie Maddoff wasn't found out till a French Bank discovered the discrepancies (France has a highly regulated fund system). Now, with the market in ruins and the speculators bankrupt the taxpayer is being tapped to bail them out.
Seriously guys... it's time to drop the superficial ideologies and look at the big picture.
"Smaller government!"
"Capitalism not socialism!"
"No welfare state!"
"No socialised healthcare!"
These are propaganda soundbites designed to encourage a reactionary, unthinking dismissal of big picture thinking... ask yourself, who benefits from your autonomic refusal to consider the wider picture?
Isn't it obviously the self same people who try so hard to make you think that way?
The Luke
