The GOP has a plan. Gut programs to aid the poor, and divert what’s left of them to their buddies in the big insurance companies. Yes, we need to cut spending, and that does include the big entitlement programs. But we do not solve the problems of America by giving more money from the poor to the rich. The growing income disparity in America – and it’s been growing since the Civil War, when the USA took on perpetual debt to fund that war – is due not to the poor being unable to hack it in the real world. It’s due to the way the government facilitates the plunder of America’s poor to benefit the rich.
I’ve read books from recent years, from the 1960s, from the 1930s, and from 1902 about the subject. All present telling facts – the same litany of facts, with numbers appropriate to their generation – all decrying the way the government assists large corporations and their directors in plundering the poor of the nation. Republican politicians seem to be the most ideologically predisposed to the plundering of the poor, and the article linked above demonstrates a continuance of that trend. Yes, we need fiscal responsibility, but no, it’s not in continuing to send bags of cash from the poor to the rich.
My solution is simple, but revolutionary. Ban all lending of money or property at interest. Ban any practice that amounts to someone earning money from another’s efforts, regardless of what was borrowed to make those efforts. Forgive all debts once the debtor has repaid the principal, and forgive all debts the debtors are unable to pay. Require conscription of personal fortunes in times of war – and we’ll never have another war again if the rich can’t lend money to profit from them. Amend the constitution with Thomas Jefferson’s idea: require the government to repay all debts within 19 years so that those born on the day the debt was taken out will not be involved in paying it off.
Yes, this means defaulting on the US debt and that we’ll never be able to borrow money again (supposedly). That seems to me to be a good thing, going forward. We need a new way of living in which we do not permit the exploitation of the poor. That is the true path to fiscal responsibility for the nation as a whole. I’m ready to ride a bike 6 miles to work when gasoline is unavailable to us – and that might not be so bad, either. It’s not the easiest world, but it’s a brighter future than one in which debt looms over us all and the rich continue to oppress the poor.
Think about it.
Not sure that is the legal, moral, or ethical thing to do, regardless of how you feel about banks. Push for regulation, push for change, but realize how big of a chunk of our economy and personal fortunes would go right into the toilet.
Like the chunk of the economy and personal fortunes that went down the toilet in the 2008 panic? 🙂 We’re going to have pain, one way or another. Better to work on pain that will make us a better nation in the long run instead of a more indebted one.