schools and hospitals is funny.
The skit ignores the fact that wealthy brokers are doing quite well thank you. Because they are the ones who caused the mess and who are playing it for profit.
Remember how after 9/11 the powers-that-be frightened us so much that we agreed to waste billions on wars we really did not need to be involved in?
Well, now they are scaring us about the debt. Same game. Same outcome. We are scared silly and willing to do anything they say. It's the same Stockholm syndrome, new story line.
Think about it. We handled this much more wisely before.
America ran up a huge, huge, huge debt during WWII. Most of our production capacity was taken over by the government and used to support the war effort. And when the war ended and the "boys came home," we ran up even more debt sending them to college and giving them home loans and restarting our economy.
We had a more protectionist economy back then. We helped others. Remember the Marshall Plan? But we balanced our efforts to help them with our efforts to help our needy and poor and ourselves. And we succeeded. Times were good for most Americans.
Until the Vietnam War, when, thanks to having been frightened by our free press and right-wing politicians about nuclear war and those dreadful Commies in Viet Nam and the domino theory, we wasted our children's blood and our treasure and finally, having failed to accomplish anything, brought our boys back home.
Only this time, things were different. The Republicans were in power and started the slow process of propagandizing and privatizing and starving government programs. After WWII, we offered free education and nothing down loans to returning veterans. After Viet Nam, not so much. A shocking number of Viet Name veterans ended up homeless or were mentally disabled by things like post-traumatic stress syndrome.
And, so here we are.
Our industry, our manufacturing capacity has been outsourced and handed over to other countries. We are dependent on imports for even the smallest things in life -- like underwear. And the patriotic spirit that helped us win WWII and then rebuild our economy afterwards have been wasted.
We are a nation vacillating between cynicism and fear, and our politicians like us like that because those extreme emotions make us so easy to manipulate.
So this video is about the stupidest, least reelvant, most simplistic comment on the economy I have ever seen. Unbelievably disgusting in my opinion.
Here is a video that shows what really happened.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x596052The disparity between European CEOs' and workers' paychecks is not as great as it is here, but the European wealthy have learned to "invest" and "loan" money so as to acquire nearly as much financial leverage as our over-the-top wealthy class has.
Moderation in all things. When capitalism gets out of kelter, it corrects itself. But our politicians have intervened so as to stop that self-correction. I am not a supporter of absolute free markets, but certainly you can't intervene in one direction -- to assist the wealthy -- and let the poor fight for survival in the "free market" when the market isn't free at all.
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