A few observations about America
America is a big country. With an average population density of 31 people per square mile. Put another way, there’s enough land for each man woman and child to have an 897,000 square foot (20 acre) buffer zone around them if they were evenly spread out. New York City, on the other hand, with its population of over eight million, and an average population density of around 26,000 per square mile, is certainly an aberration, but it does show that people tend to cluster together in this country. So… there’s a lot of open space out there. Most of the land area of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas are utterly barren. No farms, no nothing. How is it that we have not begun, in earnest, to deploy wind and solar energy collection? Is it the cost?
People in this country bitch ceaselessly about the expense of the space program. Generally, they don’t bitch about spending a trillion dollars over five years on a failed war we started. They hear about social programs that will cost 20 million dollars over 10 years, and they soil themselves with disgust. How does that work, exactly? … and where does the money for the war or the social programs come from, anyway?
Conservatives in the country (and they seem to operate the loudest, most obnoxious and inescapable media outlets) complain about “tax and spend liberals”… as opposed to what?… “print and spend conservatives”? I’m sick to death of people complaining about taxes, and then expecting the government to fix the roads, educate the children, provide health care, cover retirement and prosecute wars. The money has to come from SOMEWHERE… Where does it come from? Mostly taxes. Sorry kids, but if you want to have roads and schools and a standing army, all that costs money, and the money has to come from you.
People are living in a lopsided bizarro fantasy world, where it’s OK for the head of your company to pull a seven- or eight-figure compensation package, while he (or she, but most likely he) drives the company in the ground, but it’s not OK to tax him (or her, but most likely him).
People throw all these economic indicators around like they mean something… like what the “Dow” is at… or what the GDP of the country is… or what the minimum wage is or should be… Most people pull these statistics out and make comparisons over 30 or 50 year periods, but never adjust for inflation. The dollar is worth less than a sixth of what is was when I was born. If you’re making $6.00 an hour now, that’s the equivalent of making $1.00 an hour in 1968 (average inflation rate of 4.66%). Is no one alarmed by this? How does this come to pass? Well, the fact that the government keeps borrowing money to cover expenses that should be covered by taxes doesn’t help. Our leaders borrow to cover expenses… why is anyone surprised that we’re in a financial meltdown, now? The people are following the example set by the leaders… Apparently, it’s perfectly fine to run a 400 billion dollar deficit on a budget of about 3 trillion dollars. What happens to the deficit? it gets piled onto the national debt, which by some estimates is over 10 trillion dollars.
What’s wrong? A few things… People have no sense of scale for numbers in the millions, billions and trillions. It’s just a bunch of zeros at that point. People in this country don’t take a minute, step back and see the big picture. All they know is their taxes are too high, and somewhere, some liberal is performing an abortion. Wake up, people. Our economy is a sham, and no one really knows how the sham works. The people in charge are very strongly motivated to stay there, and at your expense, and it’s not just the folks in Washington, or city hall or the state capital you have to look out for. It’s the captains of industry, too… because they’re the ones pulling the strings in Washington, city hall and the statehouse. Not you. You just get to pick WHICH slimy politician gets to be stroked by the conniving captains of industry. Once they’re in, and they get their first “gift” or “contribution”, they’re pwned… because… well…. look at what a U.S senator or representative gets for a salary…. about $170,000 a year. All the travel and the houses and so on… that doesn’t come cheap. Nor does getting re-elected. Do you figure that Joe Biden spent more than $170,000 getting re-elected last time? I bet he did. Where does THAT money come from? I don’t mean to pick on Joe alone… all of ‘em. They’re all whores, and we’re not paying them what they think they’re worth… GM is paying them what they think they’re worth. I don’t mean to pick on GM… All of ‘em.
Oh, and a thought about Congressional salaries… here’s how out of touch and uninterested these people are. They manage to keep voting in pay raises for themselves… never fear… they won’t go hungry. Somehow, it’s escaped their notice that the minimum wage in this country is not (or was not until very recently) adjusted for inflation, and had no mechanism in place to do anything about it… Now I don’t know where you can live reasonably on $6.55 an hour, especially considering that jobs paying that low have no health coverage and are tenuous at best.
So this year, on November 4, I have one bit of advice: Throw the bums out. Incumbent = Fired. From the zoning board to US representatives and senators and everyone in between.