I first heard McCain say "Drill, Drill, Drill" when pushing a campaign crowd to go along with his efforts to get off-shore oil drilling restrictions lifted. This rift was amended by a speaker at the RNC into "Drill, Baby, Drill". Sarah Palin "corrected" Joe Biden in their only debate when he used the first version and she interrupted to tell him it was really the second one. Allow this poem to register my impressions:
"Drill, Drill Drill
Drill, Baby, Drill
Burn, Baby, Burn
Extinction, Extinction, Extinction"
Global warming take that, and be damned!
John McCain gets emotional when he cries out that taxes should not be raised. That it is wrong to take money out of your pocket because it destroys the economy's growth. How quickly he forgets the Clinton years when raising taxes on those that could afford to pay more was instrumental in creating jobs and raising the strength of the middle class. The money the government gets does not disappear. If it is spent wisely -- on infrastructure especially -- jobs get created, the working middle class grows, and more efficiency is added to the market place that allows businesses to cut costs. The middle class is the all important entity that makes a country worth living in. That group of working individuals perform the jobs that make the country's businesses succeed. Leadership provided by entrepreneurs that belong to the middle class is also an essential component.
But as it was visually explained to me by my sixty-eight year old boss when I worked in a fruit store at fourteen years of age -- my jobs where to sell the produce when needed, but mostly to deliver the orders on my bike to customer's homes -- One hand rubs the other. Entrepreneurs and workers cannot survive without customers. When the middle class atrophies, the country goes down the "toilet" as customers disappear when the ability to buy many goods and services is lost.
Wall Street is that "place" were capital formation drives the engine that makes possible our great corporations coming into existence. True. But people such as myself that engage in buying and selling stocks, bonds, puts, and calls are not entrepreneurs. We are gamblers that get a lower tax rate if we time our bets to be decided after one year--the vaunted capital gains tax rate. Makes me muse about the possibility of workers being paid one year and one day after they sign into a job. Would that make them "capital gains tax rate equals" to the Wall Street gamblers?
"Socialism" is a curse word for the "free market is always right" ideologically driven crowd. Yet -- shockingly -- every family is a socialistic enterprise. Children get fed and clothed and don't pay for it. This is mostly true in the USA but not in many parts of the rest of the world where child labor is common. No matter, any child or our children -- the so called seed corn of any country -- will need the best of educations to see to it that a country remains prosperous in a high tech society.
In my next blog, I will spout off on how the educational system of the USA should be constructed and staffed.