Over the last decade this nation has experienced a massive loss of productive and high value jobs in manufacturing, trade, and the professions sending many overseas and having many destroyed through the egregious misdirection of the self serving priorities of our financial institutions encumbering viable companies making real goods and services with untenable debt. Leveraging their assets in order to maximize profits for the financial engineers before flipping the company or taking it to market as an IPO. Too often the workers who made the company are left with little or nothing while the Wall Street "whiz kids" march off with a bundle having destroyed the vision, imagination and the hard work that went into creating these companies, to their benefit and to the detriment of its workers and society at large.
'Disproportionate' is the freighted word that shackles our society. Over the past few years some two-thirds of the gain in national income has gone to the top one percent of Americans. Mostly those in the financial industry harbored in such government protected entities as 'bank holding companies', part of something that has come to be ominously called the "shadow banking system". They bring virtually nothing viable to the economic landscape other than egregious speculation gorging on complex derivatives enriching the financial players, while through their malign impact, impoverishing great swaths of the American and world economy (i.e. betting on the collapse of the housing market). When these bets go dramatically wrong also collapsing the institutions that took the long side of the bets, they are then bailed out by the government making good the value of these 'bet' instruments whose function had no greater economic justification than a compulsive gambler's casino bets. And the grim irony, when the red comes up instead of black it's the local inhabitants of the casino's venue who are asked to pay to keep the casino afloat, while the casino lets the gambler keep his chips.
And the local inhabitants pay dearly. Their services are curtailed, their stores are forced to close, their local banks are driven to the edge, the value of their houses plummet or are repossessed. Not having insider status their financial assets deteriorate dramatically and even in desperation had they wanted to get back into the casino to try their own luck given their new world being bereft of all other opportunity, the house wont extend them credit. Its just as well, because they wouldn't have to see our compulsive gambler swilling Dom Perignon and downing a small mountain of Pate de Foie Gras after having feasted on Beluga Caviar at the casino's resplendent restaurant.
The gambler is there, and he or his proxy will always be there. And the town and its inhabitants, tattered and poorer are still there trying to make do as best they can and trying to contain their simmering anger at the unfairness of it all, not quite knowing what to do. Some joining in the regional meanderings of the Tea Party, or some equivalent movement that promises to address the clear wrongs that are being inflicted and tolerated by those in charge.
When all is said and done it becomes clear that it is the Casino that needs fixing because it is the Casino that the set the rules, it is the Casino that has permitted the outrages that have resulted in the destabilizing of the norm and sanctioning the unexpected and unfair.
Now with a small leap of imagination lets transpose our government for the nefarious Casino. Clearly it needs a new management or a new way of managing. What has come before is not functioning and major changes are needed. The local inhabitants need a voice in running the Casino, which in a sense has been denied them because they are unable to foot either the entry tab, or the needed cash to play at the tables. And that is what it has come to be, without access and without money no one at the Casino pays attention.
And that must now change for the inhabitants to ever again have a chance to rectify the wrongs imposed by the Casino's management and to fairly share in an equitable distribution of benefits should they accrue ahead.
As here, today too much of our political system is bought and paid for. Too much of our political system is self serving, responsive to the wings of our two parties and indifferent to the day to day concerns of middle Americans in spite of the incessant lip service extended to them. Yes, there is limp Wall Street reform, but no clawback of the exigencies that drove the nation to the brink. Yes there is a stimulus program, but faltering shamelesly through lack of clear direction. Yes, there is an alternative energy program without clear mandates nor meaningful results as the transfer of billions to the oil providers continues unabated. Yes, there are our soldiers dying in fragmented nation states far away without a modicum of sacrifice being asked of the home front. Yes, there are moneyed interests both domestic and foreign who have access to those who govern, without limitation and a shameless Congress ready to do their bidding in spite of the promises made in Presidential campaigns to curtail their influence. Yes we have courts of law who, through judicial minutiae rather than pragmatic sense of national welfare have given these moneyed interests even greater influence by striking down financial restraints on the powerfully funded in election laws, that make the middle class even more disenfranchised. Yes, there is talk of restraining government spending while special interests with access to government and its earmarks are encumbering the nation into ever greater indebtedness. Yes, while Main Street and middle class Americans continue to lose jobs, the pay checks on Wall Street and corporate boardrooms continue in their unabated and inflated manner while middle class Americans are absorbing pay cuts or shortened work weeks if they have any jobs at all, while teachers, the backbone of the nations future, police and firemen are losing their employment.
And so it goes, leaving the nation with a Frankenstein system whose core objective of governance has become self preservation of power and personal influence. This, while governing for the greater good of the nation has become a secondary and distant gerrymandered priority leaving the great body of the American electorate virtually without meaningful representation and forestalling and diminishing America's middle class' engagement with its government with every passing day.
And yet something is stirring. People throughout the land understand that the political system is broken, and Americans throughout the length and breadth of the country, that their government no longer speaks for them no matter which party happens to be in power. They feel the system is gamed from within, for and about those who have access and the money to follow through to assure their parochial interests are taken into account and acted upon. How those interests impact the greater good has become dangerously secondary. Checks and balances seem to have gone by the board long ago.
Grass roots movements are beginning to stubbornly emerge from the depths of these frustrations of which I have touched on only a few, as the list could go on almost endlessly. Yes, there are the Tea Parties, and they should be listened to in order to begin to understand how people feel. But out there something much more significant is beginning to take hold. A movement new to many, headed by people of impeccable credentials who are devising a program using the new age technology to bring all Americans back into the political process in a meaningful way and most importantly in a way that each American can once again feel that he/she as a citizen has the stature and sense of prideful responsibility that his vote was meant to convey unto him as a meaningful participant in the process of nationhood.
The new organization is called "Americans Elect". I don't want to steal its thunder because it can much better directly convey its goals and points of engagement. It has the potential of becoming the salutary wave of America's political future. Their contact information is given as Kahlil.Byrd@AmericansElect.org.
Even if Americans Elect is well intentioned this line proves how ineffectual they will be:
"nominate a balanced Presidential ticket that will bridge the vital center of American public opinion"
What "vital center" would that be?
A "center" between those who believe the scientists who warn us of the potentially catastrophic impact of Global Warming and those who believe talk of Global Warming is a Liberal conspiracy to bring down modern America. Perhaps it's a "center" between those who believe Obama is an American Citizen who was democratically elected President and those who believe he is an islamist/socialist/fascist/communist dictator.
Sorry Friend, but your little "grass roots movement" reeks of the same obsession with the Fallacy of the Golden Mean which has made our current ruling elite so useless.
Trade deficit increasing --> Unemployment increasing --> Lower wages -->Not any recovery in consumption expected --> less tax collection--> High indebtness of government, companies and families --> lower expectations of all the economic agents ---> less investment (public and private) ---->less industrial production ----> Trade deficit increasing
The same process have been hapenning from more than 15 years ago, but to avoid the recession, the economy was based in a long succession of bubbles (mergers, dotcom, raw mats, real state...) and in the cheap credit (due to low interest rates), and the industrial outsourcing were growing exponencially, all in a unsustainable way.
Now the fiduciary money and their bubbles is gone, and we need a REAL economy based on the production of REAL products, not merely smoke
The administration needs to start to think on protectionist measures to reverse the outsourcing trend as the only way to save the middle class
"Since the Great Recession began in December 2007, America has lost 16 percent of its manufacturing payroll jobs. While there has been a slight uptick in manufacturing jobs in the last seven months, only 11.7 million Americans work in this sector, down from 17.3 million 10 years ago"
And it is false it is due to the increase in productivity, at the same time China has created tens of millions of jobs
That means almost HALF of the jobs in the manufacturing sector have been lost in ONLY 10 years, the process start to accelerate more and more when our dear Mr. Bush brings China to the WTO in 2001 and remove all the tariffs to their products, good job George!, the richests love you!
Just hope people will take this to heart and start holding the politicians feet to the fire and get past the illusion that the parties are in the least bit different.
Don't let the fact that Obama's admin is relatively conservative, compared to what Americans wanted.
Vote Liberal in the Primaries and VOTE democrat in the elections.
VOTE
Don't let the "it's all the same" folks bs you.
Conservatism's goal is to bankrupt the republic till the multinationals can buy it, while conserving serfdom for the former citizens.
American has a cancer that is killing it. It's called greed. I wonder if the patient will survive long enough for someone to find a cure. Personally I'm inclined to doubt it.
I rather expect businesspeople to be greedy in some sense, but I hoped that the general public would act as a check on their excesses. The anti-government sentiment has allowed the rich to pilfer the pockets of the middle class with impunity.
any which way, we’re gonna need a little luck
you can still get gas in heaven and drink in kingdom come….
In the meantime, I’m cleaning my gun
-Mark Knopfler
No country can maintain a good economy and standard of living if they are not producing anything. The inevitable result of the speculation of the finance sector is the destruction of worthy productive enterprise. The inevitable result of trading intangible financial products to produce super wealth, is the kind of economic collapses seen recently and in previous global depressions.
Regulation is not there to curtail people's freedom of action, except where those actions impinge on others freedom. In this case, regulation is much like the criminal law, except applied to much richer criminals.
In earlier generations, a strong ethical responsibility to one's neighbours and peers would have allowed self regulation to work much better. Now we have a completely individualistic self-centredness that pervade's media and corrupt corporation funded politicians. All of this needs to be addressed if a functioning democracy is to be returned to the US.
We have the government saying that everything is good and it's all cleaned up, so no need to worry, and grossly under estimating the amount of oil release because they are using data supplied by BP for craps sake!!! So much for effective regulation.
The government is in on the fix, so governmental regulation is just one more case of putting the foxes in charge of the hen house. What we actually have is corporate interests and the interests of the elite placed above the interests of the people. So allowing them more power to regulate is not at all the answer. Cleaning out the cesspool our government swims in is the only answer. And to do that people have to understand that both parties are in on this, and that there is no difference between them.
Until the people wake up to this, we have no chance to move forward.
And I doubt that most of you really want democracy, as it is mob rule that allows one group to enslave any other group with enough votes, so let's get back to our constitutionally limited republic.
Both modern and ancient republics vary widely in their ideology and composition. The most common definition of a republic is a state without a monarch.[5] In republics such as the United States and France, the executive is legitimized both by a constitution and by popular suffrage. In the United States, James Madison defined republic in terms of representative democracy as opposed to direct democracy[6], and this usage is still employed by many viewing themselves as "republicans".[7] In modern political science, republicanism refers to a specific ideology that is based on civic virtue and is considered distinct from ideologies such as liberalism.[8]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic
I agree that the Government is corrupted by corporate donations and lobbyists. On the other hand, the corporations are lobbying for less regulation not more.
The Government needs to regulate more in such a way that relatively independant bodies actually implement the regulation.
A second issue is that the major influence of commercial interests on Government through donations (bribery) and lobbying should be removed.
There is still a difference between the parties in that the Republicans have dropped even any pretense at trying to fix problems with the system. They were just doing the bidding of medical insurance and big Pharmaceuticals in trying to destroy any possibility to provide Americans with affordable top standard health care. They are doing the bidding of big oil when they stymie efforts to prevent the biggest disaster the world has ever faced in climate change. They have acted to prevent re-regulation of the financial industry that is so obviously needed after the GFC.
Certainly some Democrats are equally corrupt - but as a party they are not so completely amoral yet.
The only financial instruments that should be allowed are ones that create wealth, and not those that merely make money. For example, short selling should be outlawed. Betting on failure leads to questionable descision making and destroys wealth. If a company is going to fail, let it, but no one should be motivated to help by profiting from it.
Reduce employment in and size of financial industry, which creates nothing and makes money by its participants serving each other cups of coffee.
Industries in America that physically make things should get highly preferential tax treatment over service industries that create nothing.
Does anyone remember when we were actually paying down the debt?
Romans, and now Americans, have had the misfortune of being ruled by a Selfish Class. Rome fell because of it. Will America replay the Fall of Rome?
http://americandaily.com/index.php/article/4228
Wash, rinse, repeat for most major cities in US. All in the next 10 years or so would be my guess, watch for the next financial crisis to push the economy into a depression and set it off.