What Would You Do To Rescue The American Middle Class?

Originally posted by Fromabove
The best thing to do is vote against the democrats.

Absolutely, because when the Republicans take over it will be skittles and sunshine for everyone.

GMAFB... YOU are one of the biggest problems with this country right now. YOU and everyone like you on both sides that are so pathetically deluded that they think THEIR party is right, the other is wrong and that THEIR party can fix all the problems lickity-split. That is unadulterated delusional crap and the longer that people cling to this kind of insanity the further down the craphole we're going to go.

Wealth in this country is being increasingly concentrated in the top 10% wealthiest Americans.

Here are some dramatic facts that sum up how the wealth distribution became even more concentrated between 1983 and 2004, in good part due to the tax cuts for the wealthy and the defeat of labor unions: Of all the new financial wealth created by the American economy in that 21-year-period, fully 42% of it went to the top 1%. A whopping 94% went to the top 20%, which of course means that the bottom 80% received only 6% of all the new financial wealth generated in the United States during the '80s, '90s, and early 2000s (Wolff, 2007).

source

Allowing companies to dodge taxes and engage in large scale global wage wars by funneling jobs to countries with the lowest labor rates and where workers don't receive protections, regulation, benefits of any kind has had a huge negative impact on this country. Business owns government. Go back to my link. Look where all the weallth, all the assets reside in this country. Now consider where our members of government fall in that equation. For the most part, they are among that elite 10% that have systematically looted the wealth of the middle class while supposedly 'representing' us.

There, dear OP, is the heart of the problem. We have allowed people to legislate our wealth to themselves and their colleagues. What we have done is akin to holding a person's coat while he molests your child. It's our fault. We let it happen. The Democrats didn't do it. The Republican's didn't do it. The WHOLE LOT OF THEM did it.

The ONLY way to fix things --- if they are indeed fixable --- is to put a government in place that is legally bound to representing OUR interests. And by legally bound I mean with significant private oversight and accountability that carries truly grievous consequences for malfeasance.

I keep hearing that the republican party is the party of new ideas but for some reason I don't seem to be able to entice any of them to articulate their ideas here in this thread. Do they really have any ideas? Are they ashamed to list them? Or is it that they are content to sit around and gripe as opposed to offering solutions? I mean really, where are the republican ideas to get us out of the situation we currently find ourself in?

I didn't start this thread just to preach to the choir, I posted it in hopes that it would encourage some of our republican ATSers to demonstrate their ability to come up with creative ideas for fixing our economy and to open a constructive conversation regarding those ideas. So far the response from your side of the isle has almost been non existent.

Where are you people?

How would Horatio Alger handle this situation? Could he? Maybe not...

Maybe at last the time has come to ask not what this country is doing for the plight of the doomed, but what the plight of the doomed is doing to this country. They have become the majority. The future of this country belongs to them: The doomed.

You're probably surrounded by them and don't even know it...

I used to live near this Mexican kid, and I never would have guessed that he was doomed. This kid was a go-getter; Hell bent to make money and for that reason alone almost certain to succeed. But at the time he was broke...

Which is to say that he was hungry. What casino chips are to dollars, dollars are to food. Try walking up to the buffet and saying "I'm hungry". Whether or not you get any food will depend on the hour, but you will probably not be injured or even insulted. You're taking your chances if you say that you're broke.

I was doomed too, but fortunately for this boy I understood what he was telling me when he came around broke and hoping to earn five bucks. And as luck would have it, although my income at the time was averaging around only one hundred dollars per week, there were always two or three places where I was welcome, whatever hour of whatever day it might happen to be, and some of them fed me. Money was disposable- almost useless- to my doom; I was a trader in good will. So I bought five dollars worth of good will and a barely needed lawn mowing.

I feel a bit foolish now to admit that meeting this kid filled me with optimism. His approach to finding work was different from mine, simpler, and in some small measure had actually worked where mine had failed completely. When hungry, this young man just went out and earned some money, while I was doomed to be left behind until once again some middleman in a human resources department saw fit to broker me a livelihood for reasons of his own.

The kid's tenacity is still commendable. However, I eventually realized that I was not actually in the market for his help, and furthermore that the labor was a mere ritual to accompany a mooch that I could afford to indulge only because others had indulged me. And even as we claimed to have useful labor to sell, we were throwing it away on growing, harvesting, and dumping lawns that we didn't even want to begin with. In the middle of a water crisis!

Will Work For Money... Or just because its what people do. But working for food? It never occurred to us that the word farm could be used as a verb. The doomed do not realize that they can create, hunt, find, or even take. The doomed beg or buy. When you're doomed, food comes from doing useless tasks for other people. There is no direct correlation between what you do and what you get, but the people you place in control are obliged to notice you, and give you something.

That's what dooms a person: the loss of control.
For the doomed, the whole world is a labyrinth of concrete warehouses and steel framed office buildings, where all of the doors say EMPLOYEES ONLY, and most of the people are gruff old yeomen who don't approve of your existence, and just might turn you over to the slave traders if you step out of line. It's too dangerous to go it alone. Everything is bigger than you; too big to control. You're going to need some company; A multinational corporation if you can get in with one. They have control. If they hire you then you can help change the world. In fact as the new guy you'll be forced do the hard part.

That should be your clue that it's not real to begin with. Doom is just a placebo- a suggested hallucinogen and potentiator of depressants- unleashed to protect the status quo. Sure they beam radioactive lies straight through your eyeballs, but the effects are confined entirely to the brain; Cosmic doors do not open or close; Nothing carnal or Divine is hidden or revealed. Judgement is NOT at hand. This is not dying. This is the same life you had before you were doomed and, even in this condition, it can still be used to get things done.

But it's important to realize that with no active chemical ingredient, the doom trip half-life is theoretically infinite. Turning off the TV, even getting them outdoors is never completely guaranteed to make someone seize the day, especially when they've resigned themselves to schizoid doom paralysis.

This was a tollerable fact of life in the old days, and at times even a luxury. The doomed make good company, on account of their cool indifference and their many contributions to humor and fantasy. But in times like these that just won't make the nut. It's gonna take all of us to fix things this time. Yes, as fantastic as it sounds, the easiest way out of this mess is to cure doom, so that success can happen spontaneously; just like failure.

As I have said, even the doomed actually do have the means to effect change in the world. The hang-up is that those with the motive don't see an opportunity, and those with the opportunity don't see a motive.

I'm not exactly busy, and there's a big dang fire hazard right across town. Why the hell wouldn't I stop part of my own city from burning down? Why indeed?

Well for starters, although it effects me enormously, my actual stake in this town is strangely absent. Being young, unemployed, and probably a bit reckless, I don't own any property, have any insurance or owe any taxes. So while the people around me might save money or even get some kind of rebate if the cost of fire season can be lowered, the rising tide will not lift my boat. And there's apparently no reason that it should. In the eyes of the law, the burning of my home town would not be my concern.

If not for that hang-up, then even if the economy is fundamentally breaking down on us, I could contribute to the common good. If there is no opportunity to produce, why not prevent destruction? But that's my labor and the difference I have made should be mine, less a fair cut for the house of course... we do all have to live together.

So getting down to brass tacks here's my one actual suggestion:

Publish goals, the calculated value (not cost) of their achievement (not necessarily in dollars but in something that you can actually get out of it), directions and/or a solicitation of proposals on how they can be achieved, a list of any resources available for the purpose, and of course the nature of any commissions to be offered.

Essentially I am suggesting that governments, businesses, non-profits, and even individuals can raise an investment of labor when new capital is either unavailable or more precious than the expected return on investment, and that this can deliver some of the benefits of an economic recovery without actually having to wait for one.

This is of one generalized example of a broader principle:
Work solves problems, and all it takes to do work is people, which we still have plenty of. It's all in how you deal with them. Right now, dealing with them means proving to them that doom is optional.