America’s Greatness
Throughout most of its history, America was a welcoming place, a place of refuge — with a government of, by, and for the people.
Over the last half century, powerful interests have taken control of government. They
- relaxed protections for working-class wealth and for small businesses.
- globalized the labor market. We couldn’t compete with the less affluent nations, so we lost a great many jobs, but got a whole lot of inexpensive products. The captains of industry (who control the government) got very rich selling them.
- use unlimited propaganda to convince voters to elect candidates who give them an ever-increasing share of the nation”s wealth — and who serve them instead of the people.
- deny us the benefits enjoyed by many other wealthy nations:
The cost of which wouldn’t even raise our taxes/GDP to the average of the other OECD nations.- Universal health care with low co-pays and no connection to employment.
- Free or low cost higher education and free lifetime retraining.
- 5 weeks paid vacation, plus holidays and paid sick leave.
- Up to 18 months of paid parental leave for the birth of a child
- Heavily subsidized, high quality child care
- More secure retirement systems
- Better unemployment and disability benefits
- Reagan stopped highly progressive taxation (introduced trickle-down economics) and caused the wealth disparity to become increasingly extreme — under both Republican and Democratic administrations. (The policy is still in effect and not much of an isssue.)
- are distracting us by scapegoating immigrants and with an unjust, illegal, and unnecessary war.
- have weakened the voting rights act and are doing everything else they can think of to increase their and perpetuate their power.
Going into the midterms, the situation looks really bad
- The powerful interests still have the right to unlimited propaganda
- The people are distracted