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 would 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 the wealth disparity became 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 they can think of to cling to power.
Going into the midterms, the situation looks really bad
- The powerful interests still have the right to unlimited propaganda
- The people are distracted