Not long ago, we set the standard for industrial productivity, for the quality of our infrastructure, for the growth and prosperity of our middle class. What happened?
We used to be the world leader in the percentage of young people with college degrees. We are now 12th among 36 developed nations.
We have become, as Bob Herbert noted in his op-ed column in The New York Times, “a nation of nitwits, obsessed with the comings and goings of Lindsay Lohan and increasingly oblivious to crucially important societal issues that are all but screaming for attention. What should we be doing about the legions of jobless Americans, the deteriorating public schools, the debilitating wars, the scandalous economic inequality, the corporate hold on governmental affairs, the commercialization of the arts, the deficits?”
Where is the public outcry? What are the candidates fighting about? What are you voting for?
The Republican Party has downplayed the role of government in education, the single most important tool in building the middle class. The Republican candidates plan to privatize Social Security, the only income for millions of seniors who have paid into the program since they were old enough to work. Congressional Republicans promise to kill current healthcare reform legislation, passed to help heal the growing cancer on our national debt. Republicans want to send jobs overseas, to make more jobs for us here at home, they say. And they want to deregulate the banks and Wall Street. Hello?
The Republican theory of "trickle down economics" suggests that money from the the rich will ultimately reach the poor, create jobs, build industry and infrastructure, help private colleges and small businesses, and cure all of our economic woes. In fact, it might soak the middle class!
What’s trickling down is not economic help from the rich; it’s the direction we’re heading as a nation. We need a social, governmental, and intellectual lift upwards.
Sorelly2002: The average Republican does not have to sit around and contemplate the destruction of public education - because Republican politicians and their billionaire backers already have worked out the plans. Then they brainwash you sheeple with soft sounding yet hollow mantras like "compassionate conservatism" so you check the box for them - despite the fact that they'll screw us all including you (unless you have foreign bank accounts and declare more than $500,000 as taxable income). Jay: "Czars" is just a term that Karl Rove & Lee Atwater politicized. It was actually used as an expression for Special Assistant to the President by Nixon. You can call them whatever you want, but every Republican President since Eisenhower has had Special Assistants. You can call them Chief Google or Bat Boy, buty it doesn't change the fact that they are just advisers - just like Karl Rove was or Al Haig or Dick Cheney (for Nixon).
Now is the time to put aside pre-conceived notions, define the problem and select the candidate most qualified to correct that problem. Who has the better economic track record: Obama or Romney? That choice seems to be pretty clear.
Those at the top of the economic food chain provide job opportunities for others in various ways. They may have large homes with pools, fancy cars, private jets, luxury yachts and take expensive vacations among other things but just think of all the jobs created in order to service all of those things. In addition, most of them also choose to invest part of that wealth in various ways which also creates more job opportunities for others. It may be in the form of starting or expanding their own business or investing in others so that THEY can do so. Either way, it is a domino effect which creates opportunities at all levels of the chain. The thing to remember when deciding what really is a “fair share” is the fact that for every dollar “confiscated” by the government via taxes, that is one less dollar available to create a new job or quite possibly to even save an existing job. That is one dollar closer someone may be to even losing the job they currently have. A rising tide lifts ALL boats, why scuttle the ship simply because you envy the captain’s uniform? I have infinitely more faith in the ability of private citizens to decide how best to spend money than in the government's efforts.