ysabetwordsmith (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ysabetwordsmith) wrote2011-02-23 11:44 am
ysabetwordsmith) wrote2011-02-23 11:44 am
A Look at America's Problems
These 8 charts illustrate key problems with America's wealth distribution and how it affects the country. Link courtesy of my partner Doug.
America now functions more as a plutocracy than a democracy. A tiny number of super-powerful people control a majority of the wealth. They are over-represented in the government. Wealthy people thus make decisions to benefit themselves, while harming the vast majority of citizens. Many people do not have enough money to live on, which is to say, meet the demands placed on them by the wealthy. The result is a floundering economy because there is simply not enough money left to the bottom 80-90% of people to keep it going. Too much of the money is being hogged by too few people who are using it in ways that aren't producing a healthy economy, no matter what kind of smokescreen they try to blow over the disaster.
America now functions more as a plutocracy than a democracy. A tiny number of super-powerful people control a majority of the wealth. They are over-represented in the government. Wealthy people thus make decisions to benefit themselves, while harming the vast majority of citizens. Many people do not have enough money to live on, which is to say, meet the demands placed on them by the wealthy. The result is a floundering economy because there is simply not enough money left to the bottom 80-90% of people to keep it going. Too much of the money is being hogged by too few people who are using it in ways that aren't producing a healthy economy, no matter what kind of smokescreen they try to blow over the disaster.
Re: Cite evidence, please.
School vouchers represent the CHOICE that money gives to wealthy people. School vouchers would reduce the gap between wealthy children and poor children in getting a choice in education - but Democrats regularly work against school vouchers, keeping the good schools for the wealthy, and keeping their control over poor people by deciding what schools they are allowed to go to.
And you can look at my livejournal (through ysabet's name) for my personal history with the Milwaukee Public School system. I won't recount the entire thing here - but suffice to say I have excellent reason to see them as caring NOTHING for the education of the students or the conditions they learn in. Seeing as they told me flat out that the quality of work done is not a priority in any way for them.
*deep breath* *lets it out slowly*
And yes. That's the SHORT version.
So in briefer-brief:
They cluster people at the lower end of the spectrum, remove opportunities for people to get ahead through making individual deals and choices by legislating that every employee must be treated the same, price-set vital elements of our economy, and remove our choices.
Re: Cite evidence, please.
I do not believe they are doing this *on purpose* through any sort of conspiracy. I believe it is a series of well-intentioned legislation that was not well thought through past the initial and immediate result - working off the base classist assumption of 'noblesse oblige,' where the noble class is supposed to 'take care of' the worker class.
The problem is that the person who knows most about farming - is the farmer. The person who knows most about business - is the businessman. The person who knows most about medicine - is the Doctor. Being a good and intelligent politician or legislator or administrator does not give the knowledge to regulate these elements, and regulation inherently limits the very necessary agility and flexibility of these elements to respond to the changing world around them.