Quote:
Originally Posted by johnny
Hey...i know...let's try communism.  |
Well, basically... we are.
Traditional "communist" governments, such as Russian communism, have used the excuse of "the good of the people" to basically funnel money up to the party powers, who were in essence de facto dictators. Every time Stalin had one of the "ribbon-cutting" cermonies for new train stations to dedicate them to "the people" he would get angry -- because he considered himself to be the owner of them.
Since 1975 we have pushed our wealth to the top 1% in great bundles. In 1975 that top 1% owned about 9% of the country, and now it owns about 23%. Sounds a lot more like Russian style communism than it does anything else, actually.
The worst news is that this great transfer of wealth has been done with borrowed money. We quit taxing the rich, but we didn't quit doling out the government benefits. Well, somebody had to pay for this, and in the absence of a tax base guess who the benefactor was? Yep, China.
What I yearn for is a return to the government policies we had circa mid-1950's to 1980ish, before the big wealth transfer, and before we as a country basically started living on a maxed out credit card. That model, my friend, is much further afield from communism than is the current "corporatism" we live in today.