this is in response to a republican/conservative female telling me that middle class americans are losing all of their money to large government taxes, that we need better work ethic and education, not gov't handouts. the person works in legal aid in a large city. this is my response. it was off-cuff, and a bit of a rant, but so it goes. a lot of this is hyperbole, so please don't take the exact details to heart. i would love comments.
tell her to come to florida for 2 years and live amongst the working poor, amongst people who have to choose to work for money under the table or minimum wage and can't save or pay for health care. see if she wants to go back to alabama where i worked in mobile for 4 months with people showing up at the working-pool at 5 am every day to work for minimum wage in physical labor positions b/c they can't do anything since they don't have an education. when they were growing up, they were told they needed a high school diploma to get a good life. our economy is shifting/shifted drastically, and we need to drastically change like we did post-Great Depression/1980/1950. the good life on a high school diploma is just not true anymore. people must have education to survive. they need college degrees to enter our system/market economy.
i'm not sure if you hear the things i'm saying. i'm a conservative at heart. i hate big gov't. but i think a few more-socialized or heavily regulated industries are important. notice i didn't say healthcare should be socialized. i said insurance could be as a way to lower costs for all and to provide insurance (and by that way healthcare). the issue for doctors now (remember, 25+ doctors are in my immediate family alone) is they aren't being reimbursed for total costs on low-income patients. so now the rates for everyone else increases just to get back to the total income they should have had if the gov't systems weren't fucking the doctors and setting caps on procedures.
we need to start thinking about new ways to do things. this president, whoever is elected, will be the first that can move on day one towards an open gov't with higher accountability. for the first time in history you have a society that can be 'transparent' b/c of technology and information systems. this democracy will continue to 'prosper' as a form of government b/c of the break throughs in communication. becaues of the internet. and we need to start thoroughly addressing the issues that we can finally address b/c of technology.
do you know how i think the gov't will cut back over the next 15 years? put a hiatus on new higherings. If you just let people retire, and don't replace them, (instead invest in our country's infrastructure and capital with computers and actual technology - (ps this is domestic spending and can only sound good to the electorate)) you'll save on billions down the road. some people will abuse our systems and social safety nets regardless. but i dont' want to be in a society that discards its poor/elderly/children/homeless. and it's easy to say that. but it's much harder to realize how to do it. here's some ideas that kick around in my head each day.
1. education. really fund it. i'm excited that bush was introducing new policy on education. too bad it didn't work. fund education through working age and working knowledge. scholarships to college. scholarships to technical schools. scholarships to vocational schools. or just fund it. but right now this can't happen b/c business is telling people you need a college degree, and the gov't is responding by being corrupt and running colleges and student loan programs like it's supposed to be revenue producing now. it's an investment in the capital of our country. it'll take 5 years for it to turn around, so don't require state testing until the 3rd year or soemthing. stop teaching to the test, and start teaching. clean your schools up, possibly institute uniforms. try new things to make it work. if our economy is switching to technology based, give our students a chance to compete in the future. keep us at the highest level of entrepreneurship in the world.
2. expanding health insurance. if everyone's insured, at LEAST for major medical and emergency medical, then the costs incurred by each hospital that they have to take on their balance sheet, drop. doctors are actually paid at market rates for the services they provide, not at some random gov't figure that is outdated and only covers 1/3 of the cost with no hope of co-pays for the other 2/3. also, children should be covered for everything and dental. there are ways around socialized medicine, and i feel the right wing will come around if they would just stop incorrectly lumping in as socialized medicine. keep the profits, keep your doctors in the upper-middle, lower-upper class where they belong. they're smart, we should reward them properly. drug companies save lives with innovation. keep the impetus for innovation in the budget. don't fund research with the hope of finding products, use incentives like profit to keep the R&D alive in the country.
3. communications. this one is tricky b/c the FCC is already rather big-brother as it is. The new spectrum for wireless is a right step in the right direction to open up communications. if you really use the internet, and invest in web 2.0 and bringing high speed to the public, you have an opportunity to drastically improve education {and porn, that beautiful first amendment right - slight joke} for the masses. you can finally open up avenues for teaching the good stuff and sharing knowledge. also - could provide for homeschools. i'm not against vouchers at all. i think every student should get a certain $ amount every year (might happen already), and even private institutions could get that money and teach the way they want. the market will correct itself here b/c of how much talk happens b/w parents.
4. foreign oil. great buzz word. here's what you do about it. Switch Grass. Bush mentioned in 2007 state of union. it produces (through very very very early preliminary research) a net 4x the amount of ethanol per acre than corn (and about 3/5 that of sugar cane... but we're not going to be annexing mexico, so let's just focus on switch grass). we'll still need oil. we will. but come on, let's focus on remaking our economy and returning some factory jobs back to Motor City USA. if we focus on switch grass, we can really drive costs down and pump money into domestic producers of energy. also, nuclear. give me a break, this shit is the bomb. start building nuclear power, harness the power of the earth's core, the tides, wind, solar, etc. etc.
5. birth rates. i look at this like it's education. educate our population on birth control, condom use, etc. etc. i'm not saying rollback roe v wade, but i'm saying let's take the steps to get it to the point where unwanted pregnancies aren't a problem. easiest way into poverty - having a child under the age of 18. 2ne easiest way into poverty - having a child out of wedlock. stop this horrible lower-income mentality of "my baby daddy" (having its roots in welfare subsidies ruining the family structure). let's finally control our population. the highest educated are waiting longer b/c they can afford to. let's make schooling and working a great option, and while we're at it, let's help single parents with child care on some level. a lot of options there.
6. lower the tax rate and simplify the code. give me a break. dems get a lot of boost from electorate b/c of the tax rate. it'sa joke. when you consider all the taxes, everyone in america basically has a 40% tax rate (except the extremely wealthy who have lower rates b/c they can afford tax attornies and trusts etc. -- i'm for that b/c it's within the code now, but let's make the code simpler). if we remove the complicated nature of the tax code, we remove a lot of white collar jobs. BUT with the regulations we have with sarbanes oxley (sp?), we could switch them from the public to the private sector.
7. civil unions. get rid of gov't doing marriage, and simplify the deductions for civil unions. we're currently oppressing our gay population that has long-term partners by not offering the same benefits that are offered to married straight couples. i'm looking at this simply from an administrator's stand point. especially if one of the two gays are the primary care provider.
8. publicly financed elections. elections are the most corrupt thing we have going on. there's got to be a more fair and just way, especially with the internet, to do it. look at dean's campaign and obama's in jan08 - a lot of small donors.
9. borders. seriously? we can't secure these with technology?
10. illegals. biometrics scare me, and sounds like big brother, but might be the way to go. open to discussion, but we first need to figure out who's in our country (legal and illegal citizens)
11. prisons. 2 million people in prison. we need to look at crack sentencing seriously for our future. in fact, all drug crimes need to be looked at. why is marijuana illegal again? why is crack 10 times more punishable than cocaine? why did the gov't introduce it in the first place? oh yea, to fund its private overthrows of gov't in the 80s. i like the thought of that back room shit, but crack is killing our poor and we need to take notice of how best to take care of it - rehab not jail. that's the broad strokes on that
12. infrastructure. let's start taking care of our highways. another boom like the 60's (we haven't had enough maintenance to our highways since they were constructed in the 60s) would really put a lot of people to work and probably take us out of a recession we're heading towards/already in. build proper dams in katrina, build proper levees in Florida, build bridges in MN that don't collapse, build super highways with technology for auto-propelled vehicles (that would be cool), light-rail trains running electric.
13. in some way, level the playing field on foreign producers vs. american producers. our standard of living obviously makes our products too costly. the weaker dollar will help. china's inflation will help. the 'prospering' EU will help.
14. darfur. really? this goes on in the 21st century? whey doesn't the world care about africa? warlords in africa need to wise the fuck up before they get messed the fuck up. the $100 laptop foundation by negraponte was amazing. more forward thinking like that.
you say: "we need better work ethics and education, not welfare handouts"
me: we need systems that allow people to reach the american dream so we can get out of peoples' way. she's 100% correct that education leads to jobs which leads to work ethic. we need a population that believes in our education system. we need a new Dewey that revolutionizes our systems.
i think my 14 steps above would create a great society in 20 years. i don't think it'd cost that much, either, if we trimmed our budget to some important items, and got rid of the rest. our public sector employs way too many people right now. also, barrett's first statement about the middle class is wrong. well, it's right, but the reason the middle class is fucked is b/c of our savings rate in america. in 1980, it's at 8-10%. currently, it's at -0.5%. people are buying too much, and too many foreign goods. seriously, we're just spending more of our money b/c there's more items to buy. items are 'cheaper' on the comparison, but we buy more b/c we waste (it's true. a simple study of pairs of underwear in america will show that we're buying more per capita than we did 20 years ago -- simply b/c it's cheaper i can find) and b/c there's new technologies out there to compete for our dollar. like cell phone plans, cable plans, tv's, radioes, etc etc etc.
this is lofty and idealistic, but we're finally in a place with technology to shoot for the stars. might just get the moon, but at least we're space wranglers (reference to widespread panic. they rule!). this is my rant. don't take it all too literally or seriously, but i truly feel we need to change a lot, and we finally have the possibility of changing in the right direction.
and i'm out of breath
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment