Horter wrote:
>
>> During my "bureaucratic" career I have learned a few truths about the
> American business system. Admittedly these "truths" are extremely cynical
> but they are based on personal experience. Part of the scientific method
> is to refute a postulate by demonstrated example, please dispute these.
>> 1. Everyone is on the take. No exceptions. Those with bigger sticks take
> more from those with smaller or no sticks. "Education", "plight of the
> elderly", "free trade", etc., are all sticks. There are very few who
> actually give a damn about the "stick" they are wielding. The purpose, of
> course, is to obtain money.
>
No argument. A good friend of mine was job placement councilor for the
many technical personnel laid off with the NAWC and other closings in
Eastern Pennsylvania. There are a lot of them. Few are finding jobs.
Most just disappear.
> 2. Money is money. Doesn't matter who provides it. The objective is to
> use whatever means possible to get it and keep it. State run lotteries,
> worthless products, asinine litigation, lobbying, health scares, taxes,
> political sound bites - its a ponderous list. No matter how nonsensical,
> unethical, or perverse there is always a means to justify the ends. That
> is the bueaty of American capitalism, find a better competitive edge and
> succeed. Subsidies destroy competition and weakens the economy.
Figure though that what you are succeeding at is survival. The big
stick survives, and after a lifetime we are stick wielders - nothing
else. We are no longer a civilization.
>> 3. Every business in the United States is subsidized by taxes. Barges,
> trucks, freight aircraft, container ships - all use facilities constructed
> with taxes. Utility right of way, satellite launches, transocean cables -
> taxes again. The largest workforce of the Federal government (the US
> Postal Service) provides low cost bulk mailing - tax subsidy. The
> education system, paid for by taxes, churns out students trained in the
> skills needed by business but avoids teaching how to compete with those
> businesses. Law enforcement, patent protection, weather analysis,
> demographics, and many more - all subsidizing businesses. Of course these
> are "good" profitable subsidies. The "bad" subsidies address the human
> condition, add to human knowledge, or generally provide some refuge from
> the competitive battle.
>> Before our agency disbanded, we had a saying for current conditions in the
> United States - "Welcome to the third world."
Exactly! Anyone who looked could see it coming! I predicted Reagan
would put us in debt because that is how big money wanted to run
governments - screw them with big debt so people's taxes go into the
coffers of the lending institutions hence owners. They'd been doing it
all over South American hit California, then hit the U.S. government.
It's time for a change.
>> Mr. Andelman, if you can not compete, if you can not uplift yourself, if
> you fall by the wayside, if you can not follow the economic rules you wish
> to have -- there is no one left out here who cares. We are all carving
> our sticks so we can beat each other to economic death.
>> Perhaps its a bad opinion but its mine.
>
And it's mine. Good for you, Glenn! We're getting the basis here of
people who can create a political platform that's good for and can
rebuild the middle class - people want to work for a living without
being dominated by work.
M.
