Plutarch's Lives in America

Plutarch, an ancient Greek historian, wrote at the beginning of the 2nd Century about Rome and he quotes Tiberius Gracchus, as saying the following: 

"The wild beasts that roam over Italy, have their dens and holes to lurk in, but the men who fight and die for our country enjoy the common air and light and nothing else. It is their lot to wander with their wives and children, houseless and homeless, over the face of the earth. And when our generals appeal to their soldiers before a 

battle to defend their ancestors' tombs and their temples against the enemy, their words are a lie and a mockery, for not a man in their audience possesses a family altar; not one out of all those Romans owns an ancestral tomb. The truth is that they fight and die to protect the wealth and luxury of others. They are called the masters of the world, but they do not possess a single clod of earth which is truly their own." 

So history continues to repeat itself and while a direct comparison can be made today with the veterans of America who make up 1/3 of the male homeless, we can also draw a similar comparison to ALL of the people of America and indeed the world. Who continue to struggle and suffer while those who possess the wealth and luxury do not.

We who cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We clean your floors and windows. We build your cars, computers, roads, and buildings. We file your papers, we mow your yards, we teach your children.

We guard your sleep...

Romney's 47%

First of all the number 47% is bullshit, It might be close to the number of people who don't pay income tax, but that's because they work at those jobs in fast food that everyone seems to think pay well enough to live on. They might work at Wal-Mart, CVS, the local Flower shop, or any number of places that only pay minimum wage. They still work 30+ hours a week and the government subsidizes them so that their kids have a roof over their head and food in their bellies. The alternative is to let them starve and/or litter the cities with their bodies.

*18% of Americans pay no income or payroll taxes at all, they do pay sales tax. 1/2 of those 18% are senior citizens who paid into Social Security for all of their adult working lives* 

23% of American families with 4 members and less make less than 27K, 79% of families make less than 50k, and there are even some families that make over 100,000 a year that still don't pay taxes. Those first two categories are families where at least one member earns money, most often cases it's two. 

They are being paid shit by corporations that have lobbied and bribed their friendly neighborhood politician for more "business friendly" regulations. These corporations don't provide benefits to their workers, they don't hire full time employees, the only reason they pay minimum wage is because they are required to by law. In many cases "business friendly" means the companies contract out their jobs to China who employs workers at 31 cents an hour. America can't compete with that because of what Cons like to label as "over-regulation" or they have to contend with the evils of unionized workers. Never mind that it was those regulations and the unions that fought for them that moved our children out of factories, gave us the 40 hour work week, forced the corporations to provide benefits for full time workers, regulated equal pay between men and women and a whole slew of other things that people now take for granted in America, but are virtually non existent elsewhere.

So both sides have a pretty strong argument. Conservatives are right when they say that eventually the money is going to run out and then we won't be able to provide that aid to the lesser fortunate in our country at all. 

In my opinion the solution is to let these developing countries have the piss poor paying manufacturing jobs where some 22 year old Chinese girl puts together some piece of an iPad 5000 times a day for pennies on the dollar. America needs to invest in it's people. Our public schools need massive reform, we are still using an outdated system that was developed to train workers not to think, but to memorize instruction for factory workers during the industrial age. Even our higher education degrees are behind the power curve.  Does it really matter if your Doctor can piece together a Freudian analysis of Shakespeare?

We need to innovate, we need to fund more R&D, we need to look 50 and 100 years down the road, instead of just to the next election cycle. Obama made a bad call taking money from NASA in my opinion, whose research has led to everything from cell phones to aluminum foil and office supplies.

Obama made some seemingly biased calls in Solyndra and the other companies, but the idea is sound. New technology and most especially energy is what is going to lead to a new revolution in our world. If you look at every great boom our species has ever gone through it was due solely to technology and surplus of energy. Agriculture, Fossil Fuels/Combustion Engine, Microchip/Computers.

Romney's economic plan, from what I can piece together, involves liberating corporations to pay their workers less, dump more shit into the only planet we have to live on, lessen the "tax burden" on those who can already afford a second and third vacation home, and basically perform a no lube anal raping on anyone who was unfortunate enough to have some misfortune in their life.

My sister and I were discussing welfare the other day and she laid this gem on me. Which I think sums up the situation nicely:

"Everyone notices the woman with the coach bag and the iPhone using her welfare card. You're looking for her, but you don't look twice at the woman with the clean but over-washed clothing and her kids in clothes two sizes too big using hers to get milk and bread. She is invisible. We don't WANT to see her because that makes us feel greedy and self indulgent and that is because we are."

Louis C.K. also put it aptly by saying that by driving his Infinity he's killing people. He could easily trade it in for a different vehicle, get the $20,000 in cash and use that to feed hundreds of people from dying of starvation.

It's my opinion that the vast majority of people on welfare are like the latter mentioned in my sisters quote. People use financial assistance when times are hard, times are hard because the economy is bad. If you don't need assistance you don't get it. It's that simple. It is also my opinion that the mustachio twirling fat-cats who fund our politicians campaigns actively influence policy that keeps themselves getting richer and restricts opportunities for those with less. 

I don't particularly like Bill Maher as an individual, I think he's kind of a cocky asshole, but every once in a while he will say something that rings with potential. He was quoted as saying "Hard work doesn't make people successful, if that was true this country would be run by Mexicans with leaf blowers". It's opportunity that makes people successful and what we have going on right now is a nominee who is part of a system that is actively trying to reduce opportunities for people. 

I shared my sisters quote because I believe that the republican party contains within it's upper echelons people who hype up the myth of the welfare queen for their own nefarious benefit. The myth that people make money off welfare and refuse to work therefor becoming leeches on the rest of society. I don't deny that such people are out there, but according to the link below and research provided there 93% of welfare fraud is committed by vendors, not the individuals receiving the benefits.

I'm not opposed to reforming welfare, I think we all need to tighten the belt a little bit for the benefit of our children in the generations to come, I also think that with all the wealth in this country being funneled directly towards the top more of it needs to be coming back down through taxes and social programs that provide opportunity.

This is why I'm voting for President Obama, not because I think Democrats are better than Republicans, but because I think Obama is better than Romney. I think Romney would walk past the homeless man on the street with a grimace, hoping he doesn't get something on his shoes. I think Obama would stop and help him up. I think we all need to stop and help him up, not call him lazy for not having a job.

I could get into an entire list of things that I disagree with President Obama about as well, but that's not the point of this wall of text here.