Monday, March 28, 2011

The Rich and Their Wars

I voted for Hilary. When I had a choice. The last Bush seemed at least misguided and impossibly corrupt; he embroiled us in several wars, which helped his friends the Saudis -- and others -- profit from the huge cost of the wars and the run up in the price of oil. Wars, and especially wars of revolution, come about when the rich are too rich by comparison with the poor. That is the lesson of the last 2,000 years. It is difficult for me to believe that anyone could think the last Bush was "the sexiest candidate;" he looked a little too much like Alfred E. Newman to me. And he created the Great Recession almost single-handed. No one gives him enough credit for that. The only difference between this Recession and the Depression is the flow of money from the government. Trickle down economics never worked for anyone but the rich. The playing field's not level. Read The Rich and the Super Rich and as much of Alexander Del Mar -- The History of Monetary Crimes, for example -- as you can find. It's time for trickle up economics. Time to set the minimum wage at $20 an hour with an annual increase pegged to inflation. Time to build a sidewalk/bikepath next to every country road in America. Put people back to work -- that's the real trickle up. Pay the highest wages possible.  Double the minimum wage.  At least set the minimum wage high enough so a 40 hour job puts anyone who has a job above the poverty line. Let grocery baggers earn enough to live on. You don't understand fascism very well if you think the right wing has ever been good for this country; however, in a similar way, Hitler was good for Germany. The last general prosperity we saw was during the Clinton administration. Clinton  was good at bond issues. And that's what we need more of. Sensible bond issues. Not just borrowing our  current account deficit from Red China so we can go on fighting yet another war at the crossroads of nowhere in Central Asia.  That's your idea of prosperity?