This post is political. Be forewarned. I doubt anyone will like the conclusions. That’s okay. I just need to talk about various things going on around here.
Here’s a few things I believe:
1. Businesses exist to make money for those that own them.
2. As a direct result of #1, there is no such thing as job safety. If your job can be done by someone for less money, then chances are it will be — if not now, then at some point in the future.
3. We have a staggering debt in this country.
4. We talk about the deficit, but it’s the debt that truly matters.
5. The money our government spends in many ways goes to jobs for Americans, whether it be directly through employment or indirectly through contracts for goods and services.
6. There will always be someone or some business looking to make more money off the government.
7. Those people will use their resources to influence legislation, elections, and other people to achieve their goals.
Question 1: Can we truly balance the budget and start to pay down our debt?
My view is that no one currently in Congress wants to go through that exercise, because that money is jobs for people. If we truly reduced our spending as a nation to a point where we could pay down the debt, major programs would suffer (see the recent sequestration kerfuffle), constituents would get mad, and more people would paradoxically rely on the government for assistance. Thus, when it comes to our spending, we have one choice that we aren’t willing to make. I personally believe that raising revenue will only serve to increase budgets instead of keep them level.
Question 2: There’s an awful lot of noise about guns. Should certain guns be banned?
This is a hard question to answer, simply because people will start screaming about rights. I believe that guns should be legal, but I also believe that there should be common sense regulation of them. When the 2nd amendment was crafted, it was such that if citizens needed to fight against the government, they would have arms. Now these days, as much as some people would like it, our government isn’t worth fighting against. At best, it’s inefficient; at worst, it’s incompetent. But there is enough money and voices to prevent any real change to the status quo regarding gun ownership.
No, no one is going to take your guns. They can already imprison you without a warrant, wiretap you without a warrant, even kill you with a drone strike, but they’re not likely to take your guns. The question then becomes how many do you really need?
Inevitably, the people who are the best trained and most careful with guns are the ones who see things as unnecessary. Again, I tend to think the worst of humanity, especially since we have made mental health care specifically difficult to obtain and maintain. Plus, there’s the question of Evil. I admit to believing in God; therefore I admit to believing that Evil exists in our world. And I don’t think any doctor can fix that.
Question 3: Is our government that messed up?
Yes. But it’s what we have. To me, the biggest abridgment of rights comes when dollars in campaign contributions translates to access, either directly, through bundlers, or through lobbyists. This means that people without money have less of a say in policymaking, and things continue tilting toward a plutocracy/kleptocracy. Despite there being good people trying to good things (even though I don’t agree with their support of outcome-based education, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s at least DOING something), our policies are shaped not by what’s best for our earth or all of us as citizens but instead are driven by the overarching goals of those with money. Those whose sole purpose, as I stated above, is to make money.
If you have some, you want more. If you have more, you want even more. There is never enough. The stock market demands certain performance levels, or your company loses money. The system relies on people you don’t know making judgments about value that have nothing to do with objective reality.
It’s broken. It’s imperfect. It’s capitalism. It’s what we have.
Question 4: Can we do better?