In the Humble Opinion of LittleBill, Socialist, Atheist, and Humanist
Economics by LittleBill



Help me here. I need further education on taxes, government, and ethics. I was as interested as the average citizen in government after television and the computer were inntroduced to our way of life. My interest was fairly casual until the first election of George W. Bush, at which time I began to suspect that things were not right. This, in turn, led to true suspicion of Bush and the people around him with regard to their integrity and leadership. And now I not only loathe him and the men and women who support and defend him, I truly fear them and their power and the fact that they still have a whole year to totally destroy the earth and eveything on it. Sometimes I even get to the point of wondering if his wife and his evangelical bible-quoting base have actually convinced him that God wants him here to lead us to Armageddon. After all, I have seen and heard him say several times that God has chosen him for what he is doing now.

Kind of got carried away in that first paragraph. What I really want to talk about is the whole purpose of taxes. I always thought that taxes were our individual contributions to do those things as a group which we could not do individually, like building and repairing roads and bridges, protecting the environment, and caring for each other as human beings.

Silly me. During the past seven years, the American people have been consistently taught that we should resent taxes, especially if they help someone else. No compassion for those with less. If they couldn’t “make it” on their own, they don’t deserve to have help. (On the other hand, most of those of us of the upper classes never have to work all our lives because what we have was inherited wealth. (I am sort of one of those, because I live largely on an inheritance, even though I finally actually went to work in my forties.)

As for the teachings of the Christian religion, the emphasis in doing good deeds is first of all on what MY good deeds will do to pathe MY road to heaven, followed by my concern for the recipients of those deeds.

This blog is an extension of my previous blog entitled More Questions and Comments. A different form of economic order has occurred to me. (I will be bombarded with comments like “Oh my god, she’s really a SOCIALIST!” That is such a scary word, and I’ll bet most people have never even looked it up. I’m not even sure myself that it describes me, but it’s the closest I can come.)

So here is how I look at the problem and how to try to fix it: In the first place, Bush’s plan for giving one-time-and-that’s-all tax relief is exactly the opposite of what it should be. The idea is that the masses will spend it immediately and that will jump-start the economy by increasing the income of employers, which in turn will lead to more jobs, but most of those who needed the one-time boost with shortly be out of money again, and right back where they were before. In the meantime, the government saves money by cutting other aid to the most urgent needs of the nation, such as education, health, and infrastructure.

The ethical responsibility of the nation is to try to achieve as much equality among its citizens as possible by redistributing the nation’s wealth from the top down. The really rich do not need the vast incomes they possess, which is apparent in their lifestyles. And the needs of the poor, on all their levels, should be apparent to anyone who can look beyond himself. Therefore, I suggest that there should be a strong ceiling put on the amount of wealth that any one person can own, and increasingly thick floors should be constructed all the way down to the poorest among us until the distribution of wealth looks like a pyramid. You cannot expect those in need to spend money on goods that will help the economy if they do not make enough money to spend. Almost all people would rather spend money they earned rather than money they receive through charity. This would go a long way toward building self-respect among those who work the hardest at the least rewarding jobs, as well as recognition and acknowledgment by those who have so much.

If you want to call this Socialism, so be it. It is obvious that free trade is not working to the benefit of the masses. If Americans would look at the wider world, they would realize that Democracy, as it is perceived by most of us, is not defined by current reality. Choose another name for our country, if you wish, but let’s put some text to go with the title.

ARW
1/28/08

6 comments:

jmsjoin said...

little bill
You hit it on the head! I have written numerous stories about every one of the issues you ment. Bush in his words is working for God and knowing he is purposely pushing us to a war most will not survive you have to believe Armageddon is the goal as hard right wingers have long told me.
There was a time when mutual destruction was a deterrant. Today it seems to be the goal.
You have to remember this is no longer a Democracy. Like Religion it is perverted and merely invoked to achieve their new societal and world order.
As for those worthess rebates. They are just one more facade of concern. The people who need it will get nothing. It primarily goes to Businesses and those who will put it right in the bank where it will do nothing and this too is by design.
He has purposely been widening the gap between the haves and have nots.
You know, If helping average Americans and the country was the goal Bush would give money to those who would use it to live and put the rest into our vast failing infrastructure and kill two birds with one stone.
Instead he gives the money away and it will eventually cost a trillion dollars to fix our infrastructure. It gets much worse my friend but you relax and take care!

LittleBill said...

Hi, Av Pat:

Two of your sentences, in particlar, really grabbed me. "There was a time when murual destruction was a deterrant. Today it seems to be the goal." Great wording!

I'm slowing down, but all of my computer comrades are very dear to me.

jmsjoin said...

Thanks little bill!
You just take care of yourself and the kids. You're dear to us to! I trust little bill isn't around you're neck anymore. You just relax and keep giving your two cents.

J.C. said...

For religion to take hold, parents must atrophy their own children's minds by making them believe Faith is good. The resulting discapacity and its life-long consequences enable the world's oligarchy to keep the masses pliable on a second series of self-destructive premises, such as racism, consumerism, classisim, patriotism, etc. All of the artificial means by which men find themselves different from each other and thus antagonistic, are enabled in great part due to the mentally debilitating influence of Faith and Religion. TNAT

LittleBill said...

We're in sinc, Skip. Just listening to the latest by Huckabee. He's a humorous guy, but his continued campaign (for whatever and whenever he chooses to make use of it) is truly frightening. I have said before that I am sure I heard Pat Robertson say, after he was defeated in his run for office, that he and his ilk would be back. And he seems to have been predicting what is coming to pass, if not this time, maybe next.

J.C. said...

Thanks Bill.

America will soon hit the wall and crash and burn with the demise of our elaborate debt structure.

Lots of interesting choices will present themselves.

A system that embraces special interest groups of one or a million dooms itself.

Special interests always deprive others of their rights and benefits.

System change is what is needed now. Our Price System method will destroy our resource base... and that is our true wealth.

Technocracy Technate design offers a different system that is viable.