Seriously. The GOP wants to place the burden of balancing the budget on the backs of college students and the elderly. The Republicans want to slash Medicare and Medicaid and force college students to pay back massive loans immediately when unemployment is the highest it has been in decades. But, they don't want the tax breaks to expire for their rich pals, nor do they want to make any concessions to military spending.
The graph on that page should illustrate what is wrong with our situation in relation to the rest of the world. We are funding a military we cannot afford and the American Empire stands on the brink of collapse, for perhaps the first time in its history. We hit our debt ceiling on May 16, and due to some fancy accounting, we were/are able to keep things afloat until August 2, pending the discussions about the federal budget.
So what happens if we hit that limit, and the government still hasn't managed to make a decision, one way or the other? Basically, the US defaults on its loans, and is unable to pay back the money it owes quickly enough to outpace spending. It could mean a partial or full government shut down, or, more likely, a massive cutting of social programs in order to continue paying the debt a little longer.
The problem is that our system has finally shown the stitching in its curtains, minus the men behind said curtains. It was masterfully constructed (or perhaps altered later) by a group of powerful geniuses in order to squeeze the most amount of wealth out of the largest possible population of people, and it has worked brilliantly.
As Americans, we work longer hours for less pay. And less vacation time. And we do more work. We are essentially slaves, albeit with much more freedom and wealth than any slave ever had in ages passed. But slavery is much easier to maintain when its subjects remain oblivious of their enslavement. We have to pay our way in order to survive, because that is what the system demands. Want water? Food? You'll need a job. And those are the two things with which they intend to really control us when the meltdown occurs. Water will be the most valuable substance on the planet, because fresh water is so rare. Many will die without access to clean drinking water in the coming decades, but this has been planned from the start.
Go look up T. Boone Pickens, a famous Oklahoma oil man. He's convinced the future of money making is in water. He's buying up land and mineral rights all over the place, and this isn't even a secret. He's going to sell the water in the ground to you at a premium, because he knows what is coming.
There is, then, the entirely separate issue as to whether or not someone should be allowed to 'own' a source of water anyway. It is, after all, the essence of life. Without it, we would not survive. We are made up of mostly water, and we need it to survive. But it's much deeper than that. Water is a fundamental part of our reality, and it should, I think, be a human right. All humans should have clean drinking water. We possess the capability to solve this problem.
I'm not asking that everyone in the world be given free health care, although I really see no reason why we couldn't afford to do that as well if we stopped spending trillions on wars to perpetuate a system that will eventually fail or become something much worse. But I do think that without consideration for the basic needs of all humans, we cannot ever hope to elevate our species as a cohesive whole. And if we cannot achieve that, we will never make it off this world to become something greater.
Who was it that said that quote that comes to mind? Oh yeah... Jacque Fresco:
"What is needed is the intelligent management of Earth's resources. If we really wish to put an end to our ongoing international and social problems we must eventually declare Earth and all of its resources as the common heritage of all the world's people. Earth is abundant with plentiful resources. Our practice of rationing resources through monetary control is no longer relevant and is counter-productive to our survival.
Today we have access to highly advanced technologies. But our social and economic system has not kept up with our technological capabilities that could easily create a world of abundance, free of servitude and debt. This could be accomplished with the infusion of a global, resource-based civilization where all goods and services are available without the use of money, credit, barter or any other form of debt or servitude."
It may seem like wishful thinking, but it's possible, I think. Not without revolution, however.
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