From October, 2012

Watching talking heads discuss politics - I want to put this out there. The free market is a wonderful thing, and we obviously want people to succeed, even to become wealthy.   We also hope for America's corporate elite to do the right thing, without regulation. If they had behaved like responsible social stewards over the last 40 years, we wouldn't be in the mess we are now. 

I am willing to believe that both of our candidates care about 100% of Americans, but the Republican party and its standard bearer are against any program that will help to alleviate the most fundamental problem in America today, the problem at the root of all other problems. It's the one that the Occupy movement hoped (and maybe still hopes) to address. The problem is income inequality.

It's not good for our nation to have the bulk of our wealth concentrated in the hands of the few. It's bad for a consumer economy, because poor people can't buy goods.

It's bad for elections because corporate money financed the lawsuits that enabled more corporate money to buy elections. Still more corporate money lobbied for voting machines without paper trails and financed foundations that wrote voter restriction legislation. 

It's bad for social and economic mobility, which has all but disappeared in America. We rank somewhere near dead last in economic mobility among the world's developed nations. The truth is that, in America today, the rich get richer and the poor get more numerous. 

This situation will require tough fixes, over time, by government, in the form of education, housing and infrastructure initiatives. The private sector is not going to prepare young people beset by poverty to become achievers and entrepreneurs. They can help, but education and housing are the government's job. 

And, by the way, if we do succeed raising new generations of wage-earners and consumers, it would be a really good thing if they had quality roads and bridges on which to drive the cars they invent, and light rail corridors on which to move the more energy efficient trains; all that infrastructure is the government's job, too. If you drive on the highways of Europe or take trains elsewhere in the developed world, you will understand just how far behind we are.

Thanks for letting me vent.