The US has/had the resources to truly be a modern Utopia

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

Now that we're hitting bottom with almost nothing to show for it, except for the bloated pocketbooks of a few, it's easier to imagine the kinds of things that might have been done with our American dollars if our "leaders" from the 1980's on had not been so pre-occupied with pushing the agenda of the corporate oligarchs.

Imagine the kind of nation we might have been. We seriously COULD have provided free higher education, responsible environmental policies, regulated cheap utilities, healthcare for all, mass transit systems from coast to coast, the list just goes on and on.

What a tragedy.

[The2ndWheel]

1. What are you giving to get all that?

We don't want to be too greedy about this. Free this, cheap that, everything for everyone. Seeing as how we still exist in physical reality, we'd have to give to get.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

2. I'm giving the taxes that I and other Americans have always and already paid into the system

The money has always been there for all of this - it was just misdirected into defense, war, weapons systems that are defunct before they are off the drawing board, maintaining military bases where they are no longer needed, cronyism, non-competitive bidding, privatization that cost more dollars rather than saving public dollars, etc.

In our new corporatist "too big to fail" system, gains or profits are private, but risk/loss is public. We need to reverse that pyramid.

[opihimoimoi]

3. I strongly concur....too much incompetence in our Society...mostly in the GOP

[glitch]

4. Not incompetence, misdirection. Opportunity costs.

K & R Phoebes. The most important path not taken was in 1980. We had another chance in 2000.
I don't think we'll get another, but I console myself that I could be wrong.

[bvar22]

11. We had another chance for "change" in 1992.

*

[glitch]

18. I dunno.

I am starting to think DLC v. Con might not offer the real opportunities we think they do. More like triage to stop the massive hemorrhaging from the Con wounds. Like a MASH unit, save the patient so he can get back to the front and continue the war.

Sure, it's better than bleeding to death, but is it a real chance for change?

[The2ndWheel]

5. That's not giving

That's the default setting. Taxes are. Pay them or go to jail.

I'm talking about giving up something that you like. Not taking money away from the things you don't like. That's easy. Too easy for utopia.

[Romulox]

6. LOL. It's time for the Generals and Oligarchs to give a little.

A blank check for war is the "default setting"? Massive flows of cash from working people to the already wealthy is the "default setting"?

Gimmeafuckingbreak. :eyes:

[The2ndWheel]

8. You'll get them to give a little how, exactly?

"A blank check for war is the "default setting"? Massive flows of cash from working people to the already wealthy is the "default setting"?"

I said paying taxes is the default setting.

We keep paying for the blank checks and massive flows of money from the many to the few, so I'm not sure we should be blaming the generals and oligarchs.

[Romulox]

9. Supposedly, we live in a representative democracy.

If we're dropping such pretensions entirely, then the correct answer would be some form of disobedience (civil or otherwise, I suppose.)

"I said paying taxes is the default setting."

Right. We all already pay taxes. Now we want to decide how they will be spent.

"We keep paying for the blank checks and massive flows of money from the many to the few, so I'm not sure we should be blaming the generals and oligarchs."

I put a great deal of blame on their apologists, myself.

[The2ndWheel]

17. "Now we want to decide how they will be spent."

We want to do that now? That wasn't happening before? Who spent all that money then?

"I put a great deal of blame on their apologists, myself."

Way to get to the root of the problem.

[Romulox]

20. Governance is an ongoing process. That means we can change courses.

Implying (as you have, above) that we are forever bound to the choices made by our predecessors is a bizarre form of argument, and, quite frankly, a bit silly.

"Way to get to the root of the problem."

Way to run interference for the PTB! :hi:

[The2ndWheel]

21. "That means we can change courses."

That would be nice. Unfortunately all I see is one size-fits-all. We're not changing course, as much as just picking up more people at each port that we pass by.

"Implying (as you have, above) that we are forever bound to the choices made by our predecessors is a bizarre form of argument, and, quite frankly, a bit silly."

In some instances, I'd say that's pretty much where we're at.

[marions ghost]

7. I imagine the kind of nation we could have

all the time.

Americans do deserve better. We have put up with this situation much too long.

[JVS]

10. Well duh, but we let the rich parasites feed on us.

[Echo In Light]

12. "We let" being the operative aspect n/t

[n2doc]

13. Or, at least, 10 trillion less in debt

Which would mean we could fund some of those things AND have lower taxes. And if we had put more money into infrastructure, education and energy, we would have still more money to spend. Kind of like that SNL sketch of Al Gore telling us about all the good things that happened under his presidency.....

[JTFrog]

14. No Uptopia for you. We still have to fill our Sachs full of Gold Man. n/t

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. What our government did instead was blow Middle America's tax dollars

on militarism and corporate welfare.

As a Norwegian relative told me, "Yes, we pay high taxes, but we get something for them. You pay lower taxes, but you don't get much for them."

[abumbyanyothername]

16. I am not that concerned about taxes since . . . .

Whatever money comes in, goes out. So I don't see my work as a way to accumulate money, because it isn't, but rather as a way to express my utility, or usefulness. The money that flows back to me is simply a measure of society's evaluation of my utility. For a while I got hung up on this mass valuation, rather than my own valuation, or more plainly stated, I "sold out" to the social value system rather than staying true to my own. (That is, I abandoned Philosophy for Law, Labor (side) Law for exotic Corporate Finance, etc.)

The truth is that the country had the opportunity to take a turn for the far better at the dawn of the mass industrialization in 1920s. Howard Scott and the Technical Alliance came up with a system to eliminate money and price as the foundation of social interaction, but of course this was squashed out by the Morgans and the Rockafellers.

There is an interesting Wiki page here. I guess we have another opportunity to divide up all available (solar, wind, tidal, currents, etc.) energy as a collective resource, as our energy processes are forcibly modified away from fossil fuels, but I doubt very seriously that anyone will go along with it.

[Hannah Bell]

19. The *world* has the resources to be utopia. we live in the garden, blind as bats.

[warren pease]

22. But... But... if everybody had equal access to quality goods and services...

But... But... if everybody had equal access to quality goods and services...

... what fun would it be to be rich? How would they keep score? How would we all know our betters from the peasant classes?

None of that nonsense in our utopian meritocracy, where anybody can grow up to be a CEO or some other kind of corporate titan.

Or even a US president, if they have off-the-charts levels of megalomania combined with lack of self-esteem necessary to subject themselves to months and even years of the classic American political campaign for national office.

So they're helping you defend your right to sink or swim on your own merits, and since they created the game and made up all the rules, amazingly they nearly always win.

It's an easy game to win, apparently. Victory simply involves keeping another big lie under wraps for another few dozen generations – this one being the grand secret that the rich nearly always manage to avoid the forces that shape and often destroy the "less fortunate" among us. They've created their own impenetrable white boy closed circuit affirmative action societies serve as the greatest set of social promotion programs of all time.

So, despite their apparent unconcern about wingnut gun violence, even in churches (many are in the gun-manufacturing business, so why lobby against their own revenue stream?) the rich then tell you your sacred right to choose is on the line here. And if you don't insist on keeping the role of choice alive in all aspects of American society, you'd be sacrificing traditional American values like ...

... your right to choose which feces-stained, urine-soaked mattress on the fourth floor of which cold water walk-up where you’ll go to die because your so-called "health care" policy exceeded its lifetime benefits cap and your family couldn’t afford a hospital bed where you might get treatment, or even a hospice where you could at least die with dignity.

... or which of our prestigious, world-class universities you're locked out of not because the "less fortunate" are all idiots, but because eliminating nearly all federal subsidies -- whether directly to students or to the schools -- have put the Stanfords and Princetons and Yales and MITs and Hahh-vahhds out-of-reach of all but the filthiest of the filthy rich, thereby keeping the most prestigious degrees in the hands of those who've run the show down the generations.

All this based solely on the ability to pay, and so the system turns out cretins like our previous alleged president who slid through academic life with the usual "gentleman's C" as it's called when the idiot scions of the ruling class ride daddy's donations to a sham diploma.

... or waving good-bye to which old-grove redwood grove the Maxxams and Chuckie Hurwiches of the world would have had to keep their slimy hands off rather than taking Saint Raygun's maxim at face value – the one that goes "if you've seen one redwood tree, you've seen 'em all" – and shoving another few hundred million into various off-shore, tax-free accounts.

... or wasting countless hours sucking exhaust fumes in this planetary destruction derby called "the Commute." Urban sprawl and its hideous downsides were wired into American culture in part because of an old conspiracy suit won by the plaintiffs but which various federal courts decided was only worth a few bucks from the losers.

Consider the outcome of what's generally called The General Motors Conspiracy, which ran from 1927 to 1955, in which, Standard Oil, Phillips Petroleum, Firestone Rubber, Mack Manufacturing (trucks) and Greyhound Lines pooled money and set up front businesses to destroy the urban rail system of 100 American Cities.

Their punishment? They each had to pay $5,000 in fines and additional court costs of $4,220.78. Damn good investment in the American way of making a buck. They realized hundreds of billions of them that time round and may well be positioning themselves now for the big coup of the early 21st century: another few generations of building sprawl and car addiction (hybrids and electrics this time around) and ironically championed under the banner of solving the global warming problem.


It's not a tragedy; it's a script.


sf