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The US citizens donate more funds to more causes in the US and outside than any other country in the world.
The US Liberals are trying to blame the 1% for Americas economic woes, but the way I see it the biggest issue of all is Lobbying. The Malivestment of Lawyers ($860T/year) pushed upon the people through Lobbying and Superstitious laws, the wholesale loss of manufacturing over the last 20-30 years, and our progeny obtaining poor education in liberal arts, humanities, and other non-productive degrees over science degrees.
Its not the 1% fault for the most part, its our system.
tatupu70
2015 Apr 8, 8:45am
The US Liberals are trying to blame the 1% for Americas economic woes
That's not really true. At least for me, I blame the system that is causing disparity to increase. Where (some of) the 1% get blame is their use of the power of money to maintain the status quo and brainwash folks like CIC and Indigenous into thinking that inequality is not a problem.
I see it the biggest issue of all is Lobbying
I agree it's a BIG issue, and it's the 1% that are doing it. We need to find a way to get money out of politics.
I agree it's a BIG issue, and it's the 1% that are doing it. We need to find a way to get money out of politics.
The Lobbyists/ Lawyers have the populace fooled.
The disparity is due to the US wholesale abandonment of Manufacturing and R&D. No west to east coast, the US's manufacturing has dropped from > 20% in the 1970s, to under 8% now. People are fooled by the Lawyers and spinners that the loss of jobs is not the problem its the 1%.
The 1% are not effected by loss of jobs, so a first inclination is to look at the 1% and say its there fault. A great irony is that with Legal costs at $860T annually, some of the same folks in the 1% created the situation where there is job loss:
"PEROT: That's right at the top of my agenda. We've shipped millions of jobs overseas, and we have a strange situation because we have a process in Washington where after you've served for a while, you cash in, become a foreign lobbyist, make $30,000 a month, then take a leave, work on Presidential campaigns, make sure you got good contacts, and then go back out. We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. To those of you in the audience who are business people, pretty simple: If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers, and you can move your factory south of the border, pay $1 an hour for labor. There will be a giant sucking sound going south. So if the people send me to Washington, the first thing I'll do is study that 2,000-page agreement and make sure it's a two-way street."
"PEROT: That's right at the top of my agenda. We've shipped millions of jobs overseas, and we have a strange situation because we have a process in Washington where after you've served for a while, you cash in, become a foreign lobbyist, make $30,000 a month, then take a leave, work on Presidential campaigns, make sure you got good contacts, and then go back out. We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. To those of you in the audience who are business people, pretty simple: If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers, and you can move your factory south of the border, pay $1 an hour for labor. There will be a giant sucking sound going south. So if the people send me to Washington, the first thing I'll do is study that 2,000-page agreement and make sure it's a two-way street."
This is whats happened. And to think that Lobbyists have done an end run around the founding principles outlined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. If US citizens dont see this "End Run" and how its trashed the economy, then what will the end state be?
Obama missed an opportunity to create middle class jobs,- because to do so would have Ironically been hard, and so would have eroded his support base which are more like "friends of community (dis) organizers" than they are "friends of upwardly mobile private sector workers/entrepreneurs".
MisdemeanorRebel
2015 Apr 8, 12:49pm
Speaking of Perot, what happened to us making products for ONE BILLION!!11Eleventy!! customers?
He was right, it wasn't about getting Customers in China, it was about US companies exporting to the US from China.
When a policy fails, like our unilateral one-way free trade policy, it's time to repeal it.
"Not long ago I was asked to speak to a religious congregation about widening inequality. Shortly before I began, the head of the congregation asked that I not advocate raising taxes on the wealthy.
He said he didn’t want to antagonize certain wealthy congregants on whose generosity the congregation depended.
I had a similar exchange last year with the president of a small college who had invited me to give a lecture that his board of trustees would be attending. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t criticize Wall Street,†he said, explaining that several of the trustees were investment bankers.
It seems to be happening all over."
http://www.salon.com/2015/04/08/robert_reich_the_rich_have_bought_americas_silence_partner/