Fifty two percent of voters are happy, and forty eight
percent unhappy. I count myself in the latter category but, like Tolstoy's
families, I'm unhappy in my own way.
It's not who won, neither candidate nor political party makes much
difference. It is the enormous consumption of calendar time and our nation' s
attention by what turns out to have been a diversion from real issues. As
readers know, I believe that the nation's number one, and over-riding, problem
is corruption, the corruption of special interests that have high-jacked our
democracy. But let's think of other issues for now, issues that have been
acknowledged by the major players.
Income inequality is a characteristic of unbalanced economies
as found in countries like Russia and China. In addition to being unfair, it
leads to social unrest and slow growth. I'm all for taxing the rich--until the
number of jobs lost (the money is currently not under mattresses) becomes
excessive, and I would prefer to do it in accordance with Clayton Christensen's
concepts. But taxing the rich is merely a side-show relative to this problem.
We need to restore equality of opportunity which means we
have to take on, among others, the teachers unions and the prison industry.
Note that we have a disproportionate number of young black men in jail (most for
non-violent drug offences of the type that white men walk away from). The effect
has been to wreak havoc on the black middle class; black women have trouble
finding suitable husbands, and the eligible men left tend to take advantage. Too
many black families are without fathers. I could go on; suffice it to say that
this is a social tragedy of our time. And who benefits? We now have a prison
industry rich and powerful enough to corrupt our legislatures. We also have a
drug enforcement agency (another special interest) that is allowed to confiscate
private property and add the proceeds to the department’s budget (How about we
add traffic fines to the police department budgets?)
Compounding this problem is another travesty which victimizes
poor black and white children alike—our lousy K-12 school systems, brought to us
by another powerful special interest, the teachers' unions, a major source of
campaign dollars and workers. To say that we have equality of opportunity in
this country is a lie. A black child born in certain school districts has no
chance. Attempts to fix things after the fact with college scholarships and
affirmative action tend to fail because basic skills were neglected and can’t be
made up.
We have high systemic unemployment. This will not go away
until our private sector, free of Crony Capitalism and excessive, cost
ineffective regulations, invests heavily in free and open competition.
Regulations are mostly good and provide a better standard of living for all of
us. But it's the nature of bureaucracies to keep going, doing more and more of
God's work, until stopped. We need some controls here--checks and balances.
Last, we have climate change and our, less than stellar,
attempts at moving to renewable, clean, energy. Attached is a book review.* The
author argues that good government policy (including a carbon tax) will allow
the markets to find a cost effective path to clean energy without relying on our
brilliant politicians to pick winners. (And yes, G.C., I use brilliant
here in the Irish sense of the word.)
A BIRD NAMED
ENZA & WILL’S WAR are now available as e-books on all major sites including
www.smashwords.com (in all formats) for
$2.99
No comments:
Post a Comment