Saturday, December 18, 2010

HOW IDEOLOGY IS HURTING AMERICA



ANY ATTEMPTS TO IMPROVE OR CHANGE THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM IS LABELED “SOCIALISM




By raulito

I keep a piece of limestone on a little pedestal in my foyer. It has embedded in it some fossils of ancient fish…they are millions of years old. I keep it in the foyer because I use it often. How, you might ask? Whenever one of these Evangelicals or Mormons come to my door seeking validation for their fabricated religion I show them the stone with the fossils in it. They soon turn around and leave, all frustrated but still not convinced. They know that I am presenting them with evidence against Creationism but they are so dead set in their beliefs that they refuse to accept reality.

I find that with political ideology it is pretty much the same. I am constantly posting graphs and charts that show how the rich are getting richer, how the middle class has been decimated; how comparisons with other countries the health care works in their favor. A number of other issues and still I might as well hit them across the face with a 2 X 4 or water-board them and they still will not budge.

Many if not most of the industrialized nations have very progressive labor laws and perks that we in America wouldn’t even think of having. For example in France, 5 weeks paid vacation is the norm.

Meteor Blades tells us that: “Germany, workers also get six weeks vacation - by law, federally mandated, a right. They get health care, university, child care and pensions and as a result they have higher productivity. In Germany, the government requires worker representatives to hold seats on the boards of directors of companies, depending on the number of workers. Government-funded research and vocational training, and policies to retain skilled workers bring another competitive advantage. Germany values manufacturing and the government has an industrial policy. The government is currently helping promote green manufacturing, for example.”

The economies of some of these countries are doing much better than ours and obviously they are more productive…they actually build, manufacture stuff

Whenever you speak to a Republican you find that any suggestion of improving or even talking about bringing regulations to the “free market” is labeled “SOCIALISM”. The Teahadist Republicans complain that this is “government interference” and that that it is indeed SOCIALIM.

The reality is that we have seen a disparity and a very unfair transfer of the wealth from the poor and middle classes to a very small percentage of the very rich. This experiment in DEMOCRACY that we so dearly value is coming to an end…the government is supposed to be of, by and for the people. But today in the U.S. it is considered "socialistic" to talk about these things because it violates the dominant conservative "free market" ideology that is designed to enrich a few at the expense of the rest of us. If we try to talk about a national industrial/economic policy, it is derided with such slogans as "government interference" or "picking winners and losers."

And yet, the sad reality is that what we have in America is indeed SOCIALISM, but not the traditional dirty word SOCIALISM the conservatives decry foaming at the mouth; it is a WELFARE STATE in favor of the very rich and the corporations; but you can’t tell them anything because they will simply not listen and just as the Evangelicals who are confronted with the fossil embedded in the stone, the conservatives will continue to cling on to partisanship, a very askew philosophy and an abhorrent ideology where the wealthy are to get even richer and the poor poorer. .

REFERENCE: http://www.dailykos.com/