We have come to a point here in America where we can no longer pretend that we have the ability to carry on with the myth and the ideal that we are the admiration of the world and there are equal opportunities for all to achieve “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. What we actually have is “your tired, your poor, and your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”. No matter what you have heard, the ability to prosper here is being eaten alive by massive job losses, massively expensive housing, and massively high prices on everything. Too assume that the situation is going to improve is the acme of ignorance and for those of us who haven’t fallen yet there is the wonder how long we can remain on life support. But wait - we aren’t on life support! Not when we are rapidly being replaced by AI, robots, employers who expect one person to do the work of 3 or 4, and a society that doesn’t seem to care.
As incredible as it may sound, there are still people here
who will tell you that these things aren’t happening. They will also get in
your face and tell you that whatever hardship you may be experiencing is your
own fault or call you a whiner for pointing out the facts. This society is
going down the tubes rapidly and if you don’t believe it, you might want to
take a look at all of the gun violence here. Where I live, there are people who
carry guns into the grocery stores and people who sit on their front porches
with loaded firearms. It wasn’t always like this. There is some reason why
people are aggressive and terrified and just looking for someone to take their
frustrations out on. You do not see behavior like this in a free and prosperous
country with opportunities and hope for the future.
Poverty, hunger, sickness, homelessness, want, and fear are
all around us. There are people who are extremely angry about the inequality
that exists here and even though they desperately need help they will “bite the
hand that feeds them” because they are furious that we have inequality in the
first place and we have a society that sees no reason to change that because
charities exist and sometimes crumbs are passed around to put a band-aid on the
problem long enough to shut people up for awhile. The haves and have nots are
so disconnected and so far removed from each other here that they might as well
be on different planets. We might actually have some peace if they were, but
since they are not, the time has really come to take a hard look at why
inequality exists and persists.
There is an assumption in this world that if you work you
can have your needs met but this isn’t true. If you have a job outside of your
home you may earn enough in wages to buy a shirt or many shirts if your job
pays well. Why is it that a person who is not working is denied one? The answer
to that is that business owners who wish to have many, many shirts will share a
small amount of their wealth with those who do their work for them so they receive
lots of money for whatever their company produces. They hire others to do the
work that is actually their responsibility for having created their own
company. They enlarge their company to the point where they can no longer
manage the production alone. This is when they seek out others to do their
slave labor. But since slavery was abolished in this country many years ago,
they have to call what they are doing something else. It is called employment.
If you are not employed right now, the process involved in finding a job is a
total self-esteem crusher. Even if you have valuable skills, a good work
record, and a degree of faith in your own ability those who make the decisions
on who gets hired and who does not tend to play a game of proving that you are
nothing more than a human resource whom they do not really need and you should
not assume that you have any worth beyond an inadequate salary and a casual
notice. Whatever hardship that you may be experiencing that brought you to
their company seeking a job is irrelevant and not their problem.
In some cases, employment will provide you with a salary
large enough to meet your needs and the demands of a society that wants money
as much as you do. They usually provide some sort of mutual exchange in return
for your money but it is rarely a fair exchange and you find that you run out
of your resources quickly and are barred from making all of the exchanges that
you need to sustain your life and wellbeing while others amass a great amount
of wealth at your expense. How do we change the dynamics of this situation so
it is equitable for all and not just for a few? They rely on your inequality to
maintain a system that will never allow things to be different.
It is not a natural and inborn trait in humans to believe
that they should have more than others do. Children know instinctively when
they have had enough to eat. Small children nearly always stop eating when they
are full. They usually cannot be
compelled to eat more unless an adult forces them to clean their plate by
requiring that they not waste food. Most animals are the same. They will stop
eating when their need has been met. It takes a developed ego to deny food or
comfort to others, and a perceived sense of superiority in people to delight in
the discomfort of others. This behavior is learned. Even when a small child
refuses to share a toy with other children it is usually because they do not
wish to be deprived of their own amusement with it and not because they wish to
be mean. That comes later in childhood if it happens. Here again, it is a
learned behavior that comes from either curiosity to see how others will react
to deprivation or it stems from a desire to make someone else deliberately feel
bad. It is behavior that will only get
worse if an adult does not intervene and explain why being that way is a
problem. It would appear that there are few adults in power in this world.
While there are some laws and rules regarding selfishness in our culture, they
are not enforced in an equitable way. Too many people see no reason to be fair
in the distribution of life’s necessities. And though not everyone delights in
seeing others deprived they are complicit in perpetuating want and need by
ignoring that it exists or placing blame on the victims of poverty.
Most people won’t do anything that doesn’t make them feel good in some way. Many people work but they don’t all enjoy doing it. It is a necessity of life that they feel they have to do and would not do it at all, at least not at the behest of a business owner whom they don’t give one damn about, if they knew another way to get by in this world. Much of that mentality is behind scamming, cheating, and criminal behavior. It is much more fun to set up some unsuspecting sucker and talk them out of their money than it is to get out of bed early and go down to the office or factory or retail shop and do something that benefits someone else more than it does you. It takes a lot of fear, force, and brainwashing to accomplish this. There are some jobs that people enjoy enough to do for nothing. Many do volunteer work, but that won’t pay the bills so it only happens when people already have their basic needs met. To have an all-volunteer society you would have to provide a basic income to everyone up front. Here is why the employer class does not want that to happen; because few if any people would take their crap and their crap jobs. I think that many people would still take the jobs that serve a purpose and serve the greater good, but most would not clean the employer’s toilets, wash their cars, do their laundry or any other job that a typical adult is capable of doing for themselves, and they would not give 75% of what their work is worth back to the employer so he can be 75% better off in life than they are. You would still see street cleaners and sanitation workers because that serves the entire community and the common good. Trash will pile up in your house, too, if the job isn’t done. Yes, some people would not get up off their asses to hit a tap but those kinds have always existed and they would quickly find that there would be no appreciation from others of their existence and they aren’t likely to think that is too great. Nowhere in the world is there a place where all of the people are reasonable and responsible.
An ideal society has never existed anywhere but the majority
of the social and societal ills the we have manifested as a result of
inequality and favoritism on the part of elitists who tightfistedly covet a
system that will constantly support the illusion that they do not have to
experience fear and hardship has backed us into a corner where people are
coming out fighting and shooting and feeling that they have little to lose now
when everything is being taken away from them.
As long as we are complicit in allowing the elite to keep a master/slave
mentality by agreeing with them that they are deserving and others are not, we
condemn the majority of the people to death because their resources continue to
be claimed and stolen away by an elite minority. So, we need to set up a system
where volunteer work is valued and appreciated enough to provide a basic income
to all because they are here and they contribute to society in the best way
that they know how. That basic income
would need to be for every individual and be equivalent to a living wage. A one-person
household would receive an amount equal to what it costs for one person to live
comfortably without fear that they would not be able to pay for housing, food,
and all that goes with that. Another basic check would be received for every
other adult and child in the home.
For too long we have told people that they are not worthy.
To volunteer is to be proactive in charting your own future. To wait and hope
and pray that others will somehow notice that they have worth is all that we
have given to the majority and if they won’t get up off their backsides and
contribute to their world it is mainly the result of making sure that they
never see that they matter.
The basic income would be distributed by the government but
it would be funded by the business class and the wealthy. Money would not be
paid to the volunteers by the business sector. There would be no tiered
salaries based on favoritism or longevity. This system is actually not much
different from the Medicare for all system that most people want for this
country. Compensation would be paid to
the providers of the medical services from one source through taxation. It is
similar to the military in that all of the basic needs of the enlisted people
are provided for and our military has been all volunteers since after the
Vietnam war. Back then many people thought that no one would ever enlist in the
military again but they were wrong.
One of the first arguments against a system and society like
this would be regarding the federal income tax. It needs to be remembered that
there was no income tax on a worker’s wages until 1913 when the income tax bill
introduced in 1909 was ratified by Congress. The US had been going along very
well without it before that for more than 100 years. Where did the money come
from to run this country and its government prior to that? Since the early
1950s our government has relied on working people to support it as much as 80%.
Consider that our country was built from the ground up. Where did the money
come from to build cities, roads, universities, government offices and
everything that we have before the average working citizens were required to
pay for all that is here? It came from those who were most able to afford it -
corporations, businesses, and the very wealthy. Their ability to amass
incredible fortunes was viewed as a privilege of being able to accomplish such
a thing here and it was fair and just that they give support and something back
to the country that allowed this to be possible. Somewhere along the line it
was decided that they shouldn’t have to do that anymore and their contributions
have been less and less for decades to the point where we are now. The wealthy
do not even pay into the Social Security system. When the ungodly rich pay
little or no federal taxes and somehow manage to receive millions of dollars in
tax refunds every year there is little wonder why the average wage earner is
having such a difficult time surviving now.
Doing away with corporate welfare and tax refunds to the rich who pay
little or no taxes into the system now would more than pay for a basic income
for the people. We are supporting the bloated and obese oligarchs who would
still be filthy rich if they were being held accountable as they previously
were. Ungodly wealthy people have always existed even back when they were
required to pay their fair share.
A volunteer system of work would eliminate so many of the
social problems and inequality that are dividing and destroying this nation. It
may be that you would want to keep your present job because you are good at it
and know that it has worth. Where your income is distributed from would not
change the fact that your time and effort and expertise are still needed. It
would only change the hierarchy and classism that exists in the workplace that
keeps you from having a feeling of pride and self-worth about what you
contribute there. It would also do away with the fear of being unemployed,
uninsured, and unable to keep your home and meet your obligations because your
income is not governed by a work requirement. The only real requirement is that
you understand that you are an integral part of your society and a necessary
element in keeping your world functioning not only for your wellbeing but for
the wellbeing of a society that is worth living in. There would be many jobs that would fall by
the wayside because they would no longer be relevant or they never were to
begin with, but except for those who are too old, too young, or mentally or
physically incapable of working there are so many possibilities when you
eliminate the unnecessary and put your energy into the things that really
matter. Whether or not a business or a product or a service is needed and
relevant would likely need to be rethought. If there is a need and demand for
its work product there would be no question regarding its survival but most
towns do not need more than one of the same business and many of them now have
multiples in cities that cannot support them all. A clean and safe world, good
health and wellbeing, and a sense of accomplishment and pride in your own worth
are the elements that could make life in America the marvel of the world, and
they are at the core of what we all seek for ourselves in our lifetime,
starting at birth. To feel that your life has meaning and a purpose is the
ultimate accomplishment at the highest level. Far too many Americans do not
have that and see no hope of ever achieving it when they are shown every single
day that their life means nothing when it is so easy to lose it. Leveling the
playing field is our best hope because the alternative is to stand by and watch
the downfall of our country.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to
his need.” - Karl Marx
