There is a widespread feeling that life is rigged for the top 10% with crumbs falling off the table for everybody else.
In the summer 2008 financial meltdown, Congress prepared an $800 billion rescue package almost overnight. No Wall Street criminal went to jail. Ten million victims received foreclosure notices.
Some years back two political scientists made a study showing that the lower 70% on the socioeconomic scale had no perceptible influence on public policy.
I advocate a policy for the rich countries to wipe out poverty and misery everywhere. President George W Bush had a good idea with Leave No Child Behind. Leave No Human Being Behind is even better.
Ensure that every human being everywhere has food, shelter, medical care, education, a safe neighborhood and Internet access. In some countries, the government pays poor families to keep their kids in school. May every country take this step.
When there are victims from crime, fire, famine, war, hurricanes, droughts, addiction and other calamities, rescue workers will provide food, medical care and shelter.
Military forces are organized to kill other human beings. Change their mission to protect human beings. Offer pay bonuses to soldiers who learn a foreign language. Organize warehouses with food, water, medical supplies, communications equipment and everything else to deploy anywhere in the world for fires, floods, famines, hurricanes and droughts.
In the US, one family in 6 is food insecure while supermarkets throw away one-third the food that they receive. Some imaginative procedures are necessary and long overdue to reduce hunger.
I am bewildered with cell phones and technology that are over my head and I am a certified public accountant. Sometimes companies are completely incommunicado. Do you know a secret password? How do you argue with a computer? Sometimes communicating with people in customer service is like interrogations with captured soldiers with Geneva Convention protocols. The situation is even harder for the less sophisticated.
I ask President Biden to appoint a commission to explore the benefits and risks from artificial intelligence.
I propose that anyone suffering from depression, unemployment, addiction, physical pain gets immediate assistance no matter their legal status (immigrants) or position on the socioeconomic scale. The federal government will have the primary responsibility. Religious and humanitarian charities will fill in the gaps.
There is much money available. In the US, three men have as much wealth as 160 million. In the world, 58 men have as much wealth as 3.3 billion. Effective income tax enforcement will provide what is necessary. Reducing the US nuclear arsenal to 1,000 and overseas military bases to 100 will provide even more.
Rich individuals and major corporations paid income tax in abundance when Ike was president. As a child, I remember prosperous times. With trickle-down economics, we have the greatest wealth inequality in human history. What I have described here partially explains why millions look to DT as their savior. Of course, this makes no sense. DT’s tax cuts benefited billionaires and millionaires with everybody else grabbing for crumbs that fell from the table. DT’s budget cuts hurt the non-rich.
During World War Two, the Big Three transformed their economies to generate aircraft carriers, landing craft, tanks, artillery and fighter aircraft to bring military victory over the Axis Powers. For civilization to survive, humans must start and complete the political, social and economic transformation described here.
Every individual and family will face adversity in life. Working together humans can make sure that they will not suffer war and misery. Together we can sing Crystal Blue Persuasion with Tommy James and the Shonells.
Maybe tomorrow
When he looks down
On every green field
And every town
All of his children
And every nation
There’ll be peace and good brotherhood
Crystal blue persuasion