It does not matter if it is personal debt or whether it is governmental debt, be it local, state or national debt that the politicians can not manage. We as a people have accepted and embraced an economic system, and have even celebrated it to the extent that we nearly treat it as if it were blasphemy to be overly critical of it. The system you call capitalism today is not the same capitalism that was embraced by our father's father's father. The capitalism of our forefathers worked because it was actually based upon real capital. Real wealth was created and brought into the economy through agriculture and the harvesting of natural resources. Real wealth was created at the bottom, and increased it value as it moved upward and through the economy. For instance, a tree standing in the forest has unrecognized value. When the lumberjack cuts down that tree, the value of that tree it introduced to the economy. As the tree is moved to the mill, the value of the lumberjacks labor and the value to truck it to the mill is added to the value of the original tree. When the wood becomes a piece of furniture, further value is added to that original commodity. But the capitalism that is embraced and unquestioned in our society today does not create wealth through natural resources, but in fact actually devalues the real wealth created at the bottom of the economic ladder that was shared by all, and have instead transformed the capitalist system in to one that creates new wealth through debt so they can concentrate the wealth and power into the hands of a few, and leave you a slave to its debt, but their promises that the wealth will trickle down has been left unfulfilled. The wealth will never trickle down, only its debt.
Capitalism worked when we were an agrarian society: when our economic model was 80% agriculture and manufacturing, and less than 20% service sector and government. Today, the family farm has been forced out of business by price control and the debt burden of modern farming, so the majority of agriculture is now corporate as well, but none the less agriculture and manufacturing now only account for less the 20% GDP as we have embraced a service economy that simply can not create the new wealth required to serve the economy without utilizing debt. By contrast, health care represents nearly 18% of our GDP, and our celebrated banking and financial institutions that survive on usury account for nearly 20% of our GDP. This model of an economic system is simply unsustainable, and our excessive debt is the evidence of it.
I offer this as a reminder as well, but capitalism has always relied on slaves and slave labor to maintain is success. Whether it be the African slaves brought over hundreds of years ago to work the fields, or the immigrant farm workers that are exploited today, to the corporate manufacturing jobs that have left this county to exploit the cheap slave labor wages in some distant third world country.
Celebrate....COME ON!!!!
