Proud To Be An American

Commentary by Roger Erickson

Really?

Even though, in our relentless pursuit of more static assets to hoard, we're Leaving People With Nothing? And, Washington DC is not the only city where such institutional atrocities occur. Forget No Child Left Behind. What about all the rest of our citizens?

And it's not just individuals which we're mistreating. We're killing whole cities, by pursuing hedge fund & investor-driven "bankruptcy strategies" in order to increase purely fiat "returns to shareholders." Like the case ongoing in Detroit, where derivative contracts have been granted super-priority over human pensions. Aren't functioning citizens considered a "return" to all the other citizenship shareholders?

And not just the here and now which we're screwing up. Please simply read the story about the discrepancy between Corporate Welfare NOT being pre-paid by a tax on initiative, while minimum care for retirees IS yoked to a completely unnecessary, pecuniary FICA tax on aggregate demand. That's been going on for 3 generations running now! When you read Luther Gulick & FDR admitting that the FICA taxes were never necessary, and are pure politics .... well, your blood ought to boil and your bitter tears of shame should flow (in any order). 

Do you realize that you, your parents AND your grandparents were over-taxed, like sharecroppers or peasants abused and held down by royalty? Do you wonder why? Please tell me if you come up with any valid reason.  

At a bare minimum, our Middle Class should be in the streets with pitchforks, putting an immediate end to FICA taxes altogether, and even levying reparations for 80 years of suicidal financial repression. Financial repression does as much good for the USA as depriving 99% of Army soldiers of adequate weapons and ammo during a war. WHAT is the point?

Sequestering more community assets than others in your community is NOT what capitalism was EVER all about. What, exactly, is the purpose of trying to hoard high-value dynamic assets (e.g., human initiative, aka fiat, aka fiat currency) and treat it as a low-value static asset? As any yokel could tell you, "That don't make no sense!"

Can we get back to doing the things that used to make us proud to be American? And capitalist too? An American capitalist doesn't have to be synonymous with the venal stupidity and ignorance which we now see being practiced. The old combination used to imply generous, dynamic, far-seeing ingenuity. Do you see any valid reason NOT to return to the old description of American capitalism?