I'll add to this later, but a quick question...
When/why did higher education and health care become profit-making businesses?
Doctors have to take the Hipocratic oath, but the scumwaffles who own/run the hospitals and universities apparently do not.
A few of the factors that have put the economy in the toilet and continue the conspiracy to eliminate the middle class:
1. If you eliminate my job making spatulas (or whatever) by moving the manufacturing overseas, how am I supposed to buy the spatula? No job, no cash.
2. CEO's, boards of directors and the top white collar people in any company do not need to make 1,000 times the wage of the average "regular" company worker. EVERYONE's job is IMPORTANT. Yours is not 1,000 times more important. Why do these guys get a BONUS while these companies are bleeding cash by the billions?
3. "We need to please the shareholders" should be a phrase punishable by public stoning.
4. Real estate agents' comissions should be based on their level of service, NOT the price of the house. This is a factor of the real estate crash that the media seem to have missed. This really goes for almost any commision based sales job. No personal offense intended to anyone here who has this type of job. I make the mold that makes the parts you sell. I get paid hourly and do not share a percentage of the sales. Yet, without the mold that makes the parts, you would have no job.
5. When a stock tanks and you sell it at a loss, the jackass who recommended that you buy it should share in the loss. He didn't seem to have a problem taking the comission up front, while taking on NONE of the risk.
6. Credit card companies should not be allowed to raise my interest rate to 27% based on my standing with ANOTHER banking institution. Congress has passed a law "eliminating" this practice. I believe it goes into effect in 2012. Huh?
7. Lobbyists need to go, along with corporate campaign funding. Hell, fire Congress and start over while we're at it. Realistically, limit Congressional terms to two. They did it to the President. Additionally, elected officials should not get pay raises until the budget is balanced and the national debt is ZERO. How about as the debt clock goes up, Congressional pay goes DOWN?
8. The rich, no matter what they tell you, do NOT need to be richer. (Did you know that Donald Trump is a paid actor who is backed by a cartel of rich investors?)
I will add more, but the basics are that we need more:
Oversight,
Regulation (self-regulation obviously does NOT work),
Accountability,
Truthiness(thanks, Stephen Colbert),
Honesty,
Integrity
and a bunch of other words ending in "y".
I really don't think this was what Thomas Jefferson and company had in mind when they founded this great nation. What is happening to us now is tenfold of what stirred a revolution 200+ years ago.
That Australian health care sytem sure sounds good. Don't let the naysayers con you into thinking that your taxes would go up with Socialized medical care. How many doctor's visits could you have made with YOUR share of the Trillion dollars that the banks got? Banks produce nothing but DEBT. Oh, and bonuses for CEO's. Almost forgot that one. HEALTHY people go to work and produce things. Sick people stay home, get sicker, go broke getting healthy and die.
Steve