If this nation was a corporation, heads would roll and there would be a top to bottom reorganization.
Well, we the voters are probably as comparable as you can get to corporate stockholders, so I say it's high time for a stockholder revolt.
America's global leadership position is quickly becoming history.
Its monetary base is being devalued.
Its claim as one of the best and safest places on earth in which to live is arguably a faded memory.
Its financial mismanagement is no less than legendary.
Its position as the world's leading military machine only appears to provoke distrust and to cause concern on the part of its allies.
While it appears unconcerned over the billions of missing dollars in its military campaigns, it fails miserably to provide adequate funds and proper care for its wounded veterans.
Its wage gap is increasing while its ability to properly assist its citizens-in-need is failing.
The quality of its medical care is falling as rapidly as its medical costs are rising.
Its citizens are losing their jobs and their homes while "corporate America" continues to ship jobs overseas.
Its president is hobnobbing with the very same Arabs who are sucking the lifeblood out of its economy.
And while ordinary Americans, as a group, are struggling, the wealthy are cruising through life backdating options, inflating their incomes at the expense of policyholders, conspiring to manipulate financial markets, engaging in monopolistic practices......and all with seeming impunity.
Meanwhile, our leaders routinely lie to us, corporate advertising constantly misleads us and the media increasingly fails to inform us.
This week the Global Peace Index was released and the United States was ranked 97th out of 140 countries. The measure which purports to rank countries by their relative states of peace is in its second year. In that short time span, our country has moved one notch in the wrong direction.
The index considers such factors as the homicide rate, the proportion of jailed people (U.S. is in the highest category), respect for human rights and military expenditures (U.S. accounts for 50% of the world's military expenditures). More information can be found on the website visionofhumanity.org.
Also, the latest survey by the World Health Organization ranked the U.S. health system 37th in the world, in the same statistical neighborhood as Costa Rica, Slovenia and Cuba.
Furthermore, according to the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics, the United States ranks 42nd in life expectancy among the world's countries, up (or down) from 11th, two decades ago.
And our newborn mortality rate is the second worst among all the countries in the developed world, according to Save the Children. Only Latvia has a higher newborn death rate.
What casts a particularly painful light on these figures is another statistic generated by the World Health Organization: the United States leads all nations in the cost of healthcare per capita, and actually exceeds the number two nation, Switzerland, by 50%.
And to top it all off, over 42 million Americans have no health insurance whatsoever.
Not everyone will agree, but, in recent years, many feel that our nation's finances have also been largely mismanaged. And, perhaps not surprisingly, the extent of the mismanagement may have been grossly understated.
USA Today reported that a system of audited financial statements, similar to what is required of corporations, would reveal a far worse financial condition than official budget reports indicate.
For example, from 1997 through 2005, the cumulative audited numbers revealed a deficit of $2.9 trillion, while the official number was only $729 billion. That real deficit, which covers just nine years, equates to over $25,000 per U.S. household.
By the same token, our national debt is officially pegged at $9.4 trillion. However, the Brookings Institution has calculated that the true number, including the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare, should be more than $70 trillion. That equates to a whopping $560,000 per household.
And, if there were a realistic misery index in America, it would surely be at a high level today, except, possibly, for our billionaires.
Currently, 391,298 households in the United States are experiencing the trauma of foreclosure, according to the ForeclosureData website. Another 426,674 households are struggling through a pre-foreclosure process and 420,202 bankruptcies are being adjudicated.
And while many of the wealthy deserve all the respect they can get, the inequity of the income gap is becoming particularly apparent these days. The 400 richest Americans on the Forbes list saw their collective net worth surge by $120 billion last year.
Given all that is transpiring, is it any wonder that depression has become the leading cause of disability for Americans between the ages of 15 and 44. According to Mental Health America, it affects more than 21 million children and adults and is a factor in over 30,000 suicides each year.
And many who turn to religion for an answer are finding that they are being fed a stronger and stronger dose of the "end times" theory these days.
Choice of religion is a cherished freedom in this country, but the spreading belief that the human race is entering its final stage appears to offer the ultimate escape from reality, and is a movement that has possibly been fueled by the very problems described above.
And the scariest aspect of this belief, based on ancient writings, is that, if enough people - or the wrong people - embrace it, it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The bottom line here is that while this is still the same great nation it has always been, it is currently suffering from an acute case of bad management.
Encouragingly, at least one current presidential candidate says "Change is coming to America."
I say, "Bring it on!"
Dave McGill, News Correspondent
Dave's column, "The Contrarian," generally published every Friday, to Gather Essentials: News will sometimes present a contrary view to various aspects of the news, or an alternate take on the conventional wisdom of the day, and will occasionally appear on other days of the week
Dave has been a senior officer of a large eastern insurance company, involved in economic projections and investment strategy, president of a Midwestern mortgage banking company, and a financial consultant in Southern California, serving clients in the field of commercial real estate development
You can find all of Dave's "The Contrarian" columns at: http://gather.com/thecontrarian...... Keep up with Dave's other postings and Gather activity by joining his Gather network - just click here: http://atadaskew.gather.com........ You'll find Dave and other News Correspondents, plus celebrity content and plenty of other News experts at News.gather.com.
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Comments: 51
We need to find a way to help the bottom 80% of the people in the US who can't afford to live here anymore.
Dr. Ron Paul is and was the answer and Hope For America and you didn't vote for him in mass numbers as your should have done. There is almost NO chance of changing this country with any of the three "aparent leaders".
I use the generic term "you" meaning all voters.
As has been pointed out in many places, we keep returning the
same people to office, and now it is the same families even.
It stands to reason that of all the people in the nation to
serve as our leader that a single family cannot be the best
we can do ... so they are sold to us by a bigger system that
we cannot even agree on and that we all probably in one way
or another thing we are either benefitting from or that things
would be worse without it.
If we were near as interested in what they do as we are to whom might be Prez, we would be far better off...
All the ills mentioned seem to come down to the same things; controversies over money and power.
I am stunned that the richest 400 in our country experienced $300 million a piece in income growth last year.
And wowed by the fact that although we spend the most in the world on health care, we still end up ranking 37th in actual quality of care, around Cuba, on the charts.
It would seem that America's only claim to fame is that we are the biggest, which probably ties to the fact that we are also the most obese.
Sorry, but I'm not seeing a whole lot of real pride in that.
Thanks for posting this. I certainly got something out of reading it.
Peace --
most wasteful
So what is wrong with Americans ... are we working so hard
we have forgotten about what life is all about? Why don't
we seem to care, or are we happy with this?
Who's fault is it that supporting and raising a family in America now requires two-plus income earners working full-time; whereas it used to only take one income earner working full-time?
That has not happened. In the last 30 or so year the "financial" class along with those with capital have hollowed out the whole country for their sole benefit. They started out in the 60's warning all the labor unions what would happen if salaries got too high, then they shipped manufacturing overseas, and started to import cheaper labor.
Now the only thing the US does anymore ... the biggest sector of our economy is financial services, and look at how they conduct themselves - from one scandal to the next while they suck the country dry of all the money and demoralize the nation, the people.
So, it is not the people, they were led there by these people.
During the prelude to the cold war and especially during the cold war itself Americans were told that their enemies were the Russians and communism. What we really their enemy was the Russian dictatorship. But Americans believe that communism and socialism = dictatorship, which is hogwash. Americans also believe that capitalism = democracy, which is even worse hogwash. Capitalism has thrived quite nicely in places like Chile, El Salvador, The Phillippinnes and many other totalitarian dictatorships, most of them allied with the USA at the time. Even China today is far more capitalistic than communistic, while still being referred to as communist and run by a party that has that name, and is a dictatorship.
Meanwhile, socialism and to a lesser extent communism, has also co-existed with democracy in many nations of Europe, notably Sweden and France, where social-democrats have been in power during much of the last several decades.
The point is that so long as Americans have a religious conviction that free market capitalism is the only economic system that is compatible with democracy you will never have universal health care.
Capitalism and the free market is a wonderful wealth generating system, but not so good at spreading the wealth around. Consumer goods and services should always be provided by free, private enterprise. But essential services often require the government to run them because of the simple fact that the motive has to be the most widespread availability of the service to the general public, not profit. We have this working in public transit, where most urban public transit systems are publicly owned and operated. Why? Because there is no profit in it. But there is a great need for it otherwise cities could not operate.
Where society has needs the provision of which is not profitable we need public services, and that is socialism.
But I am prepared for the hostile responses to this comment, as the devout capitalists rage against government that is "too big" (as though a society of 300 million people could possibly operate in the modern world without a large government).
Aah, the magic words. It's our fault. It's our fault for sitting on our hands and on our butts while watching this ship sink deeper and deeper into a sea of mucky quicksand and if we don't toss ourselves a life-line PDQ, recovery will not, cannot occur.
I think the majority of the reasonable, intelligent folks out here WANT to take action, but somewhere between the mid-70's and today, we lost our balls and have forgotten how to make noise.
Someone, anyone, maybe you, maybe me must muster the courage to stop all this chatter and start taking some action. I'm going to search my levels of fear vs. courage this evening and try to come up with one ~ JUST ONE ~ step that I can take that will rattle the cages of my friends and neighbors. I'll let you know what I come up with.
It's way past time to take ourselves to the streets and make ourselves visible.
If one looks at these "mortality rates" one also sees a pattern where it seems that our children survive far better in nations whose policies prioritize value human life without a debate on which ethnic group better deserves this. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why.
I do hope the shareholders to the American Dream stage a revolt. Why not do that this November.
I would like to point out, however, that the financial class leaders have been trying to run this country (mostly successfully) for WELL over 30 years. The top of the heap capitalists have been trying to garner and wield complete control over our country and the citizenry ever since the industrial revolution established those leaders lofty positions.
Consider the Chicago Haymarket Riot which happened in May of 1886 when laborers went on strike because they were sick of being forced by employers to work 10-16 hour days, six days per week. Business owners have ALWAYS tried to get themselves richer by pressuring laborers to work as much, and as cheaply, as possible; even to the point of inhumanness.
Aunt Boni H. -- "It's our fault."
Please look back up the thread to where bruce k. accurately points out that the average American is not sitting on their hands. Their lives are fully filled with the concerns of working, and (for most) family raising. The majority of American people just plain do not know how to wield control over the government. It is reminded that in our election process, our two major party's select the candidates that regular voting Americans get to choose from. There are dang few office holders who were initially selected by average folks because that person actually seemed like they would be good politicians FOR the people. I guess I won't even go into how "real do-gooders" are historically blocked by entrenched government power wielders from introducing or passing legislation that actually improves the lots and conditions of regular folk.
"..we lost our balls and have forgotten how to make noise."
I have to disagree with that. Americans continue to show their balls about making noise. Plenty of folks are writing letters and staging peaceful protests. The problem is that those folks have been cordoned off into tiny, well-guarded "free speech zones" where the media and the politicians are insulated, and can just waive quaintly at the protesters.
Code Pink has plenty of balls. That's why their members are so often escorted by guards from the mahogany and marble rooms where committee meetings are held.
Rory makes some excellent points about how we Americans view socialism and communism through warped glasses.
But, not wanting to even get into a debate about socialism and communism, I want to point to how, in America, what we classically call a government work whose sole goal is something beneficent for the "every citizen" is called a civil works projects.
Communism means that the community is most important
Socialism means that the society is most important
Civilianism or Citizenism (like democracy) means that the average civilian or citizen is most important.
Despite much flap, government sponsored programs that help average folk (such as free health care) are not anti-American or anti-democratic. Programs like that are just not "market capitalism" and therefore get labeled by their detractors as stinkingly communist or traitorously socialist.
Bill, I like your Sprit.
Great article and incredibly validating in some awful ways... I guess I should say, "So it's not just me, huh?"
I'm fired up, I'm fired up and I'm ready to go...!
http://www.berkshirehathaway.com
Maybe National Insurance would not be a bad thing,......................
Patrick, in our patriarchal society, have you ever thought it was anything but this, often beneath the radar of a collective delusion called "democracy," which Socrates often decried.
\\\\Changing the man at the helm will not fix the problems. ////
This is true, however, keeping the same man or one just like him is not the solution either. And there is more than the man at the top to change! The one at the top cannot legislate anything. It is the house and senate that needs new and different blood or there will never be any substantial change in our nation.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate
that Governments long established
should not be changed for light and transcient Causes,
and accordingly all Experience hath shewn,
that Mankind are more disposed to suffer
while Evils are sufferable,
than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms
to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of Abuses and Usurpations,
pursuing invariably the same Object,
evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism,
it is their right, it is their duty,
to throw off such Government,
and to provide new guards for their future Security."
Declaration of Independence
While our government has become unspeakably corrupt and abusive, some of our communities are preparing for the massive informal cooperation that will become necessary to care for our families and our neighbors. One of my friends believes that we must not form anything official because you must have officers who are then targets. A gardening guild I participate with meets in borrowed space somewhat like Alcoholics Anonymous.
If there is a President and a bank account, both can be targeted. Our laws are complicated enough that an ordinary person can barely breathe without breaking a law, and contraband can be planted on an adversary. Our rate of incarceration is famous around the world. Perhaps Obama would address this?
We are not, however, the only country with excess bureaucracy and corruption. An unsettling development is Canada's collusion with the Bush administration. The criminalization of Americans means many Americans cannot travel in the way Eastern Europeans were walled in. Peace workers are prevented from meeting with each other.
Paul Hawken's book Blessed Unrest points out that decent people are coming up with ways to help each other that are informal enough not to be detected by the would-be controllers.
Thanks for the posting.
All of these "blessings" were brought to us by the big government people who willingly give up their freedom to an institution (government) that has an established reputation for tyranny and oppression. But then, the article failed to mention that, too.
That med study ranking the US so low used different factors to reach that, for instance death rates among infants. The US counts stillborns to get their numbers, most nations and that study do not. Quality of care is quite different too, as is cost of medical personnel
Military expenditures assumes relative transparency, a major assumption and one easily criticized (think all those nice countries out there broadcast what they spend. It also fails to account for the difference in the way our military budget is spent. A huge portion goes to personnel and infrastructure costs not weapons.
Incarceration rates too reflect a major difference in attitudes. I agree it's too high but some (too much) is because of our insane bi-partisan 'war' on drugs. On the other hand putting away violent offenders is a key part of lowering our crime rates. So say the US is not a generally safe country is simply not true, especially considering most of the world does a rather poor job of keeping OR publishing crime stats.
The life expectancy stats in the top quintiles vary only by months, that has alot to do with many nations having little immigration (many arrive from lower life expectancy states). Older populations tend to be more stable and less active (ie European states) while a younger (per capita) country like the US has a more active-to wit life endangering, population.
The Arabs aren't bleeding us dry, we are doing it ourselves. No one is forcing us to buy foreign oil (except Congress and the enviros) Financial mismanagement has been going on for some 70 years with only a few blips, Bush has taken it higher than most but he hasn't been alone at all. The only reason we still are stumbling along is the sheer size and ability of our economy, ANY other nation would have been bled dry long ago. Given the job Congress has done about worsening this and will likely continue to do so, I don't see "change" as a meaningful word any time soon. Corporate America (and smaller businesses just as fast) are fleeing overseas because of the entangling web our own government continues to spin.
Lastly, I agree its time for revolt but who will replace the former masters? Most of you think a suit like Obama can do it. Everything he espouses is more of the same but in a different set of clothing. No one that really means change to be more than a word has a chance in hell of getting in that office.....
-- Confucius
Together we roar like thunder.
Stockholder Revolt, Dave? You betcha.
Of course, that takes us right back to the slimy politicians. They're nothing more than and elected union -- wasting time debating meaningless bullshit while returning soldiers are suffering.
I'd run for office to roust them, but I'd never get elected for the same reason I'll never get called for jury duty: I'm registered Libertarian.
Having common sense doesn't pay off these days. The baby-boomers and their guns, along with the Gen-Y'ers and their internet, rule this Country.
Where on earth is that sign holder? I need to get in on a little of this largess! Most business don't hire union personnel to hold signs, but hire minimum wage earners. Labor must have a great thing going where you drive around! And virtually all sign holders are denied health benefits.
Don't count on not getting called for jury duty. You just stated that you drive so that means you can get called from the drivers license list and if you own property, that will get you called as well.
I doubt the baby boomers are any more involved with guns than were the older people in their day. Here, we have guns in most homes and are utilized by all segments of the population.
You should run for office! Remember, that Ventura was elected governor on the Libertarian ticket.
You have some good points about the politicians "debating meaningless bullshit" as the congress had hearings on a single ball player and whether he had used steroids or not! Is that what you elect them to do? I don't think so.
The biggest thing I've got against politicians is just the same as I have against the big wheels of corporations, they have never heard of the word "integrity." If we could get some in there who under stood this quality, it would be a good start to improve.
The more I think about it, the more I'd say go for it, run for that office. You might be surprised if you did a good campaign job!
If "shareholders" are upset with management and get out of the fund, the price doesn't move as a result. Good, safe, job for lousy or crooked managers. Second, "shareholder" power is eliminated. Most mutual fund "shareholders" couldn't even tell you what companies they own. The fact is, though, they do own the shares...sort of.
I am old enough to remember grandpa and his cohorts boarding the train to New York to attend annual meetings. These guys were not rich, don't get me wrong, but they invested their savings and damn well kept up on what the boards and officers were doing. I am talking about the 1940's to early 1960's here, but the same held true in the 1920's, when grandpa started working, after slugging it out in the War to End All Wars.
I am of the understanding that there is, waiting in the wings, a comprehensive attack on the mutual fund industry. It has been temporarily sidetracked, my understanding is, by the current financial crisis.
Think about it: why wouldn't we just have managed diversified portfolios? Same thing. Why are the banks and brokerage houses so big on mutual funds. I think I know a few other reasons why, and expect that when there is a break in the action, it's gonna hit the fan for mutual funds. Maybe an article, Mr. McGill?
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