While the majority of Americans are struggling to make ends meet in the current economy with one in five children living in households described as food insecure, the President is altering NOAA weather maps with a sharpie to cover his misstatements. The point is a balanced economy is more important than covering a simple mistake that nobody cared about.
According to Steven Brill in his recent book Tailspin (2018), America depends on the “…balance between the energizing inequality of achievement in a competitive economy and the liberating, conmmunity-binding equality of power promised by democracy.” The problem is the former has co-opted the government and implemented legislation that favors themselves at the expense of the latter. They pursue their personal fortunes without regulation or accountability. Their focus is on short term gains and profits for shareholders which includes reducing labor costs to bare mininums.
Our democracy is meant to balance the power of all citizens, but this class of “overachievers” as Brill calls them has taken over our economy through aggressive deep-pocketed lobbying to buy and manipulate our government in their favor. Guess what? It is not immigrants or minorities or poor people taking your money or good-paying jobs! It’s these “overachievers” who are only interested in short-term investment to increase their personal wealth! They are not investing in infrastructure and the labor needed to maintain it. They are the destructors of American Exceptionalism. American Exceptionalism is founded in a strong and prosperous middle class.
Without food workers, infrastructure workers, transportation workers, healthcare workers, educators, fire, police, EMTs and the military, just to name a few of the hard working occupations that make America great, there would be nothing for the “overachievers” to rob and exploit! They are NOT more deserving than the rest of us. We need campaign finance regulation and an end to lobbyists. All are required to be represented, not just the powerful few!
reilly m gray 