Why Do People Put Up With Our Economic System?

Income inequality in the United States is well documented.  Looking at the top 1% of the population … whether it’s high-flying corporate CEOs or tech billionaires or financial gurus or even the top worker bees … the disparity between their incomes and the average worker in their firms is staggering.  That people live in poverty, not having enough food on the table or living in substandard housing, while the super rich bank their millions and billions is unconscionable.  

You cannot but help ask yourself that if the system is so unequal, if it is so broken, why do people put up with the system.  Why is there no major protest, either on the streets or at the ballot box?  For clarification, the Tea Party or Trump middle-class supporters, are not protesting the economic system, they are protesting the role of government.  And the progressives who are protesting the system have not attained the critical mass to bring about change; they are still a splinter group.

The answer is that while the income inequality is huge, a large proportion of the population is doing ok; the system works for them at least to some extent.  In 2018, the top 15% of households made $150,000 or more; the top 42% made $75,000 or more.  That means that 40% of the population have a decent standard of living unless they’re living in New York City or San Francisco.

The people who are really impacted by income inequality are those for whom the system just doesn’t work - the 50% of households who make less than $50,000.  And it doesn’t work for them not just because they don’t have enough money to afford what most consider essentials, let alone live as they would like. 

But the added indignity is that the system constantly clobbers them psychologically.  Indeed, it clobbers almost everyone who isn’t in that top 1%.  Why?  Because most people in our society are all about ego.  They identify themselves in comparison to what society and the media tells them the good life is, what people who have “it” do, how people who are successful live.

And most people, certainly not those with household incomes under $50,000, but not even those with incomes of $150,000, are not able to live the life that is posited before them as their goal by our media.  They cannot have the housing, the education, the food, the travel, the clothing … none of the accoutrements of those that are held up as models of success. 

Our society cultivates us to always want more.  That’s what keeps the wheels of consumerism spinning and the economy growing.

That results in most people feeling frustrated, disappointed with their lives.  Whether you’re homeless, working poor, middle class, or lower upper class, people want more and are dissatisfied with their current state.  Indeed, the more they have the more they want.

Why isn’t that a cause for revolt?   Ironically, regardless how frustrated people are, even those who have been beaten down by the system, most still believe in the system; they see themselves as somehow being at fault, or perhaps the government, but not the system, and indeed they want to use the system to get ahead.  That is why rather than disdaining people with money, those are their idols.  That’s who they want to be.

And so instead of people either having a choice to fight to change the system or accept their lot in life and be happy, people in our society mostly have no choice.  They are trapped by the golden handcuffs they wish they had, and so they suffer.  How sad.

Taking the Sham Out of Christmas

This is not going to be one of those regularly heard messages about how Christmas has become so commercialized that the true meaning of Christmas, celebrating the birth of Christ, is almost an afterthought.

You know the saying, “Every day should be like Christmas?”  While that is taken by some to mean that we should get presents all the time (hopefully only children), most take it that there should be this feeling of love and brotherhood every day.  Unfortunately, there is not even love and brotherhood on Christmas.  It is just a sham, a facade, that people put on because it’s what one does; it’s expected.

Christmas was originally established as a day to celebrate the birth of Christ and Christians’ devotion to him.   It was a holy day … which in modern times has turned into a holiday.  The change in wording speaks volumes.  Two very different things.

On a holy day, it would be appropriate to immerse oneself in the teachings of Christ and truly ask “What would Jesus do?”  Those wristbands that young people, typically Evangelicals, used to wear were a great idea.  Unfortunately, they had no meaning.  Few really asked the question seriously; it was a fad.  

And those that did usually thought only about the issues of abortion and the culture wars, perhaps feeding the homeless, and then not through the words of Christ but through the words of their local minister.  Unfortunately, I never heard an Evangelical preacher speak about these issues with a tone or with thoughts even approximating what Christ would have said.  But that’s also not the point of this post.

The point is that on Christmas we put a lot of time, effort, and money into making those close to us, our “loved” ones, and perhaps some friends, happy.  We shower people with presents as well as our presence and a good dose of holiday cheer, good spirits.

But unfortunately, as I stated above, it’s just a sham, a facade, even on this one day.  Whether between spouses, siblings, parents and children, adults and their parents, the feelings typically expressed on Christmas just don’t hold water.  There is something there, but it’s mostly passive and confused.  Instead there is a vast reservoir of active memories and feelings about lack of respect, lack of love, lack of caring, envy, and all the other emotions and judgments that make up the typical dynamic between family members.

What most people do on Christmas is, for this one day, try to paper over all these negative feelings and be pleasant and cheerful.  But papering over really never works.  Either hard words are expressed at the time, or afterwards all the negative emotions come spilling out.

If people really immersed themselves in the teachings of Jesus, you would get past all these past slights that are embedded in your ego, you would not attach to these emotions, and you would respect the basic human dignity of all members of your family.  You would understand that we all suffer and anything that someone does that pushes our buttons is a direct expression of that person’s suffering, as well as our own.  That doesn’t change the “facts” but it does open the door to not blaming, to compassion and to loving kindness.

Sometimes, though, there are situations where the facts are so extreme, so bad, so dark, so all-encompassing … and continuing … that there is no way of getting around them spiritually.  One can find compassion perhaps but no spark of loving kindness.  Then it may be best to speak the truth with equanimity, calmly, and cut off relations.  This is extremely painful.  But putting oneself through a yearly charade, and all the negative feelings that arise during the year, is even more painful because it never ends and is denigrating.

The essence of Christmas should return to that of a holy day.  If one wants to exchange simple presents, that would be ok.  But the thrust of the day should be a spiritual observance.  All the excessiveness that have become basic to the commercial success of Xmas should end; it should certainly not be encouraged.  How one could accomplish that on a large scale given the nature of our culture and economy I can’t begin to imagine.  But that is the real meaning of Christmas to me (spoken as a JuBu, a Jewish Buddhist).

How Faith in Consumerism/Technology Replaced Faith in God

A friend of mine said once that whenever anyone walked through the doors of our Buddhist temple, it was because they were suffering and they were seeking a path to end their suffering.  That is probably a statement that can be made of all religions.  

In the past, when true faith in God was high, most people looked to religion to ease their insecurity and if not end their suffering, at least give them faith that there was some larger reason for their suffering.  Belief in God trumped everything else. “The Lord works in mysterious ways”; if we mere mortals can’t understand why, it’s not in our place to ask.  Even when people were in dire circumstances or tragedy struck, their faith in God was not questioned, indeed could not be questioned because to question it would have left them bereft of spiritual support, alone and unprotected; instead their faith provided them with comfort.

Enter the modern age of capitalism and consumerism.  Just as Darwin’s theory of evolution was taking root in the public mind, creating fissures in the bedrock of faith in the Bible and in God (the Scopes Monkey trial was in 1925), and the scope of the terrors of WWI raised questions anew about God’s mysterious way, there rose in our midst a new preacher, the ad agencies who promised happiness and security through the acquisition of goods and wealth.  Shaken in their beliefs, people were open to a new way to end their suffering, a new faith, and thus were an easy target for the siren call of consumerism.

And so for most of the 20th century, although surveys in the U.S. consistently reported that the vast majority of people stated they believed in God, religious service attendance declined as did membership.  People were giving lip-service to a belief in God, most likely as a result of peer pressure, the desire to belong to the group.  Their actions spoke otherwise.

But although the masses bought in to consumerism and its promise of happiness, people found themselves still feeling insecure and alone.  Small wonder!  And so during the last decade or so, the siren call of the new technology and social media found an avid audience.  If you observe people on the street, in restaurants, in any public setting, it would appear that most people have been fully taken in by the illusion of connectedness, of multitudes of friends, that the new technology provides.  Their faith in this illusion is so strong because it seems directly to answer their deepest longing.  Indeed the only word to describe their constant attachment to their electronics is “addiction.”   How sad.

At about the same time, though, a slight change in this shift of allegiance away from God could be observed.  Some people, mainly among the young, were feeling the effects of having no spiritual support.  They had grown up in an era in which they were not exposed to true faith.  So, unlike their parents, their faith wasn’t shaken, it never existed; there was just emptiness.  While they didn’t reject consumerism and technology, they were looking for something deeper to end their suffering and insecurity.

On the Protestant stage, numerous mega-churches … orthodox in the sense of preaching the inviolability of the Bible as the word of God … began preaching that God wants you to be rich.  That together with their emotional enticements … being born again and having a “personal relationship with Christ” … and “relevant” formatting resulted in soaring membership and attendance.  An odd marriage of convenience.

On the Jewish front, there has also been a large increase in the Orthodox community, both the more liberal Modern Orthodox and the ultra-Orthodox.  Without, however, the accommodation to modern culture seen in the Protestant mega-churches. 

But these changes in the Protestant and Jewish communities are small blips in the overall decline in religiosity as measured by attendance and membership.  The false idols of Consumerism/Technology still hold the greatest sway in our modern culture.  And so the vast majority of people, bereft of any sense of their spirituality, are left feeling alone and insecure behind a facade of connectedness at the same time as their ability to find some security through consuming, illusory though it may be, is impacted by falling real wages.

One can only hope that another false idol doesn’t appear on the scene to lead a weakened people astray and that instead a true source of spirituality, accessible to modern man, makes its presence felt and awakens people to their true self … to the God, Buddha, Higher Power, or whatever one calls it within them. 

Our Culture Is the Serpent in the Garden of Eden

As told in Genesis, in the paradise that God created, man and woman were naked, but they were not embarrassed by their nakedness and they were one with all things.  The only thing forbidden to them was to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.   They lived in a world where there was no knowledge of right or wrong, good or bad.  Interestingly, the paradise of Genesis is virtually identical with the Buddhist Nirvana.

But once they ate the fruit of the tree, they became aware of and were embarrassed by their nakedness.  They now had knowledge of value judgments; they were no longer innocent.  They lost God’s favor and were forced out of the garden into a world full of the frustrations of cravings, fear, and strife.

The Abrahamic faiths’ take on this story is that man is a sinner because he violated God’s commandment.  And that women are the causal source of sin because it was Eve who listened to the serpent and tempted Adam to eat the fruit; it is thus also a cautionary tale regarding sexual temptation.  Man can only be saved by obeying God, which is to obey the multilayered moral and ritual strictures of His religion (take your pick as to which one).  

But if one looks at the story with fresh eyes, without all the layers of religious interpretation by rabbis, monks, imams, and others, a different lesson takes shape.

The real lesson here is that the world of God is the world of innocence, where there is no good and evil.  There is no evil because there is no desire for what one does not have.  There is no good because man does not compare himself to others.  There is no good or evil because man is one with himself and all things.  This is the world of freedom from the known.  The point is not so much that God’s commandment was broken, but that because it was broken, mankind lost its innocence and the world was never the same.

Speed forward several millennia to the current age.  The world is filled with serpents, those who seek to entrap mankind with the knowledge of good and evil, of beauty versus ugliness, of every duality one can create.

The consumer culture on which our capitalist economy depends is based on people being manipulated by marketing into wanting more of what the masters of the world want them to crave and into thinking that a product will in some way give them entry to a better life by satisfying that craving.  We have all been taught that happiness comes from having what we don’t have and thus we have become creatures controlled by craving.

The political culture is based not on bringing people together but by dividing them into opposing camps.  Often fomenting ill will and at times even hatred towards those “others,” thus again manipulating the populace.  Political rhetoric today, such as it is, appeals mostly to the emotions, even when it is put in a form which sounds rational.

Even the prevailing religious cultures provide no refuge.  Religion, which theoretically should be the main advocate for peace on earth and goodwill towards all, instead has over the millennia been perhaps the major source of strife among mankind.  It has been, together and in concert with nationalism, the greatest divider and thus the greatest source of conflict.  And how convenient to fight others, exploit others, dominate others in the name of promoting God’s law, when in truth it is always about promoting the power of nations and individual men.  And to the extent that the fight was against “savages,” ironically those who were being “saved” often lived a life and had a culture much closer to the garden of eden than the warriors of religion.

Towards its own, religion has never really been a force to bring mankind back to the state of grace that existed in the garden of eden.  Instead, it has created a system of fear, using its own concept of good and evil to control its flock and build power and influence.  

In truth, though, none of this should be surprising.  Religion is after all, despite its protestations to the contrary, a product of man, not of God.  If it were the latter, why would there be so many different religions, all at odds with each other?  

Is there then no force in the world to help mankind return to a state of innocence, which is its birthright, and live in peace?  The only force I am personally familiar with is found in the teachings of the Buddha.  His teachings seek to enable man to perceive that all his suffering is caused by what he has learned from family and culture and that all this learned experience is empty of any intrinsic existence and has no inherent value.  When he perceives these truths, he experiences all things without the intervention of thought and emotion ... he is once more free of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  And when he reaches that state, all suffering and doubt cease.  (I must acknowledge that I am a practicing Buddhist.)

The Buddha was a historical person.  The Buddha saw his role as relieving mankind’s suffering by putting him back in touch with his true pure nature, thus ending his craving and bringing him peace.  Jesus sought to achieve a similar aim by putting man back in God's grace.

But even here, the teachings of the Buddha are one thing ... Buddhism as an organized religion can at times be something quite different, witness the Buddhist mobs doing harm to Muslims in Myanmar, or even at times vying groups of Buddhist monks fighting with each other.  These are cases of men being Buddhists in name only.  They have strayed far from the teachings of the Buddha.

Indeed all religions ... including Judaism, Christianity, Islam ... have at their core the basic moral teaching of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you and most sought in their own way to bring mankind back to a state of grace because they are all based on the teachings of truly holy men.  But the basic teachings of most religions also created an us v them culture, and in the hands of less holy men the religious establishment has turned this aspect into the dominant theme of our world.

If we want to free ourselves from having tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, if we want to experience peace and happiness, there is only one way, and that is to turn our back to the dominant culture and follow the simple truths of the teachings of the Buddha and the other religions, while disavowing any teaching that your religion is the only path to God.

One final note ... Eden was a place here on Earth, not a paradise one accessed in heaven upon death.  While there is no way, given the dominant forces and the conditioning of mankind, to ever achieve that state of innocence again here on Earth, we can each in our own small way create waves of Eden that spread out from each of us.

Modern Man Enslaved

We live in an era of unprecedented freedom ... of speech, of travel, of work, of intellectual and creative endeavor, of where we live, to name just a few.  And we live in a nation that has experienced great upward mobility over the past century.

And yet, whether rich or poor, professional or working class, we are enslaved.  To be more exact, the habit-energies of our minds are enslaved.  We have become little more than programmed unthinking robots that do what our masters ... the lords of capitalism ... want us to do.  And this affects virtually all areas of our lives.  (You may well find this proposition ludicrous, but please read on.)

The lords of capitalism (by this I mean all those who hold the reins of power in our capitalist system) have achieved their desired control over our lives by preying on the weaknesses of man ... on our intense desire or craving to be loved, to be desired, to be admired, to be part of a group.  Now, wanting to be loved or part of a group is not inherently either a weakness or something bad for us.  But because of the insecurity that affects most of us in this culture, those wants have been manipulated by the lords of capitalism into cravings which rule our lives and cause us endless frustration and pain, leading us further from the feelings of peace and happiness that are our birthright.

Let me site this enslavement’s most prevailing form.  In our contemporary culture, status is confirmed almost exclusively by one thing ... money.   Because the more money one has the more, and more expensive, things one can acquire, and ones acquisitions ... what used to be called, derogatorily, conspicuous consumption ... is at the core of one's status.  

Whether rich or poor, what you are able to acquire ... whether it’s fancy Nike sneakers for a ghetto dweller or a 20,000 sq. ft. mansion for the top 1% ... gives you status among your peers.  It’s not talent, brains, or looks ... it’s how you’ve been able to parlay those attributes into money.  And so we find that individuals are making life decisions, to the extent they have  control, based primarily on the prospect of making more money rather than the factors that used to be of equal or greater importance.

The reader might say, “so what’s wrong with that?”  What’s wrong is that it traps one in a cycle of endless frustration, even if one is successful, because one always is left wanting MORE.  What’s wrong is that it distorts decisions that are important for the larger society ... like how many people choose to become teachers, or engineers, or primary care doctors rather than financial industry brokers or high paid medical specialists.  What’s wrong is that ethics and professionalism are routinely sacrificed on the altar of money.  Whether you look at almost any aspect of the recent financial debacle or in general at the actions of industry, including the health care industry, if making more money means disregarding ethics or cutting corners on professionalism the latter concerns are hardly given a second thought.

Mind you, I’m fully aware that the enslavement of man’s habit-energies is not something exclusive to the capitalist system.  In almost any system that has a power hierarchy, those in power will take measures to ensure that the masses do what they want them to do.  The most extreme examples were found in totalitarian societies, like Communist Russia or Nazi Germany.

But while the political propaganda in those cases was far more reprehensible and sinister, there is little practical difference between the marketing that we are subjected to on a constant basis and that political propaganda.  It all falls under the category of the big lie.  And the aim in both is the control of people.

“Oh, come on!” you may say.  But think about it.  The success of our capitalist consumer-based economy depends on making people believe they need something, regardless whether they really do.  The more successful marketing has become, the more addicted people have become to consuming, and the more money has become the essential means to obtain the desired end ... to the point that people will do almost anything to obtain money.  

There is no shortage of examples of this among rich or poor.  It is this craving that resulted in affluent people in the financial industry not caring what the impact of their reckless actions were on others in the recent mortgage securities debacle.  It is this craving that results in many of the poor turning to the world of crime (10% of black males in their 30s are in prison or jail on any given day.  According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one third of all black men can expect to be in prison at some point during their lifetime) or people with meager means agreeing to the removal of mountaintops for coal mining and hydro-fracking if they see money in it for themselves, regardless if the risk is high or virtually assured that it will ultimately despoil the environment and contaminate their very drinking water, the source of life.

“Ah,” you may say, “but people here have free will.  It’s their choice whether to buy something or not.  Whether to work in one industry or not.  Whether to be ethical or not.”  

But that’s just the point.  People don’t really have free will.  They have been programmed by our culture and its pervasive marketing and consumerist values to crave the acquisition of things and to acquire the money needed to satisfy that craving.   And when one craves something, when one becomes addicted to something, one has no free will.  That is how we have become enslaved.  And this includes those at the top who are exploiting the rest of us.  One has no real choice not to do what your addiction tells you to do ... barring of course becoming aware that one is an addict and going through a 12-step program to recover your peace and contentment.

A big lie central to the success of this marketing is the concept of progress.  Certainly since the industrial revolution, and perhaps before, progress has been touted as being the end all and be all for civilization.  And so we have come to accept and to crave everything that bespeaks of progress.  Acquiring such items, such as the iPhone, becomes the latest and most ephemeral of status symbols.

Should progress, however, be so uncritically regarded?  Without question, when it comes to material matters, we have progressed to an amazing degree, and the speed of that progress just increases with the advancement of technology.  

But has that progress brought us increased happiness or security?  No.  Has it brought us the increased leisure time that was much touted at the dawn of the technology age?  Hardly!  People are working longer hours and are more stressed, often being on the job almost 24/7 because of smart phones and the computer.  Has it brought us improved health?  No.   We live longer because of advances in medicine and improved hygiene, but we are not healthier.  In fact we are less healthy.  We are living longer despite our physical condition, not because of it.  Has it made our homes and schools and the world at large less violent?  No

Clearly there are many things that are better now then they were 50 or 100 years ago, but that is due primarily to a change in laws and attitudes.  Such things ... the status of women, people of color, and gays and lesbians, for example ... are social matters.  The things that are marketed as progress and which we purchase have not changed our interior, our spiritual, lives for the better.  Yes, women as well as men toil less arduously than they used to, but are their lives better now?  No.

The importance of marketing to make people want and purchase things they don’t really need extends from the highest luxury items down to the most plebian.  Let me give you several examples of the latter.  

Many years ago, because I was living someplace with no hot water, I started shaving using regular bar soap and cold water.  To my surprise, I discovered that I got a wonderful shave, even though I have a rough beard and shaving had always been difficult for me.  Some time later I happened to meet a dermatologist and told her about my experience, to which she replied that that made perfect sense as the cold water closes your skin pores, resulting in an easier shave.  I have not used shaving cream or hot water in more than 40 years!

More recently, we discovered a far less expensive form of clothes washing detergent than purchasing the commercial brands.  Just combine baking soda wash powder and borax powder with water and you have a very effective, inexpensive detergent that does just as good a job on washables (I can’t speak to delicate washables as I have none) as any commercial detergent.

These are but two small examples.  But if everyone followed my example, the manufacturers of these products would be out of business.  And this list could be expanded to much that we purchase.  Most of it just isn’t “necessary.”

The last example is not small.  We have a recognized and bemoaned epidemic of obesity in our nation, especially among our children and younger adults.  Why?  Because their diet habits have changed and their exercise habits have changed.  And why is that?  Because they have succumbed to the marketing wiles of McDonalds and makers of soft drinks and all the other unhealthy, fattening junk food that they eat.  They could easily have a healthier diet (note I didn’t say “healthy”) like kids used to.  And because their days are now spent in front of a variety of electronic gadgets ... TV, video games, and computers ... which they have been sold as being “cool.”  The exercise that children used to get outdoors is mostly a thing of the past.

The reader will in all likelihood now understandably say that what I’m advocating would cause the downfall of our economy and bring about much human misery.  Ah, but not if we turn from a consumer-driven economy to an infrastructure-driven economy as I suggested in an earlier post (“Strengthening America by Changing from a Consumer Economy to a Nation-Building Economy,” November 4, 2011).  In such an economy there would be ample work but money would be redirected and spent not on unnecessary fluff but on things that were critical to the ongoing health and strength of our country and indirectly our standard of living.

If we want to be truly free to do what is best for us ... not for corporate America, if we want to be strong and healthy, we must first recognize that we have become enslaved to the powers of corporate America and we must then demand a change in the status quo.  Just as Gandhi led the people of India to not cooperate with their British overlords, just as Martin Luther King led African-Americans to not cooperate in their own oppression by white America, so too Americans of all walks of life must gather and protest against the oppressive power that corporations have gained over all aspects of American life, including politics.

The future is ours to determine ... this is a democracy ... but only if we take our rights and our role seriously and demand change.

Strengthening America by Changing from a Consumer Economy to a Nation-Building Economy

While our culture of consumerism has been a boon to corporate America, it has been bad for our citizens, bad for our economy and bad for our nation. 

Psychologically, mass marketing images have led to a nation of individuals who are constantly dissatisfied with their lives ... whether it’s how they look, the job they have, the amount of money they make, the home they live in, etc.  There is not a single aspect of our lives that escapes this need of ours … not to be better individuals in some meaningful way but to project success or power/popularity, mostly through the acquisition of material things.  And we always want more; it’s never enough.

You won’t find evidence of this in polls because our culture places a premium on having fun, being happy.  Since people feel that they’re supposed to be having fun and be happy, that that state is valued by our culture, people put on that façade … not knowingly but in an act of self-deception. 

While I know of no studies that document what I am about to posit, I believe that the huge increase in the extent of depression in this country stems not from more awareness of the problem as has often been stated but results from this constant dissatisfaction that people feel about themselves.  Indeed, it is not uncommon when people are feeling down to get a “fix” by going out and buying something.

Our economy has also become addicted to consumerism.  70% of our GDP is derived from consumer spending. But consumerism is a very unproductive use of the nation’s wealth.   It does not move our country forward.   And since much of what we consume is no longer produced here but overseas, it doesn’t even help employment like it used to, just the revenues of American global corporations.

Meanwhile, the United States is falling behind other countries and entering a dangerous period because we cannot afford to do what needs to be done to keep this country strong … and I don’t mean military spending.   I mean spending on infrastructure … both maintenance and new.  I mean spending on education.  I mean spending on cutting edge research and development, investment in new industries that will drive our economy in the future. When measurement is taken of national and individual wellbeing, the United States typically finds itself towards the back of the pack of developed countries.  Not in front as we like to believe.

In order to find the money to invest in our country’s wellbeing, we must switch our economy from one that is primarily based on consumerism, to one that is based primarily on building our country.  This involves changing the components of our GDP but not lessening it or our growth.  Actually, because it mostly would involve projects that must by their very nature be accomplished in the geographic United States, it means a greater bang for the buck when it comes to job creation.

To get from the consumer economy to the nation-building economy, we will need to wean ourselves from the need to constantly buy things to be happy.  And instead of using discretionary income for self-gratification, we will need to learn to be comfortable with that money going to the government in the form of taxes to be used for projects that will benefit the nation, and thus ultimately ourselves.

Many will howl at this suggestion, but we must remember that the United States has by far the lowest tax rate of any developed country.  Yet, and this bears repeating, the people of these other countries nevertheless prosper and have a higher level of wellbeing … whether it’s their health, education, or other measures … than we do.

Making such a change in our culture will take principled leadership and preferably a united political front.  This must be approached like a war used to be … all hands on deck and united.  And everyone must be prepared to sacrifice. At this point in our history, that concept … a united political front … seems impossible to imagine.  And yet we must strive toward that end if America is once again to regain its global strength and provide its citizens with a secure and high standard of living.