Friday, July 8, 2011

Hogwash

Hogwash

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman, and philosophers, and divines." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson spoke not only for his era but also for all times sake. Just like rigid, hard rock which shatters into pieces when struck with a hammer, the rigid consistency of a zealot shatters into illogical segments when confronted with reality. A life worth living is lived in the middle away from the harsh sheen of pure white and equally away from the bleak somber of jet black. It has always been through the art of compromise that brings thinkers from the their extremes at the edges into the middle ground, that fertile area where fresh ideas are grown.

The vast chasm, opening ever wider and deeper between rich and poor, is a prescription for failure.
We certainly need jobs here in America but, as importantly, we need an increasing middle class population with incomes sufficient to allow them to purchase the goods and services produced here. Jobs remain a function of a demand society so if you cut workers income to the bone they purchase less. Inversely, when the rich have less of a surplus they need not scrimp to just exist. 

Hogwash, it's hogwash in my mind that asking those who fed at the trough of obscene profits for decades to pay a few percentage points toward a recovery program which could save our nation as we have known it. More hogwash is the claim that these enriched few if asked to pay their fair share would starve the system by not creating new jobs. Ask them, how many jobs did they eliminate in the last decade which created their obscene wealth ?

It is the greater percentage of our population who is going to suffer if deep cuts are made so the rich and super rich can whaler in the sticky mud of greed. Old, mostly men, clinging onto a worn out creed that wealth is somehow a right of passage similar to a cast system as found in India, make up our Congress. Their time has passed and they must be sent home.

The "Pledge"of no revenue increase is one of a foolish consistency adored by little statesman. 

Amen !

Ronald C. Downie

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