The national suicide of the USA has been a slow but sure thing. I suggest that the citizens of the USA are quilty of it's destruction. In the end there is no one else to blame. They knew thier constitution at one time and then they were put to sleep with entertainments and now they have nothing but debt.
America's "Inevitable" Revolution & The Redistribution Fallacy
Submitted by
Tyler Durden on 10/18/2015 - 15:15
"There are so many fault lines that the nation seems consumed by a conflict of all against all... there is an inevitable “revolution” coming because our politics, culture, education, economics and even philanthropy are so polarized that the country can no longer resolve its differences."
I'm a Zero Hedge fan too, but I see a few glaring flaws in this 'James Pierson' analysis he's posted:
1.
Americans are against redistribution.
When Americans are asked how much they believe the top 1%, 10% of incomes actually are, they grossly underestimate those at the top of the heap. And when they are asked to produce an income distribution from highest to lowest by what they consider to be fair, they come up with something that looks more like Sweden than America!
So, it seems obvious that the more people become aware of how great the growing gaps in wealth and income actually are, the more they are going to kick this meritocracy BS over the side and call for higher taxes on the rich (especially on unearned income). The fact that an aging one-issue candidate like Bernie Sanders is beating Hillary Clinton in polling in New Hampshire and Iowa, would indicate that the majority of Americans aren't buying this crap anymore.
2.
Promoting growth and job creation is going to start bumping up against the hard limits imposed by a finite world with finite resources......if it hasn't already! The US doesn't have room to grow; Europe has stagnated for a number of years. In recent years, China was the economic engine pulling the rest of the world along (including the US).....driving up natural resource prices with their increasing imports and increasing manufacturing output, and then something went wrong: they have discovered that trying to match US per capita incomes is depleting their water supplies, destroying topsoil, making breathing the air in most cities life-threatening etc....so those plans of building thousands of coal-fired generating stations will be on hold permanently, while the Government tries to figure out how to keep most people happy while they try to reduce their environmental impacts as quickly as possible. The fallout for the US, Canada and other suppliers has been lower prices for oil, metals and other non-renewables.
3.
........ the progressive case is based upon a significant fallacy. It assumes that the U.S. government is actually capable of redistributing income from the wealthy to the poor.
How convenient of him to start measuring income and taxes after 1979! From FDR up till Reagan, the government seemed perfectly capable of redistributing wealth through the use of progressive tax rates. These pigs complain about 15% tax rate on investment income and hide billions in Cayman Islands banks and other foreign tax shelters.....demanding a tax amnesty before they repatriate all of their ill-gotten gains. At its height...during the Republican administration of Dwight Eisenhower, the top US tax bracket was 90%! If they could, they would dodge paying all taxes and offload the responsibilities of financing government and public services on the rest of us....which is exactly what they seem to be working towards right now.
I still go with my previous theory that the change in attitude of the oligarch class has been brought on by seeing no physical threats to their wellbeing and ability to earn more money. During WWII, they realized they had to make sure the Allies won the war, and during the Cold War afterwards, they had to keep as much of the working classes of people onside and away from socialist movements that rose up during the Depression, so they were a little more generous than they are today. After WWII, the Soviet Union wasn't just a military threat - it was also an economic threat to the west, as the Soviet economy was the fastest growing in the world in the post-war years....at least till the mid-60's, when primary production was back in place and then economic growth slowed as they tried a number of failed attempts to imitate western consumer economies.
So, back to problem of empire facing collapse, I don't think the US problem has anything to do with following/ or not following what's in their Constitution. In the end, it boils down to the same problems all empires face as they reach their limits and try to grab more land and more power: the empire is being bankrupted by the increasing costs of military that has been essential to control international banking and trade. Like so many empires of the past, this one will collapse from within....and take Canada down with it!
