That’s like eating the packet of corn seed instead of planting corn. “What. I was hungry!”

Good times. Romney is a sell.

The problem is, nothing is being done about it, nothing is improving. Our government has been taken over by profiteers and they’ve morphed our system into a system designed to be easily abused to create wealth for about .1% of the American people at the expense of about 99.9%.

I’m old enough to remember how well things worked back in the 60s, and I know my history well enough to know how well our system worked in the 40s and 50s (with the exception of our racist policies against African Americans.) But now we act as though that, arguably, greatest period of our history never happened. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone to emulate what worked so well for us during that period of US history. I realize that much has changed, but there is still much that can be gleaned from that time that we could successfully employ to our advantage today.

The problem seems to be that there was too much in place, e.g., a progressive tax code, that today’s profiteers see as hampering their stockpiling of wealth, never mind that during that time all segments of the economy prospered. And that’s the problem. Not only are the people who now control this country only concerned with increasing their own wealth, but it’s now become clear that in order to do it to the extent they have become accustomed to, it has to be to the detriment of everyone else–roughly 99.9% of the US population. And yet we, 99.9% of us, still seem to be impotent toward taking any steps whatsoever to rectify the problem. And my head continues to spin.

Regarding gov/federal intervention and entitlements that has been true for US since the last 100+ years. The entire hitech industry is a beneficiary of federal entitlements. Anybody remembers DARPA and Military Industrial Complex ? Thats the wrapper around federal entitlements.

There are subsidies to firms that help the many such as export subsidies to firms with strong products that can produced here. There research subsidies either for drugs or guns etc.

But graft is just graft.

America’s Neo-Conservative movement loses steam after suffering declining US GDP growth since 1981. MBA growth since Gordon Gecko appears to relate to ever lowering GDP growth.

Our assumptions about management and performance have been missing the mark for thirty years. http://goo.gl/ZrFOT

@upstater That was a powerful and sad post. I thank you. The graduation rate you mention is alarming. Also, though I agree with your summation of the problem residing with our corrupt two-party system, I disagree things will get much better if we simply bring in more parties. If that were to actually occur, we would still see the blatant corruption. The only thing that stops corruption is sending people to long jail sentences or war. Not class war, but a real civil war between the haves and the have-nots. History is replete with these types of wars. As it ever was, as is shall ever be.