I remember when Paul Thompson use to post on DU

[paulthompson]

44. Wow!

Wow, thanks everybody. This thread is very gratifying for me. It seems that the 9/11 topic and some other related terrorism topics have kind of fallen down the memory hole. Most people these days would like to forget all about that "unpleasantness." So I'm glad to see that a lot of people haven't forgotten, and my work has made an impact on some of you. Thanks!

Before I drift back into lurker mode, I want to mention that I feel these topics remain important and relevant. Obama has done some things better than Bush, such as not frequently using terrorism as a boogeyman to pump up his ratings and keep the general public constantly scared the way Bush did, and finally winding down costly foreign wars. But in many other ways, Obama has continued Bush's failed counter-terrorism policies. Except that most of this goes under the radar because A) investigative journalism has fallen so low in recent years and B) many Democrats are reluctant to criticize a Democratic president and Republicans don't want to be critical on this issue when Obama's policies on this are so similar to what a Republican's policies would be. We can see this at DU with the recent Snowden NSA revelations, and the way there is so much infighting on the left and attacking the messenger and so on, and even people who seem to have no problem with the steady erosions of privacy and civil liberties.

So a lot of these terrorism related issues that came up not long after 9/11 are still revelant because not much has changed, and in many respect things have gotten worse. Even with bin Laden dead and al-Qaeda and related groups mostly defeated, the US has built up a huge counter-terrorism infrastructure that costs hundreds of billions of dollars each year. But most people have become so conditioned to this that it seems we don't even need a viable terrorist theat to justify all that spending, as well as the excessive secrecy and militarization that goes along with it.

That said, in the past few years I've come to believe that there's a much greater problem that we all need to keep a focus on, and that's the increasing disparity between the very rich and everyone else. I'm really glad that the Occupy movement has made some headway in making the concept of the 1 percent and the 99 percent widely talked about. But there's a long way to go before this problem can turn around. I'm hardly a Communist, but one doesn't have to be a Communist to see that inequality can sometimes get so out of whack that it threatens the entire society. The US and other First World countries are slowly turning into Third World countries. It's tragic because it doesn't have to be this way. I'm not a fan of Obama and most mainstream Democratic politicians, and yet, the alternative of having the Republicans in charge is horrifying. It's the difference between slowly drifting into Third World status compared to eagerly rushing headlong in that direction.

And as if that isn't bad enough, I'm also very concerned about what I think of as the "robotization" of the world. Even at these enlightened DU forums, this issue doesn't seem to get much notice, IMHO. What I mean is how robots and computers are getting better and smarter. One would think that is a good thing, but one unfortunate result is that there are way more jobs being lost than jobs being gained. Automation actually has been going on for decades without a lot of notice, but the effect is speeding up as the pace of technological advancement speeds up. Some smart economists, including Paul Krugman, have suggested that this is a major factor, if not THE major factor, for the economic troubles for the last ten years or so, especially the lack of new jobs.

What a lot of people don't realize is that robots and computers are a major factor in the continued destruction of the middle class. Automation tends to hollow out companies, so you end up with a small number of highly paid managers and leaders, plus a low paid work force doing the tasks that the robots and computers can't do better... yet. So economic inequality has already been spinning out of control, and now technology is just making things worse! Workers at every level (except the very top) are under threat. Did you know, for instance, that some commerical flights, such as Fed Ex flights, are already done without human pilots? Or that it is estimated that half of all pilots are going to lose their jobs in the next few years, since planes can fly themselves now? Pilots used to be one of the most highly desired and highly paid jobs, but that's a thing of the past. Lawyers, doctors, scientists, etc... - everyone is in danger of losing their jobs to robots and computers.

In the past, when one industry went down, another one rose up to take its place. The horse and buggy was replaced by the car, and so on. But we're entering uncharted territory. Technology is advancing at breakneck speed. Right now, people are starting to take notice of some new advances, such as drones, Google cars, or 3D printers. But it won't be too many years from now when we have actual robots walking down the street, cleaning your house, and serving you in stores. If we had a fair society, we could respond to all these labor saving devices by shortening the work week, so that everyone could still have enough to get by. We could even enter a golden age where a dramatic increase in free time results in a burst of creativity and happiness. But because society is so imbalanced, what we're likely to see is the top one percent getting nearly all the economic benefit, and everyone else either losing their jobs or seeing their wages going down and down.

I think the movie Soylent Green from 1973 was very prophetic. Forget the part about the cannibalism, and remember the general vision of the future: there's a small number of obscenely wealthy people cut off from the masses. And the masses are an unemployed, unhappy mob that is being kept alive at subsistence levels in an environmentally devastated landscape through government handouts. That's the future I fear we're headed towards unless we get smart, organize, educate the public, and aim towards a better future.

So that's where my political thinking is at these days. Sorry if I'm kind of rambling here - I guess I'm kind of venting.

The future looks scary, but only if we fail to act. If we can get our act together, we really could enter a kind of utopian golden age. I still think terrorism is an important issue, because our counter-terrorism overreaction results in a loss of freedoms, which makes it much harder to get things on the right track (plus, spending so much on the military and "homeland security" means fewer resources for vital problems). But the number one issue in my opinion, by far, is growing economic inequality.