How Can the World's Richest Country Let Children Go Hungry? 6 Tricks Corporate Elites Use

[dawg]

17. This is what I keep trying to emphasize.

Usually, if I start a thread about this, it sinks like a stone.

But this is a rich country - richer than it has ever been! Look around. See the mansions. See the fancy imported cars. See all the shiny upscale stores.

The notion that we need to "tighten our belts" and trim our social spending is ridiculous.

The government may be short on money, but the nation itself is flush with cash. So much cash that they don't even know what to do with it. That's why they are still willing to buy 10-year treasuries at 2% and Japanese sovereign debt yielding even less. That's why corporations are piling up billions of dollars in cash on their balance sheets.

The real estate bubble was allowed to inflate because rich people had nothing to do with all their cash so Wall Street found somewhere for them to put it - securitized mortgages. The lending standards fell because there was so much cash to invest that there weren't enough good mortgages to soak it all up.

And with all this wealth, they are telling us we must accept Medicare cuts, Social Security cuts, worsening infrastructure, fewer police, firefighters and teachers. Hell, they're even trying to take the damn post office away.

This is all bullshit, and anyone paying the least little bit of attention should realize that.

Our social spending as a percent of gdp is near the bottom of the 30 OECD nations. We are comparable to South Korea and Mexico.

But so many, even among Democrats, are willing to accept this with a "tut, tut .... times have changed ... everything is different now and we have to deal with reality".

But reality is that this descent into third-world status is something that we, as a country, are choosing to do to ourselves. It is totally unnecessary.