Why Can't America Be like Europe?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

19. More 'No We Can't!'?

Let's start in reverse. Too much money in politics? High on Bernie's list of things to attempt to change. Not because it 'solves' any other problem, but because it makes it easier to get in politicians who are more interested in the needs of actual voters, rather than the needs of shareholders and corporations.

And guess what? Once you get more politicians running who actually care about voters, you get more voters who care about politics. People vote when they think it might actually make a change for the better in their lives. They're apathetic to the process when no matter which side they vote for, 93%+ of the benefits go to the rich.

And once voters start paying attention to higher level elections, they also start to pay more attention to lower level ones too, and we start getting better politicians there, too, working once again for humans, not businesses. Don't get me wrong, businesses are fine, but any benefits the government gives them should be DIRECTLY tied to the demonstrated benefits those businesses bring to humans in the community, not just how rich they make jet-set shareholders.

At which point we get to 'made for stasis'. Well, certainly made for slower change than in other places, but NOT for stasis. Stasis, or 'gridlock', is a dysfunctional state that derives from all of the above - crappy candidates who win on floods of money from rich people who elect them to make themselves richer. Get the money out, get better candidates running; get better candidates running, get voters less apathetic; get voters less apathetic, get in better candidates; get in better candidates, undo gerrymandering. It all flows right along.

Next, racial divisions. Yes, they exist, and they're the original sin of the country, and have been exploited since before the country WAS a country, again for the purpose of allowing the few to concentrate wealth and power, exploiting the powerless and setting the poor against each other. Telling one group that they're better than another so as to keep the groups antagonized against each other so that they don't team up against the few with all the power, all the wealth. And, as we see more and more ethnicities entering Europe in larger numbers, we see the same sorts of tensions springing up. In that sense, Europe is becoming more like America.

Finally, taxes. Yes, Europeans pay more in taxes. All Europeans. And they get a lot back for those taxes. Our problem as regards taxes is not structural, but conditioning. Rightwingers of all persuasions have been pushing the idea that taxes are 'evil' for decades, and have gotten a lot of help in pushing that idea simply because our government does NOT return all the benefits to all citizens, but instead funnels large amounts of the taxes into the pockets of the few. When Americans actually see the benefits of taxes, they are open to paying them. When that tax money is shoveled into the pockets of shareholders of military contractors, and no real benefits accrue to the rest of America, people get cranky about paying taxes. So we need to stop being the 'world police', and paying for foreign adventure after foreign adventure and boondoggles like the F35.

But it all starts where you ended. Break the ability of the rich to buy political races, and allow politicians who simply want to actually serve human beings to win elections.