Addressing Income Inequality

President Barack Obama gave a speech yesterday in Kansas. The same place that "Teddy" Roosevelt gave a speech about pretty much the same thing, having a political system that works for everyone and not just less than a million people. The speech rhetorically was a good one. Well, almost any speech he gives is rhetorically good one. The ideas he put forward were good ones as well. So, why does this post sound like it's going to head toward the negative? Beacause, I don't feel that the legislative branch, who has the power to make a president's (or lobbyist's) ideas into laws, has the balls to actually do  that. Also, it doesn't help the legislative branch if the people we elect to represent us there, makes some of us believe that it will hurt us if they do. On a good note, I'm glad that somebody else, who we pay to make sure have a decent country, addressed this. 


One of the things that I look for in a president, or potential one, is whether or not I feel this person can effectively communicate his ideas, positions and explanations of a current events.  After living through a decade of Bushisms, I have a certain piece of mind that we have chosen a president that is a president and appears as such. Even the policies he promotes are presidential, they even have ideas from both sides of the aisle. (Before you brush this off as a puff piece for Obama, YouTube some speeches of Bush and tell me you at don't at least see where I'm coming from.) I said that to say, if we are living in a time of serious uncertainty, why don't we try to do the right thing and try something other than the road we have taken for the past 30 years economically? And, since we elected this guy to try and take a jab at it, why don't we let him? We let Bush lie to us into 2 unpaid for wars which is at the epicenter of the fiscal issues we have today. We could at least raise taxes on the rich guys to make up for that.


What irritates me the most about some conservative thinking people, is that when you talk to them about the things that social-based policy or social-based thinking has achieved in the last century (8 hour work days, 5 day work weeks, federal minimum wage, the abolishment of domestic child labor), they have to agree that those were and are necessary regulations, but then go off and deny that they work or will continue to work. If that is the case, instead of getting rid of something that you have to admit is at least necessary, lets consider making those things work better. I mean, that is why we have 52 inch LED TV's instead of  7 inch black and whites for you to stand in line for on Black Friday. It's called PROGRESSsion.


If the ideas are good, even if you have to be forced to admit it, why do we continue to have problems? It's the congress stupid! Congress is the biggest and technically the only reason why we can't just live and prosper peacefully. If we could elect more people that would at least try to do what they took an oath to do, they would produce bills that would be enacted to the empowerment of mankind. They say that we don't have the money and they are right. The government doesn't have the money because the politicians do. It's weird how they want to advocate not raising taxes, but more money is spent on keeping these crooked lawmakers in office then what they would have spent on taxes to pay for all the shit they've caused! Funny how none of this is ever brought up and if it is we brush it off as nothing and continue to watch the Donald Trump debate. Like that will be the forum that solves all of our problems.


We are the ones that allow it to happen. We allow these non-human monsters to dither around on our dime in the hopes that they will do the right thing. The president isn't excluded from those remarks, but neither can any president be. Even though those presidents were nothing more than politicians, some of them were able to make decisions that has paved the way for the good things that we have in life. The things that we take for granted every second. 


This country has an embarrassingly wide income disparity gap. Because of that millions of people who, more often than not, were doing or trying to do the right thing are losing or have lost everything. While they lose, less than a million people have acquired so much money that they could give all of those other people enough money for them to survive for a lifetime and still have enough money to be wealthier than them. Even though a lot of us dream of becoming one of those people one day, it is wrong, and not a very sustainable way run an economy of a country. You might be able to get away with that at a company like Enron or Lehman Brothers. What's that? That didn't work either. Hmm, who would have thought. 


Maybe having things work for more of us should be the way that we proceed from here. I mean, we've tried the other route and that only works for 1%. If this was the way we operated their businesses we would have been fired a long time ago. The ballot box is our pink slip and the occupy movement (as well as the Tea Party) is our final warning, but a lot of us don't know how to use it properly. I guess, if we hired a guy like Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich that may make you feel better. I personally believe that we would be so broke we would have to start World War III in order to go out with a bang. Luckily, we have some time left with the guy we just hired. I think we should let him do his job before he leaves, so we can get back to ours.


Once again, props to the president for finally making some sort of stance publicly on income equality.