: Mr. Emig is right - to a certain extent. : We are a lot better off than previous generations. We have more education
: (even if not relative to the rest of the current world, it is a lot compared to
: the world of the past), more money (the evil stuff, anyway!), more technology
: and generally more prosperity. Should we therefore stop learning, stop
: achieving, stop earning, stop advancing or stop prospering? Of course not.
Americans could continue learning, achieving, earning, advancing and prospering by 1) creating an educational system that is better than the factory education America currently gives its children (and better than the TV set, America's default educator), 2) eating a better diet, more vegetables and less meat, 3) making sure everyone earns a living wage, 4) creating a sustainable society and not just one that will die when it exhausts its resource base, and 5) making more paths to "prosperity" than the one currently employed by the most prosperous, i.e. feeding off the hard work of the powerless and gullible.
: When Americans like me say that the US is a great nation and that the people
: are pretty well off, we are right, by any standards. We do not, however, mean
: that all the people in this nation are rich, nor that they deserve to be, but
: simply that they CAN be with work. We also are not saying that the rest of
: the world is prosperous and that they deserve no help from us.
: Certainly we can help other nations - by saying, "Here, this is what worked
: for us, now YOU try it." We can give them democracy and capitalism and
: liberate the world. There are a lot of people outside our borders that need
: and deserve our help, but this doesn't mean that we cannot or should not
: praise the success we've had within our borders.
The US has a LONG record of supporting dictatorships throughout the world, especially in Latin America: Guatemala, 1954, Brazil, 1964, the relatively recent charades in Nicaragua and Haiti, etc. etc. all made possible by your tax dollars. As for prosperity, what the US created, and endorsed most specifically in a 1982 speech Reagan made in Cuernavaca, is a situation where many of the world's nations have become addicted to IMF and World Bank loans, which are spent by these same nations creating infrastructure for "market penetration" by multinational corporations. Meanwhile most of these loan-addicted nations (Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, much of Africa and Asia) can barely pay the interest on the debts they've piled up.
: People starving in the US? I don't think so. Give me one example. There are
: social(ist) programs in the United States to help the extremely needy (as
: there should be), but if they won't get the help we're offering what are we
: supposed to do? Go out in the streets and shove food down their mouths? I'm
: not about to do that.
: As far as people uniting against companies - why? Corporations are just
: groups of people working together for success (as they define it).
Unions and citizens' groups, too, are "just groups of people working together for success," only success for them means getting corporations to accede to their demands. The Mafia and the 19th Street Gang of the Pico District in LA are groups of people working together for success. The Soviet Union was a group of people working together for success. As for "success" as both the overarching goal of modern society and the source of its banality, read Max Horkheimer's ECLIPSE OF REASON.
: What, pray tell, is wrong with uniting for a common goal? Isn't that what all you utopia-pushers like - teamwork?
Maybe what some find objectionable is that corporations are given a legal status in the US that allows them to avoid responsibility to the damage they do to society and the environment, while at the same time these same corporations are powerful enough to use the US government to absorb whatever risks they may encounter in their money-making.
