“It is wrong and immoral to seek to escape the consequences of one's acts.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.” ~ Thomas Paine
As I look back to our recent "Great Recession", it is disturbing the lack of accountability from those who wrecked our economy. What is more troublesome is that those who did the damage are still in charge and the American people has not awaken to this reality and take action. As a reaction to the problem, the American people got together and bailed-out the same banks and financial institutions that caused the financial crisis and replaced 63 Democrats with a like number of Republicans. My question to you is, Are things any better now?
Not until we accept responsibility for our actions. we will see true recovery. Otherwise, we will be given an "illusion of prosperity" and we will continue making the same mistakes repeatedly and never find the solution to the problem. We will continue switching from democrats to republicans back to democrats (you get the point) and never solve the problem. Is it possible that all this emphasis on the "illusion of recovery" is only intended to keep us quiet in preparation for the upcoming elections? Why is congress given up on addressing the current fiscal problem we have and postponed it until after the elections? How is that possible?
The stock market has shown signs of recovery from the low point of 2007, so everyone seems to be happy. The stock market closed over 13,000 points, so what! Why not publish how are we going to get out of this mess? Why not focus on matter that are important to us; employment, savings rate, health issues, education, etc. Why continue talking how the "health of the stock market"? Have you received the benefits of the stock market recovery? Let me ask you then, why is it that the stock market has recovered and every news stations and financial papers seems to focus on this point and fail to focus on the unemployment problem we still have.
It seems that our unemployment rate is hovering around 8 to 8.5 percent. You may cheer and say, RECOVERY!!!, let me ask you how is this figure calculated? Something that we
are not told is that the calculation does not include, 1) those who have stopped looking for a job, 2) those that are under-employed, nor 3) those who accepted salary cuts to keep
their current jobs. Are we really recovering from the recession?
If so, why are more people now in food stamps than before 2007? To add more salt to the injury, the taxing system seems distorted. The New York Times when it pointed out that the top 400 taxpayers who earned $250 million on average in 2005 paid income taxes at a 17.2 percent rate. That rate is lower than that of a family making between $50,000 and $75,000 a year,
which is 17.4 percent. It is a continuing outrage that under our tax code some of the wealthy pay a lower percentage of taxes on their income than the middle class."little people" pay taxes. We know life is unfair, but that doesn't mean the "little people" have to allow their government to continue to oppress them. ~ Leona Helmsley
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