I was born in 1948, at the foot of an enchanted mountain whose spirit enjoins me to rise higher

Ordinary citizen, empathetic contemplator (maybe a little too empathetic to be fully comfortable in the world, as it is). Don't look for academic credentials; this guy has none, save those gained over the course of many interesting (and, at times, difficult) life chapters, spent surviving on a shoestring budget.

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Wednesday, March 17, 2010

A moral and rational argument for a new 'New Deal', like POPE

It is entirely appropriate that public sector assistance to companies be predicated on the enlistment of those companies in the general great effort to improve the nation's system of socio-economics; otherwise, we might as well give up on the idea of ever reaching that vaunted state in America on a sustainable basis and, with it, the many forms of security and happiness doing so would bring within reach for many millions more Americans.
There can be no enduring fix of that nature in the economic system without first obliging those at the top of the corporate world to be more aware of how serious we, as a nation, are prepared to get in restoring robustness to the American middle classes.
I'm sorry, but the bland recommendations of high-profile study groups, alone, aren't going to do it. We have to strike while the iron of recent troubles is hot and let these people know, in the clearest of terms, what we expect them to contribute as we strive to make things better for all. If we don't, why would they see any reason to alter what seems to have worked well for them up to now? We have to indicate loud and clear that it is, in large part, through fairer distribution of the profits of enterprise and the concomitant tempering of disproportion in executive pay that we intend to achieve improvement in the prospects for greater social equity.
Why beat around the bush? We all know that personal security is a relative measure that only has meaning when it describes a respectable altitude on the mountainside of possible earnings that rise from least to greatest. The only way we're going to ease the logjam of people stuck at the bottom of that mountain in this country is for them to earn more, relative to those at the top, period. In effect, we have to make that mountain both shorter and stouter. If that doesn't happen through more equitable disbursement of the gross profits of America's corporations, how else is it supposed to happen? Tax and spend? Religious discourse? Divine intervention? I think not.
One thing is for sure: we have to know who's on our side and who's not. Since compensation inequity in the nerve centers of companies is where things first go wrong, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion: no taxpayer-funded capital assistance should come from us, The People, if no reforms are being implemented by them. It's a case of productive reciprocity. To those who might disagree, I'd like to ask, what part of the word 'fair' do you not understand the social necessity of?

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