The root cause of problems (long)

[mrgorth]

We all (here) recognize most of the same problems plaguing our country and we share the same or similar ideas for solutions. As I think about these things however I wonder how much impact even the best of solutions would have. National health care? Great. Would do great things. Living wage? Awesome. Employee pay tied to CEO pay? Even better. Here's the rub and I'll warn you that I live near Philadelphia. Our cities are crumbling and lots of people live there. Lots of democrats I might add. These people wallow in poverty and live in squalor much of the time. Even for people that make it out of the ghetto, the problem is that the goal itself is to make it OUT of the ghetto. Thus, the ghetto will never get any better. Even the neighborhoods that are a step or 2 above the ghetto. Thus, you have hopelessness, drugs and crime. I don't think any of the solutions I previously mentioned will help these things in a large way. I'm not a history major but it seems that the problems with many inner cities are shared across the country. Manufacturing left. Anybody that could get out did. Property values dropped and now these areas are frequently the only areas the poor can afford. How are they going to get out? Working the counter at 7-11? I don't think so. I agree that everyone should try and achieve through education and I think giving everyone the possibility of college would be a big help. But the bottom line is that our inner cities have been abandon. So how can we fix it? Not just make someone's life a little better I mean really fix the inner cities? Let's be honest, building new subsidized homes in urban areas is good but if people don't have a sense of hope that they can build their communities and stay there it's still just a bandage. Of all the things I've heard our candidates say about reforming NAFTA or even getting out of NAFTA and the WTO how does that bring manufacturing back to America? Why hasn't anyone said that "if a US company shuts down a plant in the US and opens another one outside our borders with the intent of reimporting those goods into the US we will tarrif the SHIT out of those goods. Hell, fucking make it illegal." And please don't tell me about the global economy or the market. We should be worried about the lives of Americans, even the least Americans among us. If I'm off my rocker that's fine I just want to know why. If not tell me why noone addresses this. Thanks.

[PDJane]

1. The root cause of poverty

Is that the world cannot support a population of 4% of the total that consumes 28% of the total production of the world.

There is no free lunch.

The best way to fix the problem is to realize that the world has limits; one should not overuse and overconsume, especially on the scale that the US does. Share the wealth. Remove the huge military budget, remove the hidden government, dismantle the pentagon.......and spread the wealth around. Stop supporting Israel and put them back between the 1948 borders. If you fix Palestine, you fix a great deal of what's left. Forget the tax breaks for multinationals. In fact, make them responsible for the damage they've caused to the environment. Improve education, and make sure that kids have a chance to be the best they can be. Give universal health care. Increaase research for sustainable growth. Educate in sustainability and evironmental issues. Recycle. Give up on plastics, as much as possible. Give up on the war on drugs, which is a war on the poor and the black.

Learn your own history and the history of the rest of the world. Not the idealized history, not the sanitized version, but the real history of the world.

Learn that we have only one world, and that God or Jaweh or Allah will not erase that fact.

We are here. We grew on this planet, adapted to our surroundings. We cannot live in a steel and plastic surrounding.

[mrgorth]

2. I agree that

greed is probably the biggest cause of grief in this world but it's not as if if you gave every inner city family 50 or even $100,000 everything would be OK.

[PDJane]

3. I didn't say that.

read that again. The need is for a sharing of the wealth. That doesn't mean that giving everyone cash in hand would solve anything. It means that levelling the field and taking care of health care and education means that those who want to get out of the ghetto or to improve the ghetto itself can. Throwing money at a thing isn't necessarily the answer; putting money into infrastructure and equalizing the benefits of a very wealthy society is a solution.