Tier 5, Unemployment Extension and the Financial Meltdown: Determining Our Priorities

[Dulcinea]

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The United States of America once decided to invest in education, infrastructure, and internal humanitarian aid — and the result was decades of prosperity as our children grew up with a powerful educational system, a healthy infrastructure, and the security of a public safety net behind them. Since those days, we have taken a turn away from those ideals and toward the (Republican) notions of selfishness and personal freedom. We’ve become less cooperative and more competitive — the free market ideal.

The problem with the notion of the free market is that it allows people in certain positions of power to wield undue influence over the lives of the entire population. If there is no oversight, a few greedy individuals who decide that their bank accounts are more important than the society they live in — say, by extending dangerous credit to millions of people who can’t pay it back and then selling the debt as though it were a safe investment — the country suffers.

Compare that to the alternative: you pay more taxes, which is annoying. You have government sticking its nose into your business, which is annoying. But the country as a whole benefits. Education remains good, which means your children don’t suffer. Infrastructure is paid for, which means moving products across the country is easier and quicker, which helps keep prices down. State and city budgets aren’t strapped for cash, so public works projects which make your hometown a better place to live get passed. And in 20 years, your children grow up secure in the knowledge that their country stands behind them.

What are your priorities? The generation that grew up in the Great Depression learned the value of saving, investing in the future, and supporting their fellow man. The decades that followed — as those responsible adults took the reigns of the country and kept us on track — were the height of American world power and economy. If we plan to ever return to those days, we must embrace the priorities of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers. That means saving rather than spending in our personal lives, giving the government the money and authority it needs for economic policies like the Tier 5 unemployment extension and job creation bills, and investing in the future by talking to our kids about what’s happening around them today — and why. Change your priorities, help shape the next generation’s, and maybe we can get the American economy — and society — back on track.

http://all247news.com/tier-5-unemployment-extension-and-the-financial-meltdown-determining-our-priorities/4518/

[Dulcinea]

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