The only thing that will impoverish the United States is debt and pollution and losing the rule of law. On that, you and I are in 100% agreement. Question for you: are you ok with sanctuary cities, which ignore the existing laws on the books by encouraging people to aid and abet the illegal immigrants who are fugitives from justice? To me, although I am pro immigration in general, I find sanctuary cities to be a picking and choosing of which laws you want to enforce. It smacks of Democrats saying, "I don't like that law", and instead of working in Congress to change the law, they just ignore it and break the law routinely. That is chaos and it will lead to nowhere good.
We are the more fortuitous nation on earth. Tons of natural resources, perfect climate for growing food. We are the bread basket of the world. We could easily provide universal health care and free education, but we have been pissing our money away on stupid wars and unfair low taxes on the rich. Partially agree. If you asked me to make a choice between spending close to a trillion on our military per year or investing more in providing better and cheaper education and healthcare, I would choose the latter in a heart beat. However, I don't believe in free stuff, because it engages the laws of economics and math against sustaining the program and it almost always results in the tragedy of the commons. If healthcare were free, then people would abuse it, like they already do and then the sickest 5% would consume 90% of the resources, which is already happening. I'm not sure I like the laissez faire option to health care or education either, because you'd end up with the haves getting excellent care and education and the have nots falling further behind. All I really know is that the US has managed to write the recipe for the worst of all worlds in both of those things and applied it to our citizens. Obamacare is a disaster for the 90% of workers in this country, even though the 10%, sickest people and the poorest people, are getting a good deal. At some point, we need programs that focus on the 90% in this country, not the 10%.
The only problems we have we have created ourselves by not using modern science to structure our society in the best interest of the people. Yes, I agree with this statement, although I suspect our solutions would be different. I believe modern science means learning the lessons of history and applying capitalism and free markets to solve many of our problems. But where we both probably agree is that we spend way too much on the military instead of on social good and we ignore climate change at our peril and long term harm. There has to be a common ground between the total socialism that the left wants and the free for all that the right wants. Something in the middle would be good. A good, solid safety net, with a free market economy, properly regulated to provide a level playing field, strong property rights, and limited corporate lobbying influence in D.C. In fact, if I had power, I'd overturn Citizens United immediately. |
