A Time to Rebuild America
By Charles Reed, Waco, TX
America has failed over the last three decades. The economy has failed, government has failed and religion has failed. It’s time for us to begin to rebuild our country based on traditional American values of freedom, justice, democracy, and huuan rights.
By any traditional standard, America is now in an economic depression. A growing number of economists now admit this. The American depression has spread to the rest of the world.
America’s classic economist Henry George identified the cause of depressions more than a century ago. His book Progress and Poverty became the bestselling non-fiction book in the history of the world. Both Franklin Roosevelt and Albert Einstein endorsed his ideas.
What causes depressions? The answer is quite simple: depressions are caused when too few have too much, and too many have too little. The maldistribution of wealth causes depressions.
What causes the maldistribution of wealth. When an economy places a higher value on greed and exploitation than on work and innovation, it is heading for a crash.
The American economy pays many corporate CEOs, professional athletes, and entertainers tens of millions of dollars per year. Baseball player Alex Rodriguez signed a multi-year contract for $252 million. Miley Cyrus [Hannah Montana], a teenager, receives over $20 million annually.
To become a top corporate executive is to be given a license to steal and plunder what belongs to middle-class shareholders. Corporate lobbyists legally bribe politicians to plunder the federal treasury on behalf of the corporate rich.
Meanwhile, American workers are losing ground. They are paid less now than in 1973. Millions of workers receive an annual rate of less than $14,000 to do the hardest and dirtiest work.
The knee-jerk response from the Rush Limbaugh crowd is that the marketplace decided all this. This, of course, is nonsense. In the 1970s, corporate CEOs were paid about 15 times what the average worker was paid. Today, that ratio has mushroomed to more than 400 times what the average worker is paid. You can’t blame the market for that.
During the last depression, Franklin Roosevelt said: “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.” Most of organized religion doesn’t understand and this today.
If Henry George, John Maynard Keynes, and Franklin Roosevelt could speak to us from their graves, they would all cry out in unison, “We told you so!”
The American economy failed because American government failed. Since the Civil War, American government has struggled unsuccessfully to emerge from the shadow of the corporate corruption of the democratic process and public policy.
Undue corporate influence over public policy again reached the point of no return during the 1980s. Unnecessary wars and military spending, wasteful tax cuts for the corporate rich, and the dismantling of corporate banking and financial regulations have wrecked our economy. As the Bible says in Hosea, we have sown the wind, and we shall reap the whirlwind (8:7).
When Ronald Reagan took office, the national debt was less than a trillion dollars. Now it is more than ten times that amount and growing exponentially. George W. Bush doubled the national debt in eight years. None of that debt will benefit future generations.
Ironically, much of organized religion in America played a key role in the corruption of American government by the corporate money interests. Evangelical Christians in particular have, like Daniel Webster, made a deal with the Devil in exchange for political power. They joined forces with money interests to undermine ethics and justice in government and the economy.
Now, from the ashes of the failed corporate ideology, it’s time to begin the process of reclaiming, restoring, and rebuilding America. It’s time to restore peace, prosperity, liberty, and justice for all Americans. It’s time to restore America’s national honor. We are blessed to have President Obama to lead us on that journey.
Charles Reed is a retired civil servant, a Baptist deacon and former mayor of Waco, Texas. He can be reached by email at creed1020@sbcglobal.net.
