Someone in the comments for the previous article brought up their opinion that the economy is still doing poorly. I can remember not so long ago where someone would have said, “Are you crazy? Look at the stock market! It’s skyrocketed since Obama took office!” Compare the stock market just a couple of years ago when it was sitting at 7,000. Now it’s up over 12,500+. The thing is your perspective depends A LOT on whether you’re an upper class citizen with a lot of investments in the stock market, or someone just trying to make ends meet. If you’re upper class, you would argue the economy has made an amazing recovery. Funny how that doesn’t seem to register for most people anymore.
The problem is that this division of wealth has done nothing but grow under every administration. Let’s put aside the debt issue, which for most people is an esoteric concept that they barely understand. Besides, if it’s not the Republicans cutting taxes without cutting spending, it’s the Democrats increasing spending without increasing taxes. Both are just as toxic for the country’s debt situation so both parties have no credibility in that area right now.
The real root problem with this country’s politics right now is the power of the wealthy few to exert an undue amount of influence on our political process. The Supreme Court didn’t help this situation at all by ruling that Corporations can spend huge amounts of money to run ads and influence politics. You can see this every day on TV with ads run by “The Center for Americans Who Really Love the USA and Everything America,” which translates to, “a handful of corporations that want to influence politics.” Every day, decisions are made on Capitol Hill which are meant to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the many, simply because they donate and you do not. The Middle Class does not have a lobbyist.
The most shameless example of this was the Great Mortgage Crisis, which lead to a meltdown of the financial system. Instead of letting all of those greedy bastards live with the consequences, we bailed them out and let them go back to business as usual. If ever there was proof that the free market system is not fool-proof, that was it. The free market system only works when you assume that there are enough people with perfect information to make perfect choices. Once the system is so complex that only an elite few understand how it works, the result is the financial crisis.
Anyway, I’m starting to ramble a bit here, but the point is that somehow we have to get the money out of politics. Getting rid of lobbyists, and somehow making public funds available for campaigning. It won’t completely eliminate favoritism, but it will tip the scales back into balance a bit. How we get to that point is anyone’s guess though….at this point it seems like it would take a miracle or a revolt of Egypt-level proportions.