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Posts tagged as “Economy”

Teens to Congress – “We Have Sex!”

Editor’s note: The Coffee Party movement posted this on their Facebook page today with the following intro: “Since Planned Parenthood has become ground zero in…

When Customers Became Consumers

We haven’t always been a nation of consumers.

I remember when Americans were customers. We bought things because we wanted them or needed them. We would have laughed in the face of anyone with the audacity to suggest that it was our patriotic duty to consume, as Bush did after 9/11. If we were faithful to a brand, that faithfulness was brought about by value or product superiority. Companies worked hard to persuade us to become their customers, and they knew better than to insult us by assuming we were forced to use their products no matter what.

“The man who speaks of the enemy is the enemy himself.”—Bertholt Brecht.

“There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.” – Thomas Jefferson

We live in a world that runs on a war based economy. Wars create jobs. When we have peace people find jobs scarce.

I first discovered this several years ago when a man at one of my screenings of Leni Riefenstahl’s film, Triumph of the Will, after hearing me speak, gave me a copy of Jerry Mander’s book, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television.

Today’s Video: Poverty in America

This video contains some facts for you to add to your arsenal the next time you need to convince someone who thinks we’re in great…

The Rich & Taxes: A Post-Modern Myth

To hear the conservatives tell it, our economy will nosedive if the rich are required to pay an iota in taxes more than they do now. Indeed, we are led to understand the rich already pay more than their fair share, that their taxes need to be lowered so the middle class and the poor can shoulder more of the burden.

It’s understandable why folks under 30 might believe this argument. If the tax rate on the rich, defined by the Obama administration as those earning more than $250,000, is rolled back to nearly 40%, the rich just might not have the money to invest in businesses and create the jobs our country so badly needs. Never mind the fact that the rich aren’t investing in businesses and creating jobs anyway, even though the tax rate for high rollers is historically low.

The Government We Deserve

Lincoln didn’t tell us the whole truth when he said, “…you cannot fool all of the people all the time.” What he didn’t say, perhaps because it didn’t occur to him, was that you can fool a majority of the people all of the time, especially in the age of television and now, the Internet. Unfortunately, a majority is all that matters in a democracy. Democratically speaking, four sane people and six psychotic sickos means rule by the insane. Governments in the United States have been operating on this principle for quite a while now.

Over the last six decades, since the onset of the post World War II economic boom and the beginning of television on a mass scale, we’ve become a nation in which six out of ten of us believes we can find happiness through owning things. We’ve become materialistic on a scale never before seen in human history. All of our inner turmoils are solvable through ownership. Happiness comes from purchasing a new car, a new set of clothes, or the newest most cutting edge technological item.

If This Be Treason is an AlternativeApproaches Media website.