Constipated! That's what's wrong with the American economy. There is simply too much money -- wealth, income and influence -- bound up among too few people: the financiers and the investor class. That makes the whole system sluggish: too many people out of work, under-employed or in poverty; tattered families; depressed retail sales; and painfully strained budgets for law enforcement, schools, health care and fire protection. Side effects include low-extremity crime and metastasized corruption, both of which exacerbate the suffering. The system is crying for relief.
An associated symptom is nutritional deficit, indicating a more serious condition of debt anemia, which really does threaten the system. But the basic cause, the etiology, remains the same: the enormous inequality of wealth and income. The diagnosis by economic scatologists describes the patient as anal retentive, a chronic condition that does not bode well for recovery. The patient still craves more of the very sweets that caused the constipation in the first place: sugar-coated low taxes for the comfortably rich; subsidizing injections for energy and agri-businesses; big, doughy tax loopholes; juicy tax incentives for the corporate off-shoring of jobs and profits; and high fructose stimulants for defense industries -- all the while balking at any prescription for the bitter pills of regulation.
So, what's the cure?
Depends who you ask. Some simply wish to enable the continued addiction to sweets, with the rationalization that these sweets supposedly will seep (or trickle) on down to the rest of the system. But the data shows this therapeutic approach has never worked. Others, now because of the supposedly dire condition of the patient, recommend a radical sequestration enema, something reminiscent of ancient blood-letting.
My recommendation: a gentle laxative of fundamental tax reform supplemented by more equitable nutrition for everyone.
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Vern Simula
Mountain Iron
