What has happened to America?
I can summarize it in two words: Corporate Greed
Because of corporate greed:
We have no long term job security or adequate retirement, which has evolved solely for upper level corporate “management”, who make millions and hundreds of millions as the norm.
We now pay more for a car than our fathers did for a house, more for a house than our grandfathers ever earned in a lifetime. Many have become “interest slaves” to credit cards and other unsecured debt.
We are the richest nation in the world, with the least equitable health care system. Too many of us can’t afford health insurance, especially young families and the elderly who need it most.
Our once sacred “government of the people” has been morphed into a hedonistic platform for self-serving “pork barrel” politicians, controlled by special interest groups and lobbies. A job in politics seems to be reserved for those who can’t make it anywhere else.
Likewise, the judicial system has become a crippled and corrupt corporate shell. Justice is served ostensibly with a hidden price tag. The rich win and the poor lose, as the middle class slowly disappears.
Worst of all we have become a disposable society. Everything gets thrown away sooner or later. We buy a plastic bottle of water or aluminum can of beer, and throw the container in the trash. Why? Because it costs less to dispose than to recycle. The landfill is a prehistoric concept which has far outlived its time.
Because of this replacement mentality, we buy inferior products made in foreign countries, most of whom have uncontrolled industrial pollution, yet we claim the high ground of “environmental conscience”.
Due to corporate greed, we have a “global economy” of emerging industrial nations, who say you have had your turn, now it is ours, but they have no better environmental policies than we had 30 or 40 years ago.
Like Yogi Berra said, “It’s deja vu all over again.”
© WFS 2008
CB 