Poorer Citizens, Richer Corporations Equals a Poorer Nation Overall

Originally, companies, now massive corporations, have been exploiting our nation since the Great Depression. The groundwork for this was set at America’s founding. And somehow, we have been thanking them for it. Why?

I've talked about this recently: Corporate Thought - The Corporation, 14 Years Later: The Thought That Ate the World

As corporations have taken more and more profits from both the public and the government, our nation has invested less and less in the things that sustain us. Our infrastructure, education, and public health have all been left behind. 

To distract us, corporate interests have pushed one of our major political parties to make tax cuts a priority. The claim is that it helps people keep more of their income, but in truth that income has already been rerouted to corporations. The result is a government that can no longer keep up with the demands of time or the needs of its people.

Look around. Bridges are failing. Roads are deteriorating. Schools are outdated and struggling to meet global standards. Ignorance is rising, and people are teaching their children that evolution is a lie and that the world is only 6,800 years old. How do you think that happens? Because we have stopped investing in knowledge, in science, and in progress.

We must pay our taxes, not as a burden but as an act of shared responsibility. Government needs to function properly so it can maintain what individuals and corporations will not. That also means people must be able to live decently, earn enough to build and improve their lives, and still contribute fairly to the system that supports us all.

Meanwhile, monopolies are reappearing, even though laws were written to prevent them. Comcast’s merger with Time Warner, two of the lowest-rated companies for service, shows how consolidation limits competition and degrades quality. In too many cities, one company controls access to the internet, entertainment, and communication. Many of these providers also own the content they deliver. That does not create progress. It creates control.

Monopolies do not exist to make our lives better. That is what governments are for. Corporations exist to make shareholders richer. Governments should never serve that purpose.

Speak. Complain. Protest. Serve. Until government becomes what it was meant to be: a force for the common good.

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

A Defectively Conservative Status Quo

If you think you're a "Conservative" you then have to ask yourself, are you for conserving resources, or the status quo? Because they are not one in the same. And resources doesn't just mean water, the environment, etc.

Def of Conservative: 1. "Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change."

First of all, tending to oppose change is nuts. But ignoring that for now....

In a way it really doesn't matter which you are for because to do either effectively typically requires not only being a progressive, (or some use the more derogatory term, liberal) but also evoking change. To spout a couple of pleasing platitudes, "the one thing after all that never changes is change itself". One could say that "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results."

If in order to maintain things as they are in an ever-changing environment, like the world we live in, if it requires you to do the same thing over and over again, you yourself would then evoke change and thus cut yourself off from your own desires as to what you believe you stand for. Confusing? Counter intuitive? Maybe. That's in part what confuses most conservative mindsets.

It also leaves the rest of us as we are now, wondering just what in the Hell it is you are trying to do. Because you are saying one thing and doing something else. Yes, it looks like you are doing the same as always, but it's not bringing about the same change. Look at the current state of the GOP. They're useless at this point and have been for some time now. Longer than you would think, actually. There may be some outside influences. Russian come to mind. Greed and capitalism also.

This is the primary reason there is such a problem with Conservatives, today. What they are trying to be and to do are counter-intuitive and typically they have trouble thinking in that way. Because it's hard and it's complicated, two things diametrically opposed to what they want their world to be.

We have got to be more than we are being. To think better, more, more out of the box, more...creatively. More, progressively. For some dullards? Yes, more liberally. But more intelligently, also.

What have YOU done each day, in a creative or artistic way? I'm not talking about a poem, or painting a picture. I'm talking about your job, your day, your rut, if you will.

IF we all paid attention to acting more creative, more artistic, incorporating that into our lives, actions and thoughts, I suspect this would be a far better world for us all. It would bring more creative solutions to our lives. More, functional solutions.

You don't even have to actually DO anything creative.

Just start building those muscles to be and think in creative, and artistic ways of thinking.

This corporate form of thought we have allowed ourselves to be lulled into for so very long now, at times beaten down into, before any of us were even alive, has dulled us as thinking beings and as a nation.

A conservative knee jerk reaction would be to question not using "tried and true" methodologies. There is some truth in that. But to use them intelligently, even creatively. To apply them again, when they have already failed, especially to claim they haven't failed, when they have, is lunacy.

Think!

Some new technologies have even aided us in this. They have seen this, the crippling effects of corporations on people and have tried to be creative in their endeavors.

Things like "Don't be evil" a motto used within Google's corporate code of conduct.

But we need more and today with there being no money for anyone, unless you're rich (where's all that money?), where people need two, three or more jobs just to make do? We need creativity, we need even artistic solutions.

Not art or creativity for it's own sake to use up more money for "pretty", but for productive forward momentum, for real-world solutions and not just the same old fast, cheap, profit, profit, profit thinking...corporate thinking, which also includes showering CEO types with millions, or billions that should really be going elsewhere.

Don't think conservatively. Don't think like a corporation, like a brain dead capitalist dedicated only to profit and not humanity. Wisdom is knowledge and experience, not just what has been done, and so we need to think no more.

Be creative. Be productive. But do it not just for your boss, your corporation, your job, rather for yourselves (not just, yourSELF), for your group, OUR country, and humanity at large. And yes, even for those who do not look or sound or act like you.

Yes, even for your "enemies" and for conservatives, because in our actions here and now, in thinking in new ways, they may one day become our friends.

One can only hope.

Creative thinking

A word of caution: There are many ways to use creative thinking. Find the ones that best fit the structure of your brain/mind structure. But test to be sure it's the most effective it can be. Do not fall into the logic traps and dead ends we see so much in society today.