Spirits of Reality

I've been told that I am too German for my own good. Which is very strange because what Germanic family influences I have had were all environmental, not genetic. But the people of England, Scotland and Ireland tend to have a pretty wide streak of practicality and those are the DNA bits floating around in my makeup.

I've been hearing a little bit these days about business and job growth and government. Specifically deregulation.

Seems the right thinks that if we remove as much government regulation as possible, business will be free to expand and create new jobs.

And in SPIRIT, I believe this is true.

But the problem is with REALITY. Now, I'm no economic expert and I'm sure that anyone with even a slightly better understanding of the issue will roll their eyes at my ignorance, but here's what I see.

Reagan began deregulation in his two terms. It slowed some in the Clinton years and exploded again with W Bush.

At the same time, W Bush lowered taxes on the upper most reaches of income because then, in spirit, these wealth creators would be free to create business and jobs.

Um. Yeah. Okay. That's not exactly what happened. REALITY

They kept the money to themselves (which was their right to do), used it to create more wealth for themselves and their friends, then used it to co-opt media and politics so that they could keep the money train pulling up to their bank vaults everyday.

And the right is correct, the uber-rich and powerful have every right legally to do this.

But at some point, they began to hurt the rest of the country.

They sent our jobs overseas because it maximized their profit. They played shell games with our pensions because it maximized their profit. And when the whole house of cards came tumbling down, we were the ones losing our homes, losing our jobs, losing our futures while their life style didn't change one iota.

Deregulation worked, but because we humans are essentially nothing more than greedy smart monkeys and it is hard not to want to keep all our bananas to ourselves, it didn't work the way it was intended to.

So if business won't create jobs because it's more profitable to pocket the money, then we just need to make it as profitable to create jobs in AMERICA.

And as soon as those in power prove that they can act like adults and not children squabbling over who got the biggest slice of cake, maybe we can have fewer rules.