http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/08/12/Study-You-Have-Near-Zero-Impact-on-U-S-Policy A startling new political science study concludes that corporate interests and mega wealthy individuals control U.S. policy to such a degree that "the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy." Not that everyone paying attention didn't already realize this, but I figured I'd post it, since I'm pretty tired of the willfully clueless claiming we Americans live in any form of a democracy. We don't.
In my opinion we lost our democracy on Aug,15th 1971 when Nixon defaulted on our currency and took us off the gold standard. Without the constraints of gold the gov. granted itself the ability to print whenever and how much they chose to print. The US tax payer became irrelevant and the ability to control policy by direct trading in of the dollar for gold was lost. All fiat currencies fail 100% of the time. We still have the power to buy gold to indirectly replace our paper with real money through private dealers but not the treasury. Its a vicious circle. The corps pay no taxes through offshore accounts, the feds give them US tax payers money and the lobbyist give to their campaigns to keep them in office. The solution? Drop your dollar savings that is eaten up and devalued by inflation into precious metals and take yourself out of their game. If the pawns wont play there is no game.
Our debt is definitely a problem. However, your solution isn't going work because precious metals, like dollars and electronic digits, aren't traded for their intrinsic value. They're still a symbol used to show resources possessed or owed. America is heavily in debt because instead of producing what the world wants to buy or producing everything we need for ourselves we're perpetuating a nation of badly educated burger flippers ruled by people who get rich by shuffling numbers on spreadsheets to create debt slaves, value from what doesn't exist (this I think is the main thing you'd like to address with hard currency), and by exporting jobs to profit from the world's least protected workers. If I had dollars saved and were going to invest in something, I'd buy land, not gold.
The most recent joint with EU move to change government in Kiev was totally out of touch with American people. We instantly recognized the Maidan government, perhaps, before we knew what it means for Ukraine and Russia. Nobody cared in America. Total ignorance. The government was driven by corporate greed.
This study shows that even if we ordinary people do care about an issue we still can't affect policy within the current system. So we'll have to care enough to capture or replace the system of decision making we have in order to have a system that responds to all of us and not simply to the wealthy and well-connected.
Gold is the only standard of payment that is not created from something else and also of standard quality where as things like land or oil are of different quality. There are many countries trading in gold. Iran has been able to side step the western sanctions by excepting gold as money. http://www.zerohedge.com/article/india-offers-pay-iran-oil-gold After the Bretton Woods agreement the world had confidence in the dollar only because it was pegged to a non floating price of gold. Now the world has no chose but to except a fiat currency backed by nothing. Most central banks that have surplus reserves are trading in those USD for gold. http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldn...Central_Bank_Buying_To_Crush_Gold_Shorts.html I would like to suggest to you that the fed is stuck in a unsustainable ineffective policy circle. They need to "print" to buy our debt to create bonds that the last 2 auctions have shown no one wants and had to have Belgium "launder" them at a rate that is unimaginable compared to their actual GDP. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-21/who-new-secret-buyer-us-debt They are trying to QE to create inflation in a natural deflationary economic rule environment. Here is what I would like you to think about. I agree that land is a great investment but timing is everything. When global confidence and the central banks get their USD reserves down they will dump the dollars and buy they only wealth reserve that has not failed in the last 5000 years and quit participating in the paper gold dump to support the dollar. Hyperinflation will be the product if there is no intervention. If they do intervene it would have to first come in the form of a dollar revaluation. Lets say add a 0 to eliminate their debt by 90% and is the reason I believe they don't give a rats ass about debt. Think what that will do to the price of gold. What would have now cost you $100,000.00 now might cost you 10 oz.s of gold when this happens. Bottom line is the dollar will lose reserve currency status and fail same as all the other 200 fiat currency failures before it. You can not change the structure on the Ponzi scheme that is fiat money.
Can you please be more specific and name one issue that the overwhelming majority of ordinary Americans want the government to resolve in a certain manner and the government ignores the will of the people. Just curious in Kazakhstan. TIA
Stop corporate welfare programs which cost us more than social welfare problems and allow the oligarchs to continue their offshoring of US jobs. The majority of Americans want the government to stop their continuous war programs to fund the military complex and keep their stocks going up.
These are empty slogans, show me what specific policy changes Americans demand and show me that the majority of Americans actually support these changes. From your example, if you could demonstrate that the significant majority of Americans want the country to cut military expenses that would be a good start. Or please show me how the majority of Americans support ban on offshoring/outsourcing. To the best of my knowledge the republican leaning ordinary Americans and libertarians staunchly oppose your position.
I'm looking for more specific examples myself, and better sources. The example given in the article I first quoted is terrible, since, even if it is accurate, it is both the product of an appeal by certain political groups to xenophobia and is also a relentless, racist, and scapegoating propaganda campaign designed to shift the blame for low wages and unemployment to immigrants when the real cause is corporate greed in general and outsourcing in particular. Which does go to show that even if we do change the system to be responsive to the majority of ordinary Americans we're still going to have to solve a lot of media access problems. Meanwhile, from the horses' mouths: Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens https://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/...ens and Page 2014-Testing Theories 3-7-14.pdf
I gave you some good starting points to do your own research but I do not do research for others without payment. I am a capitalist.
It depends on how you consider "democracy" ... Since I've got political experience [as I say, if you call me "politician" you don't offend me] I can share this "discovery": it's true that actually the average citizen has got a very little [when not null] impact on high level policies. Usually it's about putting the interest of the system before of the interest of this "average citizen" [I would like to know this person ...]. Modern democracies are based on the principal of delegation, the real democratic game ends when the elections ends. Once you vote, you delegate to someone else to be a representative of the people to decide the policies which will rule and form your life in the next years. This is "democracy" today, what else?
I'm inclined to agree with Chomsky on this one. The USA is no longer a functioning democracy. The right term would be plutocracy. Chomsky: The U.S. behaves nothing like a democracy The MIT professor lays out how the majority of U.S. policies are opposed to what wide swaths of the public want. http://www.salon.com/2013/08/17/chomsky_the_u_s_behaves_nothing_like_a_democracy/
You gave me your personal political views which are rather fringe, I must say, while I was inquiring about policies requested by the noticeable majority of Americans and not met/implemented by the American government. Your response had none of those.
Bethany, with all my due respect you started this thread claiming that the wishes of Americans are ignored by the American government, yet no one has come up with a single concrete example supporting this claim, Freemarket's examples were based on his personal views, not the views of the solid majority of the American public. This seems to make the premise of this thread incorrect.
Fair enough. Let's start with this one: Majority in U.S. Want Wealth More Evenly Distributed And 52% support heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth PRINCETON, NJ -- About six in 10 Americans believe that money and wealth should be more evenly distributed among a larger percentage of the people in the U.S., while one-third think the current distribution is fair. Although Americans' attitudes on this topic have fluctuated somewhat over time, the current sentiment is virtually the same as when Gallup first asked this question in 1984. Slightly fewer have favored a more even distribution since October 2008. http://www.gallup.com/poll/161927/majority-wealth-evenly-distributed.aspx Obviously the opposite has been happening since the 1984 poll.
And yet Americans consistently and overwhelmingly vote against "tax the rich" candidates and overwhelmingly support "no new taxes" pro-tax cuts ones. That's actually democracy in action, its not driven by polls and referendums, it's driven by decisions people make in the voting booths. When Americans are actually serious about the distribution of wealth they will start electing the likes of Dennis Kucinich, not the likes of the Tea party.
Source for your claim that Americans overwhelmingly support no new taxes candidates and vote against tax the rich candidates? And how is the candidates we elect a better indicator of the will of the majority than polling that asks us our opinion on those issues (especially when those candidates are limited by virtue of a system that permits wealth to decide who will even have a viable campaign)?
