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FROM MY CORNER: A Rational Perspective

Howell Hurst Consumerism, Corporate Avarice, Economy & Finance, Poverty

How Americans habitually ignore the fact that 20% of their fellow citizens remain desperately poor, poorly educated, frequently homeless, barely hanging onto life in this immensely rich land never ceases to astound me.

Giant American Corporations sit on trillions of dollars of accumulated profits, commonly stored in offshore tax havens and the U.S. government hoards 25% of all actual land as many of the 20% struggle to exist in squalid ghetto hovels and abandoned small towns.

Corporations give no thought to establishing job training schools and sharing their available work with the 20%, thereby solving this societal malfeasance. Government claims the land they hold is primarily preserves, dedicated to safeguarding nature and animals.

That is not convincingly true. Millions of acres of government land are not nature preserves, but land that could be sold to poor people without down payment requirements to help solve America’s low-cost housing needs. This sort of vision does not fit into the real estate market’s game plan.

One major blockage to such a truly rational initiative is the real estate market. Limited low-cost housing does not make the profits that our oligarchical real estate market demands for its agents.

Our basic problem is America’s fixation on two things: No profit-holds-barred Capitalism and our economy’s obsession with retail consumerism. Our big-name banks repeatedly are cited for illegal financial practices. Americans massively overconsume and waste resources. We waste physical resources. We waste the resource of our fellow citizens.

Egomaniacal multibillionaires invest $ billions in schemes to move humans from Earth to Mars and the Moon. Had these $ billions been invested instead in organizing job training for poor, uneducated Americans and devising corporate work-sharing programs, we could have long ago stabilized the American economy and its societal needs.

Polls indicate that Americans are utterly disgusted with government. Rightly so. Whether bullied by Trump or coddled by Biden, our government is so invested in its alliance with the giant corporate financial world and its profit addiction that it is unable to meaningfully bridge the massive economic gap between the wealthy and the poor.

Our giant corporate profit motive, disregarding any and all responsibility for the damage it does to 20% of our people, is unacceptable. Until the cozy deal between the giant corporate financial world and our bought-and-paid-for politicians becomes a national issue in public discussion, America will continue to disgust the American people.

History demonstrates repeatedly that such a situation is a dangerous reality to ignore. Tiny seeds of discontent consistently over time turn into organized societal action. We have already seen this in action. It can only grow.

The largest damage will eventually impact the giant corporate consumer world. This is not necessary. But profit-at-all-costs corporate leaders are incapable of accepting responsibility for their near-sightedness, they are doomed to learn a lesson the hard way.

And since giant corporations fanatically loyal to our wasteful consumer economy are the dominating force in our distortedly-evolved political system, the ultimate impact will fall upon, guess who?

You and me.

Hal

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