Which Side Would You Take?
by John Lawrence, July 21, 2018
I propose an experiment in which 1000 Americans are given the following survey. You have a choice. On the one hand (Proposal A) you could receive a $1000 tax break while someone 10 times richer than you receives a $10,000 tax break and $11,000 is added to the national debt. On the other hand (Proposal B) you could receive no tax break, the rich person would get no tax break and the national debt would remain the same. My guess would be that most Americans would choose A because it benefits them directly rather than B which benefits the collective society. Americans are individualistic, and they care more about their own individual welfare than they care about the welfare of American society in general.
This is exactly why Republicans win elections. They promise everyone a tax break. Never mind that these tax breaks benefit mainly the rich. The middle class and poor are satisfied with a few crumbs from the table, and this is exactly why the national debt keeps going up and up. People want instantaneous gratification not some far off general good for society. Wall street is only interested in quarterly results not how much a company invests for the future.
What this leads to is an ultimate breakdown when lack of planning and investing for the future results in a future devoid of anything propitious because the good stuff has already been drained out of it by the past. The "me" society has shortchanged the "we" society. Because everyone wants it all now, there is nothing left for then but garbage which is literally what's happening to planet Earth. We're turning it into a colossal garbage dump. Who cares about climate change when most of us will be long gone before the worst effects of it come into play. In reality nobody really cares about their grandchildren's lives much less the lives of grandchildren in other societies.
Investors want a quick return now. That's why they buy companies, load them with debt, pay themselves handsome management fees and then oversee their liquidation. They don't buy in order to invest for the future. They want a quick turnover. This does not bode well for future generations. Lack of collective responsibility will ultimately lead to Earthe becoming an uninhabitable planet with Thomas Hobbes' dictum becoming a reality: Life will become "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
