My hope for 2014 is more. Because in the United States, we don't have enough yet. That's our problem.
"During the first two years of the nation's economic recovery, the mean net worth of households in the upper 7% of the wealth distribution rose by an estimated 28%, while the mean net worth of households in the lower 93% dropped by 4%"
The mega rich only gained 28 percent and just don't have enough money yet.
Consider this: Eighty percent of Americans still own 7 percent of the wealth. Where are we screwing up?
Americans just don't have enough guns yet. With somewhere over 300 million guns we haven't quite armed everyone man, woman and child yet. And until we do, we will continue to suffer gun violence.
After all, the best defense against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, so apparently we just don't have enough guns yet. Because with all our guns, we still have the highest rate of gun violence in the modern world.
We need more incarcerations! We incarcerate 25 percent of the world's incarcerated people. We're doing well for being a country with only 5 percent of the world's population but it's just not enough. I do have to admit Louisiana's for profit prison system is helping in this category. Its rate of incarceration is three times higher than Iran's and 10 times higher than Germany's.
Speaking of being 5 percent of the world's population, we only consume about 25 percent of the world's fossil fuel energy. Come on folks! Why not take a long drive today.
On the issue of consumption, we take 50 percent of the world's pharmaceuticals and 80 percent of the world's prescription narcotics. We're getting close, but still not enough. Pshaw, still some left over for other countries.
We don't have enough uninsured people. Our hospital emergency rooms are not crowded enough. Cost shifting to a $15 aspirin to cover the cost of the uninsured is not enough yet. We should be able to hit $25, maybe even $50, and this whole Obama care thing is moving us in the wrong direction.
Fifty percent of Americans live in poverty or near poverty. When have we ever been happy with 50 percent of anything? We can do better than this. Speaking of poverty, we don't have enough low paying, full time jobs that require employees to depend on government benefits for survival. Some employees of Walmart, McDonalds and some bank tellers still make enough money to almost survive on their earned incomes. Shame on us.
Speaking of shame, education has a lot do with poverty. And we're failing here too. We haven't made enough budget cuts to education. There are still some well-educated children sneaking through.
We still don't have enough self sufficiency. Fortunately, some Republicans are developing ideas to fix this by making poor children work for their free school lunches. That'll teach the little beggars.
We don't have enough protections against voter fraud. Certain states, with Republican leadership, are spending millions to rid themselves of this disease. Even though, "The Brennan Center's ongoing examination of voter fraud claims reveal that voter fraud is very rare, voter impersonation is nearly non-existent and much of the problems associated with alleged fraud in elections relates to unintentional mistakes by voters or election administrators."
We don't have enough ignorance. We need more politicians, pundits, duck hunters, preachers and pastors who will deny anything intellectual so as not to insult the great unwashed masses who elect them, listen to their horse manure, watch their TV shows, buy their doodads and donate to their churches and special appeals from "Gawd."
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
2
1
