Wounded Bear
Wounded Bear's JournalI sometimes wonder if some of these initiatives are false flag efforts...
Proposing a min-wage that is too high will not pass muster any more than too low. People are not that stupid, and most recognize that there are limits to what can be done in a practical sense. This was one of those IMHO.
It's why I don't necessarily support the national movement to $15 dollars that has been in the news lately. I do support the $10 movement in Congress, and would like to see it as high as $12 within 5 years, but $15 is a bit much. Local efforts based on local conditions, I can see higher numbers being reasonable, but not nationally.
Initiatives like this can have a chilling effect when they fail. It's hard to get another more reasonable suggestion on the ballot once that occurs. It's like health care, where it seems we couldn't get anything even proposed more than once in a generation.
A simplified, but accurate description IMHO...
A corollary I've played with is the human body.
If you think of a society or a nation as a human body, then the economy, being the circulation and distribution of goods and services, is the circulatory system and money is the blood.
In times of stress, the body naturally directs and re-directs blood flow to compensate. Generally that means that vital organs are supplied at the expense of the extremities. Our current economic system is like having a one-way tourniquet on one area of the body, which gets bloated and oversupplied with blood and nutrients, while the rest of the organism slowly deteriorates and rots away.
It boils down to the basic idea of what an economy is and what it is supposed to "do." To the wealthy, the economy is their source of wealth and power. To the poor, it is a matter of survival.
The support of the Founding Fathers for true democracy...
is largely overstated in most history books. The American Revolution, like most revolutions, was initiated and operated by what we would consider to be the middle class these days. That's one reason the Constitution is set up like it is, to suppress the power of the democratic masses and prevent them, in their eyes, from voting themselves "rich."
I'm sure many of the FF would be appalled at the looming corporate power extant today. After all, they were quite cognizant that what they were really fighting, beyond the British Crown, was the East India Company, a model for the modern multi-national corporation subverting national government for their own profits. For many, it was a selfish decision. After all, the laws that triggered the Revolution were largely of the economic sanction types that boosted EIC profits and made life much harder for the local merchants, in effect stifling their avenues to more profits.
With the possible exception of Jefferson and Madison-who certainly had their differences-the idea of increasing or widening democracy was anathema to most of the FF. If you look at it closely, the Constitution is really just a stronger version of the Articles of Confederation, and was opposed by many of the same folks that would oppose it today. For all its beauty of composition, it is incredibly weak in many areas.
The use of racism and divide and conquer are SOP for governments, religious orders, hell for your Homeowners Association. Any entity interested in wresting and maintaining control over others' actions will be at least tempted to go there. Humans are naturally tribal in nature. We cooperate with our tribe and resist the other. The first order of business is to define what separates "us" from "them." Skin color is easy. Religious differences can be more difficult to point out, but it's still effective. The best defense, and their worst nightmare, is getting people to realize that "they" are more or less just like "us."
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