As I read and listen to and watch the news -- earthquake, ice storms -- and think about the past year -- floods, fires, mudslides, hurricanes, nor'easters, more earthquakes -- it seems to me that nature provides us plenty of opportunities to exercise our compassion and charity, individually and as a nation, and plenty of spending opportunities for maintaining necessary infrastructure.
We don't need to maintain economic structures which create additional human misery. There is enough without them.
We can't control nature. But we CAN correct man-made structures which victimize our fellow human beings.
We don't need poverty in the world. We could manage just fine without it.
It is time to delve into those structures, and get to the root of them.
When we get to the root, we'll recognize it and know what to do about it.
When we've done that, our safety nets will be there for those who have health problems, or accidents, or are victims of nature's whims. We'll be able to devote our energies and funds to things which can't be avoided -- acts of nature -- instead of trying to patch up the victims of our economic system.
Here and abroad.
Go to the root of the problem.
Where do you start? Read Henry George. Start with the speeches linked from the front page of http://www.wealthandwant.com/, and then, if something in his thought resonates, move on to Social Problems (ditto) and then "Progress & Poverty, at http://www.progressandpoverty.org
The good news is that economics need not be a dismal science. When viewed through the lenses of the classical economists, a lot more things look a lot more fixable.
Poverty is a structural problem. Nothing we try to do for or with individuals is going to make the least bit of difference in the structures which are producing poverty. While I applaud the hearts and efforts of those who seek to improve the lives of individuals afflicted with poverty through charity, through education, through aid, even through job creation, none of these things is going to end poverty until we correct the structures which take for some that which others create. You might move one person from being a sower to being a reaper, but you aren't going to reduce the problem of some being permitted to reap what others sow until you attack the structures which permit it!
And isn't it government's job to create and promote structures which protect all of us from exploitation by others?
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