To B3 From The Aging Hippie

Can we talk about the economy for a few paragraphs?
Too little, too late the Whitehouse is talking about giving some money back to the poor and middle class. They’re only doing this because capitalist predatory practices are now backfiring, cutting into their profits.
The profit takers have slowly but surly killed the bottom of the economic food chain. Now the financial nourishment percentage they desire is not flowing up to them as planed.
I have been writing for years about the disaster that a trickle down economy will create when the rich finally end up with all the money and no one to buy their junk.
Conservative administrations always tout the strong economy that exists when they are in power. Of course, they mean that it is robust for all their buddies who make hundreds of thousands a year. Everyone else is struggling.
It is easy to appreciate an economy where you get a dollar every time a working person starts their car, or turns on a light or uses their credit card. It is a bit more depressing if you have to pay the bill for that fuel, electricity or toothpaste from a deflated salary.
The wealthy have lived for years without being inconvenienced in their bank accounts by the low wages paid to most workers in this country. Somehow, the workers have been able to spend enough money to give the capitalists their profits. But more and more of the money that common people are spending is borrowed, because of diminishing salaries and wages in this country.
Well, guess what? The wealthy minority just got a little glimpse of what it is like to be in the red for a change. If for no other reason than to wake up the rich, the housing loan “crisis” is a good thing. What are they going to do when no one has any money to buy their cheap stuff and pay loans and credit card debt?
For a democratic and vigorous economy to exist, money must flow through the poor and middle classes, or else we are back to the feudal system of the “old country” that we left in order to create democratic America.
The first American Revolution in 1776 happened because of exactly what is going on in this country right now, today, in 2008. Taxation without representation and a feudal system; we call it capitalism, which has produced a greedy indulgent class and a lower class in hopeless servitude who work for them.
Our founding fathers were by far the most insightful government leaders this world has ever known. Our constitution and bill of rights are the best foundations for a peaceful and profitable population on this earth. But we are not following the leadership of great men right now.
The formulative idea of democracy is that whatever is best for the majority of the people will be better for everyone in the long run. Greedy people say, “To hell with that! I’m getting everything I want now and let everyone else suffer the consequences.” That is poor fiscal planning for this country and the world.
Perhaps that mentality was acceptable when we lived in a kill-or-be-killed jungle. Now, cooperation among people is more responsible and even more expedient. Allowing the working class to flourish is not just a moral issue, though it is that, it is also a common sense answer to a number of problems in our society.
Until the Constitution of the United States and The Bill of Rights were written, all previous governments were created as a means to control people and resources under the power of a few leaders or kings. The idea of American Democracy was a unique and inspired concept.
Giving the populous control over their own lives and a role in their own governing was genius, not merely as a benevolent concept, but as a practical solution to the continual revolutions and wars that had raged for millennia over man’s basic desire to be free. Here was the true answer to human rebellion. Give mankind no reason to rebel. Give mankind its Freedom.
The economy of human society is like a food chain. There are predators and prey.
The present U.S. economic practice of giving all the advantage to the wealthy and ignoring the needs of the poor and middle class--the trickle down economy--is destructive to maintaining a democracy. It is very effective in creating unrest and revolution.
It makes more democratic sense to have all money enter the economy through the bottom of the economic food chain. In nature, the nutrients for the entire food chain enter members of the chain from the bottom, thereby nourishing all creatures upward and giving them a purpose to live. They live, they succeed as creations, and then die as food for the stronger and/or greedier.
Not everyone wants to become, nor are they capable of being, a capitalist. They just want to live a productive life.

Trickle-down economy works like this:
Give a dollar to a rich man, and most of goes into entitlements and foreign luxuries. Only a small percentage goes back into The System.
Give a poor man a dollar, and it all goes right back into the system. Don’t worry, rich people, it will be back in your pocket by tomorrow night.

John McCleary, author of The Hippie Dictionary
From his next book, Common Sense Again