Help me wrap my mind around all this, because it is confusing to me

[The Straight Story]

I will start with a few simple items:
The government wants to tell me how to live my life so that I can live long and prosper.

Smoking is taxed heavily, restricted nearly everywhere, I have to wear a seat belt, and, well you get the idea.

They want me to be safe and physically well, and they want to protect me from being killed from terrorists and the like.

If I am poor, it is my fault - so suffer. If I don't have health care, it is because my priorities are not right. If my credit rating sucks, I can't get help from the banks and others.

BUT

If I am the government I can start a war where thousands die, many many more thousands sustain terrible injuries, if I need money I either print more or raise taxes (like to pay for the wars), I can jack up the environment, and the list just goes on.

If I am a corporation I can totally fuck up the finances and I can get a bailout from either the government or big banks, and I can get a nice bonus to boot. I can ruin the lives of people and be rewarded.

If I am the government I can ensure the people that work for me have health care, but the people who gave me the money to do that aren't worthy to have the same.

I can make sure the people that work for me have a pension and retirement, but the people paying for it cannot.

How is it that you and I can pay for the government and big companies to have such things, and yet we are the bad guys if we don't supply these things to ourselves?

I can't smoke in a bar because of how it affects others, but the government and big companies can pollute all day long, not have standards on automobiles, etc, and they can cause cancer and the like all day long without being fined (while lighting up in a bar can cost you plenty).

We need a top down approach, but that never seems to happen. Why do we let it go on, and why do we fight amongst ourselves so much over what you and I do and pass laws to regulate that (and work hard to do so) while the real issues being caused get ignored?

The building I work in here in CA has a warning on the door that this building has things within in it known to cause cancer, and yet no one has an issue with me working there but god forbid I smoke in it. If they are that concerned about my health tear the thing down (probably asbestos, but the sign has no information about what it that can cause cancer in the building...)

If you are so fucking worried about us why don't you do something real - like end the war, national health care, reducing pollution, etc?

I just cannot understand how we punish each other on an individual basis but allow those in govt/companies jack us up and then make us feel bad about it.

Our money pooled together for each other - a common goal, a united people, helping each other out. Somehow that became a bad thing, and helping the corporations and govt became a patriotic thing.

My head is swirling :)

[Clear Blue Sky]

1. A far cry from what the founders envisioned...

[varelse]

2. It's so simple

we are being "governed" by rabid hyenas. If our government were run by human beings, there'd at least be a 50/50 chance that anything they tell you would be intentionally (rather than incidentally) true. :P

[whistle]

3. It is called reactionary conservatism but much worse...

Characterized by reaction, especially opposition to progress or liberalism; extremely conservative.

An opponent of progress or liberalism; an extreme conservative.

In otherwords: fascism

[housewolf]

4. The government rewards what it wants more of

and taxes what it wants less of.

Basically the government uses the tax code to reward what it wants more of and punish what it wants less of. You can extrapolate from there the priorities of the goverment.

This government wants an all-business society, the bigger the better.

[BlueJazz]

5. " A Government for the People, By the People"

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[Quantess]

6. Great post.