Quote:
Originally Posted by ossiblue
Look at your original question: "We went to the moon, built the fastest plane to fly, had affordable higher education and healthcare, and free love.
What went wrong?"
The moon/space successes--government programs.
Fastest plane--government/military program.
Affordable higher education--government (state and federal) programs.
Affordable health care--lost through uncontrolled rises in costs generated by for profit health insurers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and medical suppliers. Exacerbated by government mandates to provide service when patients cannot afford rising costs.
My only point is to show, given the original question, that government has played the leading role in those things you deem honorable and worthy.
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One thing capitalists hate to admit is the fact that the government plays a HUGE role in the economy. Look at 2008. Massive federal intervention to prop-up the monetary system. (No help for the little guy. "Socialism for the rich, capitalism for everybody else.") The Cold War was fueled by massive government spending paid for by higher tax rates. We have disassembled that since 1980. Taxes were slashed, deficits took off (politicians addicted to spending on their pet programs), Cold War ends, more tax cuts, more deficits, wars of choice (not paid for), more tax cuts not paid for by spending cuts, politicians gutting social programs such as college tuition grants and other support money. (College goes from a few hundred bucks a year in the '80s to tens to hundreds of thousands a year now.)
Banks can fail with no repercussions while graduates dare not miss a payment on their massive college loans--and are not allowed to legally declare bankruptcy.
We are going back to the world before 1914 where the few wealthy elites control the world's governments while the rest of us fight over the scraps. 1914-1980, and especially 1945-1980, was an anomaly. Wealth was destroyed globally by two world wars and a long economic depression and then the post-WWII rebuilding (massive government spending) allowed for massive manufacturing growth and that spread wealth among the populations of the west, especially in the U.S. The west came out on top, after destroying the manufacturing competition of its enemies, and thus enjoyed an unusual 30-year prosperity for a majority of the U.S. population. It's over. Politicians are--have been for three decades--dismantling the government's propping-up of the population and giving the windfall to the wealthy elite.