Spreading the wealth, or spreading the dumbth.

I'm sure that I am betraying my age, but I love the word dumbth. If any word encompasses what passes for political discourse in this country, it's dumbth.

Like all these working guys that claim that they are "Joe the Plumber." You're not making a living, you're not getting by, you're angry without understanding why, you've got no healthcare? Joe the Plumber.

You're not making any money as working people because unions have been eviscerated under the government policies of the last forty years. You're not making any money, Joe, because you've bought the crock that unions are your enemy and not your ally. You're not making any money because you have spurned the training that craft unions provide, since you equate that as cuddling up with communists. You unthinkingly react to the "spreading the wealth" socialist bugaboo put out by a campaign bankrupt of ideas that has simply marinated in bitterness and anger when you need to understand that you don't have any wealth to spread.

"Spreading the wealth" means regulating business so that billionaire bankers and executives don't get bonuses in exchange for abysmal performance that has put all of our livelihoods at risk--bonuses paid out of your pocket either indirectly through inequitable pay schemes or through your money given to them in the bailout. "Spreading the wealth" simply means increasing opportunity for everyone to make a decent wage in exchange for their hard work. "Spreading the wealth" means not providing tax breaks-- and that's YOUR tax money we're talking about-- for businesses that send jobs overseas-- jobs like yours. Just examine where the wealth has concentrated over the last eight years-- it hasn't been into YOUR pockets.

The "market" isn't going to do it for you, Joe. The "market" doesn't care about anything but protecting the same incestuous coterie of executives that determine each others' compensation by serving on each others' boards. Notice how quickly all that rot about "free markets" evaporated when the credit dried up-- talk about socialism! Suddenly there were the same executives who scream about getting "government off our backs" running screaming toward that same government with their hands out for a bailout.

So here are a few questions: if government is such a bad thing, such a weak force for good, why do its detractors want so badly to control it? And who HAS controlled it for the last eight years? Has it shrunk or grown in that time? Has it attempted to balance its budget or has it run record deficits? Has it concentrated on the needs of Workin' Joe or Executive Joseph IV?

In the last several decades, Americans have worked ever longer hours for ever-stagnating wages and ever-increasing healthcare costs. Our productivity has exploded-- and so has our debt. But hey, go ahead and vote for executives to make 411 times what you make-- or more. Refuse to believe that they are being paid off the labor your aching back provides, and that profitability doesn't matter nearly as much as stock price. Of course your masters want you to believe that any other system would be "socialism," because that's a word that short-circuits the thinking of loads of Americans, almost as badly as the word "Muslim." Dumbth.

But capitalism isn't the problem, Joe-- rapacity is. Capitalism is powerful when it is regulated against overweening selfishness which is the height of a lack of patriotism. Where else can people rise through their own efforts-- as long as the deck is not stacked against them? And of course, this fever to hold down wages for everyone but executives is short-sighted too, because workers are also consumers. When the credit dries up, so does the economy, because workers certainly can't consume when they have no access to any sort of money. When consumers can't buy, it's the small businesses that suffer most of all-- unless you count yacht-makers.

These politicians and businessmen would have you believe that government can't do anything for you economically when government has done PLENTY for them. And to sweeten the pot, they flavor their message with a brand of Christianity that completely contradicts the words and actions of Jesus or Moses, that denigrates any love for one's fellow-man or sense of community by worshiping the god of self-centeredness, the god of sandbox morality.

Think before you vote, Joe. Don't be spooked or herded.

I wonder how long it will take for the anonymous commenters from Crystal City, VA and its environs to swoop in.