How To Live Your Life In He 21st Century, In The U. S.

Discussion in 'Politics & Government' started by Mitchell Hartwig, Jan 30, 2023.

  1. Mitchell Hartwig

    Mitchell Hartwig Well-Known Member
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    Very gradually, over time, I came to the conclusion that no part of the government had any interest in helping me. The best I could hope for was to be left alone.

    I believe that I first realized this clearly in an online usenet debate over Bill Clinton's re-election campaign of '96. My interlocutor asked:

    "Well, are you better off now than you were four years ago?"

    I try to be honest and objective because I would not like looking at myself in the mirror while shaving if I wasn't, and I thought just a bit and came up with "Well, yeah, I have to admit that I am."

    But then I thought just a bit more, backwards in time...

    I found that I could say "Well, yeah, I have to admit that I am" for each presidential election since 1972, no matter who was in office. This meant that what *I* was doing had more effect on my fortunes than what any politician claimed they had done for me.

    If it was up to me, it meant that I did not need to worry so much about who was in; it might be true that one party/candidate would be a bit better than the other, but basically it was up to me. And I found that what I had been doing that worked was to learn the "rules of the game" as the politicians had laid out, and find my niche and figure what would work best within those rules.

    Naturally, it got where I preferred to see almost any set of rules stay in place, once I had learned them, than to see a major change of any kind. This is because I'd have to take time to learn the new rules all over again.

    But I think that I've found that I'm better off ignoring the Kabuki theatre that is US politics (it wastes your time and energy--like watching porn, I suppose...;)--and just find the soft spots and push there.

    I also realize that in a more perfect world I should not have to do this, but I gave up on perfect worlds sometime after the 60s.

    It works for me...
     
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  2. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    I believe that government has far more power to adversely affect something than to positively affect it. Unless you count taxpayer-funded jobs, the government doesn't create jobs. Oh, they can take money from some people and give it to someone else who might hire some people, but if they were to allow people to keep their money, there'd be even more jobs created. Government can and does, however, adversely affect jobs through regulation and taxes.

    Probably, most of us are (or soon will be) collecting Social Security and taking part in the Medicare program. Had these been programs that I was allowed to vote on at the time, I would have voted no, but since I have paid into these things all of my working life, I have no qualms about collecting Social Security and taking advantage of Medicare. These are helpful enough that I can understand why they were enacted. Although people could have invested their money to better advantage on their own if they weren't paying into these programs, the facts are that many people would not have. I might not have because when you're twenty years old and beginning your adult life, retirement and the problems of aging are a long way away. Medicare and Social Security were enacted because the alternative was a lot of aging people having nowhere to live, nothing to eat, and without medical insurance.
     
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