Lend A Hand

Everywhere you turn people are talking about the state of the economy. Naturally everyone disagrees. Some say things haven’t been this bad since the recession of 2001, others say this crisis is reminiscent of the 70s when the gas shortage hit America hard, still some say things aren’t that bad and we aren’t even in an official recession.

Well all I can say about that is those of us living through it, toughing it out, making the hard choices between food and shelter – we know it’s bad, really bad, as bad as we can remember. In fact it is my opinion that while we may not be heading into another Great Depression (from an economic standpoint) enough things are similar from a social standpoint  that I would say we are in deep deep…well you know.

So what should we do? We need to stop letting the wealthy run the show and remind the government that while they may have more dollars than we do, we have more of us than they do. Our power is in our willingness to stand up and not take it anymore.

• Raise Taxes On Wealthy And Businesses – I have never agreed with the ideal that giving rich business owners more tax breaks that they would “share the wealth” by expanding. And that holds even less true now that most “American-based” companies are outsourcing a large percentage of their workforce. Oh they are expanding all right – into India, Mexico, China…etc. We need to raise their taxes so we can keep at least some of their money in the country. If you make money, you shouldn’t have a problem with paying your share to keep this country great and if you do – get all the way out.
• Reinstate Tariffs – oddly enough, high tariffs were considered one of the causes of the Great Depression. I say oddly because I believe the lack of tariffs are one of the causes of this economic crisis (I will come up with a snappy name for it at some point). Since companies can base themselves here and take advantage of the tax breaks and other incentives given to American companies while outsourcing their manufacturing to countries with lower wage expectations and then ship their goods back here to sell to our consumer-good hungry market, there is no incentive to produce goods here in America and give our citizens jobs. We have to force these companies to come back and hire our people or pay a price for making their goods elsewhere. High tariffs are the only way to start driving companies back to our country and helping our unemployment rate.
• Demand That Social Security Be Reformed – Right now they are estimating that by 2041 the money used for Social Security retirement benefits will start running low. At first benefits will only be reducing but eventually they will run out all together. Already the people in charge are telling citizens to not count on Social Security for all of their retirement income. Few companies offer pensions anymore and although 401(k)s are a feasible solution, as more and more families struggle to eat and live their retirement accounts will be the first thing they stop paying into. Obviously Social Security has to be reformed and quickly before the money starts running out. While I’m not quite sure what the answer is, I know privatizing social security isn’t it. As citizens we have to start asking our government to look into and come up with a feasible plan that does not require borrowing more money from other countries.

While the government can help the economy we also have to play our part and demand more from the companies we buy our products from and cutting back on non-essentials so we can do more to help those who are going through tough times right now. Remember, we’re all in this together.

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