I remember, back in elementary school (and I am 55 now), that we were always told, “America is DIFFERENT! In all other countries, the average citizen cannot become rich, but here, everyone is equal.” This is a lie. But we were told that so many times, it became “conventional wisdom.”

And, sadly, most Americans never THINK about that statement. They just believe it — and, worse, think THEY will be RICH someday, too — and vote accordingly. This is very childish.

Isn’t it interesting that McCain keeps saying at his rallies that Obama “Will raise your taxes!”

He thinks he’s in front of this audience:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn4daYJzyls

And his audience thinks America is upwardly mobile and they’ll have a chance to get to $250K a year:

By international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility: our parents’ income is highly predictive of our incomes as adults. Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Among high-income countries for which comparable estimates are available, only the United Kingdom had a lower rate of mobility than the United States.

It is also worth saying this, “the better we all do, the better we all do.” The myth of conservative Republicanism is that when the wealthy do better, America as a whole does better. This is not true. When the whole of America does better, which is generally the case under Democratic Presidents, the entire economy does better, everyone’s income goes up. The ONLY downside is that the top 1% don’t do quite as well (though they do spectacularly well by almost any other standard.)

Cheers,

Times are changing. I have no difficulty seeing literacy as passe as learning Latin and Greek which was considered important at the turn of the last century. Perhaps acquiring the equipment for them to make DVD’s instead of writing term papers might be a step in the right direction. Schools could them become interactive with libraries of course materials (audio-visual) on line. The fact is reading is a fairly inefficient way to learn-would you rather read a manual or see a visual that talked you through a problem? Do not lose heart. We may be on the cusp of something very big and very beautiful.

In Denmark, there’s a strong tradition for voting based on your current situation. And, as most people know, a high level of taxation at higher income levels. However, the taxes that everybody pays gives you a return that I didn’t experience in the US: Free education, free healthcare, a social safety-net that ensures that you will NEVER be in the situation that so many millions of Americans are in, where they don’t have food and shelter. And, of course, this gives Danes a tremendous amount of peace of mind, which is quite frankly the biggest benefit of it all.

The Brookings Institute in 2007 compared the economic upward mobility across countries, and in this study Denmark ranked first. In other words, the support structure for a person is so strong in Denmark, that it is truly up to the person him- or herself to move up the ladder and become rich (and honestly, there are plenty of tax loopholes for the rich here, too, so it’s not as if they pay all that much more in taxes). In such a society, you don’t have to fantasize about becoming rich, you can use the resources that the collective society supports and work your way up. And your chances of success are far, far greater than in the US (I think the US ranked 43′rd or something in that study).

I’m making this comparison, because I know that the Republican voters, who vote against their own economic and situational interests, also abhor the Danish (or Scandinavian, rather) model, which would equally benefit them.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business…..0&p=1

In many other countries in Europe, for instance, they have workable social programs that include many of the things you mentioned. They don’t pay for medical care or for schools. Their tax rates are high; I’ve heard around 50% of their income, but many Americans, I think, would be willing to pay that if they could send their kids to college and get medical care free of the worry about how they can afford to pay for it all. They would, that is, if they hadn’t been taught that taxes are an unnecessary burden that goes into a black hole and really doesn’t benefit anyone. I’m thinking they also get retirement out of it. Could we do that here effectively, or would the greed and corruption of the few that run such systems serve to wreck the effectiveness? We already have social security and medicare/medicaid. Even SSI. We need a healthcare system that doesn’t cause the average citizen to go bankrupt whenever someone in his family has a catastrophic illness or accident, even though they have “good” insurance.

I do my banking at a credit union, not a “for profit” bank. It works out well for me and many others. Greed has not caused my credit union to throw their capital into risky lending practices. They are a co-op of members with mutual respect. We need some more things to be done on a cooperative basis for the sake of the citizens of this country. Things like education, healthcare, taking care of the elderly that cannot care for themselves anymore but have outlived their progeny and their savings, should be shared responsibilities. Instead, we have left our children to pay for our folly. It’s inconceivable that we could be so callous!

Not strictly accurate, but I’m calling it McCain’s ”15-State Strategy” – it leaves him no margin for error, and a very good chance of losing in a landslide.

The real key for the economy is to get real wages to rise, and other than some mild nods to making it easier for unions, there’s really nothing that a policy maker could do.

Infrastructure spending will help put a floor under the downturn, especially among construction workers, and help the U.S. in the longer term, but it too is not a cure-all.

Not much talk in the portion I tuned in for on medical, but that is certainly a macroeconomic problem, and Obama’s plan is weak.

Gotta get to some pressing matters for a meeting this afternoon.