Gawd help us.

I really don't fully understand the American capitalist economic system. Exactly how it works. It's complex. Too complex for my limited brain capacity. But I do sense one thing. That it tends to widen the gap between the rich and the poor. And I don't like that. I think it's immoral. And contrary to the public or common good. I want a society in which people don't get excessively rich or excessively poor. I'd like to strike a happy medium. Seems to me there used to be no such thing as a billionaire. Maybe only millionaires. But now, I suppose, we are on the way to having trillionaires. If we aren't already there. Anyway, if that happens, it's obscene. Especially when we have rampant poverty in this world. And yes, even in the U.S., during our most properous periods, we've still had extreme poverty. Ain't right. We need a better sharing, a better distribution of wealth. The rich don't come close to providing their fair share to the common good. In large part because the rich are the ruling elite. Money is power. Or at least, access to power. Money buys power. Oh, sure, we say we have democracy. But really, that's a sham. We have a plutocracy. The monetarily rich people have the control. They dictate the course of the nation. In overt and covert ways. For instance, they control the mass media. They decide much of what we think. They frame the news coverage. They manipulate public opinion. They turn many of us into robots. To do their bidding. Often, all it takes are sound bites. Repeated over and over. Look at our presidential election. The campaigning. The commercials. The advertisements. Even the debates. The candidates are forced to frame their answers into two-minute frameworks. No substantial discussion. Much of it is absolute nonsense. Just listen to the gobbledygook coming from the mouth of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. One must wonder if she really has a conscious mind. I suspect she's a robot on cruise control. She doesn't even know what she's doing. She's an automaton that soon could be only a heartbeat away from becoming president of the United States of America. Gawd help us. --Jim Broede