capitalism by mayeesherr.
What is most frustrating to this American is solutions to our problems and issues do exist but remain unresolved.
The "why" and "why not" that solutions are not implemented are multiple, but in America, money and the political influence it buys is behind the resistance to solve and or reform the issues and problems that are plaguing us.
Whether its health care, the financial industry, defense spending, our global war on terror, building levees that could withstand a category 5 hurricane, global warming and its denial, public school education, college student debt, the financing of elections, gun control, just to name a few of the various problems and issues that come to mind that could be solved but are not.
Take health care; most people know and want a single payer, Medicare type health care system to be implemented. It would insure everyone, cut costs substantially and would eliminate the monopolizing private, for profit health care system that increases costs each year well beyond inflation, has enormous overhead costs while providing health care outcomes that are ranked 37 th in the world when compared with other industrialized countries which have a universal type health care system in place.
But a single payer health care system in America is prevented from being implemented primarily because private health care lobbies against it as their largesse underwrites the lawmakers electoral campaigns and thus elected and reelected remain beholden to their financial backers to keep the current private health care system in place and preventing a single payer system from being considered.
The same for reforming the financial industry; its excesses are legendary causing the financial meltdown in 2008 and the subsequent great recession. The big banks under water should have been allowed to fail, the Glass Stiegel Act of 1933 reinstated separating the commercial banks from the investment banks and derivatives, credit default swaps and the bundling of mortgages into securities and sold as investment instruments to unsuspecting buyers (even when the traders selling them knew they were suspect) would be regulated and controlled.
Instead the big banks were made whole again, allowed to borrow billions in Federal Reserve funds nearly interest free, which they didn't invest to help stimulate the economy or lend to small businesses, but did use the FED funds to continue the bundling and packaging of new financial instruments as if the crisis they created in 2008 never happened while real regulation to control their excesses were never enacted.
Again, why was this permitted to happen? For the same reason the health care system wasn't reformed. The financial industries lobbying and underwriting of lawmakers electoral campaigns make them beholden to those interests and having no intent to enact the necessary reforms.
As for defense spending it is unnecessarily bloated. We build unnecessary weapon systems from new generation jet fighters, new atomic submarines or new aircraft carriers even though there is no adversary out there to justify these expenditures. But defense industry lobbyists perform the same function as their health care and financial industry counterparts do, so unnecessary defense expenditures continue unabated. And it's worth noting, defense industry companies are "conveniently" located in 44 states thus assuring the lawmakers in those states will continue to fund these unnecessary weapons.
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