I wrote a short blog on how we as a nation, in an effort to
help those less fortunate then ourselves have created an environment that will
eventually enslave the lower class. Hard
truths are hard truths. It is not our nature to want to hear them. We prefer to gather
information that supports our point of view, not challenge it. One of the roles
of the Reticular Activating System within our brain is specifically designed to
ferret out those sources of information that move us from internal conflict to
peace.
Even agnostic George Holyoake's in his 1896 publication English
Secularism defined secularism as: That it is good to do good. Whether there
be other good or not, the good of the present life is good, and it is good to
seek that good. So as Americans we strive to do what we feel is in the good.
I ran across an
interesting whitepaper entitled "The
Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerization ", September
2013, Oxford University Engineering and Science Department. It's over seventy
pages, but it boils down to the graphs below:
The population at the greatest risk of having their
jobs replaced by automation are the low wage, low skill jobs represented by the
lower class. If we add to this our propensity to compensate for low income by
providing financial support through government programs, we are creating a
class of people held in bondage. They just simply don't have the where with all
to climb out of the dependance based inviroment they find themselves in. They
have to find employment that catapults them from lower class to middle class in
one fell swoop.
The problem is that they may
find that the normal intermediary steps required to improve their financial life
are punitive. They may actually have to decrease their standard of living, now
at the bottom of the American dream, before they can move upward. They have to
give up government subsidies, start paying taxes and still have enough income
to maintain their lowly standard of living. Tough love...
Kerby Anderson talks about the ten stages in the decline of a
nation. They are (with my interpretation):
1. Spiritual Faith
(our founding fathers)
2. Great Courage
(American Revolution)
3. Birth of Liberty
(The Constitution)
4. Abundance (World
leadership)
5. Selfishness (My
specific wants and needs rule my decisions)
6. Complacency
(sometimes under the guise of Tolerance)
7. Apathy
8. Moral Decay
9. Dependence
10. Bondage
I stopped notating after
number six because I am not sure exactly where we are as a nation. We clearly
have moved into, and perhaps beyond selfishness. Have we become complacent? It
is hard to say. We seem to be broadening the definition of acceptable behavior.
States now run the gambling concession through lotteries. States have also
started to legalize drug use. Is this because we selfishly feel that we should
not be stopped from doing what pleases us, or are we just too complacent to
stop some fringe niche group from eroding our sensibilities.
Twenty, thirty or fourty
years from now, where will we be? Will we be a nation that has a substantial
population that is dependent on the government to the point that they are
incapable of taking care of themselves. Will those who actively contribute to
the cofferes of the government be able to contribute enough? Will we be
overtaken by Stage 3 or Stage 4 countries, some of which have population three
and four times ours.
If this does happen.... will
we all slip into bondage because we do not have the resources to maintain our independence? Will their economic engines run ours?
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