What's on Katie's Mind? Katie: The artist, teacher, and social commentator.

I’m tired of the same old recycled scare tactics I keep reading and hearing about.  Under President George W. Bush we all had to worry about our neighbors, who could be terrorists.  We spent many years wondering how we might possibly be blown up by some half crazed terrorists that hate us for what we stand for.  If you are a teacher you even helped in this mass indoctrination by jumping through hoops at your school to assure school safety.  You may have had to listen to police officers explain to you how easy it is for a terrorist to enter your school even if you live in the middle of no where land.  In fact you were probably told they like those places the best because it would be so unexpected.  We have been wrapped up in this fear for almost ten years.  In those years we have agreed to be checked and prodded in lines like cattle, scanned like a piece of meat at the grocery store, and put under the watchful eye of “Big Brother” through numerous well placed videos all in an attempt to keep our “freedoms”.

When Bush was in office we all heard about the many color coded terrorist threats.  I cannot even remember what they all mean any more but much like a thermometer as the color went up so did the threat of a terrorist attack.  For as many “second in command” for Osama Bin Laden that we have killed in these two wars, there were always more we were supposed to worry about.  They were like a never ending supply of rats.  Where there was one, there must be many more.

Today we don’t hear so much about this threat.  Now we have new threats, usually related to our health and well being, to worry about.  If we aren’t hearing about eggs and salmonella, Swine flu, or some other disease then we are worrying about bed bugs and other insect carrying diseases.  It’s a good thing they passed the health care bill because by the sounds of it, we should all be ready for an epidemic of mass proportions.  We were all encouraged to get our flu shots, the H1N1 and the regular one because we were all going to be falling down in the streets dying like flies.  A few years ago we were even worrying about “SARS”.

This all makes me think about fear.  FDR always said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  The truth is we have everything to fear in a society filled with fear mongering.  The government has tried everything they could to keep the masses under control.  They did a pretty good job using the churches for this for many years, but since most people don’t go to church on a regular basis any more, the churches haven’t been doing the best job of keeping us compliant and complacent.  In comes mass media to make sure we are kept on our toes about the next big thing to fear.  If we are kept fearful we are less apt to make any waves.  It just makes sense that we aren’t going to rock any boats about much of anything, if we fear everything.

Today I would have to say most people are fearful about the economy and what the future holds for them.  This type of fear is really powerful because it can even get normally powerful unions to bow to the acceptance of nothingness.  No, don’t make any waves because the next wave could be the loss of your job.  We will be compliant little workers doing what we’re told and jumping through hoops to do the best darn job we can do.  We will make ourselves irreplaceable, even though that just isn’t possible, by working harder for less and pretending to love every minute of our self proclaimed diet of hard work.  We will be compliant and complacent because we saw what happened to the last guy that opened his mouth and said something.  This economy is good for business because it makes sheep out of workers.  George Bush always had the philosophy that expected more but paid less.  This is what has happened in our society.

With so many people out of work or working at a job that is beneath their skill set, many are left just hanging on and working hard to be productive workers.  This is good for business.  Business gets far more from their workers when the workers are afraid of losing their jobs.  No one wants to be the last one, because the future is so unsure.  It also helps if you have friends in high places.  This is a good time to “know someone” on the inside.  Nepotism is the wave for any job opening today.  It can get your foot in the door even if you aren’t the most qualified person for the position.  However, you will usually still have to do the job once you get it.  None of this sounds fair and of course it’s not good for the worker because the worker is stuck just taking what he can get.  It makes it a tough time to ask for a raise or any increased benefits because you’re going to hear that old line about how times are tough.  You know they’re tough as you’ve been living those tough times.

This is the state of our economy.  It is the economy of fear.  The government wants to keep us compliant and complacent.  We can’t mass protest anything that really matters these days because what really matters is putting food on the table for your family.  No one wants to draw attention to themselves to the point where they may lose their job, so any real protests are going to have to be done by the unemployed.

While all of this is happening, the government continues to tell us our children are not educated.  Our children won’t be able to compete in the future because they don’t know enough science and math.  We are living in a global economy, so our technology jobs have to go to India where they are so much more educated.  This once again is                  indoctrination.  Our children have to stay in school because there are no jobs for them.  When they graduate from college they usually have to take a job that is beneath their ability, so they can pay for their student loans.  They may go to grad school because they can’t find adequate work.  They may go work in the family business because face it, that family business is going to take care of their own first.  It is difficult for young people today.  If they go to college, they may not find adequate work and if they don’t go to college they obviously won’t find adequate work.

So what is the answer to all of this gloom and doom about the economy and fear of everything?  I admit I don’t necessarily know the answers.  However, I do know when something smells foul, it probably is spoiled.  When the government and the mass media continually beat that dead horse about young people being uneducated, I will continue to put on my thinking cap and think about what might really be happening.  There is a shortage of jobs right now and every year young people are graduating from high school and college looking for work.  If the old were to retire earlier then there would be more jobs.  That was part of the philosophy here in Michigan when incentives were made for early retirement for teachers this past year.  Of course the government ended up putting the cost of this onto the backs of employed teachers by requiring them to pay 3% more into their retirement without any included benefit for that “tax”.

Many economists have falsely claimed that social security is broken, needs fixing, etc.  They of course want to privatize it.  There are easy fixes involved for this by taking the cap off social security but also instead of requiring workers to work longer, there could be incentives made to retire earlier.  If that happened, maybe there would be more work for young people.  Now, I’m just throwing this stuff out there because the mass media seems to do a good job of throwing enough crap at us until something sticks, so I thought I’d play that game as well.

The government hasn’t been able to find a way to solve this economic problem that we are facing.  We need to think about other alternatives to getting our economy moving again.  If people retired earlier, they would spend some of that retirement money and get it back into the economy.  They’d take trips, maybe buy a second home and of course have to furnish that home.  All of this would tie into getting this economy moving again.  The young people would also be spending money and buying homes and having families because they have a JOB and can now be productive citizens of society.  Too often the government is worried about giving anything to the masses, so they probably won’t consider my plan.  They’d rather spend all the money on bailouts for banks and corporations; you know their “peeps”.  However, if you took that money that was used to bailout the banks and had given it back to the people, I bet there would have been more movement with the economy.  My son bought a place because of the tax incentive.  His dad bought a car because of the tax incentive.  Those were incentives that helped some people but of course not those without jobs.

I think we need to look at this picture a whole different way.  We must find a way to get out of this recession, depression or whatever the government chooses to label it.  All I know is this is a bad time for our country and we need to find answers that work.  Some will say my idea is crazy but at least it’s an idea.  Lately, it seems like those in government just aren’t doing anything at all and hoping the problem will heal itself or will simply go away.  I don’t think that is going to happen.  One thing the government needs to stop is all of the fear mongering.  I’m tired of being told to fear everything from my neighbors to the food I eat to even my job.  If we are to solve our economic problems we are going to have to work together for the good of all.  That means Democrats and Republicans need to quit playing these “fear” games and start pushing programs that will benefit the economy.  This doesn’t mean tax cuts for the wealthy either.  We have to pay for these two wars that have been unfunded and we have to boost the economy.  That isn’t going to happen with cutting those taxes.

So my basic idea is to give incentives for early retirement for Social Security.  It is the opposite of course from what we are being programmed to think!  This is plain and simple enough in its concept, but of course we would have to remove the cap on Social Security so those making much more money would be expected to pay more into it.  When Social Security was originally developed it was used to help take care of the elderly and of course provide more jobs for the young through the retirement of the elderly and the administration of the program.  This would be the same concept as before.  We are at a time in our history when people are struggling.  Some people that are unemployed are very close to retirement age, but not close enough.  We could lower the age for those people or we could give incentives for people that are older, so they don’t have to wait until they’re 70, to get enough money to live on.  We have been bleeding jobs out of our country for years.  If people are expected to work longer and longer until they’re 70 or so, how on earth can we, as a country, make up the jobs that need to be replaced?  If the old are expected to keep working, we will continue to struggle with providing enough jobs for everyone.  In a perfect world the same amount of people that retire are replaced with new workers.  In our world, we are expected to work longer for less.  Young people are magically expected to find some new job that probably doesn’t exist in our country.  If we had a growing economy, this might be possible, but as it is right now we are not creating enough jobs to fill these needs and of course many of our jobs have gone overseas.  I personally think this could help a lot of people from the young to the old.  Of course the people making the big salaries will have to pay more for this to happen.  I think it’s time for the wealthy of this country to ask not what this country can do for them, but what they can do for our country!

http://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html