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BitaTruble -> RE: Paying the Tab (10/21/2008 1:23:30 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ArizonaSunSwitch
It shouldn't be cut in half, it should be cut to one dollar a year, no health benefits, no pension, no benefits at all. It's supposed to be *SERVICE*. At the beginning of this country the legislators would go to washington (or philly), do their duty for a couple months then go back to their *jobs*. It's been downhill ever since we allowed our representatives to turn themselves into royalty.
Temp contract service jobs pay about $10-$15 an hour and I'm fine with that but I do agree on the pension, benefits etc. Temp workers don't get those perks and Congress shouldn't either.
Oh, and term limits. We need term limits on every branch of government. Somewhere between 4-8 years depending on the branch and on a rotating schedule so there is always fresh brains and ideas going in while the tired go back to whatever it is they were doing before they decided to make politics a career. Politics should not be a career. I'm a strong advocate of a single six year term for the office of President. No more lame ducks and no more mid-term elections to distract the man/woman in the big chair.
Re: OP - paying the tab
Call me an optimist. I think if we decide we can fix it, then we will. That power of positive thinking thing. It's going to call for a massive reduction in spending and an increase in taxes.. but that's not enough because that doesn't go to the root of the problem and if we don't change that root, we'll find ourselves right back in this situation.
It's going to have to include evolving the mindset of an entire generation or two because until we get back to 'use it up and wear it out' we're not going to get out of this mess. We throw millions of pounds of consumable food into the garbage. We don't recycle raw materials .. bottles, clothing, cans etc. We leave on lights and waste electricity, don't keep our cars maintained properly which wastes gas and a host of other things. Little things, yanno.. that add up to create part of the problem.
You know what I hear most when I talk about conservation? "It won't help."
That's the mindset that has to change because it will, absolutely, positively help. You really can fill up a bucket with an eyedropper. It just takes a while. If you're one person, it's going to take a whole lot longer than if you have 100 people going to the bucket with an eyedropper.
What we owe right now is the tip of the iceberg compared to what we're going to owe if we don't do something about Social Security. Burying our heads in the sand, like the last 4 Presidents have done on this issue isn't going to make the problem go away.
The vast majority of wealth in this country is all on paper and when something like Wall Street happens, all it's doing is pushing the numbers from one side of the ledger book to the other. We need to really look at wealth from a different perspective. Wealth needs to be tangible, touchable. We need to go back to producing instead of just consuming and raise our labor market to shrink the huge gap between the paper haves and the paperless have nots. It's just not possible to do that without investing in things like new technology, renewable energy resources, education and things of that nature and that takes paper and that means raising taxes and until we start sending in representatives who have evolved mindsets nothing is going to change.
Patch kits aren't going to work we need to embrace a viewpoint that involves long term, permananet solutions. Evolve mindsets, cut waste at home and in government, invest wisely and well.
It's a start and we gotta start somewhere.
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