Our present system of democracy is a failure. When there is complete freedom, what develops is a capitalist free-for-all, with all of the money vacuuming up from the poor below to the rich above. This becomes the classic Law of the Jungle, a very familiar pattern. Since Money and Power are just two ways of looking at the same thing, the richest people have the most power. So, when it becomes time to collect taxes to pay for the collective expenses of the State, naturally the taxes will be collected from the poorest people, rather than from the wealthy, if they have anything to say about it, and they do (money talks).
As many people have observed, our government was formed to protect the interests of the wealthy founders and property owners, and all that talk about Democracy and Freedom was just fluff, to make the project sound lofty. For example, there was a fear that the English king might outlaw slavery, which would have a catastrophic effect on American plantations, which were based upon the economics of slavery. That would never do, in the Land of the Free.
But if Democracy be just another word for the Law of the Jungle, how else can we run a country ? Fundamentally, it is imperative to take control away from those with the most money and the most power, and find an alternative arrangement that provides direction from the point of view of what is best for the country, not necessarily what is best for the class of the wealthy and powerful.
For all its excesses and failings, this is the reason behind China’s astonishing advances on many fronts, ultimately showing up on the account books as economic growth, rapidly leaving everyone else in the dust in their inexorable rise to the top of the economic heap (“King of the Mountain”). China is on the forefront of renewable energy, producing most of the solar panels and most of the electric vehicles used in the world, while our poor little Donald is still promoting fossil fuels and discouraging all green energy advancement because of his political obligations to the wealthy and powerful who have donated to his campaign and continue to provide support for his failing Presidency. (More beautiful coal, anyone ?) The largest capital industry of the United States is the production of armaments, and all of those companies are doing very well indeed, thank you. And thank you, literally, Donald; and more on the way, so keep up the wartime economy, please.
Can anything be more clear ? Just because we are over here, as inheritors of a capitalist system of government, it doesn’t mean that we cannot make a change. Here is an edited version of the Declaration of Independence ~ Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it. . . . it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. ~ Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 1776.
So if the people of the United States (or anywhere else) are going to have any chance in competition with China, they are going to have to evolve their systems away from Jungle Democracy to some system that benefit the people, the country, and the planet. In the case of taxation, why on earth should anyone tax poor people ? The major function of a central government should be to tax the wealthy and provide services for the poor. Since the natural pattern of money is the constant vacuuming up of wealth from the poor to the rich, the function of the State should be to tax the money from the few at the top and distribute it down, to the benefit of the many. Obviously, this is in direct opposition to the natural desire of the wealthy and powerful ~ to maintain and increase their wealth and power, but that’s why I’m here saying that we have to make a change.
If the government taxed the top off of all wealthy individuals and corporations, they could then use those funds to maximize the total benefit for everyone ~ changing the priorities from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy, for example, or banning glyphosate (Round-Up) no matter how much money Bayer Chemical (formerly Monsanto) pays to the government, or its stockholders.
There are lots of things that should be free for everyone ~ health care, education, inner city transit, etc. I have even suggested that an extensive network of free farms, where anyone could live for free, would ultimately cost less than any other way of dealing with the problems of the poor. The wealthiest people of the world should be willing to pay the costs of these things with a good grace. Noblesse Oblige.
China is investing in all of the directions in which it is excelling ~ in better batteries, for example, for their electric vehicles. They are evolving their systems as fast as they can to accommodate the changing face of reality on the ground, particularly the effects of our warming planet, which is one of the most serious problems facing the survival of life, unfortunately overshadowed by the unspeakably horrible manifestations of the folly of war everywhere, including genocide. China, for all of its bluster over Taiwan, has not really been actively engaging in any war lately, in dramatic contrast to the end-state behavior of the United States under Trump, constant war on all fronts, which inevitably drags down the net wealth of a country faster than anything else. (Vladimir Putin might study this, and learn that bluster is a lot cheaper, and can be just as effective, as fighting a hot war.) While the people of China are busily at work making things and selling them throughout the world, the United States is dragging its heels, wallowing in the chaos of endless war, and the widening wealth gap between the United States and China is the clearest evidence that the United States is doing something wrong, and that China is doing something right. We need to evolve from the Jungle to the Garden.
Curriculum Vitae ~ links about the Author and his work.
