The Entirety of Conservative Leadership – Part 3
Enough is Never
The Entirety of Conservative Leadership – Part 3
Enough is Never
Greed. The five-letter word that ends representative societies. It was geed after all that brought down the Soviet Union. Party leaders were greedy with resources and lived in comfort while their people toiled in servitude barely making ends meet. They were greedy with power as they consolidated power into the Party hands and even that was further consolidated into fewer and fewer hands. As in most authoritarian states, the hoarding of resources and power eventually lead the system to fail. The U.S.S.R. was short on innovation and research and dependent on the freedom of research and thought found in the West. Researchers that tried and failed in the U.S.S.R. (like Nazi Germany) were not treated well. Failure meant demotion or prison or even death.
Greed is now devouring America. As conservative politics and economic policies became mainstream, individual greed now influences government policies and operations in many state houses up through the Congress, Executive Branch and now even the appointed federal judiciary.
Examine how greed led us to “Enough is Never” and it becomes very clear. Thousandaires ($100,000) wanting to become millionaires wanting to be multimillionaires wanting to become billionaires to multibillionaires and now the race is on to become the first individual trillionaire. After all, we now have several companies valued at a trillion dollars so this is the next logical process. There just never seems to be enough for these people. Maximum growth replaces sustainability.
On the individual basis things started with having one car, then two cars, one house, then a vacation house, one boat then a second when one got the second vacation house on the lake. Just seems that enough is never. I know that I am guilty of this.
It just seems that those with the most always want more. They either want another of something or theirs just must be bigger. A 75-foot yacht must be followed with a 100 foot yacht and there must be a yacht on the gulf, east coast, west coast and one on the Great Lakes. A house in the mountains needs one on Lake Tahoe, one on the beach, and new cars at each one. Heaven, forbid, one must drive from one house to another when one can have cars at each house. Then there are the planes. No need to use commercial airlines when their own private plane will do or even better, NetJets or something like it. Avoid the airport security lines and the regulations normal people follow. Perfect way for someone like “Christian” preacher Kenneth Copeland to avoid being around “those” people, unlike the Christ he claims to serve.
The “enough is never” crowd keeps score by having the bigger yacht, bigger plane, more cars, more and more expensive cars, bigger bank account, and finally a bigger rocket. “Look at me” as Elon Musk sends a car into space on the tax payer supported SpaceX. It just never seems to be enough. All the while these people are involved in their “pissing” contest, millions of people suffer from hunger, disease, lack of housing, education, and a lack of security. Meanwhile, the “enough is never” crowd lives in their secure compounds behind their private security apparatus and personnel.
The conservative leadership no longer concerns itself with the concerns of working people, but mainly with those that will fill their pockets. Robert Reich shows in his recent Substack post how a generational fortune has passed down to a fourth generation is now being used against working people to make sure that government serves the wealthy:
The conservative leaders used to hold the Constitution up and defend it but now it does not matter to them. They seek to privatize almost everything that is public. The post office is listed in the Constitution, but they seek to take it private or at least hamstring it to allow UPS and FEDEX an upper hand. The same of the IRS, and other governmental agencies and programs designed to work for the people. They put regulations on the government agencies while reducing regulations on private companies under the guise of better competition.
The “enough is never” push for taking over Medicare took hold with the Advantage programs that G.W. Bush pushed that allows for the mirage of better use of tax dollars, but the reality is costing taxpayers (working class) people much, much more than if the government ran the program. The conservative leadership fought to keep Medicare from openly negotiating on drug prices citing it would be detrimental to “competition” and the “free” market. This has allowed the pharmaceutical industry to profit enormously. Another aspect of the conservative leadership feeding the “enough is never” people revolves around the so called exorbitant pricing for new drugs that have received large amounts of tax dollars for research and then allowed to take extreme profits for a period of time. Kind of like that “tax free” zones or decade conservative leadership in states offer corporations to relocate or remain in their locales. The “enough is never” crowd takes much more than they ever return, but do not ask the conservative leadership about this. They will never admit to the facts, just the promises.
Remember how the “trickle down” economics would lead to prosperity for all? The Kochs started a think tank aptly named “Americans for Prosperity” which, in reality, is prosperity for the “enough is never” crowd, but not for working people. Much like Milton Friedman’s fraudulent “free market” design leads to monopolies and the suppression of the ability of working people to move up the economic ladder.
If we are to have a democracy then it is time for the working people of this country at every level to start removing “conservative leadership” from elected positions. New leadership could then work to make sure that government employees would once again be free to do the work of the working people and make sure that the “enough is never” crowd is relegated back to the shadows.
And to add...those never enough group of almost trillionaires need to be taxed at a much higher rate than now. As Robert Reich says, "Don't tell me they can't afford a wealth tax." He's right.