"Taxpayers not only ended up honoring foolish promises made by other people, they ended up doing so at 100 cents on the dollar."
This isn't really news since we all knew this anyway. But, Paul Krugman's quote above really put the whole financial debacle in its starkest terms. The last two administrations have basically taken existing and future wealth and handed it over no questions asked, no strings attached, to the financial industry. The result of this is that, along with two nearly decade long wars, you have and will be paying a substantial amount of your taxes until who knows when for the pockets of greedy military contractors, greedy bankers, and other affiliated lizards and cockroaches.
Yes, the hard work that you do for more than forty hours a week, 800 hours a month, and over 2000 hours a year (including commute, that's over forty percent of your day or over sixty percent of your waking hours) is spend partially paying off this debt. In fact, you could estimate that each year, you spend 500 hours sweating for those Wall Street figures laughing and pointing in your direction. But in truth, you really won't get to see these guys since they'll be behind their walled estates patrolled by armed guards and dogs, fitted with security cameras, and if they do emerge, it will be in bullet-proof Escalades, Bentley's, or Mercedes Benz's. The tinted windows will prevent even a glimpse of their profile. Truth is, they need every bit of that buffer.
At least there's the chance that you love your job and don't mind going there anyway so that could be some consolation. Maybe you even can afford these taxes since your expenses are all easily handled by your take home pay. College is getting cheaper, food is more affordable, and the house fixes itself---sure thing. At some point, those of you whom this fanciful ease of living does not apply to will either get mad or continue to die slowly. My hope is that your anger and resentment, quite justified in my mind, will be employed productively and collaboratively rather than through some solitary act of desperation. There is a potential for building community "out there" but only if you overcome the divisions tailor made to keep you ineffectual and isolated.
Most people have a latent positive productive capacity that can be harnessed for community building and collaborative good works. To find this capacity, this set of skills, requires us to look inward and cast off the superficial identities and baggage of civilization. We need to locate who we are at the core and this is what's needed to be developed and nurtured. Once we find our true selves and put in place a personal resiliency in anticipation of what the future holds, we can then venture forth and find other like-minded people to begin the work at the community level for building the parallel culture and, also very important, of showing the bankers and other minions of evil, what we think of their actions and deeds.
Just think of what could have been done with this money and the money used for wars that have no apparent purpose (other than maybe geopolitical maneuvering over resources). Health care, education, alternative energy, sustainability and relocalization, and quality of life--all could have been easily addressed without these alternative "projects" (but most say yes to taxes for soldiers, industrialists, and bankers but not kids and the sick). So not only has this alternative future been stolen from you, from us, but you have to pay for the alternative projects by slaving away at a job you probably hate, commuting for an hour on the freeway, and missing the best times of your life. Are you mad yet?
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