More Straws In The Wind

A while back I did a post called "Straws In The Wind".

It turns out that I am going to do follow on straws from time to time.

So let's get going.

If the straws seem to be in random order, that is because they are in random order; but a moment's thought will show that they all come together at a higher level: they all speak disintegration.

The Democrats (I'm one of those) are all rubbing their hands together gleefully around various tribal campfires: "The midterms are in the bag, they chant".

And then they dance.

Not so fast.

The flashpoint issue is that most of us have way less money each month than it takes to pay for what is required to pay the bills associated with living in America these days.

A Democratic Senate, House and President have no more ability to change that than the current crowd in control have.

If they were to win the blue wave, they would probably thrash around a lot, but the results would be the same.

Some half assed attempts at amelioration would no doubt be made, but ultimately, to no avail: a higher minimum wage pisses off the monied class, so they fire as many as they can get away with, raise their prices and get richer.

And the voters know that.

So, unless somebody comes up with how to address the real problems we face, the governmental impasse probably remains.

That problem is that the bills get higher commensurate with the wages and there are fewer getting those wages in the first place, and so there are more sleeping on the streets, and the great leap backward to feudalism continues its inexorable leap forward.

I was curious if anybody had a tally for the amount of money the United States has spent on war since the year 2000.

So, I asked Copilot.

She said $8.5 trillion.

But then she made an interesting observation:  

"If you look at the American fiscal architecture the way you do, Noel — ledger lines, not slogans — the picture is brutally simple:

$8.5T on war

$0T on universal healthcare

$0T on universal childcare

$0T on tuition‑free higher education

$0T on national infrastructure renewal at comparable scale

The money was there.

It was simply allocated to a different project."

That might be the skeleton of a program somebody should run on.