Oh, politics.
A lot of people don't care about them, but they should. As of late I have been wishing that the general American populace actually researched politics instead of being casually interested in them, as I am growing more and more wary of the state of the US after the 2016 election. Why? Oh, I'll tell you why: Donald Trump.
See, I was raised by a mother who was VERY interested in politics. She always told me, "Don't believe everything a candidate says on TV. Research what they have voted for in the past, what they have said on issues that you are concerned about in the past. Always listen for their plans as to how they are going to execute it; don't just assume they have a plan just because they say they do." I have always taken that to heart, and have always researched candidates before deciding who I support.
As a result, I have flip flopped between candidates this year. At the beginning, I was leaning more toward Rand Paul. I had supported his father Ron Paul in the previous election, which was the first election; however, I was noticing that's Rand's policies were far more right winged than his father's. The one thing I liked about Ron Paul was that he wasn't interested in taking anyone's rights away, regardless as to what his personal beliefs were. Rand, however, has no issue making abortion, cannabis (marijuana for you lesser enlightened folks) and gay marriage illegal. And then, lo and behold, I came upon Bernie Sanders.
The first thing I noticed about him was that he uses the word "we" when talking about his campaign. When WE win. When WE take back this country. WE will not stand for injustice. His speeches were lit up with a fiery passion that I have never seen in a presidential candidate. So, I got to work. I researched his voting history, his background and his beliefs.
What I found was astonishing: he has ALWAYS been for the people. There are speeches dating back to the 1970's of him speaking on the shrinking middle class, income inequality, corporate subsidies and human rights. The biggest difference between him and the other candidates is that he actually has a very well thought out plan that you can find on his official website and elsewhere. (https://berniesanders.com/issues/).
Trump, unlike Sanders, really doesn't have much of a plan for "making America great again", as he loves to say. When asked as to how he manages to do so, he gives vague, poorly thought out descriptions of his plans, in between mentions of how Mexicans and Muslims are the root of all of our problems. The plans he does speak of are really nothing special; they are the same drivel that pretty much every other GOP candidate has been spouting for the past fifteen years. Except, he spikes it with "hip" language and current events to get people listening and get them thinking that his ideas are fresh and forward thinking.
Now, I don't know what Trump's true intentions are. He could very well be thinking that he can fix this country. However, there are a few things about him besides his racist attitude that bothers me. Firstly, his method of speech. A lot of people who support him say they like him because he "tells it like it is". I find this laughable at the very best; just because you know how to appeal to people's emotions and get them fired up and angry just by using your 4th Grade level English skills doesn't mean you're telling it like it is.
If anyone is telling it like it is, it's Bernie. While Trump focuses mainly on closing the boarders, Bernie has stated multiple times that he wants to make our government work for us once again. He says that the main reason for the rapid shrinking of the middle class is the fact that businessmen like Trump do not believe that it is their duty to take care of the people that they employ to earn their wealth for them. He also has noted that candidates like Trump and Clinton accept hefty donations from Wall Street, the Koch brothers, and other very wealthy elitists that are quite content to keep things the way they are. They pay these candidates to parrot rhetoric that they believe will get the public on board the bandwagon and then, if they are elected, they thumb their nose at the public and basically do the same thing every President after Reagan has done: nothing. However, Bernie refuses to accept donations from those people, and all of his campaign is funded by normal, working class Americans.
I think Bernie makes people uncomfortable because he is challenging everything we are taught as Americans from birth. We are taught that money and being successful financially is more important than anything else, that you have a right to earn more and more and that you shouldn't have to share if you don't want to. Your company or corporation? Your money. Good business always equals more profit. Ethical business is bad business because it doesn't always correlate with more profits. People who are poor are poor because they are lazy and do not contribute to society, ect. He states that ignoring individual plights and circumstances and allowing greed to run rampant in the corporate world is what is killing us.
For example. Trump is, first and foremost, a businessman. Not only that, but he is a really bad businessman. His companies have not gone defunct once, nor twice, but FOUR times. When a large corporation or company goes bankrupt, they are given a large sum of money from the government, called a bailout. That money comes out of YOUR pocket, and out of mine in the form of taxes that we pay, taxes that need to be going to our public transit systems, our increasingly hazardous roads and bridges, public schools and welfare programs.
Now, with most Trump supporters, I have lost them at the mention of welfare programs. It seems to be GOP kryptonite when someone mentions welfare, and is usually followed by whining about the "welfare state" and how people who are on welfare are chronic welfare abusers. While this is statistically true, it does not take into consideration what might be the root of the problem, which circles us back to businessmen like Trump.
Remember how I said that Trump and others like him don't want to take care of their employees? See, when you become so wealthy that you can afford to hire people to do the work for you, you are no longer earning your own money because you have paid someone to do it for you. You don't see the CEO of JC Penney standing at a register selling people curtains and clothes. The CEO of Taco Bell doesn't get up at five AM so they can open the restaurant at 8. They sit behind a desk and basically supervise. It is people like you and me who go to work and earn the CEO's paycheck for them.
However, we have the greedy attitude that says that unless you have your own business or you are willing to go deep into debt to get a higher education, you don't deserve to earn a good wage. Minimum wage jobs are just for teenagers looking for extra pocket money, right? Wrong. Statistically, a majority of minimum wage earners are over the age of 21, a lot of which are retirees that don't make enough on SSI to be able to afford to support themselves, so they are forced to take on a minimum wage job to supplement it. Others are in my age range (21-30) that cannot afford the time to attend college because they have to work in order to support themselves.
Corporations run by people like Trump pay as little as they legally can, because if they paid more it would cut into the CEO's gross amount of profits. Because of this, many people working minimum wage jobs are forced to be on food stamps or welfare in order to be able to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. That falls directly onto the taxpayer's shoulders, and it basically means that we are subsidizing these companies. This phenomenon is known as corporate welfare.
The problem with these companies not paying their employees well stems deeper though. When you aren't making a lot of money, you don't spend it, you save it. What do you suppose happens when a lot of people don't spend money? The economy stagnates. When I go into work, I know that if we didn't make a lot of sales that week, my hours for next week will be cut. That means less money for me to spend. And that means businesses that would have otherwise gotten my money for whatever reason are also taking a hit. The less money that circulates, the more our economy begins to crash and prices start to go up. When people have more money, they think more carefully about their purchases. When they go in to Sears to buy a new dishwasher, odds are that the one they have isn't on the brink of being retired for good because they didn't have to wait until last minute to replace it, and they have the time to go from store to store looking for the best deal. Companies know this, and when the economy is strong and lots of people have plenty of money to spend, you will notice that prices for most anything are lower than they would be if the economy were bad; obviously, if half as many people are buying a burger at McDonald's for $3, then McDonald's has to raise the price of a burger to $6 so their profits don't plummet. Of course, these price raises are not life or death decisions; the wellbeing of the company does not depend on these price hikes; the only thing that is affected is profits. As I said, the corporate goal is to raise them every year. They want you to think that these price hikes are necessary, that if they pay their employees better that prices are going to go up. And go up they do; notice how every time a company starts paying employees better, the prices go up? That's not because the company will go bankrupt if they don't; that's a CEO panicking about making up for lost profits.
Oh, but it goes even deeper than that. The corporate world views it's workers as disposable commodities. They are not people, they are merely commodities. Commodities that can be collected from much cheaper sources. Over the last 30 years, corporate fat cats have figured out that they can take their means of production to other countries so that they can pay ten Chinese, Vietnamese or Indian people the same amount of money as one American and get ten times the profit due to cheap labor and means of production to satisfy the need for ever increasing profits. As a result, a lot of factory, warehouse and other higher paying production jobs have been outsourced or heavily condensed, leaving a demand for jobs that these same companies are more than happy to satisfy in the form of a minimum wage job. Oh, your local Costco distribution center shut down? Never fear, we'll open up three new locations near you and you can work as a cashier making ten dollars less than you would have in the distribution center! Oh, you want a promotion? Well, you're going to have to work far outside of your job description and do the work of three people to show us just how much you deserve it, and then maybe after five years you will have proven yourself enough for a two dollar raise.
The sick, twisted part of this is that they are trying to convince the American people that it MUST be this way. It's YOUR fault for being so greedy and wanting a way to support yourself. Corporations had to outsource work because of greedy poor Americans. What a shame, right?
And that is exactly what Donald Trump parrots every time he speaks on the job situation in this country. He has stated outright that he thinks that the minimum wage should be lowered, and that these businesses have no choice to outsource because it "costs too much" to do business here, which is a bold faced lie. As I said earlier, they want you to believe it costs too much so that you'll continue to vote their friends into office so that they can keep doing business the way they are, so they can keep exploiting their workers and make a profit off of their suffering.
What a lot of people don't understand is, because of our consumerist society, we are all interconnected. We all have to do our part and take care of each other in a sense if we want our economy to stay healthy and strong. However, these corporations are not legally obligated to do their part. Bernie Sanders wants to change that profit driven way of thinking. He is talking full government reform; he wants small, efficient government that will serve the people. That is something I believe people have a hard time grasping; he isn't talking about little changes here and there, he is talking about completely starting from scratch, which is why you have to look at his plans a little differently than you would Clinton's or Trump's. He wants to educate the population on government and how our voting system works so that the people are educated enough to keep voting in people who will honor the new system.
I have said for years that it is time for revolution. I have said that if a revolution showed itself, that I would join in arms and fight to take my country back. Well, the revolution is here. Bernie Sanders is going to pave the way to a brighter, kinder and more efficient future for Americans in ALL walks of life. I urge every one of my readers to really look at his plans and see that his plans really are what is best for us. Change is needed, and change is coming.
