As to health care, I promise nothing for free. We will all pay for it, but just differently than our currently inefficient way of filtering it through a third-party make-work insurance bureaucracy that consumes 31% of the costs without ever laying hands on the patient. And incidentally, adding its costs for marketing, broker commissions, actuarial and legal costs, CEO salaries, bonuses, stock options, shareholder profits, and even campaign contributions and lobbying expenses.

As well, there’s another 20% for over-utilization and fraud, so easily half of our health care costs are NOT for health care, and that’s why we spend twice per-capita than all other nations. The most efficient system would be a Medicare-for-all system that is funded by taxpayers and does not burden businesses, making them uncompetitive and driving jobs out of the US economy. The Big Three now make more cars in Canada than in the U.S.. They pay $800 per employee per year in Canada, and $6500 in the U.S..

As to ‘equal societies,’ try Sweden, which socializes only medicine and education and is considered by many to have the highest standard of living in the world. Do they have as many rich money manipulators as we do? Probably not. But that’s because they essentially “socialize” their electoral system with public funding of campaigns, thus the money manipulators go elsewhere.

Actually, they go to the U.S. where they can buy politicians and deregulation. I must at this point ask, how are you liking our unregulated free market now?

I am basically a capitalist and believe in the free market, to an extent. I do not believe in the unregulated free-for-all market that began in the Reagan years (though I voted for him, and Bush, twice, and McCain).

But our free market has gotten out of hand. It is bought and paid for, as your example of ethanol points out. Follow the money and you’ll find that Archer Daniels Midland has bought our politicians for years. And the corporate farming industry has virtually killed the small farmer. And just about every other industry has been bought by the special interests. (Get that? Bought! As in “bribes to politicians!”)

As to the Constitution, I love most of what it has done for America. It’s a super start, but it’s only a start. Its framers did not foresee how “freedom of speech” could be distorted to mean “freedom to bribe your politician.” Or how corporations could be given personhood.

There is one basic change in our system that would shut me up for good: Get the bribery and corruption out of our political system! At that point health care and bailouts and regulation and deregulation would all be taken care of in the best interest of the public.

Without political bribery we would not be facing another Great Depression. We would not be spending twice for the health care we lucky 85% are receiving.

You want equality? Check out the most equal societies in the world and I will show you the most primitive. When we are all equal, we will all be equally poor.

The problem is not money or even greed per se. IF I respect your rights, IF I can not use the force of government to steal from you what I do not have the strength or courage to steal from you directly, the only way I can acquire some of your wealth is to beg for it, or produce a product or service that you are willing to purchase. It is this “greed” and the specialization of labor that have made the West, and the US in particular the richest countries these last 200 yrs or so.

It is perhaps serendipitous that you choose the graph plotting incomes from 1913 to 1998. You correctly find the spike in 1928, and in the late nineties. You do not address cause and effect in a meaningful way, however. Both spikes are because of money manipulations. Both the downturn of the 30′s and the current one are because of mal-investments caused by a loose money supply. Farmer wants a bigger tractor so he can produce more corn, takes out a loan that is mostly money created out of thin air. He (and thousands of other farmers who did the same thing) produce a bumper crop of corn, which the market may not need. Supply and demand says price will fall, and it often does (except when we foolishly subsidize corn ethanol plants to increase the demand for corn.) So on net, the farmer makes the same income with higher payments. “Counterfeit money creates counterfeit businesses which can only be sustained by further debasing our currency.”

Bankers love to collect interest on money they and the Federal Reserve counterfeit, but these dollars only have value as they dilute the purchasing power of the rest of us. Others, who get the money early, similarly benefit. Think stock brokers, real estate agents. Legally counterfeited money drives prices up, especially of capital goods, and usually the rich benefit the most.

But the counterfeit currency boom is always followed by a deflationary bust, as the loans that created the money get wiped off the books. The more money that is created to sustain the boom (as in the last 8 yrs.) the more severe the bust is likely to be, and the more people who are likely to be hurt. The Great Depression was caused by the FED, and so is the current economic debacle. And the date 1913 is particularly apt, as that is the year that one of our worst presidents, Woody Wilson, signed the Federal REserve act into law.

The dotcom bubble, the real estate bubble, the automobile bubble ( you know, when the bought forward the cars that folks were going to buy a few yrs from now by offering great credit terms a few yrs ago?) the rise in stock prices, Hank Paulson’s ability to create money into existence while head of Goldman Sachs, in order to drive stock prices, and commissions up, the concentration of wealth directed especially toward the money manipulators, all the product of the Federal Reserve and its policies. OH, and do not forget the bust. That too is a result of their shell game, their lie that something can had, if not for nothing, then for very little.

Getting a little long here, but one last thing: IF government were limited in what it could do( like maybe is suggested in that GD piece of paper, the constitution ) then the amount of money one contributes could buy very little influence, except maybe to continue protecting the sanctity of our rights by preserving the integrity of government limited by said document. We have corrupt politicians because we, the electorate are corrupt in thinking we too can have something for nothing.