The Realities of American Health Care

The Realities of American Health Care

This musing starts with proposing a concept of what constitutes good government. For this musing good government will be defined as that form of government which maximizes the contentment level for the maximum number of citizens under that government. Good health care is certainly one of the factors which enable individuals to be more contented. 

A right to good health care fits in nicely with the ethical mantra called the Golden Rule: Do unto others as we would have them do unto us. It is not possible to earn good health care, especially in the formative years. A child in their formative years either receives good health care or they don’t. When a child, I had just about every conceivable communicable disease around except polio. Fortunately, the antibiotics to cure most of them had been discovered less than ten years before. My parents were able to afford the doctor bills which came with this endless medical care. I did not, in any way, earn my survival from these diseases. I was lucky. 

The American mantra for health care is partly based on a survival of the fittest mantra and the notion that everyone can earn their level of economic independence and good health. “I earned my success the old fashioned way—I earned it.” This may be good for our ego, but most often, has little connection to reality. 

The Golden Rule, as the basis for human ethics, is an inherent genetic factor which is universal, and which is independent of what religion inherited. No one ever claims the Golden Rule is not an ethical principle. Unfortunately, this universal principle is only invoked when convenient, as we have other goals which are more quickly gained via more self serving means. 

The Golden Rule is also the basis for every child or adult to have access to good schools, good teachers, a safe environment, good job opportunities at livable wages, a protected natural environment, basic civil rights, and a healthy tolerance for individual diversity. But we will stick here to the American need for a right for all citizens to have access to good health care. 

The intense political debate now taking place falls well short of a comprehensive package which will meet the needs of all our citizens. Let’s start here with all the realities involved. First of all, for all citizens to have good health care, a huge increase in the number of doctors, nurses, and health care involved employment will be necessary. In a country striving to provide good jobs for its own citizens, how can any government refuse to provide enough educational support to supply us with doctors, thus requiring a high percentage of doctors must be imported from other countries? That is not fair to our own young people and does not ensure providing the best health care professionals. To provide good education for more health care personnel will cost a lot money and more medical schools with revised, more sensible curriculums. However, once the money is found, it increases income for thousands upon thousands of employed citizens who then spend money with their purchasing power. If we want more good jobs for American citizens why would we import doctors and other health professionals from other countries? We have met the enemy and it is us. 

Next, it need be understood that a single payer system is the only way to provide good medical coverage for everyone. Letting some people have their own separate option enables those more affluent to create options in which the best doctors and best health professional providers will create their own system. This is already happening as more and more doctors charge upfront costly fees before they will accept a patient. This ensures the doctors will make more money and the patients will get appointments faster, and get treatment by the best doctors all using the same facilities as the less fortunate citizens.  The rest of the citizens, less affluent, not able to pay the upfront additional cost, will have to wait longer for an appointment, more likely get the least competent doctors, and in many cases most of their contact will be with Nurse practitioners, Physicians Assistants, and other assorted titles which are popping up. Thus, the system is returning to what we are trying to avoid—the affluent getting good health care, the less affluent getting 2nd class health care. We already have that.  With any effective single health care provider, it would be illegal for such private care alternative programs to be established. Period. When politicians argue that some union members have good health care insurance, and should be allowed to keep their old plans, we then are once again letting some workers get better health care than others. Same old, same old. The goal should be to raise the health care so that everyone gets good health care, in which case unions, along with everyone else, get the good health care that now just union members get. 

Next the government need establish a value system for careers and begin to use taxes on wealth/income/inheritance as once done back early in the 19th Century which enabled all economic classes to flourish like they never have since. Once this kind of steeply progressive taxation was eliminated, 2-5% of our citizens sequestered 90% of our nation’s wealth for themselves. There is this conception that the Golden Rule tries to level all people to some common level. This is silly. People, via diversity of their genetics, environment, and luck, will never be equal. What the Golden Rule does is try to level the playing field, and recognize that like with most everything in life, enough is enough. On what basis can any society really claim that it is just for any kind of Government to allow 3 individuals to own as much of that societies wealth as the bottom half of the citizens? It would be like a parent allowing the smarter, stronger, better looking, more social of their children, to use all these advantages to determine just how much of a families’ attention, financial assets, and privileges the more fortunate child can receive.  

The reality is that democracy in America is no longer even remotely being governed by the people via elections. The 2-5% of the citizens who own 90% of the wealth now control all three branches of government. They do this via bankrolling politicians who will vote for their interests or not get any funding and that often means they can’t get elected. Money, which is the most popular American object of worship, is seen as the key basis for contentment in their lives.  Numerous studies have shown that monetary wealth is a component of contentment only up to about a $70,000 range and after that it often actually becomes a negative. Those who tend to accumulate vast amounts of wealth are often obsessive, addictive, and compulsive about money. None of these three behaviors can ever generate contentment, except on a momentary basis, since enough will never be enough. When the amassment of vast amounts of wealth become addictive, obsessive, and compulsive then ethics becomes a smaller and smaller force in their lives. Our government is no longer able to remotely set limits on how much of our national wealth these 2-5% of its citizens can accumulate, and seldom holds these bandits for the consequences of their unethical or criminal behavior. It is not uncommon for billions of dollars in unethical/illegal behavior to result in fines only of several hundred thousands of dollars, plus it is rare for white collar criminals, no matter how many millions of people are hurt, ever receiving  jail time. Jail is apparently more appropriate for the more helpless poor, and minorities. 

At any rate, good health care, good schools, good teachers, living wage jobs, safe environments for all citizens, all require a massive input of money and a huge change in social and governmental priorities. Religion plays a significant role here in the situation. People have been taught that God will listen to their prayers, and therefore, if  the less fortunate citizens will pray to God for help, or the affluent pray for God to help the less fortunate, then all will get better. There is no evidence that God ever intercedes and saves anyone from God’s laws which govern the evolutionary process. What our species does have, which no other species has, is the ability for the affluent to help the less fortunate by living their lives according to the innate ethical nature of the Golden Rule. Of course it is easier to pray than sacrifice for the greater good of the whole, so too often, not much happens other then endless praying.  

In theory, governments are supposed to prevent monopolistic behaviors which enable some citizens to gain an amazing amount of wealth at the expense of other citizens. What could possibly be an ethical government if it allows certain citizens to amass so much wealth of that society, which is the real reason why so many less fortunate citizens have poor health care, poor schools, the least competent teachers, poor job opportunities, non living wage jobs, unsafe communities, etc. Politicians invariably say we cannot build better schools, pay teachers attractive wages, pay more citizens livable wages, take better care of the environment because there is no money to do that. Of course there is money to pay for all of this. Really?  Where is it? The 2-5% who own 90% of the wealth have grabbed all that money, often via special loopholes, tax breaks, tax shelters, etc. to manage the feat. Then there are the three individuals who own as much wealth as the bottom half of our citizens. We know where all the wealth is sitting.

It was pointed out earlier that for most everything there is a point where enough is enough. For there to be enough money to provide good health care to everyone, limits have to be put on the accumulation of a nation’s wealth by any individuals. The greater good of the whole tops the individual good of a few, which is not to say that people should not be allowed to become wealthy. Jeff Bozo of Amazon.com is worth 144 billion dollars. If someone were to make $50 million dollars a year, it would take them 2,880 yrs to reach 144 billion dollars. It makes far more sense to limit wealth by a few. I, as an individual, am not the one to determine the best limit. Given all the better uses of such vast sums of money, it seems to me that we might force the limit to be say $10 million per year. If a person makes $10 million per year it just seems they can live a wealthy life style. If they scream they need more, then they have no understanding about the basis for human contentment. Remember, compulsive behaviors, addictions, and obsessive behaviors cannot, by definition lead to contentment.

There is no way for me to attempt any precise figures here since I am likely to screw up, but just use common sense here. If the top 2-5% of our citizens, instead of owning 90% of our nation’s wealth, owned only half of our nations wealth, that would free up 40% of our nation’s wealth for excellent health care, to protect our environment, to pay livable wages to all our workers, to have the best infrastructure in the world, etc. At $10 million dollars a year maybe we are talking 60% of our nation’s wealth to use for these other needs mentioned above. 

There are other needed changes too. In 2108 CEO’s made 287 times more money than their workers. In the 1950’s, the average CEO made 20 times the salary compared to their workers? What exactly has changed in our society to justify this?  It has nothing to do with inflation since these are ratios. CEO’s are important to our society in that they are in a position to make us competitive with foreign markets. They certainly are more important than actors, athletes, financial speculators, mega church preachers, etc. Thus, perhaps it is more important to peg ‘enough is enough’ salary caps for CEO’s, medical doctors, and national politicians higher than others. These are examples, not any actual list.

One might ask, well how do we cap salaries for different professions? Once we understand that past a certain income, people do not reap increases in their contentment levels— we simply go substantially beyond the already determined level of $70,000/yr and past this level, let’s say arbitrarily here $150,000, and we tax the income so steeply that it will not allow an individual to earn more money without like 90% of it going into tax money for the Treasury Dept. Instead of a small percentage of citizens getting all the wealth, all citizens would have their basic needs met. This is real justice and ethics, not the religion of money as so well entrenched in our society today. Organized religions actually shelter the rich from their obsessive worship of money. No religion, to my knowledge, ever throws out members who use Government loopholes to further their wealth. I always tend to think of the biblical rule that “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich person to gain entrance to heaven”.  

All this is that follows here is what should go down. None of it is likely to go down. It is a mystery to me why Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren keep letting the other candidates harp on letting other competing medical care systems be labeled a good thing “allowing individuals to keep their current health plans”. In other words, other medical plans for the affluent will ensure that the affluent continue to get good health care while the vast majority of people will get poor or no health care. No change at all. 

So what will likely result after the election?  Without enough doctors, most citizens will deal with Physicians Assistants, Nurse Practitioners, and Technicians. Soon, most patients will talk to computers to diagnose their situation and come up with treatments. This is not all bad and will be the only way to get quick treatment. These computers will probably diagnose and provide treatment plans that will rival the best doctors. In fact computers can do so much now that there is really no need for a 40 hr week. We should reduce full time work hours to 30 hrs. Any additional money via overtime and more than one job  will be taxed heavily, which will prevent many from going in that direction. 

What about tax rates on the average citizen. It is hard to be precise here. The amount of taxes coming into the government will soar, the number of people on welfare will decrease exponentially when all people working 30 hrs per week get a livable wage, unemployment will be almost nonexistent and the happiness polls conducted across the globe will find us at the top or near the top instead of buried far behind on such polls. We will once again have good schools for all kids, good teachers for all kids, good pay to draw more scholastically competent people into teaching, good health care for all, good job opportunities for all, increased vacation days with a 30 hr wk, assistance with parenting for those whose kids have chronic high levels of stress hormones in their system, etc. And, our infrastructure will be the best in the world. 

And lets be honest, here. Let’s say our taxes go up 20 percent, which I doubt, all the stresses which most people have about health costs, livable wages, good education, unsafe neighborhoods, sometimes poor job opportunities, etc will all be nonexistent, and whatever money is left, all citizens can then spend on whatever they want. This is exactly why those countries who provide basic needs for all their citizens (to varying degrees) never vote this ‘socialism’ out. They don’t have all these basic worries that so many Americans have. Socialism has become a useless term. And capitalism without proper regulation and limits is a disaster. With proper government regulation and limits, it is a great system.

Finally, without getting a grip globally on responsible reproduction, protecting the environment, reducing the global accumulation of wealth to a few very wealthy citizens,  and preventing climate change, the end result, no matter what we do in the matters above, will be disastrous in the not too distant future. There is to date no indication that any of the above is about to happen globally. No nation can save itself—all the major problems are global. That spells global disaster in the short run but means nothing in the long run for God’s evolutionary process governed by the laws God created to insure progress on global time, not human time. Those who worry about the future for their grandchildren should worry. However the evolutionary future via evolutionary time will likely continue as it has for billions of years with reversals which can last millions of years. But eventually the process rebounds with amazing levels of progress via new species’ and environments. 

The Reparation Issue

The Reparation Issue

Since the early formation of our nation the United States has struggled endlessly with prejudicial issues regarding race, religion, and culture—plus has been seeped with a tendency to violence as means to achieve personal or national goals. The sad fact is that only during 21 years of our existence has the U.S. not waged any wars somewhere. It is not so much that many other nations do not match or exceed us with these tendencies, but we deceive ourselves to thinking we are not really that way at all. President Bush liked to refer to our soldiers as “peace keepers”. How many would care to take a vacation trip to any of the countries we have waged military adventures in the last 50 years? Not much peace or prosperity to be found. Our military adventures certainly have not created peace and prosperity in any of the countries with who we have engaged in military actions since World War II, with the possible exception of Vietnam and they won. The  financial cost of these failures has been huge. 

At the onset of our created ‘democratic government’, only land owning Protestants were included in some of the ‘rights’ guaranteed by the constitution. Slowly, over the years, more and more of our citizens got more and more individual rights except blacks who, shortly before the Civil War, were declared by the Supreme Court to not even be citizens, but owned property. It doesn’t help much to overdo placing blame. Human nature is determined by the evolutionary process, not some kind of perceived devils, evil spirits, evil religions, political nature of a government, etc. Abstractly, most of our citizens admit all citizens should be treated via the Golden Rule—the real innate ethical basis for human behavior—but self serving desires of varying intensities often override any ethical behavior. It is what it is. Still, enough people made enough efforts so that, over time, more and more groups got their civil rights. Evolution works slowly. 

No one can seriously argue that some groups in this country, sometimes, in some places, did not, or still do not, get the same civil rights as others were or are receiving. Environmental circumstances, created by our society, limited any prospects for many individuals to prosper. Basically, we need remember that the environment of the formative years for all children matters. It really does. Without the proper environment the nervous system—especially, does not develop the potential a child has genetically, and sometimes the damage is permanent. The reality is simply this: Many children raised in our current urban, suburban, and rural ghettoes end up permanently damaged by their environment and will never be responsible, productive members of our society. The extent of the damage to the developing nervous systems will vary and some children, via the efforts of others, will escape relatively undamaged. What is for sure is the sad situation that so many young children are at the mercy of a roll of the dice. 

It is not the intent here, to delve too deeply into the science involved here, but to start with an understanding of our current circumstances in order to better understand how best to make the best of a bad situation. 

Currently some politicians have suggested that, in this case, blacks should be given monetary compensation for the injustices of the past. This sounds much like the days when we used Affirmative Action as an attempt to level the playing field for blacks, other minorities, and women. This good intentioned effort did precious little to change the situations for those most in need of help, and managed to anger many citizens who saw many people, not in need of any help, get favored treatment for jobs, salary increases, etc. Instead of saying that those in greatest need of help, regardless of race or gender, would get the boost, those blacks, other minorities, and women least in need of any help got almost all the the help. In other words, for example, those blacks living in middle class or real affluent neighborhoods, going to good schools suddenly found themselves entitled to go to Harvard, be first in line for the best jobs/promotions, etc. Those blacks living in urban, suburban, or rural ghettoes rarely saw much, if any, change in their lives, and for good reason. Many were permanently damaged goods with learning disabilities, memory problems, personality quirks, attitude problems, and many physical problems also associated with nervous system damage like being overweight, increased likelihood of diabetes, emotional problems, and the list goes on. They simply were not equipped to be a productive successful citizen in our modern society or any other society—not because of their genes, but because the environments they grew up in were grossly deficient. We could give every black citizen a thousand dollars and claim we have righted the ship and this would be ridiculous. Six months later absolutely nothing will have changed except the rest of the public been forced to pay for such nonsense. It would be like an individual, feeling sorry for some ghetto child in a store, giving the child an ice cream cone, or giving a poor family a meal on Thanksgiving, and thinking they have accomplished something other than a temporary piece of mind for themselves. 

Here is the reality: Until all children have a decent environment for their formative years, the societal problems here will get worse, not better. That means all children need have good schools, good teachers, safe environments, good diets, good medical care, good parenting, good job opportunities, so that their nervous systems will develop properly and enable their genetic potentials to flourish. There is no other solution. Period. So where does the money come from for all this? That answer is simple. As long as government allows 2-5% of our citizens to own 90 percent of our nations wealth, and 3 citizens to own as much of our nation’s wealth as the bottom 50% of our citizens, then nothing can be done. 

Good government means the maximum number of citizens receive the maximum amount of contentment in their lives. To the extent any form of  government achieves this, it is good government. The 2-5% of our citizens have all this wealth simply because the government allows all the tax breaks, tax cuts, tax shelters, tax deferments etc. to exist so that those with plenty of money have a greased pathway to accumulate more wealth at an exponential rate. The wealthy didn’t disappear back in the days of Eisenhower when the wealthy had a 90% tax rate and steep inheritance taxes. In fact after such taxes were imposed by Teddy Roosevelt, all economic classes benefitted. They were the best of times for all economic groups.

Reparations is a total waste of money. What the disadvantaged need in our country is a level playing field. A level playing field means that all citizens need good health care, good job opportunities, living wages for a full time job, good schools, good teachers, good parenting, safe environments, good police departments freed of rogue prejudiced policemen, a fair judicial system, etc. (I probably left out some things).We can afford all this since we know where most of our wealth is squirreled away. There is nothing wrong and everything right about putting limits on how much of a nations wealth can be grabbed by the wealthy. Enough is enough applies to most materialistic greeds common to our species. The simplest human job task deserves a living wage. There need to be limits on just how much a CEO can be paid relative to the pay given to his/her workers. Currently, the average CEO makes 287 times more than their workers. What is the common sense or ethical basis for this?  Aaron Rodgers makes 34 times the salary of the average NFL player. Why are wealthy private citizens allowed to own national sports teams in a monopolistic fashion where the players, cities, and fans are ripped off to greater and greater degrees with every passing year? The citizens have no way to control the costs, and these owners keep roughly half the profits while the players have to divide the same amount of money by 1700. It just gets worse and worse. The Commissioner works for the owners, the owners decide which citizens can ever become an owner, the owners are the police, judge, and jury for whatever  player behavior they decide is unacceptable. They have their own judicial system. By what sense are very wealthy people or corporations allowed to make billions of dollars, or declare bankruptcy while making all this money and have to pay no taxes? The biggest problem is not the poor, but the very wealthy whose greed, of course, has no limit until government puts an end to all this. Some of the wealthy are very generous with their endless wealth like Gates and Buffet—and that is just peachy—but the government needs to set limits and regulations so that our wealth as a nation is distributed in some sort of fair fashion and fair doesn’t not mean doing away with the wealthy at all. Capitalism is a great system when properly regulated and proper limits set. 

No group of people in our country need reparations. The past is past. What all citizens need is a level playing field. We can afford to make a level playing field and that is exactly what we should do. Except for me. God likes me, talks to me often for advice and we discuss what my needs will be in Heaven;  greasing my own way to some sort of heavenly life before and after death makes perfect sense to me. Why other people have any earned rights for more materialistic wealth is beyond me.  Smile.

Just to put things in perspective, let us remember that 90% of our wealth now is owned by 2-5% of our citizens. If these 2-5% of our citizens were limited via taxation to own only 20% of our nation’s wealth all schools would be good—staffed with good teachers, all citizens would have good health care, our infrastructure would be the best in the planet, safe guards to protect our natural resources would be fully funded, our police force would be free of rogue officers not equipped mentally for their job, and all policeman would be monitored periodically, all citizens would have access to jobs for which they have the talent and the jobs would all be at living wages, welfare costs would be drastically reduced because of higher wages and increased employment, the 43% of adults now not making enough money to qualify to pay federal taxes, would have money to pay taxes and buy things which would vastly increase the amount of tax money coming in to the federal treasury, and if we got rid of most of the 700 military bases around the world along with the endless penchant to invade other countries to bring them peace and prosperity, which hasn’t happened since World War II (and thus drastically reduce military expenditures without affecting the safety of our own country from attack)—if all this were put in place we would then have a government in which the maximum number of citizens would be able to achieve the maximum amount of contentment with their lives. It is win-win for all citizens, including the wealthy and more genetically gifted in our population. Forget the word socialism, it is a useless term meaning different things to different people. If providing health care for all, job opportunities for all, good wages for all, decent vacation periods for all, etc. were such a bad idea, then those governments who do these things would have been voted out of office long ago. Of course polls consistently show that people who live under such governments are happier than our own citizens. What is the surprise here since the very issues which trouble so many of our own citizens are not issues which people in these other countries have to worry about. They pay more in taxes but they have far fewer worries and what money is left is spent on pleasurable activities. 

The best reparation for all citizens is to provide all fellow citizens with basic needs for a healthy, productive, prosperous, more prejudice free environments in which to live. 

There is one important precautionary note here. If we cannot quickly reduce human population across the planet and do whatever is needed to prevent major climate changes, anything else done is only a temporary solution. Our human species is not exempt from the consequences of overpopulation. Overpopulation is defined here by the existence of enough natural resources for all humans to live the kind of lifestyle the fortunate few, like myself, now live.

I won’t even bother here to bring up such nuances as to how much genetic blackness would gain one a reparation, or why the descendants of blacks who were not slaves need reparations, or why native American Indians get no reparations, or gays, or descendants of the handicapped, or actually why no reparations for all the citizens those countries we have engaged in militarily since World War II?  They probably still need their infrastructure back or maybe pay off all the money they spent to bury their dead. None of this means our country is more evil natured than other nations. They all would have done the same to us if they had the power to do so. Humans all have the same genetic traits as a species, and all groups behave like other groups under the same environmental circumstances. 

Why Are Marriage Rates Down?

Why Are Marriage Rates Down?

This topic is a tricky one from many aspects. That’s ok, tricky topics are more interesting to muse about. In 1960 72% of United States adults were married. Roughly half of adults in the U.S. are married today. That is, it seems, a huge drop. 

I start with the assumption that most adults would like to be in a loving long term ‘marriage’ of some sort. Gays have screamed bloody murder about not having had in the past the right to marry the adult of their choice. Now they have it amidst a time when marriage rates for straight people is declining precipitously. This adds another complexity to the question. Will the gay marriage divorce rate match the current divorce rate for straight marriages? Currently 40-50-% of straight marriages end in divorce. More time needs pass to compare this rate with the divorce rate of gay marriages. Even the terminologies used are unique. We seldom use the terms heterosexual marriages and homosexual marriages, but instead use straight and gay marriages as the terms. Everything about marriage is complex and confusing. 

In religious services, in one form or another, marriage is often referred to as “let no man put asunder what God has put together”. It’s kind of strange that God would only have a 50% batting average here. Divorce has long since been considered a sin against God’s will. Odd, it seems that God’s will would never be denied. The Catholic Church took the strongest stand against divorce, yet catholics divorce at about the same rate as Protestants. I wonder what percent of scripture followers of various religions actually follow everything in their scripture? I haven’t seen Christians stoning anyone ever. They used to. No-one ever gets burned at the stake or quartered in a public place either. They used to. Strange again how religious behavior changes, except religious scriptures, all written by humans, never change. Perhaps that is why there are fewer and fewer people actively participating via attendance to religious services. 

It seems marriage and religion are closely entwined. But my understanding is that priests and ministers will perform marriage ceremonies as long as one spouse is of the right religion. Whether a priest or minister is allowed to marry atheists seems clouded when I tried to research it. 

Remember when chaperones were required during dating? Of course you don’t, that was even before my time. But that sexual activities could be dictated by church rules has always been around. Just 3% of Americans dating today wait until marriage to have sex. The connection between church members and actual behavior seems to be, for most, a matter of convenience for most church members. Perhaps the inability of religions to change their scriptures with changing times is the biggest reason members keep drifting away. This is a real dilemma for all religions. There are plenty enough scriptural absurdities in all ancient scriptures to create suspicion for the members. For any religion to officially admit some of their scripture is outdated opens the door to question the rest of the scripture. 

Still, when couples fall in love and want to live their lives together it seems marriage is the appropriate status for that. In somewhat dated data about half of married couples today lived together as a couple before they married. If it is legal to live together without getting married, then marriage takes a big hit since there are legal consequences to getting married and a lot this legal consequence involves money. However, over a three year period 40% of co-habituating couples got married. 

Clearly religion has been a complicating factor regarding marriage. However, with religion becoming a declining force regarding marriage, the monetary factors play a bigger and bigger role. 

One of the complicating monetary factors is the rapid and extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, thereby leaving the middle class and lower economic class financially weakened. Raising a family when making less than $15 an hour is a difficult task.  Even if both work at such a low hourly rate, job security is also way down these days. It is calculated that the average young person today will have over 30 different jobs in their lifetime. 

On top of the financial implications of marriage, this whole question of love as an enduring state is being questioned. People’s values and priorities often change over their lifetime, including sexual habits and priorities. To the extent this latter statement is true, how can a couple realistically predict what their relationship will be down the road a few decades? Thus, we have two modern dilemmas affecting marriage rates in out country. First, suppose we fall out of love and are not compatible anymore, and second, if we can barely afford a family today, who is to say we will be able to afford it down the road?

Even more difficult, since love and sex are not driven by logically defined facts—but by feelings, and since economic security is no longer the norm, why is it a surprise that young people are balking about marriage? When actual sex before marriage was a sin, there was a unique reward for getting married, only for many to find out the reward was not sustainable. “This is it? The same old, same old ad nauseam?”  Studies have shown that those for whom sexual encounters come easy have the weakest orgasms, while woe to those who never really achieve orgasms. And how weird is it that an increase in dietary restrictions happened at the same time sexual variations and pornography copycats got hygienically sloppier and unsanitary with their sex?  Marriage and sex have become less and less related over the years. The frequency of sex in marriage has also declined over the years. Couples living together report having sex 146 times per year. It used to be

much higher. Married couples make love 98 times per year. This is also a decline. Single folks are having sex the least at 49 times a year. Of course all this varies depending on the couple. Four percent of the respondents to the survey claim to have sex daily. Is this good or obsessive? Among the 23 percent of adults - or nearly 1 in 4 - who spent the year in a celibate state, a much larger than expected number of them were 20-something men.  Experts who study Americans' bedroom habits say there are a number of factors driving the Great American Sex Drought (which doesn’t exist if we count masturbation and pornography orgasms). Age is one of them: The 60-and-older demographic climbed from 18 percent of the population in 1996 to 26 percent in 2018, according to the survey.The share reporting no sex has consistently hovered around 50 percent, and because that age group is growing relative to everyone else, it has the net effect of reducing the overall population's likelihood of having sex. But changes at the other end of the age spectrum may be playing an even bigger role. The portion of Americans 18 to 29 reporting no sex in the past year more than doubled between 2008 and 2018, to 23 percent. This reduction in sex among 18-29 year olds is puzzling. That is also when sexual desires are usually at their peak. It may alter what is defined as sex. Is watching porn and reaching a climax sex? It probably is. So perhaps both marriage and actual sex with a partner is declining. The further I go with all this the more confusing it gets. 

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• In 2011–2013, among unmarried 15–19-year-olds, 44% of females and 49% of males have had sexual intercourse. These levels have remained steady since 2002. The proportion of young people having sexual intercourse before age 15 has declined in recent years. In 2011–2013, about 13% of never-married females aged 15–19 and 18% of never-married males in that age-group had had sex before age 15, compared with 19% and 21%, respectively, in 1995.

• Adolescent sexual activity may include behaviors other than vaginal intercourse. In 2007–2010, about half of adolescents aged 15–19 reported ever having oral sex with an opposite-sex partner and about one in 10 reported ever having anal sex with an opposite-sex partner.

• Sixty-one percent of pregnancies among 15–19-year-olds in 2013 ended in births, while 24% ended in abortions and the rest in miscarriages.

 Between google, artificial intelligence, smart phones, chat rooms, artificial sex, pornography, and various mental gymnastic exercises, what will happen to actual human interactions? Even today, few people know anything much about their neighbors.  Neighborhood gossip hardly exists. 

Already more and more people meet their mate via computer date rooms. That may be good, but actual marriages still dwindle in number. The problem which exists here is that even so, the love between two people only exists at a given point in time. There is no reason to believe that a given couple will not change over time until they are no longer a good match sexually or with their priorities and values. 

Studies show that children can be raised successfully by single parents. The debate here seems unsettled yet as to the percentage of successes with two parents vs one parent.

What about two people who simply decide to live together to save money? I can’t find any stats here but certainly given the current economic situation in the U. S. this must be happening to some degree. For many it would simply be a question of whether to get a 2nd job or find someone in the same economic strait and share living quarters together. 

Perhaps there is a trend now that not only makes orgasmal sex independent of a partner but even friendship with a real touchable person less necessary. The friends many have today are those with whom contact is almost all those on their tweet list—inputs which are frequent, but rarely in person or any insight in depth. A few years ago I was on my way coming out of a forest preserve and walking down the street to my car when I spotted a party being held in a large yard—maybe 20 or more people. All but one person was on their cell phone talking to someone not at the party. We all have seen couples go out to dinner and one talk on their cell phone to someone not there the entire time. Why did they bother to go out to dinner together? We all have had conversations interrupted repeatedly by someone constantly answering their cell phone, sometimes a call from a family member which is their 25th call of the day. We have all been on a phone with someone who who gets a call from their adult offspring which was their tenth call of the day and they feel a need to take the call and you wait. None of the many changes are inherently good or bad but do represent change in human interaction. The newer interactions are more shallow. 

The point here is that real live people are becoming less and less necessary for friends or sex. Does anyone really know the long term consequences of all this? 

'New research found that our memory capacity, ability to process data, and general intelligence improves significantly when our smartphone is completely out of sight — in a bag or another room altogether. Think that turning it on silent, face down, will remedy the problem? Nope. The mere sight of the phone diminishes your cognitive resources.  

Here’s another disturbing stat: This tally seems to increase daily, but by one study’s count, the typical smartphone user interacts with their phone around 85 times per day. And this often includes middle-of-the-night checks for work emails and new “likes.”

We’re so obsessed that there’s now a word to describe a fear of being without your phone: “Nomophobia.”

Some studies have shown that all this interaction via cyberspace input does not make the person more contented. Increased contentment is the real goal of humans everywhere. It can be very elusive.

This type of long term heavy use of cyberspace comes at a price. Studies link it to hand, neck, and back issues, anxiety, depression, disrupted sleep, diminished attention span, antisocial behavior, decreased empathy — the list goes on.  I am most interested in the decline of empathy. 

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• In 2011–2013, among unmarried 15–19-year-olds, 44% of females and 49% of males had had sexual intercourse.2 These levels have remained steady since 2002.
• The proportion of young people having sexual intercourse before age 15 has declined in recent years. In 2011–2013, about 13% of never-married females aged 15–19 and 18% of never-married males in that age-group had had sex before age 15, compared with 19% and 21%, respectively, in 1995.

• Adolescent sexual activity may include behaviors other than vaginal intercourse. In 2007–2010, about half of adolescents aged 15–19 reported ever having oral sex with an opposite-sex partner and about one in 10 reported ever having anal sex with an opposite-sex partner.7

• Sixty-one percent of pregnancies among 15–19-year-olds in 2013 ended in births, while 24% ended in abortions and the rest in miscarriages.

Are we really that far away from having our own sex chamber in which we select the picture of who we wish to have sex, and what kind of sex, then attach electrodes in appropriate parts of our body, tilt back, wait for a strong orgasm, then check the record log to see if we have beaten our record level of orgasm.

I kind of knew writing a musing on marriage would not generate solid facts about marriage, love, sex, and human interactions. Stats do not generate facts, they are descriptive information. It has made me shy a bit away from saying informational overload is doing us in. Perhaps the better term is mis-informational overload. When there is too much on our plate to understand and most of it shallow, then I guess we end up with feelings, not facts. Stats on this topic have nothing to do with normalcy. There is no factual basis for someone whose life does not match the stats on this topic to feel they need change or are abnormal.  

I enjoy writing musings, but there is so much information available on endless topics that such a hobby is overwhelming. I would not like to even take a stab on what percent of the time I ever reach a correct conclusion with any of it. At my stage of life, exactly what is the point of all this reading, analyzing, and musing? Maybe it is just my peculiar way of retaining some sanity. Others might say it is just my way of proving insanity. In the end, we are all dead. No one gets out of ‘this world’ alive. 

P.S. I have a well established effective method of birth control and marriage avoidance: my personality. 

Legalized Murder or Uniformed Redneck Target Practice

Legalized Murder or Uniformed Redneck Target Practice

The Facts (as known so far):

Someone calls the police and says two young black men robbed them and took their wallets. 3 or more policemen respond and see two young black men, late teens or early 20’s who seem like they might be the culprits. They surround the two young men with guns drawn and scream as loud as they can for them to put their hands up. They do. One of them, at some point panics, bolts and runs away as fast as he can run, is shot 4 times in the back, and dies in the hospital. 

The investigation of the police behavior at this point is going to be the local Sheriff department, the least professional of any police group. If this follows the usual pattern, some two years down the road when the incident is mostly forgotten, the police officers will be acquitted of any crime. ‘Nobodies’ are still expendable. Perhaps it will go to civil court, the taxpayers will be out millions of dollars, and the most diverse ethnic, cultural, and religious nation in the world will continue the trend to become a cauldron of hate—each group toward the other —matching the revengefulness of a Middle East nation.

The police officers claim he had a gun. The video shows, if he did, he never pulled it out—just bolted. The problems here are numerous and despicable. A minor robbery has been reported, and the police stop two suspects. These are black teenagers or young adults, that’s about all the police know (or I know). Our government has put police in a terrible bind. In the past if someone has a gun, that gave police a green light to shoot to protect themselves. Today, concealed guns in public are perfectly legal, so the police can no longer shoot someone who they see or sense might have a gun. Why would any policemen, properly trained, start screaming at two young men with their guns drawn and the kids are standing there with their hands in the air? Their verbal behavior from the get-go was bound to get hormones flowing at a maximum level in everyone’s system. Young people at that age are perfectly capable of dumb behavior when scared. Apparently, so are some policemen. As is common place these days the whole incident is on video tape via bystanders and police cams.  

I personally feel anyone who runs from the police in situations like this should get a jail term for running, whether they committed any crime or not. People should not run from the police and the police have no need to start screaming at suspects when their hands are up and they are cooperating. Shooting a kid in the back running at full speed to get away is simply senseless murder. He could easily be picked up later and given jail time for running away from the police. There was no reason for any screaming at any point in this situation.

The police who shot the kid in the back have no business being policemen. They should be fired and given jail time for their actions. Policemen need to be professionals, and those who cannot, should be fired and in this case get serious jail time for needless murder. 

Why is it so hard to draw up strict rules for police and citizen behavior during police apprehension situations? There is no need for screaming by either party and that itself should draw a fine. Being aware that someone has, or might have, a gun is no longer a valid reason for the police to shoot anyone. The government can hardly make guns legal and then claim if the police are aware you have a gun they can shoot you. The police have good cause to feel threatened when they are asked to police a public that is often now well armed, in many cases better armed than the police. These bad policeman are directly responsible for an exponential rise in angry citizens killing policeman, often by minority citizens, who are tired of the endless prejudice against them. A couple of years ago a white policeman pulled over a young black for a tail light  infraction. The black informed the policeman that he was carrying legal hand gun. The policeman asked to see his license. When the black reached into his pants pocket for his wallet the policeman shot him to death in front of the passenger in the car, claiming he thought the man was reaching for his gun. All the cop got was a short suspension. 

We need a federal standard of conduct for police and citizens in these situations and a federal panel which decides who gets fined or jailed for what misconduct. All citizens and policemen need be bound by the same rules nationwide. Calm civilized talk, no name calling, threatening, demeaning anyone by either party is permitted and the fines stiff. If a suspect bolts and runs requiring later apprehension for a minor infraction of the law, jail time is automatic. If the person or persons apprehended are in the process of shooting others, then of course the police can shoot to protect other citizens. 

It is always good to remember that all ethnic groups living in our ghettoes are far more likely to commit crimes and be violent. That includes all ethnic groups (including whites) who live in urban, suburban, and rural ghettoes. Endless studies, for example, demonstrate that blacks who grow up in affluent neighborhoods do just as well in school and are no more likely to commit crimes than the white people who live in that neighborhood. Thus, painting a genetic basis for bad behavior is simply ignorance—prejudicial ignorance. Another blood spilling civil war is the most likely outcome of the present cultural situation in our country. As I say over and over, it is got going to be a civil war with uniformed soldiers fighting battles on a battlefield. No, the battlefield in any coming civil war is going to be in everybody’s neighborhood with no uniformed soldiers except the police and army. We are well suited now to behave like they do in the middle east with organized roving bands of angry citizens behaving like the Vietnamese did in our military invasion of Vietnam. Hit and run, first here and then there. In all these military adventures, our military might could not be everywhere, and even when somewhere, our soldiers had little awareness of exactly which citizens were the enemy. The same kind of wars were fought in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, numerous countries in South America, etc. Now it seems we are setting ourselves up for the same kind of conflict in our own country. It is just sad and there will be no winners. The situation is dire right now and will remain dire no matter who wins the next Presidential election. After a news article on the internet where comments are permitted, almost all the comments are simply vile highly emotional name calling insults instead of any logical input to the subject matter at hand. I suppose all of us, to varying degrees are guilty of this, but the level of this hate is over the top now and very prevalent.

The best teachers learn not to prejudge any student because of their race, culture, religious preference, sexual preference, dress, or rough edged appearance. In fact, the more different a student appears, the greater the effort needed to make them feel comfortable in our midst. Most of the time, when some minority expects the worst and gets the fairest and kindest treatment, they will respond in kind. A good cop, and there are many of them, once those two kids had their hands in the air when calmly told to do so, the conversation would have been calming, not hysterical—explaining that they need be questioned a bit about a theft in the area. Why is that so hard?

Of course police often become hardened about those living in our ghettoes. After all, if kids are raised like animals with bars on windows and doors, trapped like cages, with it unsafe to venture out, many will end up behaving like animals by the time they are young adults. The damage is done and the police see the results daily. There are no easy ways to make police feel differently. The best we can do is make these bad apples in the police force understand that if they don’t treat suspects with the proper demeanor, they can no longer be policeman and will be held responsible for senseless killings. The onus is on the police to get citizens of all ilk to trust them, not expect those living in our ever worsening deplorable ghettoes to trust the police. They often learn to trust no one in such living environments. 

Every time, while traveling to and from a theatre in the evening, when I get disoriented as to how to get to the El train stop, and I ask assistance from potential ‘bad ass young people’ I have been amazed at their response. Once I couldn’t figure out which direction to head to get to the theatre and the only person around was some young black teenager, pants at half mast, rough looking features, leaning up against a wall. “Young man, I need your advice, which way do I go on this street to get to such and such a street?”  He looked around, “You talking to me?” “sure, you look like you would know the answer” He pointed the direction for me to go.  About two blocks down I suddenly hear someone running up behind me. It was him and I thought the worst. Out of breath he says “I told you wrong, you need go the opposite direction.” “My friend, it is really kind of you to run two blocks to correct things. This idiot here may have gotten totally lost” I reached in my pocket and pulled out $5 for his help. He wouldn’t take it. “You cool man, no white man ever asks me anything, you be careful out here.” And off he went. It makes one think about the nature of ethnic relationships.

Another time I couldn’t remember the way back to the El around 11PM and this lone tall young black guy comes walking down the sidewalk. “Say chief, am uncertain which way to go to get to the El station. You look like the man with answers.”  “You got to make a few turns to get on the right street to the El Station.” He starts to explain, then says, “Look, you come with me, I will walk you to the right street.” And he did. Another time I was uncertain and came across two young women, one black and one white getting into their car. They gave me directions and said “go this way and after three blocks turn left and that will take you to the El Station”. So I did and when I got to were I should turn left there they were in their car double parked. “You didn’t go very far” I remarked,  and they smiled and said:

“Just wanted to make sure you turned at the right corner” 

The whole point of babbling about such minor interactions is to illustrate that most people, of every ethnic background, are perfectly capable of empathetic interactions with each other given the proper national leaders. Given the diversity which prevails in this country today, there is no hope if tolerance and empathy is blocked by fear, prejudice, and hate. There is no hope if a large percentage of our citizens are left living in ghettoes which are becoming more and more deplorable with every passing year, with a President who actually encourages everyone to talk and act toward others as he himself has his whole life. What is happening in this country right now, at an exponential rate, is rapidly reaching a point of no return. Perhaps we are already past that point.  Any illusion that our species is any kind of end point to the evolutionary process seems to be collapsing. Our species is too violent and our ethics (the Golden Rule) overwhelmed by greed for money, power over others, and intolerance for diversity. It would be interesting to envision what will be the reality of our planet—say a thousand years from now, but predicting the future is way beyond human intellectual capability. Our world is the now, and we all have a front row seat. All in all, I would rather listen to the Louvin Brothers, watch T.O. play football, cook a good meal, read about history and unique individuals from the past, and wander around solo contemplating the people and nature I encounter en route. Nothing makes me more contented than thinking that I really understand this or that. Of course I don’t always really understand, and like everyone else I don’t even know what my batting average is for correct understanding. 

Even my fading years are interesting as long as I can manage to go gently down the stream to oblivion.  Losing control over our own lives and abilities is not all bad given the need for relief from all the intensity of our productive years. At least for me, turning the baton over to the next generation, has been welcome enough.. Enough is enough for everything, including our own efforts during our prime time in existence.  It is all simple enough—we begin to tire, Father Time starts catching up with us, and if we are smart, we accept the inevitableness of death as a consequence of being born. Death, after all, is the one event in everyone’s life which brings a permanent peace with no stresses ever again. Fair enough. No, I don’t fear going to hell. What kind of God would allow so many individuals to be born with a horrible genetic hand and/or coupled with a terrible environment for their nervous system to mature during their formative years? Evolution works, but requires diversity as a mechanism to help it work and this generates a lot of victims en route whose chance for some contentment depends exclusively on the number of people who use the Golden Rule as the basis for their behavior toward those less fortunate. 

Yesterday I helped a frail old lady to cross the street as an act of kindness. When we got across the street she was mad as hell. She didn’t want to go across the street. No, that didn’t really happen, but if anyone could pull such a stunt I guess it might be me. Aside from sometimes being a bag of wind, I, am, more often, a bag of surprises. 

Lincoln once said, “Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that I have always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.” I always had that in mind at the start of every semester. Lincoln was a tad more successful than I.

Current Well-Being of the United States

Current Well-Being of the United States

Introductory Note.: These are the strangest, out of the pale, sui generis times in the United States/globally. It feels like the decade preceding our Civil War. It would be some comfort if all this was generated simply by the existence of Donald Trump, but Trump is just the product of a huge festering anger by roughly half our population. We could vote Trump out, barely it seems, and all the festering anger would still exist in half our citizens, now emboldened by Trump. Trump did not create all this festering anger, all this intolerance toward various groups of citizens. All his hatred, his boorish behavior, his ghetto style verbal assaults on friends and foes, his distorted or misplaced values, his obsession with wealth, his sexual indiscretions, his admiration of dictators globally, his need to play the bully, his abysmal ignorance on the issues at hand—all are cheered on by his angry fans. Even those fans whose personal behavior never approaches his, will, with reluctance, if pushed to do so, only go so far as to wish he would tone down his tweets.  As Trump himself has stated: “I could kill someone in public and my base would stand by me.” He probably, for once, is telling the truth. Their defense of his killing someone would be something like: “Well, the guy he killed was from Baltimore, and if you just killed at random someone from Baltimore they probably deserved to be shot for something or other.”  Most musing topics are challenging and fun to analyze, this one was not so. It is depressing. It makes my hermit-hood a good choice at this stage of my life. It is long (19 printed pages at last count), not best read in one sitting. If, after a few paragraphs, it is not something you care to stomach or think about, just proceed no further. It is human nature that few ever change their minds about their inherited religion or their politics. It is similar to the chances that I would ever agree certain sport writers did not punish Terrell Owens for essentially minding his own business (willpower and focus on his own achievement)—too much so. Even if the following musing is something of interest to you, just read a small portion daily until you get to the end. The Presidential campaign will go on for many, many months but I have condensed my thoughts about the current well being of our country into this one singular musing. I feel no desire to waste my time chasing illusions which deny the writing on the wall. There are endless other areas of life that attract my attention—I will write about them, and given my age now, they will just be relegated to my storage site. My writing skills and reasoning, like every other youthful skill, are surely in decline. My personal life is peaceful enough, mostly uneventful; the people with whom I am in contact in daily life, including a small army of medical personnel, are all very kind to me, and my beloved legs still get me around, so I go gently down the stream to oblivion, very grateful for all the luck which came my way during a perfect era in which to have lived. Many of you—just as lucky, should never be whining about inescapable trivial stuff and the inevitable frailties that come with old age. No one can ever go back upstream. I don’t even try. Time stays——we go. 

Current Well Being of the United States

This musing is a real challenge. It is easy enough to list the varied problems we face, but it is quite another matter, with any degree of accuracy, to detail reality and where we are headed. For example, one could say if we do this or that, a lot of money could be generated or saved, but often exactly how much is simply beyond my means of understanding to be accurate. Others, with more exact data and expertise in the area, would be obliged to do that. This musing, at best, is a well reasoned overview that illuminates the complexity of human interrelationships, and incorporates all of that into evolutionary perspectives. The problems are real and global. Practically all the major problems facing humanity today are global—and to date there is no real likelihood that any global unified cooperative solutions will be enacted until it is too late. 

We do have expert scientists and economists who have the data which enables solutions, but every solution requires massive global participation and a willingness for the general public to sacrifice considerably to ever enact the solutions. Right now we are in the midst of the 6th greatest evolutionary period of species extinction. This is quite different from past extinctions which were caused by massive environmental changes, and humans played no part. This current species extinction is being driven by human activities. Given the limits of our natural resources and limited space for a reasonable and needed number of species to thrive, human overpopulation is an underlying time bomb, which is already a driving force for many of the dire situations we face today as a species. 

Next, we need understand just how violent our species really is. We are a plague on our own species, other species, and our natural resources. We, as a species, have little tolerance for other species or even segments of our own species. Add our abuse of the natural environment and the picture looks hopeless. But we need be careful about the word hopeless. Perspective is everything here. We all have the tendency to think of our own species as the ‘creme de la creme’ of evolutionary history. Every man-devised religion places man front and center with a God who interacts directly with humans as individuals.  It is hard to imagine just why we think evolution has reached its planetary peak with our species. Neither science nor logic generates any such conclusion. But in today’s societal milieu our views need neither science nor logic----feelings rule the roost. Many of these, often strong feelings, overrule logic and science as means to push aside reality, and pretend all is well if we can just make enough others have the same feelings. It appears as the blind leading the blind, while in reality it is more like lemmings making an insane mad rush to the edge of an evolutionary cliff. The reality is that 97% of all species which have existed in the evolutionary process are now extinct. I suppose, way back when, humans assumed dinosaurs would never become extinct. They did. 

Most of human behavior is self serving and always has been. This trait is found in most of the higher species in evolutionary history.  Many really believe that the founding fathers of our country created a society in which all men are created equal. I guess if all men are defined as white, land owning, Protestant Christians it might have some truth to it. It took a Civil War to establish that some of our citizens were even legally human. Throughout human history humans have always created some sort of self serving religion which will get them to some imagined Heaven after death. It is interesting that modern day religious sects were all created by prophets who lived about the same time in history, and the bibles they selectively follow were all written by men who wrote the scriptures years after the prophet was dead. What a weird way for God to select which humans get to Heaven (inherited religion). Given the complex and time proven laws which govern the evolutionary process, human comprehension, even that possessed by the most intelligent of us, cannot possibly enable us to conceive the essence of God. I can, and do think (if I can use the term loosely) that God (however envisioned) created the laws which govern the process. But then, where did God come from?  At some point we are left to admit something came from nothing, and at this point I personally give up, and fold my cards in any serious search for ultimate understanding.  

We are now living in an age when all organized religions are losing active members in large numbers, albeit there remain the right wing literalists who still believe their bible is really the word of God speaking to them, though even the best of the literalists simply choose what words in their Bible to follow. The rigidity and inability of all organized religions to let go of historical absurdities within their scriptures, in the face of modern day standards of science and logic, is behind a good deal of the mass exodus of active church participants. The greater the exodus the stronger the literalists dig in, circle the wagons, and detest non believers who, of course, they believe are all going to hell, something which they are certain God has assured them personally one way or the other.

In reality, national, racial, economic,  cultural, and religious patriotism become the main blocks preventing global cooperation and the unity required to face the many serious global issues coming at our species from multiple directions. We are all, in varying degrees, so prejudiced in so many ways toward the diversity of our own species, that we would rather die defending our own irrational prejudices than provide the sacrifice and willingness to expand any Golden Rule behavior to other groups, outside our own group cabals, in order to collectively prevent global catastrophe for humans and other species. 

All of the above is less a question of who is right or wrong on particular viewpoints as it is widespread failure to accept logic, science, and the Golden Rule (as the universal basis for human ethics). “We have met the enemy and it is us”, not the singular existence of a Donald Trump or any other leaders of such ilk.  While the global picture cannot be ignored, the topic here is the well being of the United States at this time in history. 

As Lincoln stated: “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do and how to do it”  It just seems our country (or the world) cannot continue to progress if we continue to let prejudice, ignorance, and gut feelings drive our collective actions. 

It is a huge mistake if we allow ourselves to think that getting rid of Trump will end this road to the domestic implosion toward which our nation seems headed. A sizable portion of our citizens think much like him, behave much like him, have the intolerance he has, have the same prejudices as he has, and are as angry and discontented as he is. It is perhaps good to remember that in theory, the best government is government which allows the greatest percentage of its citizens to achieve the maximum amount of contentment with their lives. The form of government is only relevant to the extent that form is able to achieve this. Let us stop using the words socialism and democracy. These words have become meaningless since people differ widely as to what they exactly mean when they use these two words. We don’t have a democracy. We are lucky if we sometimes get 50% of the people to vote. The use of primaries to select candidates ensures that maybe 30% of the eligible voters determine the candidates for office. The word socialism is even harder to define since again people define it anyway which suits their purpose. 

Thus, in this treatise, everything is judged on how well a particular policy will enable the greatest number of citizens to achieve the greatest amount of contentment in their lives. The goal of government is not to make all of us equal. Human diversity makes that impossible. The goal really is to make the playing field more level and to let the universal ethical principle ‘the Golden Rule” be the basis for our collective and individual ethics. When everything is judged by the Golden Rule in politics, and in our personal lives, then major progress in achieving the greatest amount of contentment for the maximum number of citizens will be achieved. To the extent that competing man-devised religions can be eliminated, and everyone everywhere use the Golden Rule as their ethics, our human species will then, and only then, have a chance for survival. The problem here is how realistic is it to think our species, rooted in self serving genetic and learned prejudices, can remotely achieve this ethical status? 

Of course I cannot answer that question, and from a practical standpoint, it is not relevant to the subject matter of this musing. The above is just background framework for the bigger picture. 

Good government starts, using the ethical principle of the Golden Rule, with a genuine effort to ensure that all it’s citizens, especially all children, receive good health care, decent housing, good schools, good teachers, adequate nutrition, a safe environment for their formative years, and good opportunities for employment in their teenage and young adult years. This is where it all starts if we expect to maximize the degree of contentment in an adult population. This is the real purpose of government and how achievable is moot. Those governments which succeed the most with this goal will be the governments which will be the last to implode upon themselves in the near future.

A common and widespread opinion prevails that the U.S. cannot afford to govern by the Golden Rule, and that it is the American way to pull oneself up by our own bootstraps if we wish to succeed, no matter the environment in our formative years. And we have examples to prove this can be done, and if some can do it, all others can too. This is like saying that we know some humans can run a mile under 4 minutes and  we have examples to prove it, and therefore everyone, with the right attitude, can run a mile under 4 minutes.  Yeah, sure. The vast majority of our citizens grant that children are important and precious to our society. Some concentrate on banning abortion and then walk away from any further duty to consider the welfare of the already born. Others simply dump the blame/responsibility on the parents, as if all parents are equal to the task in any remote way.  And if the parenting is poor, apparently the blame falls on the child for not having selected better parents. The logic here is pitiful and of course unethical—a throw back to the days when good Christian parents were encouraged to stone wayward children as dictated by their scripture. Today we can get stoned in a different way, and perhaps with good reason.

If the richest country in the world cannot afford to provide the above care for its citizens, then which country can? It is simply a matter of money. The most recent PISA results, from 2015, placed the U.S. an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors the PISA initiative, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science. There is no need to quibble on the accuracy of the above stats. If we truly are the richest country in the world we should be first. For starters, the above stats are misleading. The children of the affluent in this country get a good education, maybe the best. That is because property taxes pay most of the cost and affluent parents can send their kids to private schools or their community generate taxes for good public schools. Those kids raised in our ghettoes have poor schools and poor teachers. It is estimated that about 100 million Americans live in impoverished communities or near impoverished communities. That is roughly one third of Americans. So when the scores of students living in our impoverished communities are mixed in with those living in affluent communities it drops the United States to such lowered rankings. It also need be noted that those minority students who are raised in affluent communities test as well as the white students in those schools and have no more propensity to commit crimes than the white students. So we can eliminate race as any genetic factor. It’s the environment these kids are raised in which makes the difference. And this includes parenting.

How true is the claim by so many that our government cannot afford to provide all its citizens with basic needs? If we have the wealth to provide all our citizens with all the services in question above, where is this wealth? For starters, just 3 people in our country own as much wealth as the bottom economic half of our citizens. In essence we essentially are claiming that 3 people are entitled to have all this wealth, that their greed tops the need for half our population to have better schools, health care, etc. When 2-5% of our population own 90% of our nation’s wealth and have increasing control of Congress, the Presidency, and now the Supreme Court, while not surprisingly the wealthy people want even more wealth, where is this more wealth to come from? It can’t come from the poor, they have nothing left to give, and so it comes from the middle class causing more and more of the middle class to fall into the lower economic class. Does anyone rationally think this kind of maldistribution of wealth will not cause this country to implode?  Historically, when empires implode, the have nots win the battle when they take to the streets, as the ‘haves’ try to protect their property, but the ‘have’s’ cannot during an implosion. The police and army cannot be everywhere at the same time. 

Not only does the U.S. have the wealth to provide the services in question, but the wealthy are very short sighted in not realizing their greed will be their own economic downfall, if not to them now, then to their offspring down the road. If one pays any attention to the current rhetoric in politics, this confrontational implosion is well on the way to happening, a kind of civil war that will make our last civil war seem tame. Since the 50’s, the salaries of the poor have barely budged, while the salaries of the middle class have moved, but not enough to keep pace with inflation, all this while the income of the wealthy has grown in exponential fashion. Yet the majority of citizens continue to feel this is ok. Huh?

What is amazing is how voters vote in the present economic situation. In the State of Washington when there was a proposition on the ballot to increase the tax rates of the wealthy, it was defeated. Wow, how dumb is that for those in need of more income? All the wealthy need do apparently is throw the word socialism around and they can dupe the public. Those in the bottom half of our economic population are angry enough, see the anger gushing from a Donald Trump—-who revels in telling off the establishment, and just like that plenty of the angry poor, and the religious right, vote for the angry guy, the one one who excelled at becoming wealthy via stiffing his contractors and investors in legal schemes, invoking bankruptcy loopholes for the wealthy, that left him not only wealthy, but exempt from taxation on that wealth. Well, I guess the poorly educated can be excused as being dumb, and the religious right are desperate enough to vote for a candidate whose unethical behavior can be tolerated as long as such a candidate appears before them and says,”tell me what religious beliefs you want to be the law, and I will deliver if you vote for me. And they did vote for him in large numbers. If there are any two people who differ more from each other in behavior and values than Trump and Jesus, it would be hard to find. These are the strangest of times.

Let’s start here with how much the U.S. values its education by using the percentage of our GNP spent on education. The highest percentages globally start around 10%. The United States spends 4.9% of its GNP on education. On the other hand, the United States spends more total money on education than any other country. Despite spending a lot of money, according to data from the Programme for International Student Assessment, 15-year-olds in the U.S. ranked 31st on OECD standardized mathematics tests, and their test scores were far below average in reading and science. Again, this score is deceptive since scores of those attending schools in affluent neighborhoods do fine. The basic problem is we don’t ensure that the quality of education is the same for all children.  Part of the problem is the discrepancy on how much money is spent per pupil. But there are other factors that come in to play also. Sure parenting is a sizable factor, but children don’t get to choose their parents.  Good government does not hang these children out to dry. 

When one walks into a suburban affluent school one sees an entirely different physical environment than in a rural or urban ghetto. Every child today needs a good lap top computer. If a child has one, fine. If not the government needs give them one.  The Golden Rule governs this. Since my younger days, ghetto environments have changed dramatically. Back in the fifties and sixties, most poor neighborhoods had kids playing all over the place, including the streets, while people in the neighborhood knew each other well, would sit on front steps chatting, had picnics in their back yards, etc. The kids did not feel someone might shoot them outside their home, or in school, or on the way to school, or coming home from school, or a stray bullet might find them a target. It is totally different today. Poor neighborhoods often look abandoned with streets empty of people except a few isolated persons heading quickly to the bus or train stops. Some of this fear exists even in affluent neighborhoods today. 

Medical science dictates that children need long formative years for their body to completely develop, especially their Central Nervous System. When children are raised locked up behind windows with bars, doors with bars, and limited areas in which to feel safe from harm——they often end up with chronic high levels of stress hormones in their system. We should monitor all children for the presence of chronic high levels of stress hormones periodically, but we don’t. Even affluent helicopter parents can create a fear of endless diverse groups. Science has known for years that the presence of high levels of stress hormones interferes negatively on the development of the body, especially the nervous system. This can lead to nervous system damage which includes impaired learning, impaired memory, impaired ability to reason, inappropriate emotional states, extreme obesity, abnormal behaviors, phobias, increased likelihood of diabetes, blood pressure abnormalities, and the list goes on. By early adulthood many of these situations are irreversible. The potentials these unfortunate children once had are often gone with the wind.

This chronic stress on children in urban, rural, and suburban ghettoes cannot be relieved without changing the nature of our poor communities. We have already pointed out that poor communities were not always drenched in such extreme fear of safety for the residents. Our ill-advised war on drugs designed by, and carried out by police and politicians, has been an unmitigated disaster driven by the idea that massive prison terms would eradicate the black market drug industry, now the second biggest industry in the country. Marijuana should never have been made illegal as it basically has kept the black market so financially rewarding. The era of alcohol prohibition should have taught us a lasting lesson, but it did not. Actually, across the globe, whatever recreational drugs are used by the majority are always legal. Politics drives this, never science or reason.  

The next factor that created the unsafe dire conditions of these ghetto communities was the failure of minimum wages to have kept up with the standard of living costs. We protect those on social security with yearly cost of living raises. For more than 50 years we ignored cost of living rises for the poorest workers. Gone are the days when a single person at the bottom end jobs can actually live off the salary. Then add the fact  taxes do not go up with the cost of living, coupled with the reality that most politicians cannot get elected unless they promise to reduce taxes. We have waged endless military ventures (well over 50 in the last 50 years) by borrowing the money for these ventures. The general public has wanted a lot of things and yet never wants to really pay the costs, and our national debt keeps soaring. Republicans, especially, have campaigned against a soaring debt and yet it was under Reagan that we went from the world’s biggest creditor nation to the world’s biggest debtor nation. And this has continued with every President since including Trump who is setting records in this area. When it comes to the national debt, the more things change the more they stay the same. 

For a start here taxes should automatically go up with the cost of living. After all, government costs go up too. Then we should make all military actions be paid for through tax increments and military engagement only be carried out when the people vote specifically to engage in military actions and are willing to pay up front. Then, we need adjust our priorities. For example, there is no real reason to have over 700 military bases all over the world. It doesn’t make us safer, it just makes the CEO’s of the military/industrial complex very, very wealthy. In fact, we spend more money on military matters than the next top ten of the major industrial powers combined. And all of this is purported to make us safer and more successful in military engagements. Really? Is there any country out there who seriously considers directly attacking the United States? It would be suicide for them. And what military engagements have we won since World War II except Reagan’s attack on Granada, and perhaps some of the Balkan countries more recently. By won I mean this: we always claim we are invading this or that country or supporting rebels in this or that country so the country in question will have democracy and prosperity for their citizens. What country in which we have engaged in military actions since World War II has ever achieved any prosperity and common togetherness for its citizens after our invasion? Our engagements are always the same: go in, destroy the infrastructure via bombs, create a few ‘green’ safe bases within the country for our soldiers, kill like ten times more citizens of that country than they can kill our ‘peace soldiers’ and then, after X number of years we declare ‘victory’ and leave. 

The results of our ‘invasions’ have merely created the worst hell-holes imaginable—like in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, all the Latin American countries we have meddled in etc. We have intervened in Haiti dozens of times and they just sink lower and lower as a prosperous nation. Why do we continue to think military intervention solves anyone’s best interest? I doubt Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc could possibly be any worse off than they were before our interventions. Using other countries for target practice as the means to create huge financial gains for our huge military/industrial complex is a white collar thug operation. If we want to help citizens living in deplorable conditions we could start with our own citizens living in our urban, rural, and suburban ghettoes. I know, that does nothing to make the Cheneys and Rumsfelds super rich. 

The next thing we can do is retain capitalism but put in adequate regulations (including ending all the endless tax loopholes), add the necessary regulations to keep the playing field level, and put limits on monetary gain. When Teddy Roosevelt pegged the top tax bracket at 90%, and put heavy inheritance taxes on the wealthy, the rich did not disappear, and what followed was the best economy for all the economic classes. It is totally unethical for any form of government to allow 3 people to own as much of the national wealth as the bottom 50% or let 2-5% of its citizens own 90% of the nation’s wealth. If the majority of our citizens cannot understand this, then all hope is lost. 

In the first debate for the 20+candidates running to gain the Democratic Party nomination for President, the candidates spent a lot of time talking about women’s rights, black rights, immigrant  rights, climate change, gay rights, etc.  All this is fine and good, except until people at the lower ends of our economic strata earn a living wage at whatever 40 hr week job they hold, these people —who have suffered economically with their wage buying power for some 60+ years now—are not prepared to lose sleep over all these other rights for various groups. Even those candidates who really want to start by providing living wages for all our workers are overshadowed by the extended time all candidates spend talking about specific human rights still not enjoyed by various groups of citizens. The point here is simply that until we help all our workers earn a living wage, a good percentage of them will remain hostile to expanding human rights to other groups. Our country, to varied degrees, has made good progress with minority rights, gay rights, prison reform, etc. but have made no progress in making sure our workers, at all levels, make a living wage. The democrats have lost much of their base, who they assumed would always vote democratic because of the fine speeches expressing concern for them, but the dire truth is: nothing has improved economically for workers at the lower end of our economic stratus, and they legitimately feel that little changes, no matter whether it is a Republican or Democrat as President. They switch to Trump simply because Trump is very angry, at just about everyone and everything, except the very wealthy, and that is mostly limited to his own obsession with his own wealth. So those struggling economically to make ends meet vote for the angry candidate. Of course Trump could care less about these people, and has done absolutely nothing for their wages, so they will soon just go back to not voting. If the democrats don’t nominate for President someone who clearly puts wages on the front burner, then they run the real risk of losing again. All these other civil rights issues are important, but the reality is that their chances of being  further implemented are very much dependent on the worker wage issues. When people have livable wages holding one 40 hr/wk job they then, and only then, are they sympathetic with all these other social issues. Until then, many of them are riveted to the basic feeling: “Well, what about my life, don’t I count at all?” It just seems after 60+ years of rising costs and stagnant wages, this vast population of our citizens have a good point. To them, at least Donald Trump makes everyone except the rich and religious fundamentalists (which he himself is not) feel themselves under attack. A case of misery loves company. 

We have identified several serious global problems bearing down on the U.S. and other countries across the globe and the solution involves individual sacrifice, global cooperation, toleration for diversity (needed for cooperation) and the expenditure of considerable amounts of money lodged currently in the hands of the top 1-5% of populations across the globe. In the case of the U.S. we have identified exactly where vast amounts of wealth are currently sequestered. 

But any topic concerning the current well being of the U.S. is dependent on the social and ethical culture prevalent at this time. We briefly mentioned the high level of violence that has always been part of our American history. If fact, a whole history of violence dominates the history of both North and South America since Columbus landed. Unfortunately, for South America, the extent and level of violence by the Spanish was far higher than in the French and English Colonies. Thus the high level of violence still exists today in South America as a normal way of life. Columbus and a whole cabal of South America Conquistadors established a culture in which violence against other groups in a society is acceptable. The United States now has our own modern version of a Conquistador whose daily tweets encourages violence, disrespect, and vile anger toward others, others diverse in nature from those angry, and seen as a proper expression of their manhood, especially for otherwise cowards. Tilt this modern conquistadorian President and he would fall like a beached whale. To a difficult extent to measure, our endless prolonged wars with Middle Eastern nations, long known for intense hatred and violence as a basis for their history, has simply generated much of their violent and revengeful nature into our own national psyche.  

Americans have managed, up until now, albeit slowly, tone down the violence and intolerance between various groups, with the Civil War being a notable exception. Fortunately this was a war primarily fought on battlefields between uniformed soldiers. Even so, the death total was huge and the total deaths about equal to the total deaths in all our other military adventures, of which there have been many in the last 70 years. No other country comes remotely close to the U.S. in terms of killing foreign citizens on their own soil after World War II. The military/industrial industry is the biggest industry in our country, followed by the the ‘War on Drug Industry” which has pretty much crippled vast areas of our larger cities, turning them into ghettoes which have grown in size and depravity every decade in recent times. 

Terrorism, which has grown at an exponential rate globally, has now gotten a good foothold within the U.S., and is now growing exponentially here at home. So far it is mostly been by mentally disturbed individuals, most of whom needed mental health attention. Anyone who has taught in high schools or colleges know students whose emotional stability is dangerous, and yet no one wants to confront them individually or report them for fear they become the target of the student’s emotional instability. No area of area of reporting is so riddled with fear of reporting than charging emotionally disturbed citizens as being dangerous to our society. 

What our government fails to realize is just how many millions of citizens, and the numbers increase each year, who are feeling more and more like their backs are up against the wall and thus see no light at the end of any tunnel. Many of their problems are economic, many of their problems are medical, including widespread chronic high levels of stress hormones in the blood of children living in our urban, suburban, and rural ghettoes. When these  young people turn to selling drugs or using drugs (this latter includes many older adults) we simply arrest them, put them in jail with mandatory sentences (at a $30,000 cost per year) while year after year politicians get elected by vowing to put even more in jail—-even though with 5% of the world’s population we have 25% of people globally in prison in our own jails right now.  We have always been good at waging military adventures and putting our own people in jail. We have been horrible at creating community atmospheres which maximally generate contentment among the citizens of the community. 

An inherent problem in assessing the current well being of the U. S. is that we are hardly a nation in which the vast majority of citizens on the same page. True, a good percentage of Americans have genuinely shed any feelings of racial, religious, and ethical intolerance. They have learned to appreciate diversity and include all sorts of diverse citizens in their social or workplace interactions. This is more apparent with the younger generation at most every level of society. It is not unusual, while observing a group of young people out for the evening in an urban entertainment setting, to see the interactions amongst their diversity. These young groups, in years past, tended to be quite homogeneous in nature—all white or black or hispanic, all affluent or poor, all of similar attractiveness or unattractiveness, all gay or all straight, etc.  Today, when I observe these groups out on the town for the night, the groups are often quite diverse and yet actively interacting with each other in a positive way.  At the same time, a large percentage of Americans are seething with various degrees of hostility toward groups not mirror images of themselves. This is especially true for those mired in economic distress which impacts on their feelings about others.  It becomes a situation where they genuinely believe certain other groups are the reason for their economic woes. This becomes especially strong toward any minority group who has steadily been granted rights they did not have in the past. Simply put, many people—in no small numbers—deeply resent all the political attention civil rights for minorities gets from the media. Those feeling trapped in economic hopelessness also deeply resent an entirely different lifestyle possessed by the affluent in our society. Our judicial system is hardly riddled with fairness, which is not to say it is not better than in most countries. The biggest race situation we face right now is the race to the bottom or the race to the top. 

It seems that widespread tolerance for, and appreciation of diversity, depends heavily on improving the economic welfare of the lower economic strata in our country. That essentially means finding a way for all workers who work a 40 hour a wk job, to receive a living wage which goes up each year with the cost of living. Of course this is not 100% achievable, but the more progress we make in this area, the more tolerance for diversity will become widespread. 

We have already mentioned the medical damage done to young people in their formative years who grow up in our urban, suburban, and rural ghettoes. In many cases, the damage done to their developing nervous system is irreversible. That essentially means they will never become employable productive citizens. And this problem grows bigger every year as the deplorable environment which exists in these ghettoes gets more deplorable with every passing year.  

Another impact on our national societal well-being is the internet. The nature and extent of these media devices is still to be accurately measured. But we at least know it is not the neighborhood, church, school activities, large family gatherings, etc which have the same impact as in earlier years. Today, most people’s social life is primarily on their cell phones and internet. This, by itself, tends to limit tolerance for diversity or dependence on facts for our widely differing opinions on so many matters. People with ‘gut feelings’ or irrational emotions can find others with the same ‘gut feelings’ or irrational emotions, and with both as the ‘experts’ proceed to become more and more convinced their feelings are facts, the real reality, and anything else is ‘fake news’. President Trump does this all the time, goes with his gut feelings about any topic, and pays no attention to those who spend their lives professionally studying the matters at hand. He dismisses any attempt at rational discussion of proven facts essentially by giving anyone who attempts such discussion a derogatory nickname which in his mind, settles the question. There is, for example, no climate change taking place because he sees with his own eyes that sometimes the weather is hot, sometimes it is cold, and so on and weather is always changing so that is what weather does, and climate change is fake news. He claims the largest inauguration crowd ever in American history because he was there and saw with his own eyes that people were everywhere. This kind of mindset is gaining momentum and making rational discussion impossible. Science is out, feelings are in. Science is fake news, feelings become facts. 

This leads us to the question, “exactly what is the current mental health status of American citizens? Of course it varies, but there are some dangerous trends which are quite troubling.  Emotional stress seems to be climbing to crisis levels. One of the reasons I gravitate to increased degrees of hermit hood is because it is depressing to be drawn into the lives of so many who are driven more and more by frustration, depression, and helplessness. Suicide rates in the United States are the highest since World War II. Among our military personnel suicide kills more of our soldiers in Afghanistan than death in battle. Wow. In 2017, 47,000 people died from suicide and there were 1. 4 million suicide attempts. From 2000-2006 the suicide rate increased by 1% each year. From 2006-2016 the suicide rate increased by 2% each year. In other words it doubled. We know that mental health problems reveal themselves via suicides, depression, crippling anxiety, substance abuse, schizophrenia, and senseless acts of terrorism. All of these mental states are on a significant rise on a per capita basis. The brilliant response so far by government is to allow everyone to be armed so as to protect themselves from their fellow citizens.  Some states have even gone so far as to say ‘if you feel threatened by someone else, you can stand your ground and shoot them.”  And then there is this: Suicide is the second leading cause of death by 10-34 year old young people. Not good. The tendency today is to put troubled, but most often sane people in jail and  leave  those with clinical mental conditions out loose in the community because the cost of treating them in controlled environments is too much. 

A few countries have made the well-being of their citizens  a primary goal. New Zealand, for example, spends 15 times more than our government spends via its Substance Abuse and mental Health Services Administration. England recently decided they are going to start measuring people’s well being. Earlier in this treatise I mentioned that we need to improve the percentage of our workers who earn a living wage before we can expect further progress with civil rights. But we need to remember that materialism centered around the feeling that ‘enough is never enough’ can end up leaving  90% of a nation’s wealth in the hands of 2-5% of the citizens and where 3 people can own more of a nation’s wealth than the bottom 50% of it’s citizens. 

The list so far is long and highly negative on the well-being of the U.S. as a nation. We have mentioned massive species extinction underway due to human activities, climate change bearing down on us due to human activities, human overpopulation due to human activities, sinking/stagnant wages for over half the American population, 2-5% of citizens now owning 90% of our nation’s wealth, a huge expenditure on military adventures despite not really having won any wars (unless killing more citizens of other nations than any country is some sort of win), an exponential rise in domestic terrorism, an exponential growth in rural, urban and soon suburban unsafe deplorable economic ghettos, a doubling of the suicide rate—especially for young people, a failure to put in realistic regulations of capitalism, a failure to put limits on capitalistic greed, and a national debt exponentially soaring out of sight.  Based on the cost of our foreign ‘empire’, the absurd concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich domestically, and lack of security for workers on many jobs (haven’t mentioned that but now have)—-we find ourselves having met the three historical reasons why empires implode.

But in addition to all the above, our nation is fast splitting into various groups which genuinely hate each other. Maybe this hate is not yet at the level of our President, but it may get there. About half (this is a guess) of our citizens genuinely try to practice the Golden Rule, have respect and appreciation for diversity, indicated by their support for all groups to have the same civil rights. Yet the other half currently circle the wagons around their own particular group, whether it be economics, race, religion, blind national patriotism, sexual preferences, and so on in nature. What is interesting here is that when Obama first ran for office diverse groups energetically supported him because they all realized he cared about them/their group. Then, over time, they began to realize he was helping certain groups of citizens who they personally opposed. They then began to dislike him, expressly because he tended to genuinely like all diverse groups—he just would not make life more difficult for the poor, certain races, certain religious groups, gays, the wealthy, or endorse the attempt by any group to make life more miserable for certain other groups. Giving their group a fair deal was not enough to please some, he had to make life more miserable for certain other groups to keep their approval. Obama did fail to curtail the accumulation of wealth into the hands of the 2-5% ers, but to be fair that requires both houses of Congress to be democrats to a veto proof degree. 

The last brings up another dire situation. Unless both houses of Congress are of the same party as the President with 2/3 majority, nothing substantial can be passed. Congress has become almost useless, unless the ability to pass nothing is considered an accomplishment. Things change over time and without meeting these changes with better policies, bed things happen to those who cannot change with the times. 

How empathetic, helpful, co-operative, and friendly various groups in our multi ethnic/religious/economic/etc are with each other depends on the extent to which citizens follow the Golden Rule as their ethical behavior. It seems like half the country right now at least attempts to follow the Golden rule and the other half are genuinely at war with, and intensely dislike certain other groups. While Trump is not the cause of the intolerance, he has made it easier for hate to be acted out. Unfortunately, violence begets violence. There probably is no escaping another civil war at this point. I suppose if somehow most of our citizens had good schools, good health care, good teachers, a safe formative environment, good opportunities for employment at living wages, etc. then the Golden Rule could be easier to grow in practice. Our country now consists of three large ethnic groups—whites, blacks, hispanics, and none of these group have a clear majority. All three groups, and indeed most all groups everywhere across the globe now have terrorism as an effective weapon to cause most any society to implode. Groups either become tolerant and actually each group helps other groups solve their problems, or all groups are going to find themselves in a civil war not with uniformed soldiers winning battles on a battlefield, but enraged bands of this or that group waging neighborhood terrorism everywhere. Modern gadgets make it possible for controlled roving riots—the sort of thing perfected in the Middle East, thanks to our endless invasions—and could even be more effective in our society in which more and more people are becoming well armed with assault weapons. It is simply legal insanity. 

We would do well to understand that throughout history, when a society implodes on itself, the have-not’s alway win over the have’s.  It is very simple, the have’s try to protect their possessions, while the have-not’s—with little or nothing to protect—are free to roam about creating terrorism in roving waves. The police and troops cannot be everywhere at once. They would be forced to establish ‘green areas’ within our country to keep themselves safe, and everyone else would be on the front line of attack by the angered masses. 

The problems are easy enough to identify, Naturally the question is whether these problems can be solved and an implosion of human societies globally and in this country be avoided. Only the big picture on evolutionary time, from a global perspective, can begin to give us any clear concept of our current wellbeing in the United States providing we realize that no one country can possible avert the global disasters bearing down on our whole planet.  The real human hurdles which block solving our problems are time, greed, intolerance, lack of willingness by the majority to sacrifice for the good of the entire human society, ignorance/the complexity of these global problems beyond the reach of most humans to comprehend, religious/racial/political/cultural/national patriotism, poor living environments, and a declining percentage of people willing to accept the Golden Rule as the driving ethical force for their behavior. We can no longer fake it regarding the Golden Rule and simply use faith in any inherited religious scripture as the camouflage for ethical behavior. That game is up as is misplaced patriotism. 

Without responsible human reproduction globally, there is no hope. Overpopulation brings with it dire consequences. Period. There are no exceptions for any species. The only legitimate patriotism is patriotism for the entire human species. All other patriotic impulses are self destructive, especially at this point in human history. The only good government is one which brings about the greatest contentment for the greatest number of people. Without the willingness of citizens everywhere to pay for all the things they want government to do instead of borrowing money to do these things— national debts doom economies. Until workers working a full time job earn a livable wage, ghettoes will continue to become more and more deplorable. The purpose of invented machines is to do the work humans before these machines had to do by human labor. The full time work week at this point in time should be 30 hrs/wk in order to reach full employment. Full employment at livable wages means welfare costs would be minimal. With such full employment at livable wages the amount of tax money going to the government would rise astronomically as the 43 percent of adults in this country now earning so little money they are not eligible to pay taxes, would now be paying taxes. With everyone earning livable wages, they would have money to spend and this spending would stimulate the economy. With global full employment at livable wages there would be no immigration problem. If any nation allows a majority to destroy the homes and make  resident minority groups (religious, racial, cultural or political) flee from a country, that country would need to be punished by all other nations via trade restrictions, etc. There is no way to stop desperate people, unable to live in their own country, from finding ways to get into other countries as illegal immigrants. In fact, statistics are of little use. If someone successfully gets into a country illegally how could that person be included in any statistics about how many are getting in?  Building a wall is simply moronic. In this country, for example. one of the largest entry points is visitors who just never return home. Most illegal immigrants pay others who have the means to smuggle them in. These means are as variable as ways to smuggle in marijuana, and we all know how totally unsuccessful that was. Citizen cards of some modern day form are the best defense, but most people don’t want to have so much personal data registered with the government. One way to protect worker salaries is to make it illegal for any goods produced elsewhere by non livable wages (based on pt of origin) to be sold in our country. We should not be allowed to buy things made by ‘slave’ labor. Period. If we need do with less, so be it. Maybe we don’t really need a huge TV in every room in the house, or a house the size of a small castle. Wealth is fine, up to a point, and that point is when the greed of a few makes living comfortable impossible for the lowest on the economic ladder. No government responsible for all its citizens can tolerate this.

No more military invasions of any sort should be permitted without our citizens voting to engage in such activity, and if they do vote to invade, then the total costs must be paid at the time via an increase in taxes to cover the costs. Domestic terrorism can only be limited by increasing the percentage of people living contented lives which involves livable wages again. Ghettoes and the medical damage inflicted on young people living in these ghettoes will only shrink in size and become more safe and livable when all children (and adults too) have good schools, good teachers, good health care, opportunities for employment at livable wages, and those children stuck in poor family situations receive intervention by the government to protect these children. When more citizens earn livable wages, have good health, and live in safe environments, only then will drug abuse go down, especially heroin use. Once we stop putting people in jail for drug abuse or selling drugs, this frees up an astonishing $30,000/yr/prisoner to provide medical facilities to treat drug abuse. Then maybe our country, with 5% of the world’s population will end up with only 5% of the world’s prisoners in jail compared to the current 25%. To ensure workers stay with livable wages once this is established, then these wages rise each year with the cost of living, just like social security does. And taxes should rise each year according to the cost of living too. Get the politicians out of this stuff as much as possible. 

Clearly there is little indication that much of the above has any realistic chance of happening any time soon. Human Time is not on our side. So implosion is a reasonable prediction for the short term.

The only positive point I can dredge up here is that the future is very difficult to predict. So, of course all this above could be wrong, or at least be solvable in peaceful ways. What can be far more predictable is that the evolutionary process, no matter how dire a correction required, has always, for millions of years, sometimes after set-backs which last thousands or millions of years, ends up bouncing back with more complexity and an improved planet. Thus, all is well that end’s well, and in the mean time (evolutionary time) millions of the less fortunate, as always is the case, will suffer the consequences. Whether we like it or not, none of us individually are being protected by God (however we envision God) and it is the evolutionary process created by God which will determine the future via those laws which govern the process. We humans do have the ability, via the universal ethical principle of the Golden Rule, to make life more contented for a far greater percentage of human beings, especially the less fortunate. So far, as a species, we don’t have a very good track record here. It is what it is, that’s that, there you are, so be it, that’s life. No one gets out of this world alive.

But in the last analysis Evolutionary Time is probably right on schedule to continue its ever upward spiral. Great things, beyond our comprehension, lie ahead in the grand scheme of things.   

Addendum:

If you got this far take a selfie and try to recreate the expression on your face when you saw the word ‘addendum’. Smile. 

This musing may have created the notion that contentment is solely related to a livable wage. That, not surprisingly, is not true. Studies have shown that wage has a strong relationship to contentment up to around $70,000 and then it fades away as to any strong relationship. Probably best to look at living wage as a starting point for contentment. Below I will attempt via common perceptions or sayings to complete the picture. That is: a most successful society’s result in maximizing contentment for the greatest number of citizens when most of the citizens practice the following in their personal lives:

“Violence begets violence” is true for nations as well as individuals

“Enough is as good as a feast”  Those who cannot accept this in their personal lives end up like Trump, a highly discontented soul every waking minute of the day, and night.  

The Golden Rule—even with a livable wage, contentment depends on following the Golden Rule. Mario Cuomo reflected on this when he said “All around us we have seen success on this world’s terms become ultimate and desperate failures.  Teenagers and college students, raised in affluent surroundings and given all the material comforts our society can offer, commit suicide. Entertainers and sports figures achieve fame and wealth but find the world empty and dull without the solace of stimulation drugs. Men and women rise to the top of their professions after years and years of struggling. But despite their apparent success, they are driven nearly mad by a frantic search for diversions—new mates, games, new experiences—anything to fill the diminishing interval between their existence and eternity—the way to serve ourself is to serve others; and that Aristotle was right, back then, when he said the only way to assure yourself happiness is to learn to give happiness.” Serving others can involve giving the less fortunate our time, direct face to face efforts, setting a good example for others, or giving some of our earned money to the less fortunate. 

Only earned money carries with it any assurance of contentment. Inheritance is not earned money —the receiver understands that, thus they really can’t fool themselves nor others. Governments make a big mistake when they allow large amounts of money to be passed on to a genetic cabal. Excess wealth of any degree should be pumped back into the society from which it came, so others have a more level field toward achieving their own success for some wealth. “I would as soon leave my son a curse as the almighty dollar” (Andrew Carnegie). People who, for one reason or another, are given so much material advantages in life (called spoiled brats) are rarely happy campers. They seldom ever learn how to acquire much of anything for themselves in their lives. My dad told myself and my brother that “after 18yrs of age you are on your own”. In my case, it was the best gift he could have given me. Whatever modest achievements I garnered in life were made possible by that realization.

“Love when you are ready, not when you are lonely.”

Never miss a chance to eat well or stay physically fit. Good health is directly related to these two aspects of life. 

“Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us to the end, dare to do our                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               duty as we understand it.” (Lincoln)

Our ability to achieve our own highest level of contentment is directly related to how well we can learn to tolerate and appreciate the diversity of human nature/potentials. To the extent we can contribute to the achievement efforts of others, whether in the role of parents, teachers, bosses, friends, or far distant individuals in need of help—all of this will determine the level of contentment we ourselves ever achieve.  Illogical rigidity, often expressed via ‘my way or the highway’ is to stunt the growth of our own potential and that of those we are in a position to serve.  We need individually, and collectively, to encourage every young person at the end of their formative years, to reexamine all of that which they have been taught during their formative years, let it tumble around in their own mind, extract misguided prejudices, and reach their own conclusions  of how best to become a productive and valued citizen of their society. The best way to teach others is by example, never by trying to force feed our own particular lifestyle, prejudices, and values down other people’s throats, whether they be our own kids, students, workers, neighbors, or distant nations. Of course there are limits—values and individual actions which take advantage of others, or harm the welfare of others are crimes which need to be punished. Individual freedom has boundaries.  Misguided overprotection leaves our victims fearful and distrustful of others and those different from themselves—prime candidates to become members of a mentality which dictates ‘circle the wagons and defend ourselves from ‘heathens’ who invariably are different from the mirror image of our own selves’. 

My personal belief is that God’s evolutionary process, via the rules established to run the process, will, in evolutionary time, sort all things out in such a manner that progress in all of the above areas will be worked out. Short term things look bleak, with many individual victims, but long term the process which has gotten things to the present status, will continue to move in a forward direction, albeit with the usual necessary corrections. We all can derive some personal satisfaction that once dead, we will never again suffer stresses of any kind. If absence of stress is the definition of peace then permanent peace of mind will come to all of us. Myself,  always a gentleman (smile), will be pleased to allow others go first until the planet is empty, then I will follow and close the door, with some last words: “To all a good night”. 

Soon I will have no enemies at all. When asked how I managed that my reply will be simple: “I outlived the bastards”.