Utopia

So why not something for everyone?

  Have you ever heard that bit about how the richest country on the planet should provide everyone with a minimum income and lifestyle?

 I agree that we should have a minimum level of lifestyle for everyone. However, what I might think is good enough may be too low for you and too high for the next person. 

 But here are my thoughts on it.

  In the US we should start by putting every new born CITIZEN on a health care program that will cover the childhood shots and needs and provide care until they reach 21. From there on they get an annual health screen and any needed preventative treatments. Lifestyle choices that are considered bad will be provided counseling to help you get off them. Those who choose to not change will sign a waiver of coverage for any problems those choices may cause. Over eating, drugs and booze are a choice. I would build government run hospitals and clinics across the country where treatment is free except for the above mentioned lifestyle choices. Waits at free clinics tend to be long. Private hospitals will want insurance cards or cash.

  I would also give every new born a Social Security Account and from the day of their birth I would put $1000 a month into that account. That money belongs to the person from day one. Credited every month on their birth date it goes on the books.

  If a parent falls on hard times they can file to access the money to help with expenses, but they have to show a good reason to get to it, and will be limited to $1000 a month. They cannot drain what is in the account before they file. Parental access ends when the child turns eighteen.

 That money, left alone, will be over $200,000 by the time the child reaches college age and can be used to pay for the college of their choice. Or at eighteen the child can start getting the $1000 each month to live on. The choice to draw the money must be renewed every six months. Again except for justified uses like college or buying a home access to the balance is blocked.

  A young adult has another choice available. They can find a job and earn a living while still drawing that extra $1000, or just live on what they earn and let the SSA money accrue.  

 A young adult can, if they wish, choose to live out their life on just that basic income. They can try to get by in the general world, or they can choose to go where that money will be more than enough to live on. They can, if they want, sign up to be a ward of the government, or WOG.  

  We should build cities for those who choose to be on minimum support. Nice cities with public transportation and clean streets, parks and libraries. Government run schools within easy bus rides from the housing blocks, stores located in an evenly spaced grid to make them easy to get to, clinics and hospitals will all be provided. Minimum comfort levels, prices kept at acceptable levels to match the minimum level of income, everything needed for a minimum level of life within reach and affordable.

  Those who choose this life of their own free will however, will have to give up some things to get it. Someone else will decide what that minimum level of life should be. You will not be able to vote for politicians who promise to raise the standards to ever higher levels. Those who choose to be a ward of the government cannot vote. To allow them to vote risks building a block of semi slaves that will be forced to be loyal to their masters who hold the purse strings.

 Anyone can leave the WOG status at any time. Just get a job. Seek employment, start paying taxes, and after a year you are can be a citizen again. But that will mean leaving the city housing blocks and supporting yourself.  No more shopping at the low income stores and the like.

 Those who are forced to the minimum level due to health, age, or misfortune, who do not want to sign up as a WOG, still have all their rights and can choose to live where they wish. They will get the same minimum support and any other income they may have earned while working or can earn at the time. They will still be taxed at the going rate and expected to do their best to support themselves.

  Left alone that basic income should, by the age of 65 say, be about three quarters of a million in the bank. If you live to be ninety for example that would let you draw $31,000 a year on top of your $1000 a month as a basic retirement. That’s better than most get today. Add in a company retirement plan and you have a pretty good setup for your Golden Years.

  Okay so where does the money come from to pay for all this? It comes from taxes of course. Taxes on those who want more than a basic lifestyle, who feel the need to produce something with their own hands, or mind, who want to give their children and spouses a better life, and all those government workers who work in those government run cities for the WOGs. And remember the money the WOGs get, comes right back into the government coffers from the government run stores and shops.

  What current problems would be solved? Well there would be no welfare, food stamps, unemployment, disability, medicare, or medicaid to be defrauded and wasted. Unemployment will drop as a WOG is not counted as unemployed because they are not in the labor force by choice. There will still be demand for all the basics and all the luxuries and frills of life so there will be jobs providing them and well as the government jobs looking after the WOGs.

  A Blog is a lot like talking to one's self. You think out loud and type your thoughts into the web with the faint hope that someone out there will see them and perhaps see something of value in them.
 When I started this one I had been active on several web sites and had been a part of several conversations that seemed to stir my mind to look inward. Then as world events moved onward my mind wandered and other things came to mind. I posted on terror in my last two posts and those were almost a year apart as I waited to look at what was happening around me.
  I feel there is something very wrong going on today. Here in the US we see clearly for the first time that our election process is a farce, and that a small group of party elites have been running the show and they work in cahoots with each other.
  Hillary has been promised, the slot as the first woman president and the powers that rule her party will stop at nothing to achieve that goal even if it means destroying the country as it exists under the constitution to do it.
  On the other side of the isle the republican party elites have long used the presidential candidate position to reward old party loyals for their service even if they have no chance of success.
  Both parties assume that the voters are loyal to their party and will vote the party line no matter who they send out front.
  There seems to be the very real possibility that the US as we know it, and have known it, is about to self destruct. A civil war looms on the horizon no matter who may win in November and neither party seems to give a damn.
  Perhaps its just old age and my natural paranoia at play here. But there are things happening that seem very wrong.
  The Republicans seem happy to cede control to the Democrats and them selves to second place. They also seem to have absolutely nothing for which they will stand and fight.  There is no issue or position that they will not compromise on or back away from. And there are the news stories of the Secret Service pressuring elected officials with blackmail over past indiscretions. 
  The Democrats have finally dropped all pretense of not being socialists/communists and it seems to have little effect on their base as generation after generation of college educated young people seem to embrace the idea. However these same young people are having a devil of a time living in the real world. Just a week ago a college campus went mad and students were scared almost to death when someone wrote the word TRUMP in chalk on a few walls. Not death threats or racial slurs just the word TRUMP.
   With the growth of immigrant enclaves forming in many states, and the recent tendency of these groups to form neighborhoods that retain their own languages and standards and to avoid integration and assimilation it is only a matter of time before traveling to another state is like traveling to another country. Complete with very different languages and laws.
  That so many of these immigrants are here with no permission seem to make no difference. That we have no jobs for them seems to make no difference. And that without workers paying taxes the government has no money to support them is just more of the same.
  I am afraid that Hillary may be more than the first woman president of the US, she may be the last president of the US. Because it won't be long before it all falls apart.  

The PLO, PLA, SLA, Hagannah, Viet Minh, Muslim Brotherhood, NLF Red Army Faction, FALN, Fatah, PMOI, Shining Path, ISIS, ISIL, Al-Quaeda, and the list goes on and on and on.

  Group after group, place after place, year after year the beat and the death just keeps on going on.

  The Viet Mihn were called bandits and warlords at first, then they became the Viet Cong and the People’s Liberation Front, and suddenly they were “Freedom Fighters” in the eyes of many. The PLO highjacked airliners full of people and shot and killed many. They demanded ransom, and often blew the planes up when the TV cameras went dark. Today they are the “Leaders of Palestine”.

   In the American media the old saying holds true that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” As long as the Democrats held the White House the money flowed to Vietnam to fight the war started under Kennedy, and when Nixon took office it suddenly became “Nixon’s War” and congress and the media turned against it.

  We condemn the actions of the IS groups but we ignore groups just as bad elsewhere. Just where and why do we draw these lines?

   And let’s just for once be honest here, and I’m not talking to people on the ground in areas occupied or under attack by these groups, except for those do any of these groups REALLY scare you?  Do you really live in fear of ISIL?

   The attacks on 9/11 killed thousands. It was a day very much like December 7^th of 1941 in that regard in that it made Americans mad as Hell, but did it really scare YOU?

   When that bomb exploded in Oklahoma City what did you think? No vast conspiracy, no network of terrorists, just a couple of guys and a little bit of military training. Did that image of a lone nut case scare you?

   Want to know the easy way to overthrow a government?

   You don’t spend millions and kill all your own people in symbolic attacks on buildings that mean nothing to the average person. You do it from within with small attacks that are set to attract attention and at places where the average citizen might go on a regular basis.

  You strike and wait for the people to demand the government do something. Then you strike again somewhere far away from the first attack.

   The Government will do what they always do. Make some symbolic gesture and pass a few laws to restrict the daily life of the average person.

  Then you repeat the first step to show that what they did hasn’t stopped you. This will make the government look bad and the people will demand more action. Which will result in even more laws and even less freedom for many.

  The cycle repeats over and over with each step causing the government to become more and more restrictive and the people less and less free. And each strike will only serve to show that they have failed to stop you. And even better, at some point others will become so disgusted with the government restrictions that they will join your efforts.

   As your numbers grow the government will start to use military to look for you and the sight of soldiers on the streets will scare the people more than any of your attacks. Soldiers are not police and they are not trained to use stun guns and chase people on foot. People will die by military actions which will drive even more to your side.

   The country will explode from the inside as the people will rise up to get rid of what they now see as an oppressive government.

  Every night the media report every shooting as if it were a massacre of biblical proportions. And every citizen thinks that his values and freedoms are being taken from him. The major political parties have joined in by making it look like the primaries are a sham and that a select few have already decided who will be elected.

  What I have described is the Spiral of Oppression. A know tactic of subverting and overthrowing a government. The screw is turning and is being turned by the government, helped by the media, and loudly supported by groups funded by billionaires who stand to clean up after the fall. How far can they screw down the lid before it blows?

  This last should scare you more than any group listed at the top of the page.

   How much more before the society ruptures from the turning of the screw?