Budgets that don’t INCREASE are called cuts. It’s an ever growing government that sucks up more of our freedoms with every new hire. There have been no cuts since Calvin Cooledge.
But the problem isn’t capitalism or socialism.
Any time companies and government get together to discuss what’s good for the country we all suffer. When companies make the rules enforced using the guns of the government we all lose.
Cronyism. It’s a cancer.
Why can’t seniors buy their drugs in Canada? It’s illegal. Big pharma doesn’t like free trade.
Why has DRM been such a huge issue since napster? Record companies using government enforcement for profit.
Thee are others examples but I think you get it. Our elected officials care more about perks from lobbies than us.
Coolidge’s cuts also led to an extreme wealth disparity, targeted minorities, prolonged the Great Depression and are generally really dumb policy. He’s also literally the model that corporate cronyism is built on - particularly the Reagan model that has been solidified into a permanent fixture.
And Canada’s drug are cheaper because the government regulates and subsidizes the cost unlike the “free market.” Corporations literally are lobbying for the side of smaller government, while those who personally profit from corporate money push for tax cuts and privatized government services.
These things are inseparable. Governments vary in the degrees and expressions of capitalist capture, but they all eat from the trough.
That which is for me through the medium of money – that for which I can pay (i.e., which money can buy) – that am I myself, the possessor of the money. The extent of the power of money is the extent of my power. Money’s properties are my – the possessor’s – properties and essential powers. Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness – its deterrent power – is nullified by money. I, according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet. Therefore I am not lame. I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honoured, and hence its possessor. Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good. Money, besides, saves me the trouble of being dishonest: I am therefore presumed honest. I am brainless, but money is the real brain of all things and how then should its possessor be brainless? Besides, he can buy clever people for himself, and is he who has [In the manuscript: ‘is’. – Ed.] power over the clever not more clever than the clever? Do not I, who thanks to money am capable of all that the human heart longs for, possess all human capacities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their contrary?
