And We Call This A Life?

Wow!

 

Is it any wonder that the number of Americans taking anti-depressants has soared?

Unhappiness is increasing in our country, while for the second consecutive year, life expectancy in America is decreasing.

We live in an age of unparalleled wealth yet can’t afford health care.

We try desperately to show the most Likes, the most Friends, the most Links, the most Followers while feelings of loneliness and anxiety continue to climb.

While gun ownership is actually decreasing, the number of guns owned by that shrinking minority of Americans is increasing to a veritable arsenal of semi-automatic weapons of war.

Americans own 48% of the world’s guns, more guns per capita than any other nation. The U.S. has less than 5% of the world’s population but produces 31% of the mass shooters, more than the next five nations combined.

Effective tax rates on 1 percenters may not have fallen by half, as some on the left might be tempted to imagine. But they are down by about 6 percentage points at a time when the wealthy earn a vastly larger share of the national income. That drop represents a lot of money. Moreover, as Greenberg admits, tax rates on top 0.1 percent have fallen by about one-fifth since their 1950s heights. That rather severely undercuts the idea that taxes on the wealthy haven’t fallen “much.”

And yet…

And yet, we still can’t find the money or the will to maintain, much less replace and improve, the infrastructure our parents and grandparents built.

Millions of Americans, like school teachers in West Virginia and Oklahoma have to work two jobs just to make ends meet.

We, the privileged, the educated, the wealthy have so much and we seem to always want even more.

I want to be hopeful that the Millennials will choose a different path.

Something needs to change in our nation and I think it’s us.