Nothing lasts forever. As American cities cope with their failing physical infrastructures, it’s obvious that bridges, roads, pipes, wiring built to last 75 years, breakdown when they reach 100 years old. The answer? Money to rebuild and make that infrastructure work again.
But answers when our social infrastructure fails are not so simple. When all the systems successful for 60-70 years – our economy, education, healthcare, even government – no longer work, what are the solutions?
Those we’ve been trying for the past 25 years are failing. To understand why just ask the question: Cui bono-Who Benefits from these solutions? The answer defines the reason for failure: Again and again solutions offered benefit only those providing the services and not those for whom the services were designed.
Today’s solutions fail because we are doing nothing more than “putting a patch on a road or a bridge, instead of rebuilding it; replacing a small section of pipe instead of all of it; electing politicians with the most money to ‘sell” us; propping up the power elite so that genuine opportunities for the rest of us no longer exist.
The Liberal Party established more than 70 years to deal with problems so very much like these today, pledged to level the playing field of opportunity. We are in a position to recommend the changes that will restore the playing field and the opportunities available after the Second World War – an unprecedented time of growth and prosperity shared by all the American people in a way never duplicated again.
WHEN SYSTEMS FAIL
Our programs for social benefit – our social infrastructure – is now so old that they have become institutionalized into systems. Originally designed to work to benefit as many as possible, these systems now fail because those working in them care more about their own benefits than the benefits of the people they are supposed to be serving.
Systemic failure is everywhere. Public education is failing dropping America well down the list of industrial nations. Public health has infant and adult mortality and illness rates higher than almost all other industrial nations. Income inequality driven by corporations and banks ‘too big to fail’, hedge fund operators with very low tax rates, and elected officials controlled by big money – now far exceeds the inequality that existed at that turn of the 20th Century when the Robber Barons – in steel, coal, railroads and automobiles – totally controlled the labor market and the government.
We know what to do about our crumbling physical infrastructure but what do we do to repair the failure of our social infrastructure? Money for one is not the answer for the other.
What will make our schools better? Not just more money for teachers and their union. That won’t improve what is happening in the classroom for both struggling teachers and bored, over-tested students…not one bit. New York State spends twice as much money for education than any other state. And we rank 32nd in “success”. Cui bono? Who benefits?
What will really improve our healthcare system? Not just money for the Affordable Care Act which provides a potential 40 million new customers for health insurance companies. Not with the waste, the incredible cost of treatment and drugs, the built-in profit in what has been proven so often to be fraudulent. Cui bono? Who benefits?
What will bring back the middle class? Not money for higher and higher college tuition as banks work with college admission offices to fill the seats and produce crippling debt, the largest college drop-out rate in our history but no jobs. Cui bono? Who benefits?
Where are the jobs? What will bring them back? Not laws that permit American corporations to send their jobs abroad and help them move their entire corporation abroad to save trillions of dollars in corporate taxes? Cui bono? Who benefits?
When will unions – now essentially corporations – begin working for their members’ benefits and not their own bank accounts? Not when municipal union leadership sign contracts which do little to improve productivity and personal success while sacrificing real needs – like pension funds being used today to provide salary increases and never mind retirement –and retroactive pay stretched years into the future and nothing more BUT increased union dues. The struggling teachers? The kids? Never mind. Cui bono? Who benefits?
What will end our refusal to recognize the amount of mental illness within our society before another young person goes on a murderous shooting rampage? Not new gun control laws which control nothing. Cui bono? Who benefits?
What will make our Federal Government work again and our national Democratic and Republican parties something more than just recognizable brand names? Not the fact that those parties stand for nothing, in a political system that all but guarantees life-time jobs for incumbents. Cui bono? Who benefits?
These are complex problems…but as the Liberal Party provides answers that will work – as we did back in the 1950’s when America was at the height of its power within a social framework that provided real equality of opportunity – real liberalism at work – start with the question: Cui bono – Who benefits? The answers will help you see exactly what is wrong.