@Ron Rutherford, re: "I know you think that productivity should dictate wage increases when the productivity goes up but are you then willing to concede that wages should in fact go down when productivity goes down???"
Can you show me one genuine example, Ron, of a time when productivity dropped and wages increased? I sincerely doubt it - certainly not over the past 100 years or so. We've ALL seen the graphs, man - wages & productivity track very nicely - reasonably parallel, and constantly increasing at about the same rate, until your hero, Mr Reagan, got elected. Then wages go flat, but productivity continued on its merry way upwards.
You'd be MUCH better off presenting arguments like this on a website run by Fox, Ron - those folks won't try to screw up your story with facts. Over here , we DO read "the whole thing" before replying.
It has crept up on us so slowly we hardly realized it. The purging of critical thinking skills from our schools and from our society in general. Over the last 30 + years the Cons have been pushing us to stop thinking critically and just accept authority without question.
It really started in the 1960s with the spread of activism and public protests. It was a movement in response to an unjust and unnecessary war. Our generation was the product of an affluent and successful middle class resulting from high taxes on the rich, enforcement of anti-trust laws, empowerment of labor unions and an educated and informed generation of young people. It was this generation of critical thinkers that scared the shit out of the Republicans. When we took to the streets and challenged the authority of the establishment a shock wave resonated throughout the conservative world.
Conservative thinking relies on unquestioning acceptance of authority as the way to keep socieity civil and keep the rabble from mucking up the works. That fear gave rise to a long and sustained effort to cleanse our country of the cancer of critical and progressive thinking. When President Nixon said that if the President does it then it must be legal, he set the mold for the future vision of conservatives for a rigidly ordered nation where dissent is not tolerated and punishable by all manner of penalties.
It really kicked into high gear during the Reagan administration when the Cons were able to eliminate most of the means of imparting critical thinking skills to students the elimination of civics classes, principles of democracy classes and any kind of format that would encourage students to question authority and make an attempt to improve their lot in life.
We now have an entire generation of young adults who have very little idea of what Jeffersonian Democracy is or what ideas and values our form of government and our principles were founded upon. They are ignorant of the great struggle throughout history between rigid, fear-driven, conservatism and forward thinking, progressivism. The demise of true journalism is one means by which the Cons have accomplished this change. We no longer have actual journalism taught in our schools and colleges - it's all been re-geared towards info-tainment - the battle for ratings, advertising dollars and PROFIT.
Our media, what the founding fathers referred to as the fourth estate - the independant journalistic means by which our representatives are held to account for their actions, has been completely swallowed by the radical right-wing corporate power structure. Through witholding enforcement of The Sherman Anti-Trust Act, corporations have been allowed to grow larger and larger until their wealth, power and influence has completely eclipsed the power and influence of we the people .
Jefferson believed that the only way this great experiment could succeed was if there were a literate and informed electorate. That is why he pushed so hard for public education and why he founded the University of Virginia. Without said informed electorate our experiment in democratic rule would be doomed to failure and this is exactly what we are experiencing now.
Critical thinking scares the holy hell out of conservatives because when people are able to think critically for themselves they don't need an authoritative government to keep them down, they tell them what to think or punish them if they step out of the limits set by their betters . When people are able to think critically they are able to understand what is happening and make informed decisions about how to govern themselves. The people take control of the helm and tell those who would be authoritarians how to steer our ship of state.
There are a few basic, root changes that must be made if we are ever to regain our power as a free and self-governing people. The re-learning of critical thinking is among the most basic of those changes. From that will stem a whole host of positive changes such as the ability to see when they are being manipulated and intimidated. When people are able to think critically about what is going on around them they will come up with amazing ideas about how to make things better.
It doesn't take a genius to see how we've been herded into a pen and manipulated and scared into doing the will of the rich and powerful, so that they may keep and increase their wealth and power. It's time to face our fears, gird our loins and push back in unison with the power of our numbers to take back what the Constitution and the Bill of Rights gave to every American, the right to be free to make our own choices about how we govern ourselves.
The government is not a them it is an us, we the people. We elect these schmucks, they are supposed to do what we want them to - that which is the very best for all of us. Reagan succeeded in creating a false demon - government. Remember when he said - The nine most terrifying words in the English language are - 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help' . It's time we turn that around and tell the conservatives - The nine most terrifying words in the English language are - I'm from the corporation and I'm here to help.