Graham

My immediate response is that the country is not free, as in free beer, because everything we get has to be paid for by someone, but that is too materialistic and exposes my own insecurity of loosing my home, livelihood, access to education, medical care and public services; and my children will loose them, too.

On second thought, freedom is about access to information and the ability to change the system to make more fair and pleasant for everyone. Freedom of speech is essential but to make communication effective, it has to be based on a shared understanding of how the system works and what the purpose of the social/government/economic system is.

First, there is a greater skill and professionalism in politics by which demigods can manipulate the population by framing the question and harping on those issues all day long on right-wing talk radio, The children of rich benefit most because they go to the best schools, learn the improved skills and get jobs in large corporations to squeeze more money from the lower and middle classes. They are the ones practicing class warfare.

Second, the academic discipline of economics has been captured by business and corporations to advocate capitalism and corporate profits as the only important value in our economic system. The children of the rich get well paying corporate jobs and perpetuate themselves as a class that doesn't need the lower and middle classes to thrive. They have enough political power to skew to laws make tax expenditures to favor corporate interests and the rich. Also, the engineering disciplines have been extremely successful in using machines to produce all our material wealth without relying on skilled manufacturing workers.

Third, corporations and the rich are paying less taxes and the middle class doesn't make enough income to pay for infrastructure and social services, so states and local governments are going broke.

People have to become better educated in understanding how the laws are biased to favor the very, very rich.

One area is the reporting of economic statistics. The rich and the poor are lumped together in computing average incomes. The average is biased upward by million and billion dollar incomes of the very, very rich. It is taken as axiomatic that an increasing GDP is a sign of prosperity and improving economy, but the distribution of income and wealth is a bimodal distribution and the so-called improvement is the rich getting richer. It increase understanding if the news media would explain the whole distribution, and compute the average income and employment rates for those over and under $250,000 per year.

The conservatives are still harping on supply-side economics, especially now that they have control of the House. They say we have to give more money to the "investing class" because they are the ones that create jobs. They keep harping on it and it is reported in the news media, but there is no evidence that it is true and I can't find any convincing rationale or explanation. Capitalism, and especially supply-side economics is a religion supported by sound bites from vested interests and amplified incessantly by the media.

The conservatives and republicans have such big megaphones that they drown out rational thought by repeating the same lies over and over again.

A page on the philosophical principles that underly political debate:

1) Do all people have a right to health care that doesn't bankrupt them?

2) Do all people have a right to a job that pays a living wage?

3) Should all people benefit from technology and productivity improvements even though their skills are no longer needed?

4) What motivates people to learn and apply the skills needed by society? Are most people lazy and selfish so they wont do anything but watch sports unless they are going hungry or get a big reward?

5) How fair is it for us or our rich to prosper while the rest of the worlds suffers?