GUEST: Dr. Andrew Ross, professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University and author of Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World’s Least Sustainable City, talks about US debt and the fight for a fair economy. (prerecorded in Rhinebeck)
The subject of debt works nicely into our July 4th program. Much of US debt is illegitimate in that it was foisted on borrowers without any beneficial social outcome. Dr. Ross separated debt taken on for basic human services like education and healthcare from other types of financial obligations. The government should be paying for these services with our tax dollars, instead of bailing out the big banks, cutting corporate taxes to zero, and fighting wars abroad for US businesses. And the failure of our government to protect the people from the predatory corporations results in the type of "debt slavery" we see today.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
How long will we endure a form of government that has so clearly failed its citizens? We don't have the tyranny of the British Empire to free ourselves from this time. More like the military/industrial/Congressional complex that the last truthful president we had warned us about.
