pardon me maybe i was wrong about the defense spending. but yes its 50% of the federal budge is on military empire / defense. i cant remember if the 650 billion number included classified spending or not.
yea i agree unions drove the real wage up; they did their job in that respect. driving the real wage up is a good thing. productivity has increased alot since the 1970s which is when the real wage stopped rising, so its been easier every year for corporations to hire. i agree unions are far from perfect and are in bed with the corporations and the leaders make way too much money. i dont think many american citizens were riding a "gravy train" coming to work every day working until retirement. honest work under capitalism is not easy, especially when alot of the value u produce goes to making a capitalist rich.
i agree its capitalist with heavy state intervention. chomsky (who is an anarchist and thinks the state should be abolished) says that if the state wasnt involved, capitalism would collapse. i agree i think its an unstable system which devolves into facism which is what u have a mild version of in america now anyways
corporate privatization of schools is happening for the same reasons corporations want to privatize any other public asset: because theres alot of money to be made. the pubic education system in the states is not that great. on top of that the corporate schools could push their own agenda of capitalism, markets, and other illusions which will only last 50 - 100 years tops before the environmental catastrophe forces systemic change. corporations could give 2
s whether public education is working or not. the USPS works very well, but its also being privatized. college education did not become more expensive because of inflation. america currently has the most expensive public college in the developed world. government used to pay 80% of the costs of college , now they only pay 50% and the individual makes up the difference. mexico has free college. so does brazil. so does germany, and many EU countries. tuition was very affordable in america up until the 1980s.
http://stevedenning.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834256bce53ef013487706fe2970c-pi
from the BLS adj for inflation...
9/11 happened because the US government is debatably the #1 terror state in the world. so over 100 years of terrorism on the US government's part and the chickens came home to roost. thats basically it, 9/11 has more specific reasons but that sums it up.
Total federal revenue for 2014 was $3.02 trillion and for 2015 it's expected to be ~$3.34. I'm not sure how you're getting that 50% figure.
I'm not saying Americans are riding the gravy train (since there no such thing), I'm saying that's what many want and by wanting that a lot of us lost sight of how to grow prosperity. Example, every job I've worked I saw about 7/10 people just there to run out the clock and get as little work done with as little effort as possible with the remaining 3 working their butt off to pick up the slack.
If you don't understand the conflict that the Sunni and Shia muslims have been having for centuries and how they've use the standing armies of other countries to attack the other in the past then you're not going to understand why 9/11 happened. It's not blow back, it's Persians doing what we do, what Russia does, what China does, and what Israel does, which is try to use other countries to attack their enemies.
Chomsky is a great linguist, but kind of shallow in the political department. A key factor of ownership is the ability to prevent others from using the thing that is owned. I disagree that without a state that capitalism would collapse since capitalism by definition is simply an individual having ownership of things and the futures gains from those things rather than the state. Without the state individuals would still own stuff and they would attempt with force to prevent others from exercising ownership over it. The US is going towards fascism because, like most institutions, government employees (President, Congress, courts, etc.) value the perpetuation of the institution known as government more than they value the individuals that are governed.
Minimum wage shouldn't only rise with productivity, you also have to calculate inflation (over 2280% cumulative since 1913) from devaluation of the currency which factors into a lot of current prices and test it against market forces that determine what price people would be willing to pay for said goods and services; you can't pay someone $50 to make a $20 products and sell it for $100 if people only have $30 to spend. Similarly, you can't charge $10,000+ for tuition if people only have $7,000 for discretionary income. Colleges in other countries are not free, they're paid through taxes. US colleges would lower their tuition if it seemed like enrollment would be so abysmally down that they'd have to cut down on building projects, research, and staff, but they know most high school graduates can get a loan both federally and from private institutions so they hike up the price to what the prospective student can afford to pay back based on projected income of a graduate from their college. Again, colleges aren't nonprofit.
Corporations don't control public education, the Department of Education does both on the federal and state level. They could stop all this nonsense if they wanted, but won't because they have something to gain, most likely a lobbying gig down the line (say it with me, corporatocracy not capitalism) while wringing their hands about homeschooling.
USPS doesn't work well, it would've been shutdown long ago if it weren't illegal to setup a rival postal service for letters. The beauty of FedEx, UPS, and other package deliverers is that they took over and expanded a niche market for package delivery, something that USPS should have done but didn't because it got complacent and instead griped about how email was making them lose volume.
I could go on a lot more but this already took about ~45 minutes of my time. If you're gonna be an autodidact I advise looking at source material instead of going off of what other's with agendas say.
