Updated 2024

Though economics is a dry subject, there is a very real human cost to getting economic policy wrong. Sondra Miller points this out in The Price of Economic Ignorance.  

Often graphs, charts, and videos can display a large amount of information clearly to make it easy to see trends. Many here illustrate how we are are trending in the wrong direction and have been for decades. These charts and graphs also serve as a supplement to the article The Economy. Some may not be recent, but they illustrate concepts being proposed now. This is continuously updated with new references.

Updated 2024

A decline in public education and making higher education largely unaffordable except to those willing to become indentured servants for most of their lives means we are becoming more and more like a third world country.

Updated 2024

Our democracy is at peril. In a system where money equals speech, the rich can afford to drown out the rest. They own mainstream media outlets, fund the Commission on Presidential Debates, bankroll think tanks and policy institutes, fund academic research, finance artificial grassroots (“astroturf”) organizations — in short, the wealthy have built a propaganda empire that manufactures consent for all things contrary to the public interest. In addition, they underwrite influence factories such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), institutionalizing and streamlining the quid pro quo process and matching corporate contributors with legislators-for-hire in a highly structured arrangement that leaves voters entirely out of the loop. The Citizens United ruling was a serious  blow to American democracy, which is now for sale to the highest bidder.

There is the further problem. Joseph Stalin said, "You know, comrades, that I think in regard to this: I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how." There is increasingly evidence documented below in ever increasing references that the votes are not being correctly counted.

Updated 2024

We pay more than any other industrialized country but have the least to show for it both in terms of health and coverage.

Updated 2024

Updated 2024

Less transparency and more secrecy are bad for a democratic republic. Unfortunately this is an increasing trend documented in this article.

Updated 2024

We need to evaluate who our real heroes are. We need to acknowledge those who reveal a crime are not worse criminals than those who commit a crime. (Germans apparently get this. See Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden statues unveiled in Berlin    I understand the statues are gone now, but the heritage of the three individuals will live on in Wikileaks)

Updated 2024

Poverty is getting much worse thanks to the policies of both parties. All indications are that poverty is not only getting worse, it is approaching third world status in many areas. We can ill afford to ignore these dangers.

Updated 2024

This describes  the decline of labor over decades thanks to the policies of both parties.