Thursday Thirteen

Today, I offer up 13 myths in politics that, in my opinion, are not helping things in the United States. I saw a similar list on Facebook recently and decided to create my own. Mine is a little different from the one that made the rounds.


1. "We have no responsibility for one another." This is the origin of the cry to end social programs - personal responsibility. This is the catcall that says, let the man die if he has no insurance. I do not live my life this way. We are all connected. No man is an island, writes John Donne. That has not changed just because it's the 21st century.

2. "Women are inferior." I know many thought this was a thing of the past, that women are citizens equal to men. I have always known this isn't so, as I have experienced gender discrimination on numerous levels. Given given the recent dialogue in the US, the unequal pay, and the obvious poverty of many single women, women still have a long way to come before there is any semblance of equality in this country.

3. "Tax cuts cure everything." They don't. Sometimes you have to raise taxes. Personally, I think signing pledges saying you will never raise taxes should automatically disqualify you from office. If you cannot examine every option with an open mind, you have no business representing me. I personally do not mind paying taxes. I drive on the roads and I use some of the services. I should pay for them. I consider paying taxes to be a honor and a priviledge. I am glad I make enough money to have to pay them, to be honest.

4. "Jobs come from the private sector." This is not true. The government can, does, and should create jobs. Franklin D. Roosevelt created millions of jobs and pulled the country out of the Great Depression. Obstructionism is the only reason this hasn't happened during the Great Recession. Some of the government programs that are now flagging because they have gone private include the U.S. Postal Service and the National Park Service. In my state, the state transportation system turned over snow and ice clearing to a private company. The result has been poor efforts and lots of problems moving goods and services in bad weather. Sometimes government does do a better job.

5. "People want to be poor." Excuse me? Where does this sort of thinking come from? I don't know anyone who wants to be poor. I do know a lot of people who work very hard - sometimes two or three jobs - just to get by. They didn't ask to be poor. And ending the minimum wage certainly isn't going to help them out. It will just move them from poor to completely impoverished.

6. "Getting rid of those trillions in debt will end the recession." I would like to see that paid off, really I would. But how does that end the recession? My own thoughts on ending the recession are these: spend government money on real jobs (the stimulus was a good idea, but the money went to the wrong places) and that will end the recession.

7. "Rich people should have tax cuts." Everyone should pay their fair share of taxes. I guess the problem comes in defining "fair share." If you have more, you should pay more, and if you manage to find deductions, etc., so that you aren't, then something needs to change.

8. "If people don't have health insurance, it is because they don't want it." There are many people who would like to have health insurance who simply cannot afford it. I know several.

9. "Teachers are the reason the education system is not turning out good students." This is like saying the reason there is crime is because the police are bad policemen. What is with the blame, anyway? Why not just fix the problems? Are they so vast that no one can come up with a solution? Or is it that there are solutions, but no one wants to pay for them?

10. "Unions are bad." This has been so accepted that it's off the charts and not even in the public discussion, though it should be. Unions are not inherently bad. Much of the labor trouble today is not because of unions, but because of lack of unions. I am pro-union and I wish there were more of them.

11. "War is an option." It is no secret that I am anti-war. I do not believe war is ever an option; it shouldn't even be on the table. We are supposed to be civilized people. Isn't it time we act like it?

12. "The free market knows best." I do not believe this is true. Humans tend to follow the strong and leave the weak. In a world where everyone matters, the strong must care for the weak. In a free market (capitalism), this does not happen. That is why the government must step in and regulate.

13. "Discrimination does not exist in the United States." I don't know who actually believes this, but I read it in the letters to the editor occasionally. I see discrimination everywhere - against gender, age, race, class, and sexuality, to name a few. I have experienced it as a woman and I am experiencing it in different forms as an older person.



Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here. I've been playing for a while and this is my 232nd time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.