What profiteth a man…

Clean air. Clean water. Rule of law. Unfettered access to education according to need and limited only by ability. Guaranteed retirement (e.g. National Savings Plan). And Health Care.

These are the basic human rights every American should demand from any society that generates vast wealth as ours (USA) does.

In this country, it's time to review very basic decisions, for ourselves and for this planet, like: Good business or no business? Good government or no government? Good life or no life?

After five decades of "progress" it seems clear that a happy life is far more basic, simple and elemental than our for-profit society allows for. Americans on average earn three or four times what their parents and grandparents earned in the 1950s, but are they happier? In the five prosperous decades since World War II, incomes have increased four-fold while incidence of clinical depression has increased ten-fold.

America has sold its democracy and its very soul for high corporate and individual profit and (collectively) gained little more than pornographic wealth disparity, slavish consumerism and unending anxiety.

Today Americans are overdue for honest reflection -- for a healthier private/public balance, regarding our basic human need for community, family and friends, toward a life of less materialism and more, un-abrogated joy.

Greed is not good! Progress does not collapse! In any healthy democracy, what we want less of (obscene, obsequious greed) we must tax away and what we want more of (knowledge, health, community and joy) we must subsidize.

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