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because they believe in controlling the personal, private lives of everyone, but they only ascribe to controlling private lives with regard to only six of the seven deadly sins, having elevated one of the sins, GREED into the highest of virtues. I find it immensely irritating to have to listen to a bunch of fatcat hypocrites attempting to stick their noses into the personal areas of peoples lives, insisting on making laws ranging from drug abuse to sexual behavior, all elements of private behavior and private choice, while doing nothing to contol areas of behaviour that are highly public, and have far more widesread and adverse effects on the leves of large groups of citizen.
Nothing has made this more evident than the massive deregulation of business, at the same time that the government started micromanaging and creating more and more harsh punishments for even possession of the smallest quantities of drugs. and at the same timegiving local governments a great deal of financial incentive to start arresting and virtually destroying the lives of everage people for possession of even the smallest quantities of crack cocaine, powdered cocaine, herion, or marijuana. All of these substances carry for the most part, the sentence of FIVE YEARS in prison, though judgese rarely hand out such sentences, reducing arrest for possession of five dollars worth of marijuana to misdemeanors with a good sized fine, to a minimum of several months in jail for the posession of five dollars worth of crack cocaine. For the most part, the laws regarding drugs, and the consequences attached to arrest do far more harm to the lives of the person arrested than the actual drug use did. In most cases, most people arrested were not serious abusers of substances, and in most cases, never develop serious problems with substance abuse. The same percentage of people who became addicts when drugs were legal exists today when these substances are illegal. The laws do little good, end up doing far more harm to the individual who usually ends up losing their job and then has difficulty finding work afterwards. This usually is the only adverse effect of drug use experienced by 98 oercent of the people who use illegal substances. Yet the punishment meted out is harsh, because these people have decided toincorporate thingns into their personal lives that another group of people wish to control. On the other hand, the deregulation of the laws controlling the behavious of large busnisses culminated in the Enron type fiascos, where literally thousand if not hundreds of thousands of people had there lives seriously effected, and in many cases, indirectly the behaviour caused by the greed of corporate executives will most certainly shorten the lives of many of the people who lost their life savings and pensions due to this behavior. Many elderly people will be forced to work far past their planned retirement, and if unable to do so due to poors health will have to deal with the consequences of the conservative government condoned crimes of big business. The false presentation of the idea that somehow C.E.O.'s are too noble to be tempted by the ability to get away with whatever they can is a joke. he areas of live where the most regulation and control over should be created is left to be afree for all, while the areas which cause the lowest percentage of problems are micromanaged.
When one observes the Europe and its regulation of businesses you see that there is little effect on the general welfare that is created by higher taxation and regulation. People still get rich, but there is far less poverty. Big business scandal exists, but only as a result of European businesses being able to take part in multinational level business practices, most often inspored by American corporate governanace and American legislative models regarding big business. One example would be a bookstore chain like Barnes and Nobles. This company is owned by a Dutch corporation. The employees of the Dutch owned portions of this corporation, by law, must provide five weeks of paid leave to employees, provide health benefits, parental leave (paid) and other benefits. Their American employees receive no benefits, and are given a half day paid leave for each six months they work. Another company, I know of unamed, is Austrailian. THey have Australian workers that they have moved to the U.S. who recive four weeks paid leave a year, plus all of the aforementioned benefits, while their American workers receive two weeks, and reduced benefits. Yet in both cases, the European businesses are neither less productive or less profitable. The controls come in only regardin how much personal welath the owners of the corporations are allowed to make. There are far fewer Europeans who posess the obscene degrees of wealth that the heads of American corporations make. This is the only differce,But equitable scales and calculation, European businesses are not only as productive as American corporations, but when you factor in the money that European busineses must raise and pay in order to keep the societies that they exist in running to keep the standard of living of their citizens as high as they are, Europe is far more productive than America. If the European nations could get over their arguments about keeping so much local control over their business practices and currencies, Europe could wipe up the floor with the U.S. economically. Germany, for example, outsources twice as many jobs as a percentage of its labor base, yet the citizens of Germany are rapidly trained and moved into new sectors of their economy that create more wealth. This is the result of legislation which required social responsibility of its businesses, rather than allowing them to get by with the free ride that American corporations are given. Job creation is just not considered to be enough to justify that free ride, as without job creation those who start the companies would not be able to create the wealth they are trying to create. In this case, labor is consisdered to be as responsible for the creation of wealth and productivity as the owner of capital. I have to laugh when the U.S. point to itself as having the best standard of living in the world. Out of the largest industrialized nations the U.S. has the highest rates of poverty,infant mortality, death due to preventable illness out of the entire industrialized world. Yet some of the greatest support for the conservative style of government lies with people who are most greatly screwed by those they support. And it all goes back to the desire to control private lives. Most conservative Democrats and Moderate REpublicans for some reason beleive that it is more important to control private lives, than to control the public greed of corporations. It always reinforces my belive that stupidity, not hydrogen, is the most common element in the universe.
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