When capitalism is declared the horse, then governments are declared the horse jockeys.
A nation like the USA does not have much of a horse jockey on the horse. We could, for instance, say that it is a six-year old child. In truth, our politicians sit on their hands a lot. Let me repeat that: our politicians don’t do much work. They create political upheaval with the debt ceiling, which should be a complete non-issue and the stand-off does not happen in other nations. Our politicians are hogwash.
In other capitalist nations, the horse jockeys are more mature; they have better control over their horses. We see that they are happier than we are, but we can’t put our finger on it because we were trained to never look at the big picture but rather focus on one aspect and delve it out from deep-under. We talk about the horse and go on and on about the horse. Or we talk about the horse jockey and go on and on about the horse jockey. We tend to not look at both parts.
Our two party system has made us big-picture blind, because we favor one and dislike the other; we almost always disagree collectively on everything. This helps the horse go in whatever direction it wants to go to.
Don’t believe it? Here is a map that is quite telling. The Gini index tells in simple colors how unequal people in a nation are. Or said differently, how we are taken to the cleaners, how we take part in a divide-and-conquer society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
No surprise, the USA is the most unequal nation in the rich world. See how red we are on that map. There are nations with greater inequality in the world, but they are all a lot poorer than we are.
We have many poor people in the USA that are as poor as many people living in third world nations. In other rich nations, they don’t have these deeply-seated poor people like we have. They are not as divided as we are.
So, we really need to stop being a two-party nation. It is not helping us getting a stronger and better horse jockey. Our horse jockey is pathetic because the voters are not given enough power. Our horse jockey does not need to grow up, and it should.
Voters are competing with voters for the win. How dumb is that for a democracy? Answer: Very dumb! We should empower ourselves more.
Many of the happiest nations in the world use Thomas Jefferson’s clean voting system. Surprise? We don’t have it. We can get it; it is actually quite easy for one section of our government. Ask me how.
