Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Who Should Carry the Load??? (Solving our Fiscal Crisis)


Let me begin with a very basic statement: No matter how much truth there is in the arguments and information regarding the need for unions and the "common man" to give back and give up benefits that have been part of their life contract and no matter how dire the situation may be, until BOTH the politicians and especially the bankers and investors (and by bankers I mean all those I call "white collar gamblers") who got us in this mess are held accountable and give back and give up what they have taken, our country is going to be at a standstill and it's all going to crash.

Three examples of the point I'm talking about:

 The Price of Inequality: Interview with Joseph E. Stiglitz
 The Scam Wall Street Learned from the Mafia by Matt Taibbi
 Wall Street Isn't Winning -- It's Cheating

Conclusion: If you can get the "big boys" - translated the 1% - to own up to their responsibilities and take responsibility (in spiritual terms of reconciliation, we call this restitution) for their role in all this mess, then the large percentage of us in the 99% who are resistant to wrapping all of these financial issues up in a bag and hauling them up the mountain of fiscal responsibility by ourselves would willingly share our responsibility and hauls our part.

Seems like this clip from The Mission: Redemption might have some application to this discussion. DiNero is paying penance for his sins. Finally, those he sinned against cut the bag from his back as an act of forgiveness. Here is my application of this scene to our dialogue:

The people who are NOT responsible for the mess we're in are being asked to drag the bag of fiscal responsibility up the waterfall ONLY there is no one waiting at the top to relieve the load.  Imagine this if you can . . . What if the bankers and politicians who got us here were to literally place the bag of fiscal responsibility on their backs and carry us out of this mess? Such an act of penance and responsibility would free all of us!!!

But alas, these things only happen in movies and fairy tales so we will continue to ask those with no penance to pay to carry the load and we will remain polarized and most likely at some time in the future . . . crash our economy and country.

The Three "R's" are the bedrock of Christian Community Development - Relocation, Reconciliation, and Redistribution. I wonder what might happen if they were applied to our economic circumstances???

Hoping against all hope,


Dave