Time to take it all back

A thread on a discussion list I'm in has been dealing with issues of ignorance and education in relation to a film on education called "Waiting for Superman" and the state of public awareness in the US revealed in the elections.

One of us summed it up by writing:

"…the country is sick."

I then made the following contribution on the general context of problems like this:

There's an enormous amount of surplus wealth around, and we produce it. It's just that we don't get any of it. Our work creates the surplus that is bloating the already bloated. And the less we get to keep, either as individuals, families or communities (the public), the more they get to squander.

Just think about how we get skinned all day every day. 

Our work produces ALL value. 

The following deductions are then made:

1) Profit (at least 10%)

2) Landlord "tax" (rent) (at least 10%)

3) Direct taxes (federal, state, local)

4) Indirect taxes (consumer, VAT, purchase, whatever)

5) Redistribution charges (money for bourgeois drones like advertising agencies, accountants and lawyers)

What's left is ours but it's often just stolen back from us in exchange for useless and harmful commodities (junk food, entertainment, drugs inc alcohol and tobacco, etc etc).

That's just the positive stealing.

Now add in the *negative* factors constricting our wealth:

1) Military expenditure;

2) Preventable and curable diseases;

3) Deliberate creation of ignorance and lack of skills;

4) Chaotic lunging between gluts and dearths of food and other goods;

5) Deliberate crippling of knowledge and culture, of ideas and creativity, due to secrecy, patents, copyright, restricted access;

6) Deliberate crippling of human interaction due to national borders, travel restrictions and cost;

7) Destruction of productive facilities in war;

8) Destruction of human beings in war.

NONE of the deductions listed affect the part of surplus used for new and re-investment. Any other beneficial use of surplus can be carried out by democratic decision at various levels within the process of wealth production, not outside it after the event. (Democratic here means made by elected representatives at the appropriate level, all on average income and subject to instant recall by their constituencies.)

ALL of the factors strangling human productive potential can be removed either overnight - like business secrecy, copyright and patent walls, and war - or be remedied in the decade or two required to adapt material facilities and productive processes to new requirements - military organizations and manufacturing, institutions of health, education, culture, and research.

This is all very clear. It's very simple, too.

But it's not easy, because the forces arrayed against understanding, reason and human prosperity are huge, brutal and ruthless.

However, their strength is parasitical, sucked from us and our work. If we stop them from sucking our blood, they shrivel.

If not, we shrivel.

They have been depriving us of what is ours for far too long. It's time for us to take it back.