Something I point out, over and over. When I graduated from college, my starting salary at my first job equaled 4 years tuition. When my daughter graduated from college, her starting salary was less than one years tuition.
On the other hand, that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Mandatory Auto insurance is what pushes insurance rates up so high. Don't pay your bill, and the state cancels your license - that's extortion, and the rates are extortionary.
Health care costs started rising with the passage of Medicare. I remember that in 1962, when I had the measles, the doctor made a house call. In the fifties, the government was trying to convince woman to have their babies delivered in a hospital.
I remember listening to a debate on Health Care reform about 15 years ago. It took me about 40 minutes to figure out that the Democrats were talking "wage and price controls", while the Republicans were talking "easy payment plan". I thought that was especially interesting, since it was Richard Nixon's administration that introduced the U.S.A. to wage and price controls.
Gun control and the price of guns, ditto. The price of cigarettes, ditto. I remember when a cigarette cost one penny, now they are two for a dollar. That's marijuana prices.
Right, let's not get into the price of drugs. I don't care about the price of cigarettes either.
I'm just pointing out that this is an issue as old as the U.S.A. - protectionism.
Export taxes led to the Boston Tea Party and the War of Independence.
Abolishing the African Slave Trade just caused the prices of slaves to go up and made domesticated slave breeding more profitable than farming on the Atlantic coast.
Export taxes on cotton, import taxes on cloth, and the desire to expand slavery into the corn and wheat belts led to the Civil War.
The key point is, all these things happen because somebody is making money, and they use that money to influence government policy.
Barack Obama's election was a powerful demonstration of the power of "community organization" and "grass roots campaigns". I wonder how long it will be before people (especially Black people) realize that by uniting and standing together, they can be even more powerful than the megacorps and the ultra-rich 2%.
