America’s Frugality and Innovation

What don’t we dump money into? Public schools, health care, ourselves… 白費, it’s all bureaucracy. Well, except the money we profligately waste on luxuries for ourselves (yes, I’m going to speak with caustic shamelessness) when there are still people struggling in the United States: unwelcomed refugees, poor immigrants, centuries-long victims of the system.

There are two ways that people hide shame:

1. Work their heads off in kiasu pursuits through medical, legal and engineering professions.
2. Scream (though I could use more colourful words) and complain whenever any truth leaks out, insisting that it’s not true and focusing on how much more money they should get.

America is fat. No, I don’t mean the people, but sure, you’re entitled to think that, too. But we who tout ourselves as a country of efficiency (which must never be the chief end) show ourselves instead to be enslaved to a bloated system that takes away our money and returns little. A credit indeed to the greatness of America. Will we continue to be deceived? There is a difference between investing a reasonable amount of money for the right returns and blindly pouring millions of dollars into a system that does little for what we gave it.

I began writing about public education in America some time ago, before Lent, but eventually I gave up writing solely about education. Why? Public education reform cannot happen thoroughly until the infrastructure supporting its ills can be removed, and that is government overhaul. Interest groups have too much lobbying power, politicians are too complacent with their jobs, both parties are corrupt… anything I would propose would be opposed vigorously from the table of the public school teachers’ unions, which have failed their purpose.

What will it take to throw off a senseless yoke? The votes in Congress are secured by the money. The candidates who agree with ignorant positions or allow themselves to be puppeteered by the money, these are the ones we sweep into office year after year, this aided by gerrymandering and power grab equilibrium. A most idiotic impasse.

So the ghettoes stagnate in their dilapidated state, and the health system funnels in money from the poor and wastes the insurance money from those who have it. Nobody will question the structure of the public school system and be taken seriously. Nobody will demand a closer look at the swollen bureaucracies and not be labelled ignorant, heartless or elitist. Nobody will refuse to feed the destruction and not be swept away.

There is hope for the people, but is there hope for the system? Maybe our system must collapse and we must fall into the hands of cruel tyrants before we will change. I just hope that Americans will not forever be so seduced by mammon as are the rich in mainland China who profit themselves off the backs of the poor and exploited.

Well, America has been for years in the grip of affluenza. Once we as a people get wiser for the purpose of saving money for better uses, e.g. something that is not for ourselves, perhaps we will open our eyes to what other waste is endemic to the interests that rule our bank accounts. Instead we have churchgoers who don’t tithe and elected officials who don’t watch where they’re putting the money. God save our taxes, medical bills and legal fees.