New Year’s Day 2017
By Karen and Erica
We celebrate the arrival of a new year because it represents hope for a better future, for ourselves and for our world. It is an inflection point. We reflect upon how we want to improve, and we resolve to act.
This year our hopefulness is frayed. We know change was needed, but these changes are backward looking. How will the lives of Americans improve if the people now in charge seem not to believe in public education, housing assistance, health care or clean air? How will our society continue to progress if the people in charge seem not to subscribe to the principle that all people are created equal, do not accept that our greatness is premised upon the contributions of immigrants, and seek to dismantle the institutions that protect us? And how can we be secure if the people in charge seem not to trust our military and intelligence services, and to see our enemies through rose-colored glasses?
We will toast in the New Year, but we are resolved. We are resolved to change the course in 2018 and 2020, to keep our country moving forward. We know it will take work. The big question for us is how to be most effective. We are on it.
In the meantime, raise a glass. Celebrate. Hope. And resolve to be involved.
How dangerous is it to think ‘I know best and everbody else must be stupid not to see it? Those in charge in the West in decades gone by have not done a good job. Whether anyone can do better is still to be seen but we must embrace change and work with it not find reasons to obstruct it. That is democracy. Certainly, for all our benefit, America does need to be ‘great again’. We need to make some sort of ally out of Russia and we must find a way to prevent being dominated by China, an unpleasant and tyrranical regime and system that is growing more dangerous b y the day fuelled b y wealth the West has, in my viewe, unwisely transferred to it through trade where in reality China was the only beneficiary. The current position of Russia and China being driven to becoming allies is not a good scenario. Islam is a problem. Not that the majority of its followers are terrorits but that, with a huge following, there is a significant and growing minority intent on causing trouble in our communities and overthrowing our culture. As an analysis of history shows, Islam was spread by violence by a violent man, so followers can convince themselves to do likewise all too easily. The silent majority are irrelevant in this, as they always have been– Germany and Japan to name but two in living memory. This must be confronted by a determined effort but not one that tars everyone with the same brush. Let us not be frightened by change but seek the opportunity to contribute constructively to change for the better. I am not sure about US healthcare but what I can tell you is that a move to a UK style national health system will inappropriately skew government expenditure and eventually bankrupt the USA as it is doing to us. We need to move away from it and you should not move towards it. The answer is to increase the spread of wealth and let people provide for themselves. Politicians of all persuasions have been guilty of miselading electorates that they will usher in the golen age by giving mor ‘free’ handouts of one sort or another. But there is not such thing as a free lunch. Increased taxation makes the government rich but the people poor so the engine of growth and wealth creation gets starved of fuel. Won’t it be interesting to see how it all looks in 5 years time? Maybe we will all be disappointed but maybe we will not be. By the way, should I buy shares in US concrete/brick companies?