When America was Great

When America was Great

Do’t get me wrong.  I believe our nation is great. Maybe not wonderful. Definitely not close to perfect. But it is great.  But when were things the best.  Many say back in the 50s.

I think this may be the truth, but not for the reasons that people that say it is great think.

Not socially.  There was some good parts to it.  Sure. But why were we so secure.  Why did we do so great.  

I think the 50s were the penultimate time because of the ecomic environment.  We were growing as a nation. That helped.  We were also helped by the rights and protections tha unions and the laws gave us.  

The employees were not taken advantage of, treated fairly.  The owners of companies did well, some were extremely rich, but it was not at the expense of the common man.  

We have slowly doing worse.  It is harder for people to make a living and have finacial security. I believe this has a correlation with the rise of corporations. Corporations are, in a way, a union, for people to get together and gain more share of the wealth created by the economy.  We went from a family owned business environment to corporations that act like the Terminator.  They have one goal and that is to dominate. Not feed the employees family or create a secure nation.

So it is not welfare that is dragging us down. Charity and helping hand. It is not the lack of an intact family (Not saying this is not a problem).

The Truth

English: Barack Obama speech "Fighting for Health Insurance Reform" delivered 8 March 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The truth of the matter is that Obama did not require health insurance because he wanted your freedom or to turn us into socialists.  It was because of the coverage of preexisting illnesses.  Otherwse people would not pay for the insurance until they got sick and then sign up for insurance.  That is not a sustainable plan.

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Lizziefiles

English: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Resized, renamed, and cropped version of File:Mazlow's Hierarchy of Needs.svg. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

People want to believe there’s an easy answer to thing.  People on welfare, well they should be made to work.  Pay their own way. Not actually a bad theory. In a perfect world.  However, in this response, is racism.  Okay, I'm sort of kidding. However, I don’t think people that are hard line conservatives can truly put themselves in someone else’s shoes (and many are just racist). In other words, they think that they would bring their values and work ethics and life skills with them.

I see correlations with governmental programs with my teaching.  I work with children that use illegal substances and have done bad things.  They have hurt people and they continue to hurt people when I work with them.

You cannot just come down on them. Yes you have rules and consequences and you enforce them. Yet you cannot be punitive. It only leads to be more punitive. You also have to identify the cause of the acting out. You have to give them skills to work through troubles. A kid that does not know how to calm down, is not going to calm down no matter how much you take privileges away.

You also have to cut break and reward their goodness.  You have to strengthen the positive so that the negative is replaced.

I am not saying take away prisons and laws.  I am merely saying that for everyone, change often does not succeed.  The figure I have heard is that it takes ten tries to change something you want to change.

We are all in our cycles of behaviors.  Thanks to luck, parents, and security ours are less dangerous. Those on welfare ares stuck.  Our only hope is to provide the children on welfar with the needs on the maslow hierarchy of needs and give them the skills and support that they need.