When pondering the vast sums of the Powerball lottery and weighing that against the noise being raised over the fiscal cliff and other social ills, I can't help but to feel frustration over the glaring exposure of out greed and the absence of the most basic altruism even if taken to it's most pragmatic level.
If one considers that the current Powerball jackpot is half a billion dollars, accumulated over sixteen drawings it staggers the mind. If the same earnestness it takes to purchase a $2 lottery ticket by 150 million people over a four month period was applied to our budgetary concerns regarding entitlements that guarantee the existence or even (dare I say it) the expansion of our society's safety nets, we wouldn't be facing the political reality of cliffs, cuts or even the current acidic political juxtapositioning.
If it's taken at a deeper level, it's easy to see how the threats of higher taxes is really a red herring. It doesn't take all that much revenue spread out over the entire populace to generate the funds to keep these programs solvent. The fact is that it's a smokescreen to raise taxes beyond the level required to ensure solvency for these programs.
The government is counting on us to be unable to see how the numbers truly work. The taxes they say will go toward fixing this program will most certainly go elsewhere. That's why all the noise is being raised, to confuse, to obfuscate and to separate us from our money and our intellect.
If there was a lottery where the proceeds went towards fixing safety nets and that offered a cash payout to winners, we could use our own greed and self-serving natures to fix our own problems without raising a single tax. It's actually kind of sad but I think it could work...so long as the government (supposedly us) isn't involved.
If there was a jackpot that was called the social security powerball where people bought a two or three dollar ticket and the winnings were perhaps less but still large and the proceeds went towards fixing social programs we could fix our entitlements in just a few years. All it would take would be to rely on our true natures and our desire to own more money than anyone needs and all would be well.
S. E, Brink
Trout Run
Submitted by Virtual Newsroom
