July 4 this year will be the 245th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of the U.S. from Great Britain. Much has changed. Travel has evolved from horseback through automobiles, aircraft, electric vehicles and now rockets to Mars. We now have 50 states as opposed to 13. Our population has grown 100 fold.
Many Americans —most of whom have never traveled abroad — falsely still consider the U.S. to be the greatest democracy in the world. Unfortunately, it’s neither well run nor a democracy — it’s a badly run plutocracy.
Except for election funding where the rich can now donate any amount to their favorite candidates ($50+ per vote in the recent Georgia runoff), our system of government has hardly changed in the 245 years since the founding. Especially the U.S. Senate with its two senators per state. That’s archaic and another block to democracy. For example, the population of California now exceeds the total of the 20 smallest states, yet each state still gets two senators. Moreover, one quarter of U.S. senators are past their 70th birthday, five are over 80 and more than half of them are multi-millionaires. During the last Congress their main achievement was a tax bill that overwhelmingly benefited the rich (U.S. billionaires saw their fortunes rise 34% to $3.9 trillion). It’s past time to replace the Senate with something more democratic.
Health care is another example of government for the rich. The U.S. is the only major country without health care for all. Even China and Russia have it, as do more than a hundred other countries. Even though our health care costs twice as much per capita as any other country, our life expectancy before the coronavirus epidemic was 46th in the world. Now, we have the 4th highest coronavirus death rate per capita. In both cases, the poor do much worse than the rich.
Frank Fish, Taylorsville
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