I was planning to title this blog posting "The Three Stooges," the title to go along with the picture at the top. A picture of the real "Three Stooges," Larry, Moe, and Curley, can be found at the bottom. Upon reflection, I decided that such a title would not be truly accurate.
A short definition of "stooge" is a person who "plays a subordinate or compliant role to a principal," and that definition does seem accurately to highlight the extent to which the three fawning billionaires, pictured above, have subordinated themselves to our most recently-elected president.
On the other hand, "stooge" is also defined as a person who is "fooled into doing all the hard or dirty work for someone else," or who is "the butt of someone's mean jokes." By that definition, it may well be that we, the citizens of the United States, are the ones who have been cast as "stooges" by our "Apprentice President," not those feckless billionaires.
I decided to make my blog title reference Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos, billionaires all, listing their names in the order they are pictured. I have a simple point to make.
We, the people, are not, for the most part, wealthy - and we certainly aren't anywhere close to being a bunch of "billionaires." Still, we don't print "E Pluribus Unum" on our dollar bill for nothing. In Latin, that phrase really means that "we are in this together," a phrase that I employ frequently as I write, each day, about our "political world." All of us, including the nation's small billionaire cohort, are "in this together."
So, on to my simple point: If we are "in this together" (and we are), and if we want to make sure that our federal budget starts moving towards "balance," and away from deficit spending, there are two basic ways to get there. First, we can slice and dice current government programs, and reduce expenses. Second, we can raise more money (that is called "taxes") from those who can afford to pay more. And, of course, we can undertake a combination of ingredients approach.
With apologies for my delay in getting there, here is that simple point I have mentioned: To achieve the goal of a more balanced budget, let's have the billionaires pay more. After all, they can afford it. The current approach is to let the billionaires off the hook, and to assign the billionaires (and particularly Mr. Musk, allegedly the wealthiest person in the entire world) the job of cutting expenditures that benefit all the rest of us.
If we don't take the approach of taxing the billionaires, it seems to me, we might as well start recognizing ourselves, collectively, as the "300,000,000+ Million Stooges," because the way our billionaire president and his billionaire friends are doing it, the ordinary people of the country are doing the hard work for someone else (in fact, for the billionaires), and if that isn't the definition of a "stooge," I don't know what is!
Image Credits:
Thanks, Gary, for you faithful commitment to reach out to others. Indeed, we are in this together. Well stated:
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