Whose Fault Dependency?

I see Mr Romney has shot himself in the foot again. The Republican Party does have an endearing habit of pushing the fools to the front, doesn’t it? I think his little faux pas invites a brief comment.

The reason why ‘47% of Americans’ (assuming the statistic to be accurate, since we all know how readily politicians throw spurious figures around) feel themselves to be dependent and entitled to food, clothing and a place to live is because of the way Mr Romney and his pals have been mismanaging the balance of wealth over the past few decades.

I was told a long time ago that as technology took over the jobs people used to do, the wealth thus generated would enable people to work fewer hours for the same pay. It didn’t happen, of course. Instead, the greedy entrepreneurs simply did away with the ‘unnecessary’ jobs, kept those still in employment working forty hours a week, and pocketed all the extra money themselves. The banks were the worst offenders. It seemed that nearly every week through the 90’s, big banks would announce record profits one day, and then sack a few hundred people the next. But the same was happening across the board. The entrepreneurs used technology to make themselves into billionaires instead of mere millionaires by doing away with jobs to reduce labour costs, thus making it more and more difficult for ordinary people to get a decent job.

Those same entrepreneurs are Mr Romney’s friends and backers. They’re the ones who created a dependency culture and the need of a better welfare system by their unmitigated greed. If blame is to be laid at any door, it must be theirs. They should stop talking selfish rubbish; they should start taking responsibility for their actions; they it is who should be paying to support the victims of their greed. But, of course, they won’t unless somebody makes them.