You want know what really, really pisses me off? How rich people and large corporations have enough money to end not only world hunger, but global poverty. Hell, they are hiding more than what would be required to do so in tax havens alone. But while that is annoying and does piss me off, what makes me even more angry, is the fact the dick-bags we have running our collective governments are so wasteful with tax money, that even if these one per-centers paid their fair share, it would only mean more god damn bombs being dropped on more civilians. More money for the military-industrial complex.
Or to put that another way, since the government is run by the rich and powerful, there is no way to use tax money appropriately. The tax money the rich pay, goes right back to them in various forms like tax breaks, government contracts, and cushy government jobs for whomever the rich think should be have them. And your tax dollars go with them. The US government could slash its “defense” budget in half, still have the largest in the world, and have enough left over to end global poverty and create a functioning NHS. Alternatively we could tax the rich and their corporations at a fair rate and use that money to do the same. Or we could do both and fix our basic infrastructure. But it is hard to make money off of that (extreme sarcasm.)
The USA is not in the 21st century, we are way behind, we have no NHS as “Obamacare” is a sick joke that forces you to buy from private companies, our roads, bridges, train lines, power grid, etc, are all crumbling. Our power grid alone is so weak it is a massive national security threat. But instead of fixing this gaping hole in our nations armor, we instead spend our “defense” budget on failed and failing projects, support for terrorist groups, foreign aid, invasions, bombing, and occupation of sovereign states, and “research” like the billions spent on deciding to change the style of the BDU.
Here are a few facts about the United State's military-industrial complex.
NASA, the US space agency, has a lifetime budget which is less than 1 year of military spending.
Under the Bush regime the US agreed to give 8.5 millions dollars a day, every day, to the israeli military regime. This is on top of the billions of additional dollars given in military aid.
The USA supported, trained, funded, and armed The Taliban and Al-Qaeda. This has been openly admitted. Just as obvious but not yet admitted is the US support of and for ISIS.
It is also a known and admitted fact that Saddam Hussein was put in power as the leader of Iraq, because he was an asset of the CIA.
The F-35 program, a program which has proven to be yet another national embarrassment, has a whopping current exepected liftime cost of over $1,500,000,000,000.00 and growing. That is one point five trillion dollars. All that is despite the plane itself being neither a good bomber, a decent fighter, or even a successful “stealth” plane.
The republicans often claim to be the party of the military, but every bill to support veterans, the VA, or even active duty members of the armed forces in recent history, has been defeated by republicans in congress.
The “conservative” voter base often say they want smaller government and less spending, but resist any attempt to lower the military budget, which is almost as much as the rest of the world spends together.
Democrats often run for office on an anti-war or anti-military spending platform. However even when in control of congress and the presidency, they fail to lower the budget or reduce war. In fact Obama has now attacked more countries than Bush, while continuing the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, both started by the republican.
The government routinely uses contractors to do jobs. These contractors are paid in high multiples of their military counterparts. The contractors have also been known to order equipment they don't need, destroy the equipment themselves, and write it off.
Aside from having the largest military budget in the world, the US also has the unfortunate distinction of having the largest paramilitary budget. In addition to the already incredibly large policing budget of the various agencies eg; FBI, DEA, ICE, NSA, DHS, TSA, NIST, USFS, OLE, DOCOIG, DCIS, DIA, DLA, NCIS, AFOIS, etc, etc, etc. These and the dozens of other paramilitary policing forces of varying sizes and responsibilities are in addition to the local and state police who can receive anything from boots, to machine guns, to APCs, to military jets, all as part of the DOD's program 1033.
The media, which can legally lie to you, and it does as studies have shown you can expect as little as 8% factual information from the likes of FOX, makes it seem like everything is okay. The reason for this is that the media is state run. Or perhaps in the USA it is more accurate to say the state is media run. Either way they can not afford to have you wake up. If you wake up and realize that enough money to end global poverty is being used to enforce laws, many of which are immoral and unconstitutional, they risk a revolution.
In summary...
So in order to keep you down, keep you licking their boots, keep you defending their misuse of your money, they start brainwashing you. This begins in school where they lie about history, economics, and America's "freedom". Then in the media where they lie about current events and America's "freedom". They say the USSR was communist when it was really fascist. They say the US is a democracy when it is really supposed to be a constitutional republic, and in effect is more of an oligarchy. They tell you that the rich create jobs when the rich actually kill jobs and hurt the economy. You are made to believe that capitalism works for everyone when it only benefits the rich. They even make you believe that invading and occupying other countries, killing the innocent civilians of those countries can keep you safe and free here. And while they are telling you how free you are they pass more and more laws, and increase funding for police and military agencies.
Now they don't even have to work at it that hard. The vast majority of the populace believe these things to the point they will not only refuse to hear the truth, they will fight against anyone speaking it. They will never do research. They have the worst case of Stockholm syndrome in history. There are millions upon millions of people who will fight to defend the lies they are fed.
However, no matter how hopeless it seems, no matter how hard the masses fight to defend their delusions, we must also fight. We must try to break through their cultural programming. We must try our best to free our brothers and sisters from the brainwashing that threatens to destroy our world.