You know what this country needs?

(This blog has been retroactively posted from the future: October 17, 2008 to be precise.)

We need some way to pool our resources to pay for the things that just about everyone needs to use or have handy, but nobody (well, practically nobody, Mr. Gates) can afford to build on their own. You know, like roads, fire stations, traffic lights, schools, etc. And what about things that are in the public interest, but no individual person is powerful enough to fight for alone, like truth in advertising, and predatory business practices, and affordable health care? Wouldn't it be great if instead of each person having to build their own personal roads from home to work and to any restaurant they happen to like, we could all chip-in and do it together?

Of course, it would take a lot of time to get this stuff done, and most of us don't have that much vacation time from work. I guess that some of us could just quit our jobs and focus on doing this stuff, and the rest of us could chip-in a little more money so those guys can buy food, clothing and shelter for their familes. I mean, they're doing this for us, after all. It only seems right that they shouldn't have to starve or live in abject poverty because they're building roads that everyone gets to use, and ready to fight fires at anyone's homes, not just their own, or teaching all of our kids so that we can go to work during the day instead of staying at home to teach them ourselves.

And then I guess we'll have to chip-in a little bit more to create the infrastructure to organize all of these projects, and some people will have to spend all of their time just working on logistics and paperwork. I guess it's worth it and we can chip-in a little bit more to cover their living expenses, too.

Wouldn't it be easier if there was already a big infrastructure in place that we could use, instead of having to invent a new one? Wait a minute...

Don't we already chip-in a bunch of our money every paycheck to pay for bombs and missiles and soldiers to kill people in other parts of the world? What if some of that money got used to pay for stuff we need over here? I mean, they're talking about cutting taxes, (even though we keep spending more and more money on destructo-products), what if we all just kept paying in the same amount we are now (or even the same amount we did 10 years ago... Oh, wait, I still do. So who's getting all these tax cuts I keep hearing about?), and we could pay for all of that other stuff?

Just an idea.

- "Have you met them? The poor? Oh, they're marvelous people... of course they don't have two pennies to rub together, but that's because they're poor!"