Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Lobbyists, the American economy, and pastoral ministry.

Many of the organizations listed at http://www.lobbywatch.org/lm_profiles.html, with names that sound "non-profit", neutral or "bipartisan", are lobby groups on the payroll of large corporations from the oil & gas, pharmaceutical, health/medical, financial (insurance, banking), telecommunications, nuclear, airline, and other large industries. The people at the very very top of industries such as these want to control the money flow of the other 99.99%. The adage "80% of all wealth is controlled by the other 20%" expired a long time back in the USA, where it's more like 90-10 now, and the supremely rich won't stop till it's as close to 100-0 as possible (in the USA at least...I don't know about other countries).

Unfortunately, using these "lobby" groups, these corporations influence and manipulate, with nearly 100% success (!), nearly every decision made by the American government that financially affects every single large corporation that does business in the US. For all practical purposes, the American government, since many decades, is fully controlled and run by corporate giants using lobbyists as proxy. :(

You know what the sad thing is? It's virtually impossible to stop this disgusting (it's not strong enough a word for what's happening) transformation in the American economy. With a few decades, every social stratum from the below poverty line (BPL) to the upper-middle class in the USA (yes, there is a huge BPL class in the US, and it's growing rapidly) will all shift to lower strata. No one will be spared, safe the minuscule few who will benefit enormously if taxes are lowered. These large corporations have always, and will continue to do everything to positively affect the bank balances of ONLY those at the very very top. The rest of those who work in those corporations are not benefited at all. If you have been fooled into thinking that the wealth the uber-elite are amassing will trickle down to you, it's not your fault. Their propaganda machine (read "FOX News" and "The Washington Post") is supremely effective. Workers' unions exist to prevent such abuse, but lawmakers in each state in America, pressured by these un-ethical, wholly un-Christian lobbyists, are slowly eliminating unions and workers' rights,

No use in me continuing to speak about these things because the hopelessness, "unstoppability" and inevitability of the situation is such. This is the reason why pastoral, clerical, and counseling work is going to be paramount in the Church's ministry in the US in the coming decades. Churches have to financially brace themselves to support such an endeavor starting yesterday because there will be no funding from the government for such things in the future. The work to be done is, and will be, huge. Now you can never say that i never informed you. All this may sound doomsday-like, but my background is in corporate finance, and i can tell you that it's not going to be pretty in the USofA in the decades to come.

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