Republicans making us a third world country

The glaring features today of Third World countries include poverty, lack of democratic institutions, controlling oligarchies and the unequal distribution of income and wealth. In other words, the few enjoy a rich lifestyle while the many share subpar incomes and poverty.

Another characteristic of Third World countries is that a major portion of their fiscal expenditures is allocated to the military. In many Third World countries, the military is controlled by an elite or a small collection of the wealthy. Finally, in many Third World countries one finds that leadership is passed from one generation to the next, often via a close relative.

The United Nations publishes a Human Development Index that ranks countries in terms of life expectancy, literacy, education and standard of living. The U.S., despite its vast wealth and power, placed only in the 12th position among industrial countries. The top four countries were Iceland, Norway, Australia and Canada. These top four countries still pay some lip service to income distribution as an important economic and social goal.

These Republicans are redistributing the wealth upward to fewer people rather than downward to greater numbers of our working population. They are also transferring wealth to themselves by issuing greater amounts of debt to our wealthy debt holders and overseas countries like India and China. Eventually, we will have to raise taxes on working men and women to pay for all this Republican debt.