All We Need Is A Department of Agriculture

Monday morning and the national news cycle starts again. My blog, Moneythoughts, is such a small piece of noise out there, and yet for many months I took my postings so seriously.

Lately, I have had contact with members of my high school graduation class from 1960. After exchanging a few choice words with them, I realize that for some, it is still 1959. Nothing has changed, or, at least in their minds nothing should have changed and that which has changed they are very unhappy about. You see, in the 1950s, I was way way outside the mainstream from conventional thinking. Conventional thinking about Civil Rights was just one area where my opinions about the need for more equality drove many of my classmates mad. But, thank goodness, my fellow classmates from the 1950s did not prevail. A new day came to pass and America did rise up and we did try to make our society a more perfect place for people of all races.

Many people complain that the Federal Government is too big, that we need to have fewer departments. Well, I have been giving this some thought over this last weekend as I listen to the latest news about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I would suggest that we get rid of the SEC, Securities & Exchange Commission and the Department of Commerce, etc. and place everything in the Department of Agriculture. Why the Department of Agriculture? Well, let me explain it this way.

What we have in the United States today is the FARMING of the working class. How does this work? People work in their jobs , they save, then they invest in stocks and bonds and mutual funds, and then the investment bankers harvest their money and put it in their pockets. There is no charges of fraud and the cycle continues. This latest feeble attempt by Congress to regulate the investment and banking industry is going to be another disaster. A disaster because the Federal Government will be bailing out the bankers on Wall Street in a short time again.

By turning this over to the Department of Agriculture, there is the possibility that the bankers on Wall Street could be paid for not farming off the working people just as farmers were paid not to grow crops. This then might prevent the Federal Government from having to bailout the Wall Street bankers in the future. This idea may at first appear a little strange, but if you realize that our capitalist system is much like that of primitive tribes that farm off of those tribes that grow crops and do all the work only to have their crops stolen after they are harvested, you will see my point. Wall Street and the investment bankers may not be a primitive tribe, but their tactic of farming off the hard work of people that have harvested their money through their own hard work is very much the same point. With only the Department of Agriculture to deal with, perhaps the working people can catch a break and not have so much of their money harvested, never to be seen again.

Stay tuned.