'CHOOSING LIFE', EARLY 21ST CENTURY

 Today, money has a negative interest rate.
This means that our current system is getting much too topheavy as regards how grossly unequally our society's wealth is apportioned. That can be seen because the dragon-heaps of wealth which the already-obscenely rich are accumulating have nowhere to be re-invested in the economy because demand is as low as it is. And the primary reason for that is that we of the 99.5% have very little discretionary income and growing debts. Many of us would be homeless and starving without credit; an alarmingly growing number of us are already in that state.
The place where all that money for which the economy currently has no place has to go--indeed, the only place it can fruitfully go--is down. That is, to the poor and working classes. Except for islands, the old middle class is no more in the USA. Only fully civilized places like Canada and Europe have a fully functional middle class anymore. And if that is to happen here, we need to expand the talk about systemic racism. We do need to remember that we are all sinners in need of Grace, so we can banish our anxieties about being Good People or not. Those anxieties seem to be a major stumbling block to discussing, analyzing and eventually dismantling systemic racism. And that dismantling needs to happen for us to regenerate our country and our society. That idle money is needed for daycare centers, upgrading of public education,  'greening' our society in ways such as switching to cleaner and renewable forms of energy, from extractive to regenerative agriculture, restoration and indeed strengthening of vital ecosystems. All these are reinvestments. Reinvestments in both human and biological 'capital' which, if past performance is anything to go on, will bear fruit which keeps on growing with time.
This is the 2020 version of 'choosing life'. Starting with such investments and proceeding to make our country much more of an economic democracy and thereby regenerating political democracy as well is how we will 'choose life' in our time. If we don't do this, this is what I see coming.
Never mind weather catastrophes becoming more frequent and more intense; societies as badly skewed as ours as regards who has what have a bad tendency to implode, to crumble from the top on down. No need to take my poor word for this; do the research! And what will that mean? It will mean that, for most of us, we'll need to scrape harder and expect to miss more meals. Which means our health will deteriorate. The worldwide death rates will spike far upwards. Are you still thinking, 'Not here. Not us'? Let me point something out and remind you of a related factor: in large regions of the earth, it may be that those left alive will not be enough to bury or otherwise dispose of the dead. That means large numbers of corpses will just rot where they've died. Now, wind currents circle the whole earth. Even if we ourselves are not faced with the situation I've just outlined, we will smell the rot. Literally. Imagine, say, ten years where the smell of rotting death is always in the air. Are you ready for that? Is that what you want for your children and/or grandchildren?! Think you can wear masks all the time?! I hope you don't want that!
And in order to 'choose life' I for one say we need to tax the billionaires' monies to the point where the largest fortunes are in the mere hundreds of millions as once they were, and keep those taxes operating for a good long time. Not only for revenue either but to keep privately-owned wealth and power within what I would call civically healthy limits. This means, no private wealth that can, to borrow Mr. Jefferson's words, 'bid defiance to the laws of our country' or lobby and propagandize as shamelessly as is currently the case.
So there it is: some significant changes or, at the very least, the omnipresent stench of death in the air. And what it will be is still, at this time, up to us. Choose life, that all of us and our children may live!