Breaking ‘social contracts’ leads to decline

Recent unsettling news: #1. three people at the top in the US own more than the lower 50% all together. #2. “$50 trillion dollars through the last fifty years bypassed the middle class in America traveling to the wealthiest top 1%”. #3. Large homeless camp in Chico, California, was washed out by torrential rainstorm. City management remained silent.

It’s wrong for a culture to claim Christian values and then have such disparity between the wealthy few and the many people below struggling to survive. Chico recently, almost defiantly, put a new state — of- the — art steel fence around the entire downtown Plaza shutting out homeless people who have found shelter there. Several Federal Court rulings last spring had forced Chico to allow the homeless to sleep in such a place if no beds were available elsewhere. Justifying the fence, supposedly an ice skating rink, backed by downtown businesses (with little open discussion), is about to be built there.

Over and over the city, practicing what amounts to class warfare, has found ways of forcing homeless people out of our eyesight to “help” businesses rather than helping to cure the causes of poverty. The same is happening among power brokers in Washington DC who break their own fiscal policies to keep Wall Street looking good to the world rather than honoring the government’s social contract with its people to “promote the general welfare” and “insure domestic tranquility.”

Heads up: breaking “social contracts” is always a forerunner in the decline of civilizations.

— Linda Furr, Chico