General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThis is not what America is supposed to be about. This must change.....
liberal N proud
(60,334 posts)They want it all and they want it now!
burfman
(264 posts)Or perhaps..... what's mine is mine and F*** you!
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)bleeding must be stopped. This should be bipartisan.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)jsr
(7,712 posts)on top of all the corporate welfare.
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)That's dealing with the devil in the most literal sense that actually exists.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)they'd see that they have common ground.
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)Before 2000, I had some confidence in my fellow citizens.
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)And I can't think of any "solution" that isn't flagrantly unethical, so...
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)Individuals are figuring it all out.
My hopes are increasing when dealing with local people at teh GroceryOutlet where I am tabling on a med marijuana issue.
Sadly, I find it harder and harder to come on topics here at DU and find such wisdom. (For instance: I am very surprised at the large number of fellow DU'er's, who delighted in letting Will Pitt know that he should simply suck it up. It was almost as if they were telling him that his wife deserved the ill treatment regarding the drugs, since Will is no longer an Obama enthusiast. Just wait until one of them has a relative get a $ 79,000 heart bypass, only to die, on account of not being able to afford the $ 7,500 to 15,000 bucks worth of antibiotics!)
bigwillq
(72,790 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(48,988 posts)Good point: Wealth is much too over-concentrated.
Good man: Bernie Saunders.
Bad use of arithmetic: The figures are used deceptively.
Since the entry point to the list is fixed and does not increase as global wealth increases, so the "billionaire aggregate net worth" expands more than the actual concentration of wealth expands. In fact, it is possible for the percentage of wealth in the top 1% to decrease while the world's total wealth increases and have the same kind of figures as in the quote.
Good propaganda: Most people won't see the deception and won't care when it is pointed out.
Reality based thinking people don't need such deceptions to be convinced of the good point (back to the top).
Trust Buster
(7,299 posts)Economist John Kenneth Galbraith had an interesting theory. He noted that our economy follows 80 year cycles. He believed that the oligarchs would crash the economy and the people naturally rise up and demand reform. Like Teddy Roosevelt before him, in the wake of the excesses of the Great Depression, FDR had a mandate from the American population to initiate a series of reforms, re-regulation of banks, dissolution of monopolies, stronger worker rights and a strengthening of the social safety net to name a few.
Galbraith observed that when the American generation most directly affected by an economic collapse dies out over a 40 year period, the replacement generation was ripe to fall for the deregulation of banks, weakening of anti-trust action, marginalization of worker rights and a weakening of the social safety net ideology. We witnessed the second 40 year oligarch power grab starting with Reagan and culminating in the most recent economic collapse. Galbraith plots these 80 year cycles throughout American history.
The question I proffer to you, the people is: Has special interest money so corrupted our government that the promise of a rebirth of a nation after an economic collapse been denied the people for the first time in our history ? This time the banks have carried on without missing a beat, monopolies are continuing to grow, worker pay and rights have not rebounded and the social safety net is being disassembled before our eyes. In other words, as Galbraith pointed out, money has always won it's fair share of the battles, but, has money won the war this time around ?