To be rich necessarily requires that you are able to consume more than you produc

[undergroundpanther]

The gated community, Blakely and Snyder write, is the latest innovation in the suburbanizing trend toward ''ever more controlled, ever more privatized residential environments.'' For the zoning restrictions of earlier suburbs, the gated community substitutes guardhouses, physical barriers and hired security forces. Its governing body, the homeowners' association, constitutes a private ''pseudo-government'' that supplants or augments the services provided by surrounding local governments: street maintenance, police protection.

As they explain the rise of the gated community, Blakely, dean of the School of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Southern California, and Snyder, a member of the city and regional planning department at the University of California, Berkeley, fall into the language of inevitability, allowing ''development'' to assume a life of its own. They set up a schematic model of community, heavy on homogeneity: ''shared territory,'' ''shared values,'' ''shared public realm,'' ''shared support structures,'' ''shared destiny.'' It should come as no surprise that the gated communities fail to measure up. But when the authors abandon the language of test cases and listen to their informants, they begin re-creating the texture of life in gated communities.

On the whole, it is a smooth, bland texture, strikingly uniform despite the authors' efforts to separate the communities into categories. ''Prestige communities'' and ''lifestyle communities,'' mainly situated around golf courses and marinas in the Sunbelt, make up the vast majority of the places surveyed. ''Security zone communities,'' created by traffic barricades within existing urban areas, are more embattled and middle class. But nearly all the gated-community dwellers who speak up in this book are affluent corporate executives -- tanned, fit and dressed in ''chinos, polos and golf sweaters.'' Some are retired; others are empty-nest professional couples. Their apparently casual tastes coexist with a habit of command; even at leisure they wear ''pressed knee-length shorts.''What these people want, the authors discover, is not community but privacy and security. No matter how affluent they are, they dread the world outside the gates. Guardhouses, electronic surveillance systems and physical barriers provide reassurance but also reinforce the sense that one is surrounded by a disintegrating society. Crime is an obsession, despite (in most cases) the absence of any credible threat.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/28/reviews/971228.28learst.html

"Some of our opponents are pretty smart - smart enough to figure out that if you change who lives here, you change who votes here, thus you can change the politics." - Chris Daly, S.F. Supervisor, D6

Displacements..For the wealthy..
http://www.poormagazine.org/index.cfm?L1=news&story=978

Jon Kyl and I were talking about the estate tax. If we knew anybody that owned a business that lost life in the storm, that would be something we could push back with."
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1106213,00.html
http://st4tic.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/kill-the-poor/
The rich and wealthy do not like the poor and they do not like to fraternize outside of their class. So, needless to say, if the republicans (the rich and wealthy) have their way there will only be two classes left, the poor and the wealthy.
http://contentdig.com/politics/what-does-it-really-mean-to-be-a-u.s.-citizen.html

Mines are not laid in places where wealthy, comfortable people live. They harm poor people, people who don't look like us,
http://www.spectacle.org/298/wilmine.html

When wealthy people get enormous tax cuts, they don’t spend the money to create more jobs. They don’t spend the money on anything at all if they can help it. They’ve already got more money than they can ever possibly spend. What they do instead is put the money into tax shelters so they can avoid paying any taxes on it.
http://www.gazettextra.com/news/2008/jan/22/trying-trickle--economics/


http://www.acriticaldecision.org/links/manipulating-emotional-issues-to-obtain-votes.html
The quiet plan to kill medicare
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/47707/



Seems to me, the wealthy know exactly what harm and what evil they cause others and they are armed to the teeth to make sure no one not of thier class ever taints thier prefect world...It is about time WE realized the evil affluent people cause by thier greed and QUIT attacking each other and scapegoating the poor and come together to tear down those guarded gates,breach the defenses, And storm the Bastille! If people fail to make these wealthy thuigs FACE# the "world outside" thier GREED created..Who will? They will suck the world dry to have thier precious lifestyles. To me the cost of maintaing the lifestyles of these few obscenely wealthy people is too high for all of us outside the gates.
http://mindhenge.typepad.com/blog/2005/01/the_rich_and_th.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/10/18/MN1038CH.DTL
http://dir.salon.com/story/books/review/2004/02/09/johnston/


Living High and Letting Die.
http://www.iadb.org/etica/documentos/dc_sin_elpan-i.htm
http://www.satyamag.com/jan01/kim.html
"A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal." Ted Turner - CNN founder and UN supporter - quoted in the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, June '96.
http://www.population-security.org/11-CH3.html#1
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/443213in.html

if Katrina would have happened in France, there would have been a lot more going on than just looting in a local discount mall... Some rich people would’ve had to die.
http://eastcoastcriticsarebiased.blogspot.com/2005/11/tale-of-two-cities-remastered.html
http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=776089


http://www.poormagazine.com/index.cfm
http://jech.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/60/12/1060
http://gulcfac.typepad.com/georgetown_university_law/economics_and_legal_reasoning/index.html

[SoCalDem]

1. It's the new and improved method of red-lining/racism

By having unreachable and hyper expensive communities, they insulate themselves from riff-raff.. The only people who could affprd to live there are more likely to be others "just like them"....and wealthier members of minority groups might self-select to NOT live there because of the prevailing groupthink that exists in those communities.

[Raskolnik]

2. You know, to the majority of the world's population, *you* are one of those wealthy thugs

It is about time WE realized the evil affluent people cause by thier greed and QUIT attacking each other and scapegoating the poor and come together to tear down those guarded gates,breach the defenses, And storm the Bastille!

Whose computer are you using right now?

[undergroundpanther]

5. An old one

And YES I know to those living off less than a dollar a day I am rich,but than again in some of these very poor countries amounts like 300.00 can pay your rent for a year or two in a nice place by thier standards.

I happen to have been born here.Here those living on a dollar a day would not be able to survive at all because shit here costs more.I don't decide the costs I just bear them.

I am using a computer I have had since the year 2000. I own it.It's slow creaky and all but I can't afford another one now,probably won't be able to for a very,very long time.What's your point/ problem .Arew you one of these types who assume poor people should not have CD players or computers as if poor people only poor if they are in rags? I think you are being an asshole with that comment..
And I am not counting blessings nor am I sorry. What makes you think I should be. The wealthy have TOO MUCH,.Period. They have bought the government.

[Skittles]

6. good response

:thumbsup:

[One_Life_To_Give]

3. Different than centuries before?

When in history did people not tend to associate principally with those most like themselves? What would a poor person shooting 9 holes of Golf with a retired CEO talk about during the game? Their recent vacations? One in Paris the other at the Y.

Fundamentally there is more to "Class" than just some designation in a text book. We naturally associate with people who have similar interests and life experiences to our own. And may engage in some activities with people outside our socioeconomic group. However much of what we do with our time will be consistent with those who share our group. Furthering our common experiences and hence view of the world.

[JosephSchmo]

4. Thats called being in debt

Poor and rich alike can do this.

[mdmc]

7. kick

[dysfunctional press]

8. i think you have your subject line backasswards...

if you consume more than you produce- you aren't going to get rich, or be rich very long if you already are.

look at the united states as a whole, for example- we didn't get to be a wealthy nation by consuming more than we produced- and now that we do, our fortune has turned to debt.