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This Is Really, Really Scary
Jul. 24th, 2010 03:17 pmThe Middle Class In America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are The Stats To Prove It.
This made me physically ill when I read it. Literally, physically ill.
We're boned. Utterly and completely boned. In the Great Depression, we had WWII to pull us out - 30 million people had to die for that one. What the fuck would be needed to save us here?
The worst part is that I can point a finger and see who's to blame - Washington DC, for not regulating businesses who sent jobs overseas out of existence. And much as I'd love to blame Republicans more than Democrats, we the people are to blame for not stopping them from allowing big corporations to send their resources elsewhere.
An American worker can't compete with an overseas worker willing to work for less than a dollar per hour.
So, um, yeah. We're fucked. Massage Therapy is looking better and better as a career, simply because someone has to massage the top 1% of the country that holds 83% of all US stocks.
What I don't get is why individuals constantly vote against their own self-interest, and let's face it, if you vote for those who vote against more regulation of big corporations, that's exactly what you're doing.
Once again, I blame religion and the religious right for using it against the ignorant, derailing rational discourse with topics like Gay Marriage and Don't Ask, Don't Tell. "Family values" have distracted us from the real division of wealth in this country.
People get very angry when the subject of the distribution of wealth comes up, but let's face it - class systems where a small percentage of the population hold a large percent of the wealth don't work out very well in the end.
Exhibit A: France.
Exhibit B: The Soviet Union.
Don't get me wrong - communism doesn't work. In truth, I AM in favor of capitalism, but what we have in the US now isn't true capitalism, it's corporate parasitism. Big corporations get tax breaks for not giving jobs to Americans and even though the Supreme Court recently said that they had the same rights as individuals, they pay far less, percentage-wise, than the average citizen in taxed. How is that fair?
The more I think about it, the more that I realize that 1% of the population controlling a majority of the wealth sounds an awful lot like...
A monarchy.
And didn't we fight a war 234 years ago to try and get away from that system?
This made me physically ill when I read it. Literally, physically ill.
We're boned. Utterly and completely boned. In the Great Depression, we had WWII to pull us out - 30 million people had to die for that one. What the fuck would be needed to save us here?
The worst part is that I can point a finger and see who's to blame - Washington DC, for not regulating businesses who sent jobs overseas out of existence. And much as I'd love to blame Republicans more than Democrats, we the people are to blame for not stopping them from allowing big corporations to send their resources elsewhere.
An American worker can't compete with an overseas worker willing to work for less than a dollar per hour.
So, um, yeah. We're fucked. Massage Therapy is looking better and better as a career, simply because someone has to massage the top 1% of the country that holds 83% of all US stocks.
What I don't get is why individuals constantly vote against their own self-interest, and let's face it, if you vote for those who vote against more regulation of big corporations, that's exactly what you're doing.
Once again, I blame religion and the religious right for using it against the ignorant, derailing rational discourse with topics like Gay Marriage and Don't Ask, Don't Tell. "Family values" have distracted us from the real division of wealth in this country.
People get very angry when the subject of the distribution of wealth comes up, but let's face it - class systems where a small percentage of the population hold a large percent of the wealth don't work out very well in the end.
Exhibit A: France.
Exhibit B: The Soviet Union.
Don't get me wrong - communism doesn't work. In truth, I AM in favor of capitalism, but what we have in the US now isn't true capitalism, it's corporate parasitism. Big corporations get tax breaks for not giving jobs to Americans and even though the Supreme Court recently said that they had the same rights as individuals, they pay far less, percentage-wise, than the average citizen in taxed. How is that fair?
The more I think about it, the more that I realize that 1% of the population controlling a majority of the wealth sounds an awful lot like...
A monarchy.
And didn't we fight a war 234 years ago to try and get away from that system?
