Nadie_AZ: The Pew Research Center has found that some 90 percent of Americans believe that the government should do everything it can to ensure equality of opportunity.

I read this, and I am not sure I can believe it. If it were true, then the GOP would be a far more progressive party than it is. Same with the Dems.

50% of people have an IQ below 100. People vote against their own best interests. People vote for religion and hate. People vote for bigotry.
FFS W was elected twice. He was the least intelligent president ever.

But ensuring equality of opportunity does not mean the same thing to everyone. Dems think of that as providing aid to people at the bottom. GOPs think of that as cutting taxes so government is out of their way (which would otherwise prevent opportunity)

The fact that you dont "believe" a poll is proof that most people dont even understand how polls work.

o5iiawah: The wealthy can only do that if they ingratiate themselves with government. your beef, Occupy's beef, the Progressive agenda....

All of it should be directed towards Washington, DC.

Thanks to the tax code they write, GE and facebook pays no taxes and GETS billions back whilst a schlub earning $50,000 in a factory probably pays $14,000 and is just happy to get a couple hundred bucks back in middle February. Thanks to the laws they write, companies escape prosecution when they commit fraud. Thanks to government, it is easier to get rich investing in congressmen and lobbying than in R&D for a product. Who needs the market to buy your products when you can convince government to do it? What is easier, making a product that 309,000,000 people might want or making a product that a few people in Washington can order 309,000,000 people to pay for?

Wealth is social power. It has always been power. It will always be power. The rich will always attempt to extract privilege for themselves, because that is what humans do with power. Yes, there will be far-seeing individuals who do otherwise, but they will never be the majority as long as humans remain humans. The only way to oppose power is with power. At the most basic levels, what other forms of power are there?

There are two options: violence or law. The club or the gavel. Either the people who object to this self-serving behaviour kill the wealthy to curb their excesses, or they make rules to curb their excesses and force them to comply by threat of sanction of some kind.

The former happens when people rise up and say enough, and kill the wealthy and take what they have. All other things being equal, that's bad. It's the worst possible solution. It is brutal and unjust and leads to misery and poverty and atrocities done to one and all, because it is rarely if ever applied in any kind of controlled or rational fashion once it gets started. The French Revolution is the classic example, but hardly the only one.

Law is when the member of society agree together that a certain behaviour will be allowed or not, and variations on that idea with greater and greater complexity. The other word for it is government. The whole point of a representative system of government is that the people are the ones who are ultimately supposed to hold the power. The actual government actors are supposed to be their representatives, in that they represent the will of the collective of individuals who make up the nation.

And the government is not beholden to wealth - at least in theory. Continued of government does not directly depend on solvency, although obviously the lack thereof is a big problem.

Now, the wealthy in general do not get wealthy by being stupid or complacent. They generally understand that government is the only social actor that can seriously challenge their acquisition of further wealth and power. And so they seek to co-opt the representatives of government and the mechanisms of government to their own use, which is what you are complaining about. And that's true - but it is also incomplete. Because it still remains that government is the only powerful social actor that is directly beholden to the people, and which has the power to oppose the natural human tendency of the wealthy to seek power and privilege for them and theirs.

Because they will also seek to disenfranchise the population by alienating them from government. By presenting the government as other and untrustworthy, ruled by elites and unresponsive to the common man. They will tell you that the government is the problem. This is only true to the extent that the wealthy have made it so by co-opting it and disrupting the political will of the general population. Because the people can always take back the government - IF they are informed. IF they understand what the real issues are. IF they can coordinate their individual social actions into a collective political action.

So when you say government is the problem, instead of enjoining governement actors to remember who they are actually supposed to be beholden to and take action, you are part of the problem. When you encourage isolationist individualism, you are part of the problem. When you cheer corporate America and distrust government, you are part of the problem. Make no mistake, the Tea Party had the support of powerful right wing corporate backers precisely because it was perfect for defusing and redirecting the social anger over inequality of opportunity into something that they could use to further strengthen their position at the expense of society at large. Conversely, OWS faced the conundrum that the very disorganized nature that made it impossible to coopt also made it nearly impossible to transform into effective political action, and easy to slander and parody in the corporate press.

It never fails to boggle my mind why so many conservatives would prefer to let corporations whose only goal is increasing the wealth of their shareholders run free to do as they please in the name of maximum possible profit rather than seeing them leashed and limited by the actions of a governement that in the end is supposed to be "by the people, for the people". Do they really think those corporations will be good corporate citizens just because?

Philip Francis Queeg: The Stealth Hippopotamus: 12349876: That's not the point. The point is the hope is a lot less than it used to be. One person can do it, one person has always been able to do it, but one person's experience has nothing to do with what's going on at the societal level.

That is exactly the point, that is the tip of the point. If we don't believe it it can never be. Have you ever heard of a self fulfilling proficiency?! Yeah I know we have someone on the biggest and loudest soap box in the country telling you you cant do it. I know that. But if there ever was an example of someone beating long odds it's him! (And yes I messed up, it was Harvard Law Review.). You can do it. Your kids can do it. Everyone can do it. You may or may not become the super wealthy but you can improve your station and push your family up the ladder. Maybe you are shooting for more of a change than is realistic? Going from emigrate to midclass is a huge jump but it can be done by one family push one kid into a good school. Now mid class to millionaire is a hard jump. But the sure way not to do it is to be negative and never try.

So we should ignore reality, pretend there are no problems and tell ourselves happy stories rather than trying to improve things?

Because "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!" worked out so well for this lady:



All you conservative types asking why we should take more from the rich, why we should take what they earned, the answer is very simple:

Concentration of wealth into the hands of a tiny percentage of the population is how you create an aristocracy. The defining characteristics aren't the fancy titles. It's the social power and privilege passed down through inheritance. It's great that you get people like Obama and Buffet making it big.

But when the wealthy set up social barriers to entry into their class that ensure that most of their wealth will end up in the hands of themselves, their peers and their children, whether directly through inheritance of privately owned wealth or indirectly through the inherited control of legal entities like foundations and businesses and through privileged access to education and opportunity, then you have a huge farking problem for any nation that dares to imagine itself as some form of representative democracy or republic.

And no matter how many anecdotes you trot out about specific individuals making it big, it remains that the plural of anecdote is not data, and the general social trends are towards increasing inequality of opportunity and social stratification based on wealth. You are building yourselves an aristocracy of wealth and privilege and your poor conservative base is cheering it on.

o5iiawah: That is not what I am complaining about. Re-read everything I have written.

The market can seriously challenge the acquisition of further wealth and power so they will use government, acting outside of its authority, to protect it. The market though, is the aggregate of hundreds of millions of people acting in their own best interests. They are a lot harder to placate than a few dozen people on a banking committee.

Nonsense. Without the existence of law to define and control the action of the socially powerful, there is no market, because the unchecked actions of social power by those who experience early success means that they are able to create monopolistic protectionist conditions that are self-serving. That's how you got things like aristocracy and later guilds in the first place: because in the absence of some social force preventing it, the powerful will always act to promote their own interests over that of society at large. For examples, see most of human bloody history. Markets are good for driving economic growth, and so certain governments have created and protected them from the wealthy and powerful in order to increase the general economic growth of the nation instead of a privileged few, but make no mistake, they did not come into existence by themselves.

Seriously, have you never even heard of the tragedy of the commons, or game theory? Market systems are inherently unstable. They exist only when there are powerful social forces acting to protect or create them. They are not some kind of all powerful magic force that can prevent the abuse of power by the wealthy. In fact currently it is by using the markets to their own advantage that the wealthy maintain and perpetuate their position.

o5iiawah: And again, we have a government which was established to protect individual rights, establish a system of uniform commerce among the states, protect property, mediate contracts and settle bankruptcies. You and I arent arguing on this point but for the fact that government DOESN'T DO IT.

It doesn't do it because it has been co-opted by the wealthy and powerful, and as long as the only things government does is that short laundry list, that was and is inevitable, because humans live to game systems. We will always seek to find loopholes and exploits in any system of rules or laws, and as no system of rules or laws created by humans is perfect, there will always be such loopholes. Government must therefore be able to grow and change to remain equal to the new ways it will be challenged and exploited by the wealthy or powerful, else it will grow to be irrelevant and useless. I submit to you that the idea that large government is always bad and small government is always better is an ideological position that is not borne out by facts, but which admirably suits the purposes of the wealthy and powerful in curtailing the ability of government to limit their ability to maximize their own personal benefits and those of their classs.

The goal should not be small government, or large government, but effective government; that is, government that most effectively exercises the social actions that it must in order to promote and maintain the goals of an egalitarian representative democracy that endeavors to promote the general welfare of the nation it represents, whatsoever nation that may be - I do not limit that argument to just the USA, mind you. If reducing it's size will remove redundancy and bureaucratic inertia and result in more responsiveness without curtailing effectiveness, then shrink it appropriately. Likewise, if changing conditions and exploitative behaviour on the part of private enterprise (cfe. Wall street et al. in the last couple of decades) require an expansion of government in order to more closely monitor and regulate their activity, then grow the government to do so.

The goal and methods of government should be dictated by pragmatic requirements, not by ideological sloganeering.

o5iiawah: Again, I havent. Just government overreaching or neglecting its enumerated authority.

In other words, government is the problem when it doesn't adhere to your narrowly defined ideological position. I hold such unrealistic positions as having very little value, if any.

The appropriate reach of government is determined by the necessities of governance of the society and time in which it finds itself, and the challenges posed by same. To argue otherwise is to play into the hands of those who would undermine government in order to exploit the people for their own gain and the gain of their close others, be they peers or relations.

You can't have it both ways. Tie the hands of government, render it unable to act in a given social arena, and you do not render that arena free by some magic. You simply allow other social actors with the means to do so an unfettered arena in which to pursue their own agenda, none of which are beholden to the people of the nation as is the government.

o5iiawah: The whole reason we have government to begin with is to protect what we have and ensure that a few bad actors dont ruin things for everyone. We need rules for individuals, so we make local laws. We hold those who administer those laws accountable. We have state laws and elect people to execute those laws with means of holding them accountable. We have federal laws and elect people to execute laws, placing limits on their authority and holding them accountable. There's anaccountability mechanism in place for every element of government because government owns an exclusive monopoly on force.

Wal-Mart cannot kick your door in at 4am. Wal-Mart will never judge your fate in court. Wal-Mart will never be able to send you to war. Only government can and so there's a reason we hold them extra accountable. I can choose not to shop at Wal-Mart. I can choose not to work for Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has personally done nothing to me and never can unless I willingly on my own accord choose to enter their business and if an agent of Wal-Mart harms me in any way, we have government to settle the dispute.

Nobody can hurt you (without penalty) rich or poor unless the government allows it.

Wal-Mart can't kick down your door - but they can arrange with their cronies to have a monopoly in an area so you can't shop elsewhere because certain goods cannot be found elsewhere. Likewise, they can undercut the wages so that you can't find a comparable job for better pay in an area, and so prevent you from bettering yourself economically. If you do not think Wal-Mart and other large corporations are doing exactly that right now, you have not been paying attention to what is going on with the growing inequality of your nation.

What you fail to grasp is that this is not Wal-Mart being a bad actor. This is Wal-Mart being a corporation. The fundamental structures of corporate economics mean that all other things being equal, maximum possible profit is the goal. All actions will be pursued based on that calculation - because if they don't they will lose out to a competitor who does follow that rule. Corporations acting as corporations will always be bad actors when viewed from the persepective of an ethical human being because that's how the capitalist economic system is set up.

Meanwhile, you worry about a police state. Guess who has an incentive to create that police state? Guess who it is that benefits from a world where the little guy cannot stand up for himself, cannot fight back, must fear the government? The wealthy and the powerful.

Cui bono is the age old question. Who benefits? When you have a democratic system of government, who benefits from police state powers? Generally speaking not the actual politicians; an autocracy of some sort is the way to go if you want to become wealthy and powerful as a politician. Look at Assad in Syria, or the Saudis, or all the banana republic Central American dictators of the 20th century. Heck, look at Stalin for that matter.

No, not the politicians, their place on the stage is designed to be transient, and that's ingrained deeply enough to be nearly unchangeable. No, it is their wealthy backers who benefit. The corporations, the lobbyists. They don't change when the politicians do. The system of government was designed to be responsive to the common man, but has been subverted to large extent by the wealthy and powerful because it suits them for it to be so.

And none of this changes a single fundamantal point: Only government is powerful enough to seriously oppose wealth in the social arena, all else, religion, journalism, even academia, has all already been subverted for the most part, and that can only change if government is first taken back. The market is the fiction they sell to you, conveniently failing to mention how it is defined and supported by the government they already have subverted. Thus every attempt to strengthen "the market" actually strengthens the wealthy. That's the great lie of trickle-down economics. Competitive markets exist when the governement acts to restrain the activities of corporations that would otherwise use their existing social power to ruthlessly enshrine and protect their own sources of wealth and power. They are already doing so. Do the words "too big to fail" sound familiar?

And finally, police-state shenanigans are rare. They attract a lot of very negative attention when they happen, and they are not conducive to the long-term health of any given regime. Use them too often and sooner or later you get that mob violence response I mentioned before. Meanwhile, corporate economic shenanigans are endemic to the system. Corporations engage in them frequently, because they can and because it's usually profitable to do so - even if they eventually get caught and punished. After all, do you really think the cost to Wall Street in terms of both fines and actual losses as a result of the latest financial fiascos is anything close to the wealth they extracted from it before their house of cards collapsed on them?

In short, your fear of a rare event is causing you to be complacent about a constant problem. That's an irrational response no matter how you slice it.

WhyteRaven74: KiltedBastich: Because "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!" worked out so well for this lady:

She never said it.

I am aware; it was more of a summation of her attitude and the attitude of the court at the time than a direct quote, but the narrative isn't as compelling when presented that way. She's still the iconic example of the perils of the rich and powerful ignoring the plight of the poor and downtrodden.

I haven't looked at the prices in a while but when my son was first starting college, I tried to get him to move to Norway. There was no tuition to go to the universities there (I think there's still a 300 and up to something like 700 NOK semester fee - which I think is $50 something for 300 NOK to $100 something USD for the higher amount - but still no tuition) no matter what country you're from originally. That semester fee pays for itself in discounts on public transportation and a student health clinic if you have medical issues, among a host of other things. I do know you aren't eligible for cash aid from the gubermint if you're one of those poors (like me), so you'll still need to be able to prove you're able to pay your rent and feed yourself. (Everyone in my family except for the five of us are in Norway, so he'd not have to worry about that, either. He could have stayed with relatives.) Luckily though, there are scholarships you're eligible for no matter in which country you were born. The rest of Scandinavia charges a little bit, but only for foreign students. If you're from an EU country (or Switzerland) or are an exchange student, there's still no charge.

Why oh why can't people in the US realize this kind of thing would benefit all of us in the long run? Bite the bullet, so to speak, make higher education an attainable, cheap goal and for those we know aren't college material, do just as Obama said at the end of his SOTU speech - make sure they're trained and ready to work when they finish high school. Some of us have been saying that for years now and pointing out that's a common strategy throughout Europe. How incredibly shortsighted is it to not focus more on REAL skills, especially marketable skills, and make sure the little darlings are employable right out of the gate, whether they're going on for higher learning or not?

Why can't we put more money into education here, even if it does mean a tax increase? I don't understand this slow suicide the US seems hell bent on committing. I'd be highly uncomfortable relying completely on this generation to care for me long term if something were to happen to me or I somehow, miraculously, make it to a ripe old age and there is no family that can care for me, necessitating my placement in a care facility. We should be putting more money into our own country's infrastructure, including education. After all, if your house is falling apart, you repair it and repairs cost money. You've got to pay that money, even if you don't want to do so, if you want that house to be there for you in the future.

At the rate we're going as a nation, we're not going to have much of a house left. We have a lot of problems in the US, ranging from a crumbling infrastructure to poor education, lack of decent, affordable health care and all points in between, it seems. Nearly everyone I've heard talking about this sort of thing says they want these problems fixed, but no one wants to help pay for it or otherwise make it happen. It's a little scary to me to even imagine how much further we're going to have to fall before attitudes change. Growing up, I kept hearing how the US was the Richie-richiest and bestest country EVAR, so of course I never thought we'd allow our country to fall this far for the benefit of the few. Man, was I ever wrong.
Great, now I haz a sad. Well, the old lay-deez are gone so I guess I can drown my sorrows in a couple snaps of akvavit and a chocolate chip cookie or two. Anyone else want some? It's Aalborg akvavit and I used Alton Brown's "Big Softie" recipe for the cookies...

ManRay: If only there were massive government programs aimed at helping poor people and giving them an opportunity to succeed and build a better life. If something like that was put in place a generation ago we would have less disadvantaged now.

In some ways, things indeed were getting better after WWII and the postwar boom into the Great Society era until the 1980's and the economic squander/blowback from the Vietnam War. Not for most black families without any inherited capital to build on, but for some.



Then the income differential really hit. You can't expect some compensatory programs to replace the job of actually governing well.

sheep snorter: Poor people earning over 180,000 bucks a year.
disclaimer: this graphic is from some douche who wants you to think that the black folk on it don't pay taxes.


[i.imgur.com image 614x408]

Let's see:
Single parent making $250,000 -- 1.2% more income in taxes
Single person making $230,000 -- 1.2% more
Family making $650,000 -- 3.3% more

Yeah.  Sucks to be them.

I keep harping it but I feel the 1912 Wisconsin Idea, which formed much of the philosophical backing of the New Deal, covers a lot of this.

Why not take by taxation some of that wealth acquired by Force? Why allow idle sons and daughters to waste this wealth; why not tax them by graduated income, inheritance and increment taxes, so that they bear a burden proportionate to their strength, in order that the burden of maintaining the state shall not fall so heavily on the poor? Will this be permitted? Will not that same dreaded Force terrorize our legislators? They are but human, with business interests and families to support.

Why not make public the affairs of monopolies, so that they cannot buy the votes of electors or legislators? Why not limit the power of wealth in elections? It cannot buy the whole people, can it? If not, why not make our legislators directly responsible to us so that we may watch them? Why not simplify the whole machinery of nomination and election so that we are certain to elect the men we want--men of honesty and strength?

The Pew Research Center has found that some 90 percent of Americans believe that the government should do everything it can to ensure equality of opportunity.

I read this, and I am not sure I can believe it. If it were true, then the GOP would be a far more progressive party than it is. Same with the Dems.

Snarfangel: Not that anyone cares, but I rather like Stiglitz. If he had a daily column in the Times and Krugman the occasional guest column, I wouldn't complain.

Sergeant Grumbles: The Stealth Hippopotamus: Yes we have those in place. Won't you admit that you can over regulate something? Or are more regulations always the answer?

More regulations are the answer when deregulation was the problem.

Yikes, I can't begin to reiterate how true that is just by pointing to California's rolling blackouts and skyrocketing electricity prices after deregulation.

The Stealth Hippopotamus: Poor black kid from a unstable home grows up to graduate Yale get elected to state congress than federal and then becomes a two term President.

Yeah the dream is dead.

Someone wins the Powerball jackpot more often than your example of "opportunity" occurs.

This is America, becoming a Millionaire is as easy as winning America Idol (or at least making it to the finals), being a pretty girl who can sing & posting your voice on the youtube (we sure like song), choosing the right case on a game show or inheriting it!  and if you think it's more difficult than that you're just a naysayer!

disregard every thing you see every day, going to and from work, your first job to your second, pay no attention to the thousands of people on the same freeway stuck in traffic, never you mention the neighborhoods divided by property values & incomes, this is one great country where anything can happen and more than likely will (to your advantage, never disadvantage), so please, stay focused on your success & never give up, there's 24 hours in a day and between work & school & sleep & eating, all you need to do is get in the millionaire line.

/foreigners need not apply, our unlimited success is limited to Americans only!

slayer199: Of course, nobody wants to point the finger where it belongs...the massive growth of government from taxation, regulation, and redistribution of wealth...beginning with FDR.

Do you know how we all know you didn't RTFA?

People still believe that crap?

The Stealth Hippopotamus: Poor black kid from a unstable home grows up to graduate Yale get elected to state congress than federal and then becomes a two term President.

Yeah the dream is dead.

Look!!  A single anecdote that proves anyone from anywhere has an equal chance of achieving anything as everyone else!!

zedster: slayer199: zedster: right, let's forget the robber barons and gilded age

And forget that people had more upward mobility back then as opposed to now.

Maybe, but you are skipping some data points here, let's skip the 1800s and move to post-WWII. The middle class grew during the 1950s and continued into the 70s, then it started to crash down a bit. Why?

[cdn.theatlantic.com image 615x447]
Source

this is all about the reagan royalty revolution. Until we undo that, we will continue to wallow.
bring back the death taxes. bring back cap gain taxes. bring back (implement) wealth taxes. reinstate glass-steagall.

these efforts would have little to zero impact on 99%

oh wait, the 1% decide what will happen.
nevermind

The Stealth Hippopotamus: Aar1012: What are the odds of it happening again? What are the odds that a poor black kid or any poor kid that was born within the past decade would be able to do the same?

The dream isn't dead, but it is on life support


It a really really long shot. It was a really really long shot to begin with. But it was and is possible. The dream doesn't come with a guarantee

A Family Affair: Intergenerational Social Mobility across OECD Countries - PDF

The US has the third lowest upward mobility index behind Italy and Great Britain

Ignore the dream of being break out rich or even two cars in the garage and a chicken in every pot. The real American dream has always been if you play it straight your children will have more opportunity then you had. With 20 somethings and younger today we are seeing the dream evaporate. The cost of education has shot up, the job market has crashed. We (Gen Y) were told go to college, get good grades, and you will be alright. Instead you have JDs waiting tables and people with solid degrees doing jobs they could have done out of high school. Don't give me the crap about oh if you went into STEM, thanks to outsourcing, H1As, loss of grants, etc... those fields aren't that much more secure these days.

We are looking at a lost decade and a lost generation unless we decide that we need to do something about it instead of attempting austerity. The life time earnings of Gen Y are going to be significantly less just because of how late we are getting into actual jobs.

Poor black kid from a unstable home grows up to graduate Yale get elected to state congress than federal and then becomes a two term President.

Yeah the dream is dead.

I realized it was a myth by my second year of college

o5iiawah: the USSR, Libya and currently Syria were taken down or pestered to bankruptcy largely as a result of a tireless, armed insurgency who knew the layout of the terrain and who eventually got on-the-fence locals to come over to their cause. That is another thread altogether but there's plenty of examples in the last 50 years of human history of established, regular armies getting harassed to no end by an angry band of locals.

The revolution will never have the support of the population. Fascism 2.0 will have the benefit of history at its side. It'll realize the Iron Fist is nowhere near as effective at controlling the population as the fluffy pillow. People will be kept comfortable, productive, and saturated with opiates of all kinds. Fascism 2.0 will be sold under the banner of freedom. "Government" will be almost non existence replaced instead by a coalition of large multinational corporate monopolies. There will be no El Presidente for Life, the President will just be a figure head elected by the people so they can feel they're part of the process. That's assuming the office even exists and hasn't been drowned in a bathtub in the name of freedom. The ones right now who love to talk about "2nd Amendment Solutions" will be the ones defending Fascism 2.0 the most.

The actual rebels who would be fighting it will not be the future George Washingtons, they'll be the future Osama Bin Ladens. They will not be engaging in straight up fire fights with the Armed Forces of the United States, because just like every other insurgents that have tried that they will lose those battles. They will instead be doing things like blowing up shopping malls, movie theatres, and office buildings. The closest they might get to an actual military target will be when they blow up a police station.

The new fascism will have the advantage of being able to study the whole history of human civilization. They will know how to keep the population happy enough not to revolt. They will make sure bellies are full and hands aren't idle. They will control population size enough so that there are enough people to fill every roll needed to make the world work. Everyone will have some function to perform, assigned to them by the corporations that control their district. Everyone will have a roof over their head, assigned to them by the corporation that assigned them their job.

The 2nd Amendment Solutions crowd seem to think that fascism is going to happen one day when Obama pulls off his rubber mask and reveals himself to be Hitler and goes BWAAAHAAAHAAAA and suddenly jackbooted stormtroopers will start repelling from black helicopters and take over the US.

Market research shows that kind of fascism historically doesn't work for very long. Dictatorships and boots on the throat tyranny doesn't tend to work very long. The New Fascism will be sold to you by advertising firms that will make the Nazi's Propaganda Machine look like a kid's lemonade stand. Guns won't do squat against that. Once it takes hold it's not going anywhere.

The only possible defence against it is to not vote it in in the first place. As long as people hold onto their fantasies that they're going to be the next George Washington in the glorious revolution they're pretty much laying the foundations for it to happen.

RanDomino: Government implies a bureaucracy. Many societies have had laws but no formal government.

No, the governing of complex modern societies with the intricate and large scope problems they face implies a bureacracy. Bureaucracies are not limited to governments. Any large and complex social system develops them. The only question is whether their authority is formalized in the government or not.

RanDomino: Democrats. Republicans. These are the options. Going to stand by that statement?

Yes, because even with a system that is as corrupted by money and power as yours currently is (Note, not an American myself) there are still political actors that attempt to do the right thing when they can. Change is possible. It will be slow and extremely difficult, and the wealthy and powerful will fight you the whole way, but no one ever promised change for the better was going to be easy or quick.

Social pressure for change in the face of inequality builds up over time. Remember that making it appear hopeless and that you shouldn't bother is what the wealthy powers that be want; that reaction favors them and lets them keep milking the system that much longer.

RanDomino: They are beholden to their paycheck, future employment by the corporations they're supposed to be regulating, and/or campaign donations from the corporations they're supposed to be keeping in check. Periodically an irate citizen complains and needs to be given the run-around for a while before they get exhausted and give up.

Which they are not supposed to be, and which is how the wealthy have co-opted your system. That's one of the things that must change if you want to take back your political system. As long as they are reliant on the wealthy for reelection, the wealthy will call the shots. Remove that limitation, and a great many things change.

RanDomino: Of course it was impossible to transform into politics. That was by design. The problem is not which politicians have power, but the fact that any politicians have power.

That is a counterproductive attitude. Every human society that advances beyond the tribal level has politics, pretending otherwise is just willful blindness. Those who enter politics become politicians by definition. What you advocate is anarchy, and contrary to what certain ideologies would have you believe, the wealthy love anarchy, because those are exactly the situations where they can leverage their wealth into power and control most easily.

Politics is going to happen. So it behooves you to choose the best people to engage in it, not make pointless ideological protests that there shouldn't be any politicians at all.

RanDomino: Sure, because a genuine pro-democracy movement that seeks to curb corporate power will ever get good press in the corporate media.
Remember the excuse the police used to raid the camps? That they were unsanitary. It was complete horsecrap. Inspections repeatedly showed that the camps were clean and safe. Kitchens were sanitary. Crime was actually lower in the vicinity of the camps. None of this mattered, because the media spewed lies about rapes and tuberculosis, and the cities used it as an excuse to send in the pigs.
When it's hard to slander, they'll just make shiat up.

Never said it was, but OWS made it just that much easier. No spokespeople ment that anyone is a spokesperson, and there's no way to disprove the more ridiculous and outlandish claims. This is the world we live in. You want to change it, I want to change it. But we still have to deal with it the way it is now in order to enact that change. Acting based on how you think the world should be instead of on how it currently is, is a predictable path to failure to achieve your goals.

RanDomino: Suppose this has already happened. Then what?

Then you take it back. Social organizations are not fixed in stone. They are always in flux, by their very nature. This is how things are now. That means there is work to be done to change things, not that nothing can be done.

RanDomino: That is not a rallying cry to save the government, but an indictment of our ability to organize.

No. Any organisation with a lot of social power will nonetheless operate by petitioning the government, or else it will have grown so large and have garnered so much support as to be the government. Because the government is literally no more and no less than the legitimate will of the nation which it serves. If you are now the ones enacting laws, you are the government, and you've either already supplanted the old one, or you're going to about to do so - possibly via a revolution in progress.

Essentially, those who make the laws accepted by the nation at large are the government, not the other way around. When the current regime loses that legitimacy, you either get an election or a revolution, depending on the context.

RanDomino: Nonsense. There is also economic action. We don't need the government to change its policies if we can simply take what we need. That's why the longest-lasting Occupy chapters are those that focused on actions like foreclosure resistance through direct action (i.e. 50 people show up and force the entire sheriff's department to drag them away).

Economic action requires economic power commensurate to the scope of the problems to be addressed. As the problem is specifically the enormously unequal distribution of wealth and income and the way it allows a small minority to call the shots for your nation, I am deeply skeptical of your claimed economic action. All of those examples you cite are ultimately going to result in only short-term localized victories that do not significantly change the larger situation, and will continue to remain so unless systemic change is enacted. That requires either the political action which you claim to eschew, revolution or else you becoming the wealthy and powerful calling the shots. Superficial victories do not impress me if you have not in any way substantially affected the underlying social systems that produced the problems in the first place.

o5iiawah:
Assuming you no longer have the courts on your side, thats why you have the 2nd amendment.  When the government becomes destructive, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.

Yeah, good luck with that Jimmy. 2nd amendment might have worked that way when wars were fought by armies meeting in a field and lobbing a few volleys of musket fire at each other before charging in and hacking the survivors to little pieces. Not gonna be so helpful against the modern military might of the United States. A revolution won't be won by a asymmetric warfare against this hypothetical future fascist government of the United States. Asymmetric works great against a foreign occupying force, especially one that has to fight against public opinion not only back home but with trading partners around the world. Even in the 60s the United States had the military might to simply go in and kill every last person in Vietnam but that wouldn't have accomplished their goal of securing a friendly trading partner and would have had global consequences. History has shown that for the most part nations don't really care what governments do to their own people as long as they contain it inside their own borders. There may be embargoes and strongly worded letters, but a government that is facing its own extinction at the hands of a revolting populace will do everything in its power to preserve itself even if that means ultimately a scorched earth policy.

Besides, as I've stated many times before when Fascism 2.0 takes over the United States most of the population will love it, live comfortably under it, and not even recognize it. One of the ways Fascism 2.0 will keep itself hidden is by loosening gun restrictions not making them stronger. People continually spread the myth that Hitler "took away all the guns" when in fact he actually lifted most gun restrictions. Since Hitler is seen as the Fascist of all Fascists people will believe they can't possibly be living under fascism since they're allowed to buy the most expensive firearms that Guns Inc. has to sell them. They'll be lulled into complacency by the 2nd amendment.

They'll have far too many creature comforts to want to take up arms and revolt when Food Corp. monopolizes the food supply and makes competition impossible. They'll be to opiated to care that Energy Inc. now controls all the power. They'll just do whatever job the corporation that runs their city determines they're suitable for and be glad to be free. There will probably be no real hunger, or poverty, or want. You wont be able to go swimming in clean water but you'll be free to buy the most expensive bottled water you can afford. And that's what they'll think freedom is, being able to buy whatever you can afford. They'll be glad to be told where to live and what function to perform and those poor unfortunate souls who just don't fit into this system will be institutionalized in either Mental Corps fine hospitals or Prison Corps excellent prisons.

Fascism 2.0 won't be goose steps and jackboots. It will be rampant consumerism and reality TV shows. Less Mien Kamph and more my comfy chair. It'll be the fascism as seen in the original Rollerball movies. Gun nuts will love it.

ImpendingCynic: FDR passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act? The trend towards regulation started in the late 19th century with the rise of Carnegie and Rockefeller.

I would say the regulation of industry started, oddly enough, with the growth of massive industry. It's not like we had massive, titanic industries existing for centuries and just randomly decided at one point to start regulating them. Rather, in the second half of the 19th century, some truly monstrously large industries become monopolized and we basically had no choice but to regulate them due to completely lack of competition.

theknuckler_33: According to research from the Brookings Institution, only 58 percent of Americans born into the bottom fifth of income earners move out of that category

I was actually surprised the number was that high... and I'm trying to figure out what being surprised by that says about me.

Moving into the second fifth means you're still poor. Mobility doesn't mean much if the curve is flat. One of the ways economists look at mobility is by analyzing the correlation in incomes between generations. Some studies have suggested that as much as 80% of a random person's income is explained by the income of his parents. That's an absurdly high number, but it leaves a lot of room for movement around the underclass. Just not so much room for movement out of the underclass, which is really the point of opportunity.

The_Sponge: Duke Phillips' Singing Bears: we just don't think that people should starve because they've made mistakes, had bad luck, or acted stupidly.


At what point does a person f*ck up enough where you say "enough is enough"?

Do you really want a consequence-free utopia?

No just starvation free.

Reading this right now:



Getting a kick, etc.

Giltric: How will taking from them build you up?
Why bring someone else down to make you feel more equal?


The top bracket makes their money not from hard work but from an unbalanced playing field based on laws that work to lock money in. One of the bigger problems we have is deflation, there is not enough money moving in the economy and it's locked in the upper echelons. They have no incentive to move it because of the laws. If you are making 50% of the income in the nation, shouldn't you be taxed accordingly? These people are wealthy because the system protects them and benefits them. Isn't it only fair they pay their fair share based on the utility of the system to them?

The Stealth Hippopotamus: Yes I admit that not every single person in America has an equal chance of being the president. That was a strawman i built myself. Sometimes I build my own strawman by accident silly I know but I do that sometimes. But "that crap" as you so eloquently put it is true. Everyone has a chance to improve on their station. Everyone.

I never said otherwise.

I said people do not have "the same chance to succeed." 

And you agreed.

The Stealth Hippopotamus: Lionel Mandrake: Does she have "the same chance" as little Georgie Bush? F*CK NO.

does she have the same chance to become President as a Bush? No. You're right about that. But she does have an equal chance of success. There has never been nor will there ever be a society were everyone is completely likely to gain access to the halls of power. But one persons definition of success isn't the same as the other. Not everyone is working become the POTUS.

And if we do fill her head with dreams what's the worst case scenario? She only goes to a good college and not an Ivy League?! She only make the state congress and not the federal?!

I'm glad you agree.

Apology accepted.

Just to be clear, this is what tenpoundsofcheese and The Stealth Hippopotamus are defending, and I am calling BS:

"We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own."~ Barack Obama

I just think it's hilarious that those guys are defending 0bama.

Now, I shall bold the parts I don't agree with:

"We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own."

Can a little girl born into the bleakest poverty become enormously successful?  Hell yes!

Does she have "the same chance" as little Georgie Bush?  F*CK NO.

fta President Obama's second Inaugural Address used soaring language to reaffirm America's commitment to the dream of equality of opportunity

5th grade english is now "soaring"?

tenpoundsofcheese: Lionel Mandrake: People still believe that crap?

The Stealth Hippopotamus: Poor black kid from a unstable home grows up to graduate Yale get elected to state congress than federal and then becomes a two term President.

Yeah the dream is dead.

Look!!  A single anecdote that proves anyone from anywhere has an equal chance of achieving anything as everyone else!!

Yes, it demonstrates that it is possible to succeed. You are pathetic if you believe that that is the only success story. Herman Cain laughs at you.

I thought you had me on ignore.

Please put me back on.

namatad: zedster: slayer199: zedster: right, let's forget the robber barons and gilded age

And forget that people had more upward mobility back then as opposed to now.

Maybe, but you are skipping some data points here, let's skip the 1800s and move to post-WWII. The middle class grew during the 1950s and continued into the 70s, then it started to crash down a bit. Why?

[cdn.theatlantic.com image 615x447]
Source

this is all about the reagan royalty revolution. Until we undo that, we will continue to wallow.
bring back the death taxes. bring back cap gain taxes. bring back (implement) wealth taxes. reinstate glass-steagall.

these efforts would have little to zero impact on 99%

oh wait, the 1% decide what will happen.
nevermind

How will taking from them build you up?
Why bring someone else down to make you feel more equal?

zedster: slayer199: zedster: right, let's forget the robber barons and gilded age

And forget that people had more upward mobility back then as opposed to now.

Maybe, but you are skipping some data points here, let's skip the 1800s and move to post-WWII. The middle class grew during the 1950s and continued into the 70s, then it started to crash down a bit. Why?

[cdn.theatlantic.com image 615x447]
Source

Outsourcing labor to countries where you can pay someone the American equvlant of 2$ a day? Automation?

slayer199: zedster: right, let's forget the robber barons and gilded age

And forget that people had more upward mobility back then as opposed to now.

Maybe, but you are skipping some data points here, let's skip the 1800s and move to post-WWII. The middle class grew during the 1950s and continued into the 70s, then it started to crash down a bit. Why?


Source

zedster: right, let's forget the robber barons and gilded age

And forget that people had more upward mobility back then as opposed to now.

slayer199: Of course, nobody wants to point the finger where it belongs...the massive growth of government from taxation, regulation, and redistribution of wealth...beginning with FDR.

right, let's forget the robber barons and gilded age

Aar1012: What are the odds of it happening again? What are the odds that a poor black kid or any poor kid that was born within the past decade would be able to do the same?

The dream isn't dead, but it is on life support


It a really really long shot. It was a really really long shot to begin with. But it was and is possible. The dream doesn't come with a guarantee

The Stealth Hippopotamus: Poor black kid from a unstable home grows up to graduate Yale get elected to state congress than federal and then becomes a two term President.

Yeah the dream is dead.

What are the odds of it happening again? What are the odds that a poor black kid or any poor kid that was born within the past decade would be able to do the same?

The dream isn't dead, but it is on life support