My parents were complaining about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer 50 years ago

[NNN0LHI]

And you know what their complaining got them? The rich got more rich and the poor got more poor.

Want to know what I have figured out in the 50 years since then? Shit rolls down hill. When the auto industry began laying off thousands of workers like myself how many people at the top were laid off do you think? None.

Same thing the state employees are going through right now. Think the politicians and decision makers at the top are going to lay themselves off? Not hardly. They aren't even going to take a pay cut like everyone else.

The corruption is institutionalized. It is built right into our system. And I don't know any way of stopping it. It has never gotten better. Only worse.

Anyone else notice this?

Don

[NYC_SKP]

1. About the only way that it ever gets better is that the rate at which it gets worse slows down.

True fact.

[LibDemAlways]

2. Hell, yes. Last year an entire division of my husband's company

closed. All of the worker bees were let go - my husband just days after receiving his 20 year service award. However, every single manager (most of them completely useless) were transferred to other divisions to continue their do-nothing ways. These were the people responsible for the division shutting down in the first place. They were unable to secure any contracts. Just sat in their offices twiddling their thumbs and examining their stock portfolios while the division slid into the toilet.

The rich get richer, you bet.

[Doctor Hurt]

3. "It has never gotten better. Only worse."

How many major cholera outbreaks have we had in this country lately?

[jp11]

4. You are right for that fact how many alien attacks have we had in the last 5 years?

None, that's right, and we haven't had any sea monsters attack in at least a thousand years, things are getting better all the time I don't know what the OP is on about.

:sarcasm:

[wickerwoman]

17. 100 years ago it would be unlikely that all of your siblings would survive to adulthood.

Most mothers buried at least one child. Some buried half a dozen.

During the Great Depression people were literally starving on the side of the road or subsisting on dandelions, onions and potatoes (and feeling lucky to have that). We're in the shit today, but we're not in that kind of shit.

We have made progress. Adding almost 30 years to the average lifespan over the course of a century is not a nothing accomplishment. Neither are advances in civil rights, feminism, gay rights, unions (even with recent rollbacks workers rights made enormous strides in the 20th century), environmentalism, etc.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

There's nothing wrong with, or even inaccurate about, hope and the person you're responding to didn't deserve to have their remark derided by references to aliens or sea monsters.

[jp11]

18. Maybe the person I responded to should have made their comments relevent to the

issues the OP was talking about instead of pulling in a random, yet true fact, that had nothing to do with what was being discussed in reference to a single sentence.

Cherry picking a single point made by another person is a terrible and virtually useless way to have a discussion.

[wickerwoman]

20. It's perfectly relevant,

which you would see if you hadn't cherry picked the last sentence of my post.

Compare society today to the post-war 1950s boom when the US didn't have any real competition and yes, it seems like the rich are consolidating wealth. But compare society today with the 1900s when we still had child labor and no weekends or Dickensian London (read Henry Mayhew- it's a a shocker) or real feudalism or classical civilization (when most of us would have been illiterate slaves... the richest senators in Rome had personal wealth the equivalent of owning Canada today. In relative terms, Crassus was 100x wealthier than Bill Gates and he wasn't the richest Roman, just the biggest show-off) and hey, we're not doing all that bad. If you look at it in perspective, this is a hiccup. And it sucks. But it doesn't suck like working in a coal mine in 1930s West Virginia sucked.

And cholera was a symptom of the massive overcrowding and poor sanitation that was epidemic in Industrial-age cities. One of the first movements towards a social safety net was improving health and sanitary conditions for the working classes. (And they did it because when they were drafting young men for WWI they found a large, large percentage of people who couldn't pass the basic physical- poor nutrition and disease had stunted their growth... can you say with a straight face that "things have only gotten worse" from that?).

Yes, the rich are consolidating their wealth. But it's not hopeless. There are many examples of things moving the other way too. The British broke their aristocracy through taxation. We can do it too. If every other first world country has managed to get universal health care, there's no reason the US can't.

Saying "the wealthy just get wealthier and it's always been that way and there's nothing anyone can do about it" is just a lame excuse not to get off your ass and do something about it. Nothing gets better if the people who should be screaming bloody murder just accept fatalistically that things have always sucked.

[jp11]

22. No it wasn't, your post was relevent, you made a broader theme and expanded upon

what you wanted to say. The person I responded to didn't do that, they picked one line and countered it ignoring everything else the OP was talking about. Agree or disagree with what the OP said my saying the IPAD 2 is better than the IPAD 1 isn't relevant, just as mentioning how a specific infection hasn't resurfaced isn't relevant. Now if all you want to do is be snarky in drive by short replies fine but it isn't a discussion and doesn't add anything of substance to the discussion or the point one would allegedly be trying to make. My reply to that also added nothing to the discussion with a short but valid response ignoring the OP's point.

You responded to me to say that ANYTHING that shows things do get better is a valid response, technically correct, but I disagree. As I've explained in the sense that it doesn't address the topic at hand which was corruption/greed in our system. I wouldn't have responded to the OP as like you I see that things do change and while I see corruption as being part of the system it has historically been weeded out. Now I think it might be harder to do as we may have to come to some armed revolt to do it as it seems we don't have enough leaders willing to stand up for the people over corporations. Then we have a population that is being economically enslaved and seems less aware/involved/interested in what is happening to them.

I don't disagree 'things have gotten better' in a broad sense examples are abound, but talk about how cars got better, science got better, do those address corruption/greed? Do those examples address how we have a never ending flow of people in power and position that continually sweep in to try and 'get theirs' and have to be swept out anew only to have new corrupt people come in? No they don't, preach hope, but the 'valid' message would be one where you talk about how corruption came to power and was defeated, then it repeats AS YOU'VE JUST DONE. It is the nature of some people to become corrupt when given power and privilege or to have corrupt/greedy people seek power to further their ends then natural to have people respond by getting them ousted at some point.

[katnapped]

19. No worries

TPTB are desperately trying to bring back those glorious times (well, for us unwashed pee-ons....not for the nobility, of course)

[socialist_n_TN]

5. Not only my parents, but I heard that canard by my

GRANDPARENTS. And uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. Cliches usually become cliches because there's truth in them. And you're right. Nothing has changed.

And right again about it being institutionalized. You can vote for the UBER capitalist or you can vote for the big capitalist party. Some choice, huh? Even then your vote is discounted or outright stolen.

It's past time for extra electoral rememdies.

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. You go after their reputations.

It's their reputations that allow them to continue in their roles of leadership. People who benefit from someone who has crookedly gamed the system have a contaminated support system. So, you uncover the crookedness, and knock them off their perch.

This will create some difficult decisions. Because, sometimes, those crooked leaders are on your side, politically.

[Curmudgeoness]

11. I wish this could work, but they have no reputations left,

and still they prosper. They have committed so many sins against society, and still they have jobs in high positions. What is there for them to be ashamed of anymore? They have flipped controvesy to their sides---moving jobs from the US for more profits, no problem since more profits are a good thing. Bailing out the sorriest companies on the face of the earth, again no problem, would could not let them fail or we would be up shit creek without a paddle. Profits rule. Reputations are old news.

[Overseas]

7. I had hoped the Bush Crash would have jolted Democrats into action.

I had hoped that would have been severe enough to jolt my Democratic majorities to zoom into office with strong FDR like programs to turn us away from the failed Trickle Down Supply Side economics that benefit the Top Few, on to the Demand Side Economics that put millions to work to spend money and keep local economies afloat after the Second Republican Great Depression.

I even thought Truth & Reconciliation hearings on the Bush crash of our ethics would put our country on a new footing-- understanding that deep changes would be required for us to rebuild our moral standing in the world and catch up with international markets for renewable energy and conservation technologies.

I thought a super FDR green infrastructure push would be promoted to help our people who were bankrupted by the Wall Street heist.

I expected a little balance. They got a bailout, we'd finally get national health insurance.

But my Democrats had already allowed right wing judicial activists to be appointed to our Supreme Court.

I wish I had been even more cynical. I would have made better plans to get away from here instead of hanging out in hope of practical, pragmatic changes to rebuild our country after Republican policies had driven it into the ground.

[Curmudgeoness]

8. "I wish I had been even more cynical." I couldn't agree more.

What we are being left with is worse than just getting poorer. We are getting poorer, and we have no recourse. There is no one standing up for the "people" anymore.

Actually, the rich are getting richer at a much higher rate now than they had in the past. Another cliche: there will be a straw that breaks the camel's back.

[Overseas]

15. Yes we have had a bunch of straws already

Way back with GWB already -- Nuremberg Nuremberg Nuremberg -- and he was not impeached.

Crumbling infrastructure at home while war profiteering was amped up overseas.

And I did think the Bush Crash would be the one that jolted us onto a new track-- FDR Revisited to get us up to par with other industrialized nations in terms of social safety nets in times of economic upheaval, and infrastructure upgrades that incorporated lots of green technology, so just like the space program of yore, we could sell some of the spin offs and keep up with the world markets for conservation and renewable energy technologies. That was pragmatic and practical to me.

I am all the more depressed because rebuilding our country together would have boosted national morale even as we tried to recover from the beating of the Bush Crash. We could have revived some Democratic family values like helping one another and our country for the good of our children and their children. Sharing creative ways to live more with less. Marveling at the variety of technologies put to use nationwide to use our precious fossil fuels more carefully, so they could stretch to serve future generations too.

Is it because we did not jolt at those straws that we have not jumped in a positive direction after the newer straws?

Like the BP Deep Water Horizon disaster that exposed how little our billions in subsidies had done to encourage the oil companies to improve their clean up technologies. They were using techniques that were decades old, and quite dangerous in an already polluted world. Poisonous chemicals by the thousands of gallons. And still, we the Democratic party, are allowing this reckless industry to continue its explorations so soon? Why don't we have a clean up stimulus plan for the Gulf, financed by the careless companies that caused the accident, so we can put our people to work learning a valuable trade that will be needed more and more in years to come?

Like Fukushima. The meltdowns still in progress have given other world leaders the courage to close their nuclear plants. Isn't it disheartening that all of the Democratic drifting along to the Right has put us in such a weakened position that we expect our Democratic president to be a nuke booster? That is an awful imposition. Wish we could have zoomed in with all our Democrats pushing the green projects already so that our president could be pushing much more funding for those instead.

And then there is the true face of fracking. Thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals pumped into the porous shale to force out the gas and poison groundwater all across America? That's the lovely flame on the TV commercials about our abundant natural gas? One hundred years of power, the nice guy says, but at the cost of how many years of pure drinkable groundwater? Until Gasland (the movie) came out, I didn't realize how destructive the extraction methods were. I am still stunned that legislators across the country are approving the permits.

The 2010 Republican Governors' Hit Squad has been allowed to get so very far. Thank goodness they crossed the line and got Wisconsinites and Michiganders and others out into the streets. But they are just speeding up their obviously corrupt policies of perks for their friends, union bashing, and upping the misery index for the poor. And instead of outrage on the broadcast media, we have seen peculiar discussions of the issues they raise-- as though cuts to the already suffering are necessary, even though foregoing the gifts to the governors' cronies would save just as much.

This rightward drift has really turned so ugly and crossed so many moral lines.

We could have revived our spirits with a super Democratic surge. We could be so much further along. And it would have been bipartisan too by now-- bipartisan among the 90% of us that would be working together to rebuild, rather than at the top among the privately owned legislators. Millions of Americans who'd been facing eviction but were now working on rebuilding their roads and bridges and high speed rail would be making friends. And spending their paychecks locally, keeping local economies afloat. That would have been bipartisan in action-- on the ground.

But we tried to start at the top. Winning over GOP legislators entrenched in plotting our demise. That gave the incredibly complex right wing propaganda teams a lot of time to stir up discontent in our already miserable populace. Democrats were supposed to be the people's party and millions voted for us and then we didn't have a moratorium on foreclosures, or push to the end for Medicare for All, or go into the midterms fighting for fairer taxes and letting the top Bush tax cuts expire.

Was there a grander purpose in not doing that and getting the right wing to show themselves to the nation in all their ugliness? That would be my charitable view. But the right wingers were already quite ugly before. Millions of us knew that already and thus, voted for Democrats in 2008. But then the Democrats caved and caved and hopes were dashed and the right wing PR machinery was powerful and triumphant, greatly assisted by right wing judicial activists my Democrats allowed to be appointed to our Supreme Court opening the floodgates of election campaigns to secret funding.

So here I am. Pollyanna X. Hoping for the best. Wondering how this right wing tsunami will ever end.

[Curmudgeoness]

21. Honey, you are the anti-Pollyanna.

I am ready to give up all hope now. If it weren't for the sorry slate of candidates that the GOP are rounding up, I would give up.

One of the other things that we gave the GOP besides time when we attempted to work "with" them is to give them power. They see how much power they have because we blinked first, and often.

[demosincebirth]

9. When has it changed? Humans have been saying that for ions

[patrice]

10. Institutionalized: 50 yrs ago my Dad was talking about how the co.s he worked for weren't investing

in their operations up-front for the long-haul.

He worried about how everything was going into looking good to investors quickly and not enough into operations.

[DavidDvorkin]

12. It goes back a long way

See this article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_rich_get_richer_and_the_poor_get_poorer

[cali]

13. My father was saying the same thing

30 odd years ago.

[HockeyMom]

14. 50 years ago my Pediatrician said

"The Middle Class will be eliminated." "A day will come when this country will only have the very rich and the poor." I was about 12 at the time, but I remember him saying this to my Mom. She, and now me, agree with him.

[barbtries]

16. i think i've seen it

get exponentially worse since reagan