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It’s the season to show concern for the less fortunate among us. We should also be concerned about the widening gap between the most fortunate and everyone else.

Although it’s still possible to win the lottery (your chance of winning $636 million in the recent Mega Millions sweepstakes was one in 259 million), the biggest lottery of all is what family we’re born into. Our life chances are now determined to an unprecedented degree by the wealth of our parents.

That’s not always been the case. The faith that anyone could move from rags to riches – with enough guts and gumption, hard work and nose to the grindstone – was once at the core of the American Dream.

And equal opportunity was the heart of the American creed. Although imperfectly achieved, that ideal eventually propelled us to overcome legalized segregation by race, and to guarantee civil rights. It fueled efforts to improve all our schools and widen access to higher education. It pushed the nation to help the unemployed, raise the minimum wage, and provide pathways to good jobs. Much of this was financed by taxes on the most fortunate.

But for more than three decades we’ve been going backwards. It’s far more difficult today for a child from a poor family to become a middle-class or wealthy adult. Or even for a middle-class child to become wealthy.

The major reason is widening inequality. The longer the ladder, the harder the climb. America is now more unequal that it’s been for eighty or more years, with the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of all developed nations. Equal opportunity has become a pipe dream.

Rather than respond with policies to reverse the trend and get us back on the road to equal opportunity and widely-shared prosperity, we’ve spent much of the last three decades doing the opposite.

Taxes have been cut on the rich, public schools have deteriorated, higher education has become unaffordable for many, safety nets have been shredded, and the minimum wage has been allowed to drop 30 percent below where it was in 1968, adjusted for inflation.

Congress has just passed a tiny bipartisan budget agreement, and the Federal Reserve has decided to wean the economy off artificially low interest rates. Both decisions reflect Washington’s (and Wall Street’s) assumption that the economy is almost back on track.

But it’s not at all back on the track it was on more than three decades ago.

It’s certainly not on track for the record 4 million Americans now unemployed for more than six months, or for the unprecedented 20 million American children in poverty (we now have the highest rate of child poverty of all developed nations other than Romania), or for the third of all working Americans whose jobs are now part-time or temporary, or for the majority of Americans whose real wages continue to drop.

How can the economy be back on track when 95 percent of the economic gains since the recovery began in 2009 have gone to the richest 1 percent?

The underlying issue is a moral one: What do we owe one another as members of the same society?

Conservatives answer that question by saying it’s a matter of personal choice – of charitable works, philanthropy, and individual acts of kindness joined in “a thousand points of light.”

But that leaves out what we could and should seek to accomplish together as a society. It neglects the organization of our economy, and its social consequences. It minimizes the potential role of democracy in determining the rules of the game, as well as the corruption of democracy by big money. It overlooks our strivings for social justice.

In short, it ducks the meaning of a decent society.

Last month Pope Francis wondered aloud whether “trickle-down theories, which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness…”. Rush Limbaugh accused the Pope of being a Marxist for merely raising the issue.

But the question of how to bring about greater justice and inclusiveness is as American as apple pie. It has animated our efforts for more than a century – during the Progressive Era, the New Deal, the Great Society, and beyond — to make capitalism work for the betterment of all rather merely than the enrichment of a few.

The supply-side, trickle-down, market-fundamentalist views that took root in America in the early 1980s got us fundamentally off track.

To get back to the kind of shared prosperity and upward mobility we once considered normal will require another era of fundamental reform, of both our economy and our democracy. http://www.alternet.org/economy/robert-reich-what-will-it-take-us-get-
back-being-decent-society

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Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:
Liam Clancy (of the Clancy Brothers) does a version of it that will make you cry.

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The supply-side, trickle-down, market-fundamentalist views that took root in America in the early 1980s got us fundamentally off track.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

Complete rubbish. The slide started in the 60's. The 'decent society' you're looking for existed in the 50's. Or maybe the 30's. Or maybe... never ?

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When the economy crashed and people lost jobs and got desperate, business people became what they always wanted to be - greedy without restraint. People got desperate for jobs, and business owners took advantage without any consideration.

So no, I don't expect this society to go 'back' to being decent. For one thing, it never was. In the US we floated on the post WWII destruction other countries were struggling with to give us our first-place economy. And besides, this is a capitalist economy. Profit is the only goal. That won't change.

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1776 Continental Dollar: The first coin authorized by the Continental Congress after the signing of the Declaration of Independance was the 1776 Continental Currency, called the Continental Dollar. Designed by Benjamin Franklin, America’s first coin was a one of beautiful simplicity. There was a sort of monetary anarchy in the United States so the Congress decided that issuing the Continental Dollar would help unite the nation by bringing some kind of standardization to the monetary system. The first coins of the United States showed a sundial with the legend "Fugio", meaning "I fly." The sundial refers to time, so the message was that "Time flies." Under the sundial is the motto, "Mind your business." On the reverse of these cents is a chain with 13 links. The legend on the reverse says, "We are one." All of these mottos are attributed to Benjamin Franklin and collectors call these "Fugio cents" or "Franklin cents." .

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I wish to god you were on your own, with nothing but your "individual" "hard work" to survive on. You wouldn't last a month. In fact, you'd be one of the first to go

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There you go, NOT minding your own business, and instead trying to interject yourself into the business of others.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
With that sort of outlook on life, the West would have never been explored or tamed. The frontier may have never exceeded past the Mississippi valley. America would not be America were it not for far sighted, free thinking INDIVIDUALS.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
. . . Get rid of money. . . . Stop buying a lot of crap. Opt for "just enough". . . .

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This is a pretty bad example for Mind Your Own Business. Those jolly explorers and "tamers" were invaders who happily butted into the business of the people already living in those areas, acting as if they were owed the land these people lived on.

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That is no way to run a country. I've seen this kind of Henry David Thoreau advice before. Do a search at Amazon for all the books titled "How Much is Enough?" It is great for people with money volunteering to live poor; it improves their souls and clarifies their minds. But it doesn't help real poor people. They need incomes and jobs. Or put more crudely: Money. One way to make that happen was having World War II. There are now other ways, less destructive.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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There you go, NOT minding your own business, and instead trying to interject yourself into the business of others.

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Says the man who is telling everyone else they have to play by HIS rules?

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Hey, all I did was wish for you to be living YOUR OWN personal fantasy of how you think the world should work... yanno, everyone living off their own individual effort and hard work... and it seems you didn't like it much in there. So please, dear god, make it so that rappy has to live by the fruits of his own labor!

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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That is no way to run a country. I've seen this kind of Henry David Thoreau advice before. Do a search at Amazon for all the books titled "How Much is Enough?" It is great for people with money volunteering to live poor; it improves their souls and clarifies their minds. But it doesn't help real poor people. They need incomes and jobs. Or put more crudely: Money. One way to make that happen was having World War II. There are now other ways, less destructive.

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No, they don't need money.

The world is awash with money. And yet, while people need to be educated and healed, and homes need to be built, and land needs to be farmed and environments need to be remediated and population growth needs to be tamed... why is there unemployment?

What people NEED is some technology to make their lives more productive and less brutally hard. They need food. They need houses. They need education. They need a source of power. Money isn't necessary to obtain those things. You really only need work, and maybe some helpful tools.

That is the difference between exchange value (money) and use value (goods).

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I'd still be there if Obama and company didn't keep taking from me. When the govt comes and takes the fruits of everyone, and tells us " it's for the greater good ", I don't trust the govt.

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Rush Limbaugh is a blue pill addict.

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But there are millions of poor people that can't work. Work in exchange for goods in a moneyless transaction is not touching those people. They get nothing from that idealized arrangement.

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I'd still be there if Obama and company didn't keep taking from me. When the govt comes and takes the fruits of everyone, and tells us " it's for the greater good ", I don't trust the govt.- rappy

Oh, bullshit. Sop whining. Your taxes have neither gone up nor down under Obama. They're just the same as under Bush, so all you're reflecting is your own irrational (race-based) hatred of a single person.

As far as YOU'RE concerned, the government should get out of money-printing business. Get out of the business of protecting copyrights and patents. Stop negotiating international trade deals. Stop insuring banks or maintaining roads or educating the workers of tomorrow or investing in blue-sky research. Should have never "subdued" the Natives, or toppled reformist governments elsewhere. In other words, allow EVERYONE the ability of make it on their own, without government interference.

Correct?-signy

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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I'd still be there if Obama and company didn't keep taking from me. When the govt comes and takes the fruits of everyone, and tells us " it's for the greater good ", I don't trust the govt.

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Oh, bullshit. Sop whining. Your taxes have neither gone up nor down under Obama. They're just the same as under Bush, so all you're reflecting is your own irrational (race-based) hatred of a single person.

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As far as YOU'RE concerned, the government should get out of money-printing business. Get out of the business of protecting copyrights and patents. Stop negotiating international trade deals. Stop insuring banks or maintaining roads or educating the workers of tomorrow or investing in blue-sky research. Should have never "subdued" the Natives, or toppled reformist governments elsewhere. In other words, allow EVERYONE the ability of make it on their own, without government interference.

Correct?

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As far as YOU'RE concerned, the government should get out of money-printing business. Get out of the business of protecting copyrights and patents. Stop negotiating international trade deals. Stop insuring banks or maintaining roads or educating the workers of tomorrow or investing in blue-sky research. Should have never "subdued" the Natives, or toppled reformist governments elsewhere. In other words, allow EVERYONE the ability of make it on their own, without government interference. Correct?- signy

Nope. But keep telling other people what THEY believe, because that's all you frelling want to hear anyways.-rappy

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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But there are millions of poor people that can't work. Work in exchange for goods in a moneyless transaction is not touching those people. They get nothing from that idealized arrangement.

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Do you mean can't work ... as in: (A) too young, too sick, or too old?

Or do you mean (B) Can't find work for a wage that will ensure survival?

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
Well, technically you can only get addicted to...

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Seriously, I figured fans of Sci-Fi would get that reference.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
FACT: Rush Limbaugh is a blue pill addict.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
When I was growing up, bank managers and ceo's probably earned about 3 or 4 times that their basic employee did. Houses were smaller, but almost everyone could afford to buy one. Electricity and gas, publically owned in those days, were dirt cheap. Cars were expensive. Most households only had one. Medicare had just been expanded and all education, including tertiary was free. Welfare was very generous and not many checks and balances about how it was accessed.

There are lots of things about those days I do not long for.... the position of women in society, the open sexism, racism and homophobia - but I do miss that it was a much more stable place and less dog eat dog. I'm kind of horrified at what ambition has done to some of my closest friends who are really chasing big big salaries and what it has meant for their lives.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
I was talking with a temp who works in the lab. He was telling me about the jobs that have been offered him, the payscales, and the conditions attached. He has advanced degrees in both physics and chemistry and years of work experience. He was offered a job that paid $17/ hr. Another place offered to pay him by the month - no matter how many days or hours he worked. Another potential employer said he would get $25/hr but have to work Saturdays for free. He said the people who he knows - with his level of education and experience - are in the same boat.

So, I asked him if this was due to businesses being extremely wary about spending money, or if it was an attitude. And he told me it was an attitude, because those same people thought nothing about paying themselves hefty salaries and bonuses. They didn't mind spending business money on themselves - not for work but just b/c they were owners, they just couldn't see their way to paying other people a reasonable wage, for a 40 hour week.

His story corresponds with the stories of the other temps who come through. And it corresponds with what the security guard tells me, about how the owner of the company thinks nothing about having everyone's (minimum wage) paychecks 'accidentally' be a week late - every pay cycle. It corresponds with what the waitresses at the restaurant tell me - that they are expected to show up early and set up for free, and stay late and close up for free.

When the economy crashed and people lost jobs and got desperate, business people became what they always wanted to be - greedy without restraint. People got desperate for jobs, and business owners took advantage without any consideration.

So no, I don't expect this society to go 'back' to being decent. For one thing, it never was. In the US we floated on the post WWII destruction other countries were struggling with to give us our first-place economy. And besides, this is a capitalist economy. Profit is the only goal. That won't change.

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Crazy Eddie [Lampert] has been one of America’s most vocal advocates of discredited free-market economics, so obsessed with Ayn Rand he could rattle off memorized passages of her novels. ... Lampert took the myth that humans perform best when acting selfishly as gospel, pitting Sears company managers against each other in a kind of Lord of the Flies death match. This, he believed, would cause them to act rationally and boost performance. If you think that sounds batshit crazy, congratulations. You understand more than most of America’s business school graduates.

Instead of enhancing Sears’ bottom line, the heads of various divisions began to undermine each other and fight tooth and claw for the profits of their individual fiefdoms at the expense of the overall brand. By this time Crazy Eddie was completely in thrall to his own bloated ego, and fancied he could bend underlings to his will by putting them through humiliating rituals, like annual conference calls in which unit managers were forced to bow and scrape for money and resources. But the chaos only grew.

Lampert took to hiding behind a pen name and spying on and goading employees through an internal social network. He became obsessed with technology, wasting resources on developing apps as Sears’ physical stores became dilapidated and filthy. Instead of investing in workers and developing useful products, he sold off valuable real estate, shuttered stores, and engineered stock buybacks in order to manipulate stock prices and line his own pockets.

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What Will It Take for Us to Get Back to Being a Decent Society?

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Unlike you I deal with facts when I think about the real world. OTOH you have not posted a single fact yet. You keep posting fantasy.

FACT: Rush Limbaugh is a blue pill addict.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

The slide started in the 60's.

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I'd still be there if Obama and company didn't keep taking from me. When the govt comes and takes the fruits of everyone, and tells us " it's for the greater good ", I don't trust the govt.- rappy

Oh, bullshit. Sop whining. Your taxes have neither gone up nor down under Obama. They're just the same as under Bush, so all you're reflecting is your own irrational (race-based) hatred of a single person.-signy

So, you think you're Harry Reid now, and know what others pay in taxes, do you ? Funny. And Obama's vast expansion of govt and inflating of our debt has ZERO to do with race. You're the gutless race baiter here. rappy

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As far as YOU'RE concerned, the government should get out of money-printing business. Get out of the business of protecting copyrights and patents. Stop negotiating international trade deals. Stop insuring banks or maintaining roads or educating the workers of tomorrow or investing in blue-sky research. Should have never "subdued" the Natives, or toppled reformist governments elsewhere. In other words, allow EVERYONE the ability of make it on their own, without government interference.
Correct?-signy

Nope. But keep telling other people what THEY believe, because that's all you frelling want to hear anyways.-rappy

Well, since you suggested that we should be like the old west (as you saw it), where people lived and died by their own efforts and luck... not much money, no insured banks, little law, no roads. and no industry ... I thought you were making a broad-brush "get rid of government" proposal. If not, in what areas do you think a government SHOULD interfere? And why? (Gets in car to run errands and some popcorn, will be back later.) -signy

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

Well, the issue of society's fall had its own path,imo. The ever growing power of labor unions in the auto industry didn't help matters either. A sense of entitlement , getting more and more for less and less, tipped the scales and all but destroyed the industry and Detroit along with it.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Thank you Frem.

Indeed, culling the sociopaths from among us would be profoundly beneficial. The other option is that we... the 99% of us... simply build another society and then refuse to share. 'Cause those Randists? They NEED society; they couldn't dig a latrine or cook a pot of beans or write code if their LIFE depended on it- which, it does. (BTW, my immediate reaction to the end of the story, when all of those capitalists run away to found a "better" society was Good riddance!. Unfortunately, they will never do that because like all parasites, they do need their host.)

Until we rid ourselves of parasites and predators, all the rest of us are doing is licking each other's wounds and sharing our crumbs so that we can hobble forward to another day of being sucked dry.

But once that is done, we need to keep the parasites and predators from re-developing. You and I had this discussion many years ago. At the time, I think you suggested barter and smaller semi-independent communities. I said it would be impractical, as modern technological economies need wide-scale trade. Your answer to that was that that we needed to take a couple of steps back, and my answer to that was nobody would tolerate such as move. And YOUR answer to that was that we either do it voluntarily or we will be unprepared for when it happens on its own. Over the years, I think I've come to your position. Anyway, it was obviously an interesting discussion because its stuck with me all of these years.

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You know, I can actually see where you're coming from here and why you think that, but you're missing the other side of this equation: that the car manufacturers were going to move operations overseas anyway, no matter what the unions did. The organization of the unions was a desperation tactic to keep their jobs, and they failed because they weren't getting liveable offers. Inflation in America meant that the employees couldn't live on the 5 cents an hour that the businesses could pay someone overseas in a 14 hour-a-day death trap. Now we have the proud distinction of being a former manufacturing powerhouse that imports more than we export, and every bit of those imports is covered in blood. This has thoroughly screwed over the job market and the economy and which has exacerbated our now endless debt and inflation. Fun times.

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