The last 30 years has seen the middle class all but disappear. For the great majority, their mobility was not upward. Now the rich are whining because poor people are picking on them. It's their own fault for destroying the only buffer between the two.
An economy only works when money moves. Once it stops moving, it isn't really even money anymore. Now it only serves to ensure that there is absolutely no possibility that an incredibly small number of people will ever want for anything ever again. Or for political leverage to outright buy elections. This was done on purpose. After all, the 1% does pretty well in third world countries.
Nam6870vet: Buffalo bagels. In 1980, Reagan and his cronies simply did away with an economic system that had served us well, and was responsible for all the greatness we had thus far laid claim to, and replaced it with a pyramid scheme. They knew the enormity of what they had done. They knew it wasn't sustainable. They didn't care. They still don't. He who dies with the most wins, right? Now the 1% feeds us table scraps, and tells us we'd be better served by making sure they get better meals. And Tom, things like the "master race" remark are the reason people came up with the term "ugly American".
There always has to be one xenophobic nitwit who is willing to rationalize harm done to someone because he's terrified. And he's angry that everyone else won't be terrified with him. It must suck to live like that.
The problem is, most of these folks are a paycheck away from living in a cardboard box. Any interruption in income is a serious problem. That, and the fact that most pay the same crappy wages. Because they have gotten away with it thus far. That should cease. Unless you're happy with your tax dollars being used to make sure McDonald's employees don't starve to death. Subsidizing a very profitable company isn't my idea of the best use of that money.
As a nation, we have consistently failed to live up to the ideals set forth for us in the beginning. Mostly because of people who now call themselves tea partiers, though they've had many different names over the years. We have made progress in spite of them, and will continue to do so. They will fail for the same reason they have always failed. The inability to adapt to change. Unfortunately, they won't go the way of the dinosaurs. They're more like locusts. In a generation or so, a whole new generation of barely literate, heavily armed, seditious idiots will be back to subject our descendants to another round of batshit crazy.
It's all crime. They've just figured out that crime doesn't pay on a small scale. It pays on a big one. A single mother on welfare has neither the will, nor the resources to game the system on the same scale as big business and the politicians they've bought. Eventually, when the crime gets big enough, it will begin to govern.
{sigh} Kentop: calm down and try to keep up. M.R.Heywood: Both would be correct. The difference is, that one of the two thinks that a lack of character is a virtue.
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An economy only works when money moves. Once it stops moving, it isn't really even money anymore. Now it only serves to ensure that there is absolutely no possibility that an incredibly small number of people will ever want for anything ever again. Or for political leverage to outright buy elections. This was done on purpose. After all, the 1% does pretty well in third world countries.