Is civil war possible in America

[LivingTheDream]

I wish I knew the numbers. As you say, I am sure there are millions of profiteers, but what concerns me is that there are also millions of hard working people for whom the American dream of the 1950's, 60's, 70's is simply out of reach. Those are the ones with whom I am concerned. I wish hard work and perseverance were all it took in 2020 America, but I am concerned that this is not the case anymore...

The dream is still there. There is a group of millennials right now busting their ass in corporate america, buying houses/cars, and contributing to society but they are working and not complaining on social media. The dream is still there.

The lie that has been told, is for years teachers and guidance counselors have told kids do what makes you happy, dont work a summer job you need a break, go to college and study something that interests you. These are the lies that have devasted the work ethic and perseverance that require someone to be successful. The America dream is not the accumulation of stuff, or to be like your neighbor but to have the freedom to make your own choices and choose your own path. Some choose a shitty degree at an expensive college, the dream is a live in the fact that you can choose to do something else, get a different degree and start over.

And this is my biggest issue with the left today, the act like if you are born poor, or born a minority, or whatever you are destined to be a victim. This in combination with everything you do is great and needs to be rewarded, is what has caused this mess. If you are saddled with debt, it is because you are victim of corporations or banks. You took in that debt because you are special and deserve to have a new car. It never occurs to them that they have the freedom to do something different and change their life. The ability to choose your own destiny is the American dream.

 

[sgt_zim]

I would disagree. I've read those that are from a lower ecomonic and social class are just worried about day to day decisions (ie where their next meal is coming from) and not anything long term planning because of their environment. And I would agree with that.

I would also suggest that the "racist" book The Bell Curve becomes truer every day.

10 years ago, I was living on peanut butter and crackers and lots of ramen noodles. My credit was a wreck, below 600. My wife wasn't in the dire straights I was in when we met, but she wasn't a whole lot better off. We've fought and clawed for 9 years and now find ourselves in the "lucky" top 4%, and are steadily acquiring rental properties so we can walk away from the golden handcuffs our jobs represent. Neither of us are management.

success is there for ANYBODY who wants it badly enough. for those that don't want it badly enough, there is nothing to be done for them. it is an obscenity that a single milray of my tax money goes to anyone who isn't hungry enough to make their own lives better.

 

[sgt_zim]

I fully agree with the above sgt_zim, although one could probably slice hairs about "Everyone believes in the freedom to choose." This may not be as universal as we think, outside of what is defined at large as Christian culture. I suspect that Red Leg's Arab Studies may have touched on that. In any case, I do not think that this is what you implied, so we need not digress

As relates to this thread Is civil war possible in America, "Everyone believes in the freedom to choose" applies particularly well to the main point I was making: people choosing that the social contract, and particularly the balance between wealth concentration and distribution, continue to work for them; or choosing that it has become unbalanced and needs re-balancing. Luckily for us, the more basic tenet of the social contract, physical security, is generally not at play in America, although some would argue about access to health care in that regard.

I personally believe that "civil war" is extremely unlikely, I am tempted to write "unthinkable," in America currently because the overwhelming majority has way too much to loose and will not choose to risk it, but I speculate about some level of mild civil protest ("unrest" is likely too strong a word at this stage) and I suspect the emergence of different societal choices (the temptation of socialism being one, although few understand the death spiral that it represents; the temptation of exaggerated nationalism being another one) as a way (however misguided) to re-balance the social contract. A couple of (not so spontaneous) ignitions have sputtered and fizzled here or there in recent years. This is not accidental.

Although there are a lot of questionable interpretations (to say it mildly) in the article provided by Mekaniks, there are also some basic facts. For example: "Of the 39 developed countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), only South Africa and Costa Rica exceed the U.S.’s 18 percent poverty rate. The United States is an anomaly: a very wealthy country suffering from exceptional poverty." The OECD may be using metrics that apply well, or not, to America, and their percentage may be exaggerated, but even the U.S. Census Bureau's 2017 report indicates that 12.3% live in poverty based on standard poverty measures, and 13.9% according to supplemental poverty measures !?!?!?!

This is too much, and, more importantly for our way of life, this is not sustainable.

We, as the richest nation on earth can and must do better.

As people who believe generally in free market efficiency; economic freedom, opportunity and accountability; minimum intervention of government; etc. we should fix it ourselves (by sending to Congress and the White House people so minded) if only to avoid political frauds (I am referring here to both philosophies and personalities) taking advantage of it and relying on the mathematics of demography to steer our country, legally mind you, in destructive directions.

Off my soap box

What I meant was "everybody believes in the freedom to choose for themselves." Where civilized people are separated from barbarians is the degree of liberty they believe should be extended to other people. Tyrants alone believe they are qualified to make those decisions for other free moral agents.

Consider the number of people who are just convinced that nobody should own guns or hunt. Tyrants. Every god-damned one of them. C. S. Lewis called them "omnipotent moral busybodies." I have much more colorful language than the erudite "theologian for everyman."

You *should* be on solar/wind/bio-fuel.

You *should* drive a Prius.

You've made enough money.

You should pay your fair share (according to whom?).

You shouldn't eat meat.

Ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

There are two ways to deal with other men: violence or persuasion - logic and reason, or the barrel of a gun. Money is a product of the former, not the latter. Money is the tool for men of good will, who hold out the hope that there are other men like them who wish to trade each other for their best efforts. Unfortunately, we do not have money in this country, and have not had money for a very long time. We use currency, and the two are not to be confused. Currency is the tool of grifters and con men who tell us "it's the same as money." Pish posh. What a lie.

If you wish to understand the wide disparity between the haves and the have-nots (and everything implied by that) in this country, look no further than our medium of exchange. Money cannot be manipulated. Currency is easily manipulated by insiders. Many consider this a bug. It isn't a bug, it's a feature.

 

[One Day...]

Looks like we have a lot in common Bullthrower338...
I enlisted as a private in the French Army to put myself through prep school and I took the national competitive entrance exam to the St Cyr Special Military Academy, the equivalent to West Point except that in France 2,000 take the exam annually and only the best 200 get in. I was one of them, not through talent, but sheer hard work and perseverance. When France took the socialist turn in the 1980's I chose to emigrate to the US, created my own company, fed my kids with the money I made, no plan B - a strong incentive, and when I sold the company and joined corporate America and my education was not deemed good enough by corporate HR, I went back to school and earned an MBA and a PhD. It was not easy being a full time student; working 60 hours a week; and raising 5 kids with my wife. So, I respect and know well the school of hard knocks. Like you, nothing was given to me, included my U.S. citizenship that took over 10 painful and doubt-filled years to get through the legal channels.

I agree LivingTheDream, that we as a society are doing our kids no favor by failing to raise them, educate them, harden them to the realities of life, etc. and making them believe that just because they exist everything is owed to them. Door prizes are a great tragedy and do not teach the same lessons as the dry realization that second place is actually first looser... My wife hated when I said that to the kids! Good kids, supported by good parents (I mean 'morally supported', not 'financially supported') can still extirpate themselves from the politically correct morass of failing schools, useless college, surrendering parents, "offended" society, all rights and no duties culture pounded into them by academia, the press, progressive politicians, peers, entertainment, etc. but not every kid is supported...

None of the above do I challenge.

What makes me take a second look at the balance of our societal contract is when "60 of the nation’s biggest corporations didn’t pay a dime in federal income taxes in 2018 on a collective $79 billion in profits, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy said today. If these companies paid the statutory 21 percent federal tax rate, they would owe $16.4 billion in federal income taxes. Instead, they collectively received $4.3 billion in rebates. For years, corporations have manipulated the system to avoid paying taxes, and it’s clear that the 2017 tax law did nothing to change this,” said Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at ITEP and lead author of the report." (Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy - https://itep.org/60-fortune-500-companies-avoided-all-federal-income-tax-in-2018-under-new-tax-law/).

Is it getting too hard for good kids and too easy for mega corporations?

Do not get me wrong, I understand rewarding the capital and giving tax credits for investments ... except when the capital we reward is the one that is fleeing to offshore tax shelters, and the investments for which we give US tax credits are made outside the U.S.

Last year, Netflix, Amazon, Chevron, Delta Airlines, General Motors, Gannett, Goodyear Tire, Halliburton, IBM, Jetblue Airways, Principal Financial, US Steel, Whirlpool, General Electric, etc. paid $0 taxes on $79 billion in profits. Our five kids paid their student loans (I wish I had known how futile it was for me to push them to go to college - an immigrant utopia?) and they paid their taxes... As I did. And as I am sure you did. And your kids too...

The unreasonable concentration of wealth at the top is by necessity reducing the equitable distribution of earned wealth by those who created the wealth, at the bottom or in the middle. It is mathematically impoverishing the lower economic class and gradually eliminating the middle class, NOT by raising it to the top, but by driving it to the bottom.

THAT is what I think needs to be re-balanced. NOT doling out unearned wealth, but distributing equitably wealth earned through hard work. This can be done many ways: balanced individual, corporate and capital taxation; meaningful 401K, or that vanished American Dream staple: the retirement pension; employer funded health care, another vanishing pillar of the American Dream economic system; affordable trade-focused education; etc.).

 

[Brent in Az]

I concur that hard luck is not something to look down on and these are the people whom deserve a helping hand. Where I am from in NW Montana is not a hotbed of high paying jobs. I could have very well stayed right where I was and done like a large portion of my peers and took one of those jobs that were available(they were there, sometimes you had to look a little harder but there was always a job). I made a choice to leave my comfort area and chase a paycheck. I was not born awesome at my profession, nor did Daddy own the company, I jumped Scaffold boards, ran a grinder and welded my way to where I am today in senior management. My ex-wife and I took a single restaurant and through hard work turned it into several exceptional and successful ventures (that she still enjoys).
I left Montana after returning from the Army(another way out of the status quo) with enough money for fuel, and a flea bag hotel room when I got to my new job. At that time it was a few hundred bucks. All I knew was I needed to impress my boss because there were people to replace me if I didn’t cut it.
Participation awards and blowing smoke up our kids ass about how exceptional and special they are doesn’t build character, it builds the kid that thinks he is going to get an art degree and instantly deserve the CEO position at ExxonMobile! The hard truth is the world is full of people that are not particularly exceptional at much. The ones that can accept the fact that they will probably never be the leader of a Fortune 500 company need not waste the 50k on a degree that will not generate enough income to pay the debt incurred. These people need to go into a trade. Society today looks down on this. I have one kid that works for me that came straight out of the barrio, he broke out of that life by making a choice and being persistent showing up in work cloths and a lunchbox asking to be put to work repeatedly. I finally got tired of telling him no every day and put him to work as labor. He makes over 100k per year now as a welder, drives a new pickup. So yeah, you can bring yourself out of your hole, most won’t because they are not forced to.

I concur on Montana not being a hotbed of high paying jobs. When I moved up there after my divorce and life implosion, I worked for a good company during the winter. They were impressed enough with me, that they ended up offering to transfer me to the machine shop/Engineering dept, as an apprentice, because of my background with manufacturing and numbers. As a former business owner, and employer, I declined, because the money was not sufficient, and I had no desire to be the bottom of the totem pole. Montana is a little third world, in some regards.

I made considerably more working as head of maintenace on a guest ranch (Seasonal) just to get out of Arizona for awhile, and indulge my inner Trout bum for a couple summers.

Little did Blackhawk know, I was just biding my time until the Winter hell was over, and I put in my 2 week notice and went back to the Ranch in the spring.

I do love Montana though.

 

[Bullthrower338]

I would disagree. I've read those that are from a lower ecomonic and social class are just worried about day to day decisions (ie where their next meal is coming from) and not anything long term planning because of their environment. And I would agree with that.

I would also suggest that the "racist" book The Bell Curve becomes truer every day.

I am certain Sir that in your profession, you have seen far more of the dark side of poverty than I ever will in the States. I have much respect for your opinions and enjoy your posts greatly. I have seen through my travels Much to make my stomach turn when related to what poverty produces and brings people to do. I just have a hard time believing that people of ability can not get broken free of their misery here in the US.
The Bell Curve does have some substance to it for sure. It is especially true when looking at the public school system that lets students graduate and enter the real world functioning at grade school at best levels of intellect. I still do not buy into genetic IQ as they promote. Intelligence is built upon in the early development of the brain, this can be encouraged or retarded by ones environment certainly but just because you are born into a dumbed down environment, there is still hope for success in life if desired.
A great example is Dr. Ben Carson, he had all the potential in the world to become a hood rat. But instead became one of the best neurosurgeons in the world and performed ground breaking work. He had ambition, and the forethought to realize that his temper was self destructive, he didn’t say well shit, I’m black therefore I’m destined to a life of mediocrity! He picked up a bible and used the scripture to correct himself and it worked for him.

 

[Brent in Az]

Maxine Waters claims Ben Carson is not smart enough to be the head of HUD.

All I could do is laugh at that woman.

 

[Bullthrower338]

I concur on Montana not being a hotbed of high paying jobs. When I moved up there after my divorce and life implosion, I worked for a good company during the winter. They were impressed enough with me, that they ended up offering to transfer me to the machine shop/Engineering dept, as an apprentice, because of my background with manufacturing and numbers. As a former business owner, and employer, I declined, because the money was not sufficient, and I had no desire to be the bottom of the totem pole. Montana is a little third world, in some regards.

I made considerably more working as head of maintenace on a guest ranch (Seasonal) just to get out of Arizona for awhile, and indulge my inner Trout bum for a couple summers.

Little did Blackhawk know, I was just biding my time until the Winter hell was over, and I put in my 2 week notice and went back to the Ranch in the spring.

I do love Montana though.

Brent,
I would say that 3rd world is a pretty good description if your talking about wages and overall pace that life occurs. I mean for the most part we had functioning toilets and still courted women rather than barter for them! Lol. It is a great place that I hope to go back to for good one day but it is changing also, you probably wouldn’t believe what Bozo has turned into. The university has a toxic affect on wonderful places! Missoula where I grew up is almost intolerable, the mayor painted rainbow crosswalks to show inclusion. At least it was promptly used as a place for a burnout contest.
Hopefully he goes away soon.

 

[WAB]

Maxine Waters claims Ben Carson is not smart enough to be the head of HUD.

All I could do is laugh at that woman.

Hmmm, a fence post calling a brain surgeon dumb... I really don’t know what to say to that

 

[Brent in Az]

Bozeman was nicknamed "Boze-Angeles" for a reason. Another place that got ruined by Californication.

If drinking was an Olympic sport, I think Montana would win. It seems to be a pastime with many up there.

 

[Bullthrower338]

Bozeman was nicknamed "Boze-Angeles" for a reason. Another place that got ruined by Californication.

If drinking was an Olympic sport, I think Montana would win. It seems to be a pastime with many up there.

I had a bar maid ask me what we do in Montana during the winter? I told her there is only two things to do, held up my beer and told her I’m doing one now, show ya the second as soon as I’m finished! Lol

 

[sgt_zim]

Looks like we have a lot in common Bullthrower338...
I enlisted as a private in the French Army to put myself through prep school and I took the national competitive entrance exam to the St Cyr Special Military Academy, the equivalent to West Point except that in France 2,000 take the exam annually and only the best 200 get in. I was one of them, not through talent, but sheer hard work and perseverance. When France took the socialist turn in the 1980's I chose to emigrate to the US, created my own company, fed my kids with the money I made, no plan B - a strong incentive, and when I sold the company and joined corporate America and my education was not deemed good enough by corporate HR, I went back to school and earned an MBA and a PhD. It was not easy being a full time student; working 60 hours a week; and raising 5 kids with my wife. So, I respect and know well the school of hard knocks. Like you, nothing was given to me, included my U.S. citizenship that took over 10 painful and doubt-filled years to get through the legal channels.

I agree LivingTheDream, that we as a society are doing our kids no favor by failing to raise them, educate them, harden them to the realities of life, etc. and making them believe that just because they exist everything is owed to them. Door prizes are a great tragedy and do not teach the same lessons as the dry realization that second place is actually first looser... My wife hated when I said that to the kids! Good kids, supported by good parents (I mean 'morally supported', not 'financially supported') can still extirpate themselves from the politically correct morass of failing schools, useless college, surrendering parents, "offended" society, all rights and no duties culture pounded into them by academia, the press, progressive politicians, peers, entertainment, etc. but not every kid is supported...

None of the above do I challenge.

What makes me take a second look at the balance of our societal contract is when "60 of the nation’s biggest corporations didn’t pay a dime in federal income taxes in 2018 on a collective $79 billion in profits, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy said today. If these companies paid the statutory 21 percent federal tax rate, they would owe $16.4 billion in federal income taxes. Instead, they collectively received $4.3 billion in rebates. For years, corporations have manipulated the system to avoid paying taxes, and it’s clear that the 2017 tax law did nothing to change this,” said Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at ITEP and lead author of the report." (Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy - https://itep.org/60-fortune-500-companies-avoided-all-federal-income-tax-in-2018-under-new-tax-law/).

Is it getting too hard for good kids and too easy for mega corporations?

Do not get me wrong, I understand rewarding the capital and giving tax credits for investments ... except when the capital we reward is the one that is fleeing to offshore tax shelters, and the investments for which we give US tax credits are made outside the U.S.

Last year, Netflix, Amazon, Chevron, Delta Airlines, General Motors, Gannett, Goodyear Tire, Halliburton, IBM, Jetblue Airways, Principal Financial, US Steel, Whirlpool, General Electric, etc. paid $0 taxes on $79 billion in profits. Our five kids paid their student loans (I wish I had known how futile it was for me to push them to go to college - an immigrant utopia?) and they paid their taxes... As I did. And as I am sure you did. And your kids too...

The unreasonable concentration of wealth at the top is by necessity reducing the equitable distribution of earned wealth by those who created the wealth, at the bottom or in the middle. It is mathematically impoverishing the lower economic class and gradually eliminating the middle class, NOT by raising it to the top, but by driving it to the bottom.

THAT is what I think needs to be re-balanced. NOT doling out unearned wealth, but distributing equitably wealth earned through hard work. This can be done many ways: balanced individual, corporate and capital taxation; meaningful 401K, or that vanished American Dream staple: the retirement pension; employer funded health care, another vanishing pillar of the American Dream economic system; affordable trade-focused education; etc.).

No offense, mon ami, but that sounds like it could have been lifted from a Mitterand speech.

FTR, Netflix has operated in the red since they day they went into business. I have a good laugh every few months at the idiots who continue to invest in it.

Understand that no business ever pays taxes, they only remit taxes. A tax (income, property, inventory, whatever) is an expense, just like payroll, insurance premiums, utilities, and the like. Businesses act as tax agents for the entities to whom they must remit checks.

Ever read Frederic Bastiat's "The Law"? I highly recommend it and a few others. You can probably find copies in original French.

 

[One Day...]

No offense taken my friend.

My thoughts are not lifted from anywhere but my feeble mind, and having lived under Mitterrand's years-long ascension to power, then his first joint government with Communist Party cabinet members, I can assure you that what I said above does not have much in common with what he said or did. And by a long shot, I might add... Been there. Heard it. Seen it.

I get the semantics that businesses "pay" nothing but simply pass expenses to customers etc., and I understand the difference between money and currency, and yes I am quite familiar with Bastiat. I actually do have an old copy of La Loi (The law) somewhere and I do get the concept of natural rights, etc. As a matter of fact I do not think that my discussion of the social contract balance is much distant from his end goal vision of nobody plunders anybody.

My point is that when our largest corporations pay no income tax on $79 billion in profits while off shoring said profits, and receive $4.3 billion in rebates on investments they make outside of the country, transferring our technology and industrial basis out in the process, while the local welding shop or family restaurant pay taxes on their profits, then, I dare say, we have a problem. And I do not think that good old Frédéric Bastiat would disagree.

All I am saying is that I cannot help but observe how Wall Street appears quite successful at creating waves of Sanders and Warren supporters. Not the smartest strategy is you ask me, but hey what do I know, right, I only saw happen once already...

PS: Netflix? Come one, we all know they will make it up on volume

 

[lwaters]

I don't believe there will be a civil war but a constitutional convention could very well happen as divided has the government is. It become a big mess if the states call for one. I think it only takes 34.

 

[IdaRam]

I don't believe there will be a civil war but a constitutional convention could very well happen as divided has the government is. It become a big mess if the states call for one. I think it only takes 34.

The saving grace being three fourths of the states approval on proposed amendments.

 

[Mekaniks]

The saving grace being three fourths of the states approval on proposed amendments.

Here is Wa Post opinion piece FWIW....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...d5b76a-197d-11e7-855e-4824bbb5d748_story.html

 

[sgt_zim]

The problem isn't with business, the problem is too much government.

As I alluded to previously, there will always be those who seek favors. As long as there is no one with the law and power to grant those favors, it doesn't matter.

I agree there are far too many who have gotten exceptionally wealthy via pull and favors. But they are of no consequence so long as there is no weight of law behind their actions.

There are way too many people who, unknowingly, look to the revolution of 1789 rather than the one which began in 1775.

Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges. -- Tacitus

 

[IdaRam]

@One Day... after reading and re-reading the last couple pages of posts, I’m trying to better understand some of your comments. While I understand that when it comes to the subject of taxes in particular, it can become a long winded conversation quickly, it seems you take issue with Section 179 Depreciation and accelerated depreciation schedules for corporations?

Here’s one excerpt from the ITEP document.
The tax-avoiding corporations are some of the most profitable, recognizable companies in the world, and they represent a variety of industries, including technology, energy and gas, financial services, aviation, pharmaceutical and manufacturing. Earlier this year, ITEP reported Netflixand Amazon paid no federal taxes. Other companies on this list include Chevron, Delta Airlines, Eli Lilly, General Motors, Gannett, Goodyear Tire and Rubber, Halliburton, IBM, Jetblue Airways, Principal Financial, Salesforce.com, US Steel, and Whirlpool. The complete list is at https://itep.org/notadime.
These companies avoided taxes by employing a variety of legal tax breaks. Accelerated depreciation allows companies to write off the cost of their investments much faster than these investments wear out. This break accounted for hundreds of millions in tax write-offs. Chevron alone, for example, reported $290 million in accelerated depreciation, and Halliburton reported $320 million.

There is spin throughout, in my opinion. The above paragraph suggests something illegitimate about accelerated depreciation by stating that AD allows companies to write off depreciation faster than equipment wears out. That may be the case, but what is not stated are the many “mutual” benefits of accelerated depreciation. The depreciation is going to get taken on equipment anyway at some point. It compresses that tax benefit and allows companies to add jobs sooner and spend capital with the supplier of equipment, which creates income for another business entity. The down side to the corporation, also not stated, is once that depreciation is taken and income offset, there is nothing left to offset the taxable income and the corporation’s taxable income is increased, unless they expend more capital on more equipment which inevitably creates more jobs, which is also not stated.
After reading further from the link you posted I must say I question the supposed “non-bias” “non-partisan” claim made by ITEP. Let’s tell the whole story not just a portion of the narrative.

Also, from one of your above posts, you mention employer funded health care as being one of the vanishing pillars of the American Dream and a means of re-balancing the distribution of wealth. Care to expound on that? I can’t tell if that is a criticism of “Obama Care” or an indictment of business/corporations?

 

[IdaRam]

Here is Wa Post opinion piece FWIW....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...d5b76a-197d-11e7-855e-4824bbb5d748_story.html

Interesting piece, thank you for posting.

 

[One Day...]

Diving into the tax code can indeed be quite laborious IdaRam, and I will hasten to say that I am not qualified to do it comprehensively.

I am not indicting business/corporations, and I am actually not criticizing them for taking advantage of every existing legal mechanism to lower their tax liability. As long as they comply with the IRS they are entirely fine by me. They did not vote the laws, a Congress assembled from people WE elected did.

I am also not criticizing “Obama Care.” However imperfect (major understatement!), it initiated a needed effort to attempt to rein in the completely out of control costs of our medical system. Had it been a bi-partisan effort, that effort might have resulted in something truly useful. The partisan circus that presided over that saga only served to kick the can down the road. Not very productive...

The point that I am trying to make is simple. As stated above, I see a growing social unbalance when our largest corporations pay no income tax on $79 billion in profits while off shoring said profits, and receive $4.3 billion in rebates on investments they make outside of the country, transferring our technology and industrial basis out in the process, while the local welding shop or family restaurant pay taxes on their profits, and John Doe Public's income tax burden increases. Shifting the burden of funding society/government on the diminishing group alone of citizens and small businesses sandwiched between the 44% of Americans who do not pay any federal income tax, and the business/corporations/finances who also do not pay any federal income tax, and their elites who pay capital gain taxes at half the rate John Doe Public is paying, is not healthy for a society. It has proven socially unsustainable time and again, and I suspect that it is in the process of causing the rise of protectionist and nationalist aspirations here and in various Western societies that are essentially hitched to our economic and cultural engine. Historically, these are not very productive trends...

In ultra simplistic words, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and there will progressively be nobody left between the "1%" and the "99%" as the middle class slowly but surely melts into the rank of the lower economic class. How long do you think the "1%" or "3%" or "5%" and their political figures will retain control in a 'one person/one vote' democracy? And is this a desirable outcome for America?

The pie is growing, but everyone's share is shrinking, in both proportional and absolute terms, but for one group who wants it all. Not a very sound basis for long term harmony in the clan...

In any case I do not pretend to have the answers, I am just observing that for the first time in American history self avowed "socialists" are parading at the head of the democratic party primaries process. This is new. And my sense is that economic disparity is what is putting them there.

But these discussions are quite honestly not the reason why I roam about AfricaHunting.com. Nobody forced me into this thread, it was my choice alone, and it is now also my choice alone to go back to more relaxing threads on rifles, bullets, etc.