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It's cool. Keep singing and dancing, living carefree. It works for Greece (er, it did until a year ago)
We will, singing and dancing is important here and does not mean that people don't work, which you seem to imply. Greece is a completely different country, culture, and mentality.
A lot of it is built on sand...people borrowing against their own futures to fund their current lifestyles. Just wait until the heavily-mortgaged boomers start to retire en masse.
And Texas is already turning into a third world country. We are becoming totally overrun by illegals with their third world mentalities who refuse to assimilate. The border states are Ground Zero for the death of the middle class.
Well, I live in Texas, in Fort Worth, and have done so for 55 years.
Lots of illegal Mexicans? Sure, always have been.
But to say that we are turning into a Third World country is wishful thinking on your part.
The Gini coefficients (measure of economic inequality) of the US and Brazil have been converging for some time, as the economic policies initiated by Cardoso, perpetuated by Lula de Silva, and which both candidates running to succeed him vow to perpetuate have reduced economic inequality and poverty in Brazil, while the US has followed economic policies that have increased economic inequality and poverty.
Brazil's Gini right now is 0.51 (down from 0.61 during Cardoso's administration), the US' Gini right now is 0.48 (up from 0.39 during the administration of Cardoso's US contemporary, Bill Clinton) - Brazil and the US do seem to be converging towards the same level of inequality. As America has lost its middle class majority (in the early 2000s after 30 years of decline with the decline merely temporarily stopped under Clinton rather than reversed) and the middle class sector of the population is now about the same percentage it was under Harding, Brazil now has a middle class majority for the first time in its history according to The Economist (albeit the barest of majorities).
This makes me not only wonder when Brazil will join the club of "high income nations" (what used to be called the First World) but also when it will economically surpass the US.
BTW, the terms "First World", "Second World" and "Third World" were related to political alliances during the Cold War and are outdated, the current terms are "high income country" (generally, countries which were considered "First World" with a handful of former "Second World" and even ex-"Third World" nations), "middle income country" (countries that were considered part of the "Second World" with some which were part of the "Third World" and a couple of the poorer "First World" nations), "developing country" (formerly "Third World" nations) and "low income country" (very low "Third World", sometimes referred to as "Fourth World" - i.e. Sub Saharan Africa, most Central American countries, Haiti, Afghanistan, etc.). The US is bound for "middle income country" status barring some unexpected changes. Gore Vidal stated that he saw the future of the US as being "in between Brazil and Argentina", referring to the current status of those countries.
Admittedly old naming habits are hard to break.
We seriously need to be moving towards European-style social-economic system NOW, or our future REALLY, REALLY ugly...
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I skimmed through the Brazil-US article as well, thanks for bringing it up. Very much agree that the U.S. will become a "middle-income" country more like South America than the wealthy industrialized countries of western Europe and Northeast Asia...
The removal of the middle class is the goal of the elites.
Why? Because when the middle class is the majority, they run things. They don't need government to meet their needs. Therefore they can be independent and vote and run the country as they see fit.
When the majority is poor and need the government to meet its needs - then the government elites call the shots. The majority is no longer middle class and independent. It is now poor and dependent. The reason why other countries don't take off economically is that the governments & elites don't want to lose control - so the status of the people will never get to majority middle class as it has done here - and therefore be independent. So governments will change the rules to ensure the majority of the people do not attain financial independence.
Wide layers of the population, who have seen trillions of dollars funneled from the public treasury into the coffers of Wall Street executives while their own living standards have been assaulted, their jobs slashed, their children’s schools closed, and vital social programs such as Medicare cut by billions of dollars, have no faith in the US government to secure their most basic social needs.
The corporate-controlled news media, along with the major institutions overseeing the nation’s educational needs and basic food and medical resources, are considered corrupt and untrustworthy, contributing to the suffering of millions.
President Barack Obama, continuing to pose as a populist man of the people when he finds it necessary or beneficial, stands exposed as the chief representative of the interests of the American ruling elite and the standard bearer in the assault on the working class.
The restructuring of society taking place, in the direct interests of the corporate-financial elite and at the expense of the working population, is not occurring unnoticed. The American and international working class will inevitably find itself drawn into struggle against the present, untenable form of social organization.
The biggest scam of the century is making a full conclusion with this deep recession. What made America the envy of the entire world, a strong and vibrant middle class, is being quickly dismantled so the new order of corporate raiders can siphon off life support from the productive economy. Nothing highlights this grand robbery more so than the current situation of our country.
This article is suggested reading. It mentions how well the wealthy are doing while the middle class shrinks. Less credit is available. More foreclosures and bankruptcies are occurring. Unemployment is up. Bailouts are funded from the middle class to companies "too big to fail". Meanwhile, the middle AND lower class - it is OK if we fail.
The American middle class is on the verge of disappearing,
This is exactly what the ruling elite desire.
A middle class is harder to control than the poor.
And anyone who is very wealthy who isn't in the Network will eventually be invited in or "they" will try their best to obtain the wealth..... for example sending a Black Widow alter (Beta mind controlled slaves) for espionage and blackmail.
The removal of the middle class is the goal of the elites.
Why? Because when the middle class is the majority, they run things. They don't need government to meet their needs. Therefore they can be independent and vote and run the country as they see fit.
When the majority is poor and need the government to meet its needs - then the government elites call the shots. The majority is no longer middle class and independent. It is now poor and dependent. The reason why other countries don't take off economically is that the governments & elites don't want to lose control - so the status of the people will never get to majority middle class as it has done here - and therefore be independent. So governments will change the rules to ensure the majority of the people do not attain financial independence.
We need to realize this before it's too late.
The elites you mention -- the top 1% incomes in this country? That's been happening since about 1980. You're wrong about other countries failing to take off, too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by delusianne
"Geoghegan's latest book, Were You Born On The Wrong Continent?, makes this point largely by looking at Germany. German firms, Geoghegan writes,
don't have the illusion that they can bust the unions, in the U.S. manner, as the prime way of competing with China and other countries. It's no accident that the social democracies, Sweden, France, and Germany, which kept on paying high wages, now have more industry than the U.S. or the UK. … [T]hat's what the U.S. and the UK did: they smashed the unions, in the belief that they had to compete on cost. The result? They quickly ended up wrecking their industrial base.
"Geoghegan's book went to press too soon to report that Germany is now experiencing a recovery that's leaving the United States in the dust. New York Times columnist David Brooks takes away the lesson that the Germans succeeded by spending less government money than the United States to stimulate its economy (a conclusion that Krugman, his fellow Times columnist, had already labeled "foolish"). Brooks mentions only in passing (and somewhat elliptically) that government policy in Germany is much more supportive of labor; for example, during the recession it paid businesses to keep workers employed (something the United States was willing to do only for state government workers). The idea that pro-labor policies can produce an economy that's both more egalitarian and more robust—as occurred under the Treaty of Detroit—has, regrettably, become unfashionable."
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