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Hard to fathom that we are where we are now. These current events are as shocking to me as was the fall of the Soviet Union in the early nineties. It's just insane.
The situation we are in is similar to the old story of a group of blind men trying to describe an elephant. There are many piecemeal solutions to a problem that no one fully understands. None of those will actually be sufficient or long-lasting. At best they are band-aids. We have arrived at a place where capitalism, as it has evolved in the US, is no longer serving the purpose of the majority of people. We are sliding into an ever-worsening position. The GDP topped out sometime in the middle of the Reagan administration before the supply-side/trickle-down theories took hold. Since that time the average American's existence, prosperity, and QOL have stagnated or diminished while a tiny percentage has amassed incredible wealth by screwing the life out of everyone else. There is no longer any pretense of working for the common good or working for the benefit of the American worker or agricultural production. Instead, we shipped jobs overseas to benefit the greedy who can make a buck off of low paid sweatshop workers or cheap factory workers. We consolidated farming activity and agricultural resources into the hands of huge corporations.
These conditions create social stress and pit one side against the other and suspicion and false victimhood take hold. They foster civil unrest in the cities. They unleash racist and classist animosities. Anyone who tries to get ahead is put in their place. Public institutions fall short of expectations. Most of the problems we have seen in recent years are symptoms and can be tied back to the conditions of economic predation that now guides the economy and the resulting social structure.
Corporate profits are the highest they have ever been since 1947, after the war. They stood at 13.6% of national income in 2012 before taxes and 11.4% after taxes -- still much higher than the 6-7% that was typical in the 1960s and 1970s. There is a great effort being made to deflect and distract public attention while greed takes a greater share of the "national" pie. Some younger generations have never known any other condition but the older generations should be able to reflect on where we are and how we got here. Do you recall when we sent astronauts into space, rebuilt infrastructure, fought a war in Vietnam, and waged a war on poverty all at the same time? It is now the "corporate pie" with Americans getting a smaller and smaller piece every year and CEOs calling the shots. The graph below shows corporate profits by quarter since the mid-1970s. This is a picture of corporate greed at the expense of American citizens. The only way anyone will ever see America made well again will be when the corporations are brought under control.
Everything is so simple for people like you, who see life in such black and white terms. The rest of us, with thinking minds, deal with life with all its shades of gray and an occasional splash of color.
Nuance is not allowed anymore. Don't believe me? Go public and disagree with any part of the BLM manifesto.
Nah, 90 years is old enough to get you to thinking about the good 'ole days. How things used to be better than they are now.
When Sowell was starting out as a professor there was probably some white 90 year old conservative who thought the world was coming to an end because they were letting blacks teach whites in college. Somebody who's daddy fought for General Lee at Fredricksburg or some such.
Isn't the excuse by Second Amendment gun owners that they need all those guns and heaps of ammunition to defend America from a government that is infringing our rights? Second Amendment supporters absolutely detest anything that infringes a right. So where are they exactly?
Perfectly fine with police murdering civilians. It's not them, so what do they care? Hypocrites.
Hypocrites??
The mob forced their way onto the property of that couple in Missouri forcing them to stand in front of everything they have worked for with guns in their hands to protect it and the Police came along later to confiscate their guns...
Good honest gun owners don't need or want that type of hassle. Not a single one of them condone Police murdering civilians and they realize that this is a rare occurrence that is being hyped by the media to push a political narrative. Something else they don't condone is when the Police are told to stand down by the elected and the streets are torn up by the tantrum throwing children.
With the way things are going some are saying there is another Civil War brewing and sadly it will be the Democrats against America and Black V White.
This has nothing to do with Trump and everything to do with the Democrats and what they want to transform America into.
Isn't the excuse by Second Amendment gun owners that they need all those guns and heaps of ammunition to defend America from a government that is infringing our rights? Second Amendment supporters absolutely detest anything that infringes a right. So where are they exactly?
Perfectly fine with police murdering civilians. It's not them, so what do they care? Hypocrites.
who is 'perfectly fine' with that? state their names, so we can see if you're lying
Nah, 90 years is old enough to get you to thinking about the good 'ole days. How things used to be better than they are now.
When Sowell was starting out as a professor there was probably some white 90 year old conservative who thought the world was coming to an end because they were letting blacks teach whites in college. Somebody who's daddy fought for General Lee at Fredricksburg or some such.
I guess you haven't followed him over the years. He has been consistent in his beliefs for a very long time!
Everything is so simple for people like you, who see life in such black and white terms. The rest of us, with thinking minds, deal with life with all its shades of gray and an occasional splash of color.
I guess that makes you part of the intellectual elite!
last year 57 unarmed people were killed by the police. 10 were black. less than half of those were deemed to be unlawful killings. you can argue that this is the police protecting their own. so lets just go with 57.
more than 100 police officers were shot and killed last year.
more than 7000 black people were killed in violent acts, the vast majority were killed by black people.
19% of police officers deal with PTSD as a result of the things they have seen and had to do on our behalf as a function of the job they do for us.
1 police officer openly killed 1 man named George Floyd. That 1 police officer is in jail and has been charged with murder.
since that day there have been more black children under the age of 10 killed by black men than unarmed blacks in the last 2 years killed by police.......FEAKING OPENLY!
NO RIOTS ON BEHALF OF DEAD BABIES.
NO RIOTS ON BEHALF OF DEAD POLICE OFFICERS
No "peaceful protests."
No BLM movement people taking up the cause of protecting the innocent.
For the rest of you (not the poster i quoted because they don't care)
This isn't about black lives. this is about destabilizing the nation. it is about putting a socialist state in place.
GotHere, you are mad about all the wrong things. I think that's on purpose.
“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
― Thomas Sowell
“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.”
― Thomas Sowell
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Somebody who's daddy fought for General Lee at Fredricksburg or some such.
