Join the Discussion

Comments So Far: 47

• 0%

  DropkickaLib3 months, 1 week ago

  So much for the dream of a socialist utopia! Couple the current economic crisis with a top-heavy social welfare system and you have the formula for disaster.

  Reply

  18 Replies

  • 0%

    hyperbola3 months, 1 week ago

    Actually I visit Europe fairly often. The middle class there is MUCH better off than in the US. For example, in contrast to the US, standards of education are still rising in Europe, whereas the current generation of americans is less well educated than their parents. Europeans also have MUCH better medical care than the middle class in the US.

    We will probably see a lot more of these kinds of stories in the US - our corrupt elite are worried whether they can keep us dumb and docile while they continue fleecing us.

    Reply

    6 Replies

    • 0%

      hyperbola3 months, 1 week ago

      The Great Silence

      Our Gilded Age and Theirs

      ... Mark Twain would feel right at home today. Crony capitalism, the main object of his satirical wit in The Gilded Age, is thriving. Incestuous plots as outsized as the one in which the Union Pacific Railroad's chief investors conspired with a wagon-load of government officials, including Ulysses S. Grant's vice president, to loot the federal treasury once again lubricate the machinery of public policy-making. A cronyism that would have been familiar to Twain has made the wheels go round in these terminal years of the Bush administration. Even the invasion and decimation of Iraq was conceived and carried out as an exercise in grand-strategic cronyism; call it cronyism with a vengeance. All of this has been going on since Ronald Reagan brought back morning to America.

      Reply

      5 Replies

      • 0%

        hyperbola3 months, 1 week ago

        Reagan's America was gilded by design. In 1981, when the New Rich and the New Right paraded in their sumptuous threads in Washington to celebrate at the new president's inaugural ball, it was called a "bacchanalia of the haves." Diana Vreeland, style guru (as well as Nancy Reagan confidante), was stylishly blunt: "Everything is power and money and how to use them bothâ;¦ We mustn't be afraid of snobbism and luxury."

        That's when the division of wealth and income began polarizing so that, by every measure, the country has now exceeded the extremes of inequality achieved during the first Gilded Age; nor are our elites any more embarrassed by their Mammon-worship than were members of the "leisure class" excoriated a century ago by that take-no-prisoners social critic of American capitalism Thorstein Veblen....

        Reply

        4 Replies

        • 0%

          hyperbola3 months, 1 week ago

          ...So too, while industrial and financial tycoons liked to imagine themselves as stand-alone heroes, daring cowboys on the urban-industrial-financial frontier, as a matter of fact the first Gilded Age gave birth to the modern, bureaucratic corporation -- and did so at the expense of the lone entrepreneur. To this day, that big business behemoth remains the defining institution of commercial life. The reigning melodrama may still be about the free market and the audacious individual, but backstage, directing the players, stands the state and the corporation.

          Crony capitalism, inequality, extravagance, Social Darwinian self-justification, blame-the-victim callousness, free-market hypocrisy: thus it was, thus it is again! ...

          Reply

          3 Replies

          • 0%

            hyperbola3 months, 1 week ago

            .. However, the wheel turns. The capitalism of the Second Gilded Age now faces a systemic crisis and, under the pressure of impending disaster, may be headed back to the future. Old-fashioned poverty is making a comeback. Arguably, the global economy, including its American branch, is increasingly a sweatshop economy...

            .. Nonetheless, the current break-down of the financial system is portentous. It threatens a general economic implosion more serious than anyone has witnessed for many decades. Depression, if that is what it turns out to be, together with the agonies of a misbegotten and lost war no one believes in any longer, could undermine whatever is left of the threadbare credibility of our Gilded Age elite.

            Reply

            2 Replies

            • 0%

              hyperbola3 months, 1 week ago

              Legitimacy is a precious possession; once lost it's not easily retrieved. Today, the myth of the "ownership society" confronts the reality of the "foreclosure society." The great silence of the second Gilded Age may give way to the great noise of the first.

              http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174922/steve_fr...

              Reply

              1 Reply

              • 0%

                Lurch3 months, 1 week ago

                Excellent article. Should be required reading for all Americans.

                Reply
  • 0%

    doppich3 months, 1 week ago

    Yeah, right. It would be so much better for them to emulate Bushist America and accelerate the return to feudalism.

    Reply

    1 Reply

    • 0%

      hyperbola3 months, 1 week ago

      Perhaps the tipping point has already passed without our corporate media telling us.

      A Trillion Dollar Rescue for Wall Street Gamblers

      Money â;; If the move to a Unitary Executive of unfettered presidential power frightens you, America's radical right turn to Unitary Finance should compound your fears--and your debts as well. We are on the historical road to serfdom: debt peonage to a financial oligarchy concentrating wealth in its own hands.

      http://money.propeller.com/story/2008/04/15/a-t...

      Reply
  • 0%

    hyperbola3 months, 1 week ago

    Well drop, here is the current comparison for you. But then, why compare to Europe. Life expectancy is now longer in Bangladesh than in Harlem.

    Top 5 Myths About America

    MYTH 4. The US doesn't need improvement compared to other countries; it is the greatest country in the world.

    TRUTH:

    Wrong again. I'll only cite the statistics here.

    USA Ranking on Adult Literacy Scale: #9

    (#1 Sweden and #2 Norway)- OECD

    USA Ranking on Healthcare Quality Index: #37

    (#1 France and #2 Italy)- World Health Organization 2003

    USA Ranking on Student Mathematics Ability: # 24

    (#1 Hong Kong and #2 Finland)- OECD PISA 2003

    USA Ranking of Student Science Ability: #19

    (#1 Finland and #2 Japan)- OECD PISA 2003

    USA Ranking on Women's Rights Scale: #17

    (#1 Sweden and #2 Norway)- World Economic Forum Report

    Reply

    6 Replies

    • 0%

      hyperbola3 months, 1 week ago

      USA Ranking on Life Expectancy: #29

      (#1 Japan and #2 Hong Kong)- UN Human Development Report 2005

      USA Ranking on Journalistic Press Freedom Index: #32

      (#1 Finland, Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands tied)- Reporters Without Borders 2005

      USA Ranking on Political Corruption Index: #17

      (#1 Iceland and #2 Finland)- Transparency International 2005

      USA Ranking on Quality of Life Survey: #13

      (#1 Ireland and #2 Switzerland)- The Economist Magazine ...Wikipedia "Celtic Tiger" if you still have your doubts.

      USA Ranking on Environmental Sustainability Index: #45

      (#1 Finland and #2 Norway)- Yale University ESI 2005

      USA Ranking on Infant Mortality Rate: #32

      (#1 Sweden and #2 Finland)- Save the Children Report 2006

      So much for those "socialist" Europeans and those "backward" Asians, hm?

      http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/163437...

      Reply

      5 Replies

      • 0%

        crghss3 months, 1 week ago

        Why don't I see any Muslim countries on the list?

        Reply

        3 Replies

        • 0%

          dissent3 months, 1 week ago

          and to think that only a few centuries ago when we were still slugging it out in mud huts they were the smartest people in the world. looks like sluggers win, might is right, hey crghss? btw..... weren't those crusades quite the eye opener? amazing what clever things you can pick up during a massacre

          Reply

          1 Reply

          • 0%

            DropkickaLib3 months ago

            You mean the counter Crusade against the Islamic invasion of the Byzantine Empire. Who was staging the massacres?

            Reply
        • 0%

          Lurch3 months, 1 week ago

          Comparing our nation to those worse off than us is a great way to ensure thats where we end up.

          BTW, you completely ignored the fact that each of the countries that ranked #1 or #2 in the lists is by wing-nut definition a socialist country.

          Care to comment?

          Reply
      • 0%

        DropkickaLib3 months ago

        That doesn't consider the effects of unscreened illegals entering the U.S.

        Reply
  • 0%

    Lurch3 months, 1 week ago

    dkl,

    > So much for the dream of a socialist utopia! Couple the current economic crisis with a top-heavy social welfare system and you have the formula for disaster.

    Wow.

    We in the US have been there for years. They are only starting to catch up to our situation, and you try to blame socialism. He!!, they have what we have plus universal healthcare, 2.5 times as much vacation (which they actually get to use and enjoy), free university education, and decent retirement. When all costs figured in, we pay way more and get way less.

    The only top heavy economy there is in the world is the US won. The US middle class has been carrying the dead weight at the top of our socio-economic pyramid since the 1980`s went common sense went out of style.

    Reply

    1 Reply

    • 0%

      DropkickaLib3 months ago

      European countries have an aging population with a massive social welfare system. Wait ten years and let's see if you'll make the same post extolling the virtues of the socialism.

      Reply
• 0%

  walden33 months, 1 week ago

  Great story for May Day. May the workers of the world unite.

  "...are the millions across the continent grappling with the realization that they may have lives worse, not better, than their parents."

  It's the same in the US. No longer can one person put bread and bacon on the table or buy a home. Both parents need to work and even then most are barely scraping buy. Wages are stagnant prices are not.

  "The hourly earnings of some men -- and not a trivially small group -- have done poorly over the last few decades. As shown above in the graph, the typical married man in his prime earning years, age 25 to 54, saw his real median wage fall a couple of percent from 1979 to 2006."

  http://www.alternet.org/workplace/83349/

  Reply

  18 Replies

  • 0%

    saintetienne3 months, 1 week ago

    "May the workers of the world unite."

    ....and open up their OWN businesses, so that they can be "The Man" for once. Maybe they'll realize that it ain't no picnic running a business, employing people and paying their wages and benefits, paying beaucoup taxes to the government, dealing with governmental regulations, restrictions and tariffs, not to mention fierce competition, having to constantly upgrade your capital to stay productive and competetive.... are you getting my point, waldrip? Why do you always feel there's some "conspiracy" against the "little man" by the "evil, greedy, business bastards"?

    Maybe these "united workers" should just be grateful, for once, that they have jobs, and GET BACK TO WORK. There's plenty of people on the breadlines who would be glad to have their jobs.

    May Day.... Immigrant Workers Day.... WHAT A JOKE. SHUT UP AND GET BACK TO WORK!!

    Reply

    17 Replies

    • 0%

      SusieQ723 months, 1 week ago

      You really are a sad person. If you have a spouse I feel bad for him/her having to live with such an angry person with such a bad attitude. Every post you make is yelling at someone or calling them names, it's really quite pathetic.

      Reply

      11 Replies

      • 0%

        simonsez3 months, 1 week ago

        He speaks the truth, Susie. You have no idea what a small business owner goes through with the various government entities each has to deal with, plus many of the employees who perform poorly because they don't care.

        Been there, done that. It's no fun!

        Reply

        10 Replies

        • 0%

          hyperbola3 months, 1 week ago

          The main reason for that is that the corrupt financial elite and giant corporations that run America have no interest in Americans being able to be economically independent of their machinations.

          Reply

          3 Replies

          • 0%

            crghss3 months, 1 week ago

            What kind of gibberish is this. You should stick to jew hating. At least you can then cut and paste your material. When you write your own material your stupidity is glaring.

            Got news for you spanky 80% of jobs are supplied by small business.

            Reply

            2 Replies

            • 0%

              Lurch3 months, 1 week ago

              > Got news for you spanky 80% of jobs are supplied by small business.

              And those small businesses also pay (in many ways and on many levels) for the crony corruption and upward redistribution of wealth forced upon us by the Republican Party, the party you defend.

              Reply
            • 0%

              hyperbola3 months, 1 week ago

              I suggest you look into the role of Monsanto in using fascistic goon squads on american farmers. Here is a starting point where you can find other links if you are really interested in more than just slogans fed you by corrupt politicans and corporate media.

              Farm Broadcaster Ousted After Ripping Monsanto's Goon Squads

              Do No Evil â;; Monsanto relies on a shadowy army of private investigators and agents in the American heartland to strike fear into farm country," Barlett and Steele write. "They fan out into fields and farm towns, where they secretly videotape and photograph farmers,

              http://donoevil.propeller.com/story/2008/05/01/...

              Reply
        • 0%

          saintetienne3 months, 1 week ago

          Thank you, simon. It's nice to know there's SOMEone on this wacky website who has vision beyond their nose.

          I'm there now and believe it or not, it's fun. Despite all of the obstacles put down by government, my business is thriving, thanks to grateful, hard-working employees who appreciate the position they're in and strive to do better, instead of whining and complaining about what they DON'T have.

          It's why the U.S. is losing its competetive edge - and it's jobs: Workers who expect more handouts, more pay, more government involvement and more union involvement, so they can do less work and be less productive. Is it any wonder businesses go overseas to hire cheaper, more productive people, who have good attitudes? Wake up, people. It's not business that is screwing you. It's YOU.

          Reply

          5 Replies

          • 0%

            SusieQ723 months, 1 week ago

            I didn't say anything about whether I agreed with your comments or not. My statement was about how you present your opionions which is always rude.

            Reply
          • 0%

            Lurch3 months, 1 week ago

            Likewise st,

            No, you need to wake up saintetienne. American workers are the most productive workers in the world overall because we work longer hours and have less vacations than just about any industrialized nation perhaps with few exceptions like the slave laborers in China. Yet our wages have gone down in real terms.

            You admit it yourself that your employees are hard-working people. Then you blame them/us.

            Gimme a break. You need to start seeing who owns our govt, and guess what, it aint us anymore. Who do you think buys the politicians who pass the regulations? Who do you think buys the lobbyists who actually write the legislation? Clue: it aint the US worker.

            You make it sound like the US worker is the enemy. Big clue for ya, it aint. You get what you pay for. If you give a guy crappe wages and no benefits like health or retirement what the blank do you expect?

            Reply

            3 Replies

            • 0%

              Lurch3 months, 1 week ago

              On an hourly basis, those lazy-arse socialist French are the most productive workers in the world. Guess why. They get paid in wages, corporate benefits, and social benefits a greater portion of the marginal gains from their productivity.

              The BS about American workers being lazy is nothing more than an attempt to blame the victims. You cannot change human nature; you give crappe wages/benefits, you get crappe output.

              The reason for shifting production overseas is due mostly to the fact that the power elite in third world foreign countries do not pay the negative externalities of slave-like wages and environmental dumping of industrial pollutants. In fact, they sell their fellow countrymen`s labor as if it were a national resource like timber. Costs are artificially low and there is no apples-to-apples comparison.

              Reply

              2 Replies

              • 0%

                Lurch3 months, 1 week ago

                This is one of the reasons Obama and others like him are pushing for Fair Trade.

                Fair Trade means to level the playing field by making sure businesses that compete in America and against American businesses have to meet the same worker, safety, and environmental standards our companies have to meet. This means a level playing field, which means more jobs at home, which means more money staying in our economy without devaluing the dollar and creating inflationary pressures, which means greater prosperity for America.

                Reply

                1 Reply

                • 0%

                  hyperbola3 months, 1 week ago

                  Yep, except that the most productive industrial workers in the world are the Germans. Per hour worked, their output is 2.5 times that of US workers. The reason is that instead of shipping off jobs to "slave wage" third-world workers, the German government, industry and unions have combined to invest in industrial efficiency. I am often impressed by how antiquated many american industries look in comparison.

                  Reply
    • 0%

      walden33 months, 1 week ago

      Think about how the decline in unions has occurred at the same time as a decline in the American standard of living.

      It may be a coincidence, but I think not.

      Reply

      4 Replies

      • 0%

        crghss3 months, 1 week ago

        Decline in the American standard of living? Are you serious?

        Reply

        3 Replies

        • 0%

          walden33 months, 1 week ago

          Any increase has been due to both spouses having to work. Wages have been stagnant for 30 years.

          Reply
        • 0%

          hyperbola3 months, 1 week ago

          Real wages in America reached their maximum during the Carter administration. Reagan reveresed that and wages have been declining ever since. New workers in the american automobile industry earn LESS in real wages than their grandfathers.

          Reply

          1 Reply

          • 0%

            Lurch3 months, 1 week ago

            Why do Republicans hate America and/or Americans?

            I just don't get it.

            Reply
• 0%

  Wolfie20073 months, 1 week ago

  Socialism fails every where it's tried. Capitalism wins every

  where it's tried.

  Reply

  2 Replies

  • 0%

    hyperbola3 months, 1 week ago

    Actually the kind of corrupt crony capitalism that we have now has failed everytime.

    The Republican Erosion of America

    Politics â;; Prior to the rise of the radical right 30 years ago, America was the most innovative, prosperous, vital nation on Earth. And it wasn't just an obscenely rich fraction of 1% skewing the numbers, either...like it is today. Republicans are rogues and rapscallions who took a hearty, robust economy envied by the entire world and ran it into the ground.

    http://politics.propeller.com/story/2008/04/29/...

    Reply
  • 0%

    Lurch3 months, 1 week ago

    Capitalism is the greatest engine of industrial power ever created.

    Unchecked capitalism is the greatest engine of inequality and indentured slave labor ever created.

    BTW, you need to check Hyperbola`s list of top nations above. Every country in the top spots is socialist by the typical Right-wing definition.

    Broad generalizations often don`t fair well, this is one of those cases.

    Reply
• 0%

  crespi3 months, 1 week ago

  Don't worry.

  The ultra-wealthy will get richer, even if everybody else starves.

  Reply

  1 Reply

  • 0%

    Lurch3 months, 1 week ago

    Thank Gawd, I was so worried!

    Maybe we the middle class should pay more of their taxes for them, just in case. What do you think?

    Reply
• 0%

  Lurch3 months, 1 week ago

  Here`s an interesting article on how the FED is bailing out their member banks to the tune of hundreds of billions in added costs to our economy and to the consumers by devaluing the dollar while giving themselves free money.

  http://money.propeller.com/story/2008/05/01/the...

  Tell me again how it is all the fault of the American worker...

  Reply
• 0%

  Lurch3 months, 1 week ago

  The FED is the most bloated and inefficient bureaucracies ever created. The proof is in the FED itself. Look at the map.

  http://www.federalreserve.gov/otherfrb.htm

  Ask yourself this simple question:

  If region #12, which compromises about 1/3 of all American land, only requires one bank, why does the other 2/3 require 11 banks?

  Long before anybody gets rid of the IRS or any other federal agency, we need to get rid of the FED, the most bloated, inefficient, and counter-productive pseudo govt agency ever invented.

  Reply

  2 Replies

  • 0%

    hyperbola3 months, 1 week ago

    The Fed is a private agency. It is also a "carrier mechanism" for doing away with yet more aspects of american democracy.

    A Trillion Dollar Rescue for Wall Street Gamblers

    Money â;; If the move to a Unitary Executive of unfettered presidential power frightens you, America's radical right turn to Unitary Finance should compound your fears--and your debts as well. We are on the historical road to serfdom: debt peonage to a financial oligarchy concentrating wealth in its own hands.

    http://money.propeller.com/story/2008/04/15/a-t...

    Reply

    1 Reply

    • 0%

      Lurch3 months, 1 week ago

      The Fed is private in so far as it was created by bankers for bankers profits.

      However, the revenue stream is anything but private. The FED makes its revenues through a US$ printing monopoly right.

      There is no reason for a for-profit privately held concern to control our economy and dollar value. We don`t even get licensing fees from the Fed for the use of our country`s name! Instead we have to pay for them to profit off of our country and our work.

      Every dollar they print out of thin air means you and I have to work that much harder to maintain the same quality of life because the print-like-theres-no-tomorrow policies of the Fed are driving up inflation while driving down the value of the dollar in intl exchanges.

      You and I pay rent to them on our own labor.

      Reply