There are some truths so hard to face, so ugly and so at odds with how we imagine the world should be, that nobody can accept them. Here’s one: It is obvious that a class system has arrived in America — a recent study of the thirty-four countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that only Italy and Great Britain have less social mobility. But nobody wants to admit: If your daddy was rich, you’re gonna stay rich, and if your daddy was poor, you’re gonna stay poor. Every instinct in the American gut, every institution, every national symbol, runs on the idea that anybody can make it; the only limits are your own limits. Which is an amazing idea, a gift to the world — just no longer true. Culturally, and in their daily lives, Americans continue to glide through a ghostly land of opportunity they can’t bear to tell themselves isn’t real. It’s the most dangerous lie the country tells itself.
[…]
In the United States, the emerging aristocracy remains staunchly convinced that it is not an aristocracy, that it’s the result of hard work and talent. The permanent working poor refuse to accept that their poverty is permanent. The class system is clandestine.
Given the state of the economy, the unwillingness of our politicians to do anything about pretty much anything, the realization by business at all levels that they just don’t need as many people as before, manufacturing jobs moving to other countries that are never coming back, computerized equipment requires less people for the remaining manufacturing jobs, etc., is there any real hope for reversing what the article talks about?
The caste system has arrived from India. People are now categorized, classified, analyzed, surveilled and relegated – just accept it lemmings. Stay buried in debt, it’s the American way!
http://tinyurl.com/cwezv6n
“It is obvious that a class system has arrived in America” How delusional does some one have to be to not recognize that its always been here.
Au contraire; after WWII there was a vibrant middle class that filled factories, produced the goods America consumer, and provided a solid base to consume what was made. A good education (often covered by the GI Bill) was a solid foundation to move up and be better off than your parents had been. America was a Land of Opportunity. Today’s 1% ers with 30% of the wealth have made it a Land of Closed Doors and favoritism.
After WW2, the PC system became thoroughly entrenched in American culture. We trusted in God, we acquired a Department of Defense that never again dealt with an invading army…and those of us who worked for a living adding value started to be called the Middle Class regardless of contradictory existing rconomic definitions.
Great sums were spent as part of the Cold War to assure us there was nothing more sacrosanct than the 2-party system even though they pimped for 2 wings of anyone but working people. Most working folks opted for the Dems as the only choice to the barons of inheritance in the Republican Party.
Both united to ensconce laws local and state to prevent independent and 3rd party candidacies. Practical political movements of working people expressed through their sole remaining form – trade unions – were dealt with starting with the Taft-Hartley Act. And good old Joe McCarthy.
I lived through it. Which is why it’s easy to recall. How many of you have taken time to read about it? Or even cared to until we arrived at the worst economic times our moneyed power brokers dropped on this nation since the Great Depression?
The same pimps for the same crooks offer the same solutions that brought us here. Conservatives, libertarians, “clever and classless and free” of any responsibility – tell the same lies. And most of you will choose to play by their rules.
I lived through it. Which is why it’s easy to recall. How many of you have taken time to read about it? Or even cared to until we arrived at the worst economic times our moneyed power brokers dropped on this nation since the Great Depression?
Umm why didn’t you stop it since you were well aware it was happening at the time you lived through it?
Probably because you either didn’t see it happening as you claim or you were pretty content in your middle class position.
Which does nothing to contradict the fact that there has always been a class system in this country since its foundation.
Well, isn’t this what the American Revolution was all about? The realization by a large minority of the population that all Americans were hopelessly relegated to being second class citizens within the British Empire? And that the only way to escape that was to remove ourselves from the “protection” of the Empire? That was a bitter pill for most people to swallow, but one we did, boy, what a difference it made. Problem was, the people who led us out of that stinkhole were people of great vision, integrity and intelligence. I don’t see anyone like that in Washington, or if they are there, they’re hiding very well. And we, the voting populace who are supposed to keep the aristocracy out of government as much as possible, are allowing this collapse of democracy. We keep voting as though we’re looking for the next benevolent king.
Here’s a suggestion for starting to change all of this. Vote for the ugliest person in the race. Think; would a guy who looked like Abe Lincoln get on a ballot today? No this isn’t the cause of our detour away from true American democracy, but it’s a symptom.
The aristocracy was created out of the Industrial Revolution.
When corporations came to be understood as “persons” under the rule of law, the Constitution became diluted for the natural persons that the document was ratified to protect.
In less than a hundred years, the Constitution was subverted by the aristocracy.
Before the corporations there were land owners. How many of the founding fathers were poor, black, native american, or women?
With the advent of SCOTUS latest adventure into government by the rich, for the rich, but not of the rich in the Citizens United case, it is unlikely that there is any leverage with which to alter the current domination of all phases of our government by the rich and powerful. As much as I know that violence will create a multi-generational chaos in our society, I fear that it is the only means by which this state of affairs will change. I am glad that I will probably not live long enough to see it happen.
Good topic. While always there, the ‘social mobility’ borders are much less porous than they were in the past.
It is very bad now, caused in large part by a decade of careless Republican rule and now a continued downward spiral as Teapublicans have infested Congress to lock down those borders.
The Occupy Wallstreet uprising is the only evidence of citizens waking up to this fact.
Naturally, the Teapublican sheeple are trying to stifle this to protect their corporate masters and of course, pretending to appear as “successful” to fellow sheep. In reality, they’re four paychecks away from backruptcy instead of two.
There have always been the rich and the poor. The US has always been a meritocracy in the past. Cain and Obama both started off poor and ended up rich as did many others including the founder of Wal-Mart/Sam’s.
On the other hand recent changes in the laws during the last few decades have caused several such men to say that without a legal staff to deal with all the regulations flowing from Washington and the state governments they could have no longer function and that it was a major anti-competitive advantage to them.
It is also clear that Congress has written laws to benefit its members and has happily accepted bribes from those with the money to afford them which is a lot less than 1% the occupiers blabber about. It is more like one in a million. Small businesses and organizations pretty much get trampled into the mire on a regular bases.
It is also true that for many manufacturing companies the only logical location to locate is outside the regulatory reach of the their local state and the federal government which is one reason that major success stories like Apple now do nearly all their manufacturing beyond the reach of such people.
The majority of people running government today take the same tack I’ve seen coming from Dallas, McCullah, and Uncle Dave. They regard successful business people as the scum of the earth automatically guilty of benefiting at the expense of others and that laws should be passed limiting how much these bleeps should make. They are succeeding and with it removing any opportunity for a poor person to make it big based on merit: ability plus hard work.
If any of our progressives actually have any hard evidence suggesting I’m in error about the their views or the result of same they are of course free to share them but their views have often been shared in the past and they have made it clear they support a EU style nanny state and those freeze the rich as the ruling elite and the poor can never get off government handouts while the entire economy turns into a total shambles.
I suppose some of you can claim Germany is an exception but when we pull our bases out of Germany, which is going to happen in decade or less when our ability to borrow goes sour, the German economy is going to fall by about 80,000,000,000 a year so don’t get carried away by that either.
“The majority of people running government today take the same tack I’ve seen coming from Dallas, McCullah, and Uncle Dave.”
Damn, I’m back to being a Liberal again…no matter how hard I try, they just keep pulling me back in!
Well, at least try to get the spelling correct next time.
Oh, and go Ron Paul.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. No guarantee of happiness.
Odd that an article about the class system appears in a publication whose name means “man of higher social rank” or in the US the lawyer class.
You might want to check this article out if you doubt that Reid and his ilk hate business people:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2011/12/25/sen-harry-reids-unicorns-fact-checking-a-whopper/2/
“If your daddy was rich, you’re gonna stay rich, and if your daddy was poor, you’re gonna stay poor” – is total BS and even propaganda. I happen to know a handful of “millionaires” . Guess what – every single one of them arrived to this country as (legal) immigrant with very little more than clothing on their body and have been without any family support (in most cases they were the ones supporting families back at the even poorer home). Most of American “poor” were order of magnitude richer than these people. Proof that there is a chance in US, clear and open. Proof also that those poor who remain poor are not so because of some unjust society but their own actions. No, that is not PC nowadays but that is hard truth. If bunch of piss-dirt-poor immigrants can make it on their own, it is not a system that is the problem.
Oh, I’m sorry. We should have listened to your anecdotal evidence instead of believing our lying eyes.
I own two SF houses, I have a safe filled with stuff, and my son is almost through college. I drive a servicable Ford Ranger, and have nice pensions and a fat as 401k. Yea for me!!!! I worked my ass off for it, and now I get to enjoy the upper middle class life. Screw the rest of you.
Me the people.
Pensions? You elitist union-c0ck-sucking hoor.
401K? You’re as safe as any other hen in a henhouse run by the foxes.
Dupe.
You should join a nice church and let them swindle you out of it.
“They don’t show you the loosers.”
“Loosers” is now my favorite word. Sums up this decade we’re facing.
Does this seem like a propitious moment in history to make a baby? Plenty of people are doing it. I pity the babies. Or no, I don’t. They’re well & truly screwed & I don’t give phvck.
Wonder if I will still be alive when the Supreme Court building in D.C. is pillaged, gutted & torched. That “corporations are people” ruling has made it pretty much inevitable. The noble experiment is fail.
Am glad that duplicate post detector works. Did not want to post it twice.
Congratulations—that is a nice script.
Stop whining. Don’t like it – do something about it (and it doesn’t involve wasting your time here on DU).
So long as there are different levels of people with different levels of saving and investing, there will always be classes. The dipshit who spends all his money on smokes, lottery tickets, and interest will never rise above his class.
So you’re saying that your parents were not in any way responsible for your current self-satisfaction?
Excellent thread and some individual posting. I especially like moss: “barons of inheritance.”
I would point out what was directly hinted at: all societies have “class” elements but what used to make America unique was the MOBILITY between classes based on merit, hard work, chance. This mobility is greatly affected by the inheritance of wealth especially when it is supported by adverse tax policies on the poor.
You know why Marx is famous right? Because “class” is inherent and unavoidable in any society. The material dialectic can be helped or hindered by social policy but not done away with. Silly to think Marx’s Foundational recognitions were not abused by Communist regimes, just as the Foundational recognitions of Adam Smith have not be ignored by so called Capitalist societies.
Did you know that the 6 Walton Family members have the same accumulated wealth as the bottom 96 Million Americans? All inherited. They did and continue to do no more to “deserve” it than the other 96 million people all dealing with a core of the same issues in life : xyz. And they are spending money to make sure their kiddies get even more of the pie while cutting Medicare and Soc Sec to pay for it. Why should any non-Walton vote to reduce the inheritance tax?
The class warfare that exists is the Super Rich who have won it now walking the battle field giving a shot to the head of any of the survivors.
It mainly results from attitudes like ABO’s: “I’ve got mine, screw you.” and thats just what is happening. As long as anyone can see and feel superior to someone below them, they don’t recognize they are likewise below someone else, and we are all below the .1%.
Just how bad it will all get before a reform candidate breaks from the mold is hard to tell. Indeed, even the poorest among us still has tv, phone, computer, car. Not that bad a life if one becomes a Buddhist–assuming you aren’t in a neighborhood racked with crime and their is a good store within walking distance?
I am trying to develop this theme on the CageMatch. Nay’s and Yea’s invited to contribute: http://cagematch.dvorak.org/index.php?topic=10339.msg43946#new
One of the walton girls (at least I assume it was one of the girls) turned you down didn’t they.
He has a real hard on for the Waltons. I guess that greeter application got turned down.
How do you make a link work to your own Cage Match? I do plan to reference this for a while to build interest. Yea/Nay?
#32–So What==are there any? I don’t even know, suppose so statistically probable. I didn’t fit in a bit of a segue to Ivanna Trump==whatever the Donald’s daughter is named. Nice looking, cultured, educated, smart, hard working, and advantaged. That doesn’t bother me because there is merit in those born of advantage as well. But Paris Hilton? And the mix of merit vs inheritance becomes heavily weighted towards the inheritance when a society has been captured by the Super Rich. In North Korea–you see it with inheritance directly taking the power of government. In the GOUSA, its done indirectly with money.
I think in the next 20 years without a for real reform candidate we are going to see our own society unravel. Think “Knock Out” is a game that can only be played by punks with their dukes? Not in this country founded on Second Amendment remedies.
Even the Super Rich will mourn what they have created and fought for. A little less money and a lot more social ease is not a hard bargain to make==unless you live in a total vacuum.
Pro’s and Con’s to all we do.
How many bong hits are required to achieve the level of pragmatic existential evangelical anti-theist AND social critic?
Do you drink the bong water too?
The key to more equality is to eliminate inequality of power brought by more government.
The key to more equality is to be born rich.
#36–orchi==btw, I can’t see your name and not think of chinese therapy balls rolling around in someone’s sweaty palm. too large for anal foreplay for most of us, but the image is solidly there.
But to your pimp: No, its mostly book reading. That and Dr Phil. There is no more important question for understanding just about everything there is to understand: “How’s that working out for you?”
Yeah, it crack me up everytime I think that. Obama trying to compromise with the Pukes: “How’s that working out for you?”
And to America: tax cuts for the rich expecting jobs to trickle out as a result? ((talk about your orchi therapy)): “How’s that working out for you?”
And drill baby drill as we choke on the carbon asphyxiation and bleeding of our national treasure: “How’s that working out for you?”
THATS all “pragmatism.” All about “what works.” Sad how often isolated leaders can believe that which does not work is the way to go. How often do they seriously consider: “How’s that working out for you?”
Even weekly mid day tv offers a wealth of wisdom should you be open to it.
Always a “joy” of sorts to find my own ideas “not working out for me.” Swoosh……there goes a another six pack as I think about it….. ideas i had that didn’t work for me. “…..and the beast in the jungle lept….” Everything you can think about has already been published in a book. Sometimes quite thick books—and more than once.
Quite humbling this hooman condition.
The name orchidcup is a symbolic reference to the vagina.
Dr. Phil is a douchebag with an opinion and a fat checkbook.
Books are my favorite hobby, next to computers. I owned one of the first TI 99/4A computers released in 1981.
I just wonder how it is that silly hoomans waste their time talking trash on a blog like this.
We accomplish nothing. Nothing is gained.
Might as well take another hit from the bong….
I think Kurt Vonnegut wrote (maybe Slaughterhouse 5) that humans talked when they had nothing to say just to stay in practice for when they might have something important to say.
Same with blogs.
The wonderful is built on a foundation of drek.
Why have dreams, when nightmares are free?
Civilized countries, like civilized individuals, like to keep their budgets balanced. For years old-fashioned Italian leaders tried to make income and outgo jibe. But in 1876 there came to power a modern politician for whom red entries had no terror, but even a certain charm. Agostino Depretis, Italy’s first Liberal prime minister, started Italy on the road to fascism. He was a journalist who discovered that the key to modern power politics is the masses and their mouthpieces, the Left politicians. With their help, he managed to stay in power for eleven years. He owed this achievement to a technique that seemed inspired then, but is familiar enough now: he had no program. He simply promised every sort of reform regardless of whether or not his promises were contradictory. Thus he promised to reduce taxation but increase public works, to restore prosperity but introduce social security. This catholicity attracted men from all schools of thought. Oppressed tenants and underpaid workers, reactionary landlords and big employers all sought to collect on the promissory notes which he issued on his way to power.
When your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep will be your downfall.
I agree with the premise of a class system.
You can see the extreme, pretentious douche-bag behavior among people who think they are high class and pretend to be intellectually inclined, but who never question authority. These are the corporate lackeys. They know they are obedient and they’re proud of it. They watch TED talks. They ridicule 9/11 truthers or act scared of them. And they screw over the common man every chance they get.
It may eventually descend into a caste systems.
Who will be tomorrow’s untouchable?
I nominate the disabled.
The healthy representatives (bwa ha ha ha, like I should be so rich and well fed,) have been paying nothing but lip service to the Americans with Disabilities Act that I figure the congress will dispose of their hypocrisy and the act once and for all as a cost-saving measure.
Maybe not the disabled specifically, but the unhealthy.
Medical expenses are already the leading cause of bankruptcy.
Denying insurance claims will be a social good, since the sick are so unsightly. {/sarcasm}
We’ve become a government
• OF the thousandaires (the 99%, that would be me and thee,)
• BY the millionaires (the 1%, that would be the extremely insular privileged overlords and bosses,)
• FOR the billionaires (the 12,400 individuals identified by the IRS as the people who count (though they don’t really count as they hire some thousandaires to run machines to do that.)
As long as you have parties, its going to suck, badly…
If you’ve never bothered to read the ADA, you should…. It’s a self-employment manual for lawyers. No Congress will ever repeal or significantly change that, except to add more lawyer-stuff….
In very short, the law says that an employer “should, or might, or could” do something, and an aggrieved employee can then sue the employer if he/she doesn’t like the employer’s choice of remediation (or if the employer chose to ignore it).
If the employee sues, there’s all kinds of legal help for him/her. The employer generally has to cover his/her/it’s own costs, even if the whole thing is specious….
MSB, you keep posting that. Are you saying there are 12000 billionaires in the US?
Look at the IRS data. There are only 12,000 billionaires (or hundreds-of-millions’aires,) and 400 really rich (can you imagine?) people in the ‘States.
The IRS’s own statistics reveal that the economy is set up for the few % who own almost everything.
To put in terms you can understand at a glance:
183,000,000 poor Americans own/control as much wealth as
…………400 rich Americans
120,000,000 lower middle class Americans own/control as much wealth
………12,000 upper middle class americans.
…60,000,000 middle class Americans own/control as much wealth as is left.
That’s what is for the ‘States.
Government went after the #1 source of investment capital for black businesses in Michail Milliken, with the press playing up the evil of ‘junk bonds.’ Then they raised the minimum wage to make it harder for minorities to get work. Then they rolled back welfare reform.
Barack Obama: Bringing cynicism and despair to a new generation!
Dear Esquire;
“Post-Hope”? Really?
You media maggots told us that we had elected HOPE itself.
Maybe we shouldn’t take your assessment of Ron Paul seriously.
Illuminati Jews have over time toxicated every aspect of American life. When the women in a society are trashed out whores and have no respect or self-esteem, then that society crumbles from within, within no time. The main-stream media propaganda run and controlled by these same Illuminati Jews can spin it, do smoke and mirrors, create false terrorists and pose Iran and China as potential enemies..but the fact remains..and that is the enemy is within us…and we know who they are. the greedy bastards, money loving, God-hating, humanity-hating Illuminati Jews/banksters/elite who have the govt in their pockets. We’ve seen the amount of destruction they’ve caused in 2011. just goes again to show they have no regard for American people, humanity whatsoever. These bastards are shameless non-Americans.