Pic Of The Moment: House Votes For Sandy Relief

[glowing]

17. How would they even have a clue?

Their entire lives are insulated from reality from the time they are born, through their entire private schooling lives, and to the job that they practically "inherit" because of who they are and whom they were born from.

They are really quite clueless. And why would they feel particularly invested in paying taxes? They don't get how they have money or the concept of a consumer based economy that they and their peers have helped to perpetuate by offshoring jobs that pay a decent living to people ringing up cash registers. Property taxes only help to keep people out of their communities, but they don't want to pay too much because they don't utilize public schools. They don't feel it's fair to give money to the govt because someone has died, they feel they are entitled to their inheritance and all the "work" that supposedly went into investing into the right hedge funds and stocks.

The top % of this country is more than clueless about the conditions of poverty in this country. They will donate money, travel to Africa and other poor nations, have extravagant parties/ fundraisers for those poor starving children in foreign countries, yet when they are asked to pay taxes to support the social needs of the poor and the children in this country, the attitude about poor people in this country is that they are moochers and that they spent a lot of time making mistakes in their lives to make them poor and destitute because America is a capitalistic empire that allows anyone to "make" it. If they don't make it, it's the poor people's fault on choosing certain paths in their lives. They were born on third base and think they started at the plate just like everyone else. Clueless, heartless, insulated, assholes for the most part. Hoarding money they clearly don't need because they heard that poor women living in blighted areas just continue to have children to collect welfare. They don't even understand that welfare has been thoroughly reformed and cannot be "gamed" in some crazy fashion.

It would be really great if we could take all of these wealthy people, congress, etc and put them into a housing project to live for a month with the amount that a typical poor person would get for aid from the govt, and see how long it took before they realized that their thoughts and experiences are so far off the grid of what most Americans are living, they might actually grow a heart, empathy, and get a clue. However, we cannot force anyone in this country to go and experience what poor feels like, looks like, and even smells like. The only thing the rest of us can try to do is use our massive amount of numbers to force a more fair and equitable distribution of "wealth" in this country.

I don't know that the "wave" will come from us. I almost think that countries like India and China may lead a revolution faster. They have many people and many people being used and abused and poor enough to be desperate enough to forcefully push for changes. There are still to many in this country that are on the cusp of working poor, lower middle class and middle income middle class that are holding onto what they have because they know that any further down the rung on the ladder will land them into the poor pile, and it's continuing to happen year after year.

"Main st" America is still experiencing a depression like existence. And it's nearly impossible to work one's way up into prosperity because those companies and those jobs don't exist all that much; along with the saddling debt of schooling debt that young people are amassing for a chance at a better life, that is not really coming after graduation.

It would be nice if we weren't hearing "cut" and "deficit is the most important issue", because really, we should be spending money on infrastructure, education, and research. Also, we aren't much of a society without arts and music, so we should have a healthy dose of funding people who make the world seem a little brighter sometimes. Most people would like to see military spending cut, money spent on schools, money spent on infrastructure, and money spent on going "green". Most would like to live life with some basic assurances of having a home, nutritious food, clean air/ water/ environment, health care that won't bleed you dry, and freedom to have time to do what one wants with their loved one's and their friends. There is no good reason that we should have to work longer and harder to make a living, never have enough time or money for a vacation, or miss out on so many important moments of life because our world is held hostage by wealthy, incompetent, self-important boobs. We only have one life to live, and most aren't able to "live".