2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: America is a centrist, capitalist country. We are not and will never be socialist. [View all]raging moderate
(4,305 posts)Capitalism is great, as long as it has some restrictions. The laborer is worthy of his hire, and where your treasure is, there will your heart be. The wealth of this country is being sucked upward so fast that there is not enough left at the lower levels. I am not complaining for myself. I had it rough as a kid, but I made it, thanks to sources that are being reduced as much as possible by the oligarchs. I am complaining on behalf of the children I worked with whose families could not provide properly for them, and for their children and grandchildren who seem destined to suffer even more.
The people who are running the country believe that rich people are best managed by fantastic over-reinforcement, but poor people are best managed by fantastic over-punishment. This snobbish assumption is visible throughout the social fabric, and it is wrong. My profession involved precise doses of reinforcement, so I know what that is better than most.
I worked with some children whose parents both worked split shifts at different times, just to keep a roof overhead and food on the table. These kids were taken by one parent to a relative's house and put to bed there, then awakened in the middle of the night and taken home by the other parent to be put to bed there for a few hours before being awakened at 6 to get ready for the school bus. I apologized to them on behalf of the people of the United States of America.
The world depicted on the TV series Little House on the Prairie never really existed; that is a fantasy. And the possibility of working out your own living off the land has been put out of reach for most people. The gap between incomes of rich people and poor people is too wide. When I was a girl, some textbooks mentioned such a gap as one of the factors that led to the French Revolution. Those of us who advocate for letting the poor people keep more of what they are producing are working to PREVENT violent revolution, not to foster it.
Bernie Sanders supporters actually want a more moderate country, in which rich people are not cossetted and worshipped. Where do you think Donald Trump came from? His candidacy is the inevitable result of giving too much unearned luxury to a few and inflicting too much unearned drudgery on many. This is not very different from what the other wing of the party USED to SAY they believed. I have worked for Democrats for several decades, when my drudgery allowed it. Can you hear me now?