Something about God saying they're the only ones supposed to blessed. That's what The Family tells themselves. That's why young people go to war to get themselves maimed or killed. Cuz the 1% deserve everything.

Sheee.

Well, don't you worry peeps, the .01% are encouraged to tackle the problem of inequality! Who better to do the job? Surely not the landless peasants, the destitute mucking around in rivers of poisonous pollution,....

I'm not sure what it is...but a breaking point. These people are rich beyond belief...on paper. They don't have vaults of cash. They have online computer receipts of stocks. So what gives? The market crashes 50% and they lose 50% or so of their fortunes in a matter of a few weeks or months.

a couple hundred million people in this country as they forget any need to own assets, come more and more to be nothing but a source of fees for the finance industry, are deliberately denied opportunities to capitalize on their own humanity by slightly more moneyed voters who will not invest in their own country. Our schooling is very efficient at creating people who look to others for validation, making control a much easier task. And the whole effort is enabled by politicians, whole political parties who pretend to be the good guys in office, who will profit by shoveling money to their donors and friends, politicians elected primarily by those with slightly more money to keeping their house values inflated and business loans cycling and kids in school, fed, housed, and clothed on the backs of those who have less.

Like today.

Sooner or later, something is going to give. I don't know what it's going to be... a global revolution? A massive economic disaster that utterly destroys the system and forces us all to rebuild? Climate change wiping most of us out? The balance of power is too far on their side. The might of the world is too heavily in their corner. Why on earth would these 1% who have the power to change this... why would they change it? The way things are now gives them enormous power. Very few people are willing to surrender that.

It's up to us. The 99%. We need to do something.. soon.

before the only option left is destructive.


Something will give.

and poverty will become more common, less important. More people are being taught every day that those in trouble are there of their own accord, (part of teaching people to be good, pliable, cheap employees), and that being older, or disadvantaged economically, or even just different, means one can be discarded without consequence to others. That's how 10 million people fell into poverty, another 20-30 million into near poverty, during this administration without much noise. People who have money know that it's value, along with things such as their home, is being supported by denying resources to that population and giving money to bank$ters, and they don't care that it is hurting their neighbors. That message is becoming more culturally acceptable as we go forward, so much so that people don't even realize they are doing it.

The best hope most people have is to make some friends. You can organize small groups with neighbors to protect yourself and your family. Try to find people who know how to learn, people who are farming or gardening, a doctor or two, (one might get killed or kidnapped), and do some reading about how to own and operate a business. Security is important, but that means training and awareness and cooperation, not more ammo.

Friends, or at least people engaged in a cooperative venture to improve and secure your future in a small area might be one of the few salvations as we get into some tough economic times that are just ahead, much tougher than we have now.

Doesn't mean not to work on the bigger picture, because all those people profiting from keeping things this way, from you and me, might be right, eh?

Thousands of castles have been put to the torch.

I get that you are using a metaphor, but seriously? You know the leaders of the people who provided the main support for the French Revolution lost their heads to the same guillotines the tyrants did, right?

The time to make money is when blood is running in the streets".
Rockefeller

Bring the hill people and their torches. That's a profit making opportunity. You think the wealthy are afraid? That's your ego talking. They are busy employing your neighbors to kill you. The spirit of Jay Gould is still firmly with us.

The old castle-stormers could have listened to La Botie, who described precisely how to remove the tyrant without lighting a match. But they had too big an ego to cooperate with each other, become big enough and strong enough to win. An ageless problem:


Pull your thinking into this century. The wealthy mostly just created rules that say we will pay them money. Instead of paying attention most folks just watch American idle. Now they meekly follow the rules. They WILLINGLY hand over their money. They are the source of their own problems. They could teach each other not to, like the people of the Mondragon corp did many years ago, with no money and under a dictator that was killing them. But, then, they didn't have cable.

The wealthy could pile up all their money on card tables, have us file by and hand us ALL an equal share. And they would have it all back faster than they got it the first time, if you haven't made any provision for a few years of training so they know how to keep it. It's obvious that has to come first. eh?

People don't know they are in servitude.

"I saved a thousand slaves. I could have saved a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves."
Harriet Tubman

Not a new problem

You seem to be expecting millions of people to turn off their cable, haul their largely overweight asses out of their lazyboys, and charge the moat with what? Their remote? Those people are held there - not by the chains used by people with castles, but by far more effective an insidious means.

"The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."
Steven Biko

What history does tell us, and you can feel to read Mother Jones autobiography, the memoirs of Bil Bill Haywood, "Them and Us" by Matles and Higgins (really good), "Men Needed to Fill the Jails of Spokane", if you doubt it, is that your whole army is owned by the opposition, and they will kill you if you try to change them. So be careful.

That, btw, is why so many people focus on the wealthy. It's easier to yap about the symptoms than it is to treat the disease.

So, when you charge that castle, look behind you. If at that point you realize you forgot about what the people need, and are helping no one but yourself, you can at least go get a seat on the log ride. Or run for public office.

I did not mention the french revolution, I did not mention any revolution , nor what level of success any revolution had. I stated that human beings can be driven to violence by oppressive conditions. That through out history the oppressed have lashed out violently and destroyed visible representations of their oppressors.

The afore mentioned French Revolution of 1789 (-95), The American Revolution of 1776, the October Revolution of 1917. the Hungarian Revolt of 1956, the Prague Spring in 68, The Bar Kokhba revolution in 132-35, Boudicca's revolt in 60 or 62, Bolivar in Columbia and Venezuela in 1819 and 21, Chilean revolution in 1817, Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt (at least 3 times in it's long history), Greece, England, etc. Those are the ones I thought of in just 4 minutes.

People can and have been driven to a point where the cost of their own lives seems like a fair price to pay to be able to strike down their oppressors.

No, I'd have to say those people are definitely wrong. In the long run, mistreating, underpaying, and basically screwing everyone will catch up with you. If the backbone of this Country was stronger and more secure (the working class) then we likely wouldn't even be having this discussion right now. There would be no need for it.

Our infrastructure is failing - pretty much on the verge of failed altogether. Our educational system is underfunded - and being used as a scapegoat for all of society's ills by the very same people responsible for funding and regulating it (I should say, the people who FAILED to fund it or properly regulate it). Our economy overall, leaving so many people in terrible situations... is slowly crumbling while politicians speak of economic recovery. The fact of the matter is that all of the money in this so called recovery has gone to the wealthiest of us - and the jobs that are being created are low paying, offering little or no benefits. We have a mountain of student debt, a mountain of medical debt - and a bunch of idiots in the house and Senate can't even agree that we should do anything about it.

On the one hand, we've got the tea party conservatives who are deliberately trying to shut down government, shut down the Country, shut down everything altogether. Maybe they're eagerly awaiting the rapture, or gearing up for what they think will be a zombie apocalypse. Maybe they're just stupid. On the other hand, most of the democrats are too afraid of being seen as either liberal or socialist to even speak of the steps that need to be taken. With a few exceptions, like Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.

When our economy finally does collapse, when the stock market gives out and jobs start dropping like flies... when people no longer have enough food, water, or shelter... when they can't pay their electric bill or heat their homes... and when those numbers climb high enough - a revolution becomes inevitable.

These wealthiest of people, they could change this. They could change it now - and it would benefit them as much as the rest of us.

I think class warfare is already here - most of us aren't fighting with knives and guns yet, but if things don't change, they will be.

And has no clue as to how to fix it.

"These wealthiest of people, they could change this."

Sure they could. The Master's gonna shut down the plantations any time and make it better for all us workin' folks. Last time in this country it took a war, and you may remember it nearly tore the country apart. And here we are today having the same discussion, although we no longer use mere chains to bind people.

It's not gonna happen. You think they should help you or others because it would benefit them. They are getting all the benefit they need, an.d everyone in this county could die tomorrow and it would barely make a ripple. None of us make a bit of difference to them at all. At all.

The 85 richest people in the world are increasing their wealth by about $500,000 a minute. And that's not because their corporate headquarters, or even most of their sales, are here

There are whole countries out there to profit from. Heard of TPP? Turns out Vietnam is cheaper than China, and we want the rights to move them there. And follow them up with another few tens of thousands of jobs according to the available data.

Keep on believing if it comforts you. Lot's of people grab onto invisible things near the end. I hear religion is good for that.

Remember, however, one mouse just sat there and starved, not realizing that the cheese was never coming back again. The ones that made realized they needed to get up and go look for more. Not get someone to do it for them like a little child.

It's the people that have only ever helped themselves, not the Master.

There is a difference between hope and knowledge - between reality and what we wish would happen. No, I'm not suggesting that these wealthiest of people are going to do a damn thing differently - and I also neither need nor want their money. I come from a strong family - and if things get as bad as I fear they will, then I'll still be just fine, because we can take care of each other.

It's those of us without such resources that I worry for. When the shit hits the fan, do you really think that most of us are going to have that? I don't. I think we'll be looking at something like scene out of a science fiction movie. The shitty thing of it is that it doesn't have to be this way - it never had to be this way. There are rich people who are kind, compassionate, generous, who understand that we are all in this together. Sadly, however, the majority of the super wealthy view life through rose colored glasses.

Again - it's going to be up to us, the 99%. Those of us who can, are going to have to start doing more for those who cannot. The very rich won't do it, so it's going to be up to the working class to save itself.

and someone(s) must figure out an economic program that will work for the world.

Yeah, sure, they're gonna do something. Most likely pretty much what they've been doing, while they toss out a few words to the proles, the worker bees, about how they're gonna be fairer in the future.

Don't believe it for a moment.

Seems like a unique ski resort gathering

a decent paying job with some wage security, universal health care, old age and disability insurance, and good schools and educational opportunities for our children. More and more of us live on the edge, one broken leg away from disaster.

The concentration of wealth in the hands of so few (most members of the lucky sperm club) is obscene and we all know it.

( )

http://www.oxfamamerica.org/static/media/files/even-it-up-inequality-oxfam.pdf

Just more info to add to the OP. Thank you for posting that.

Let's go get the rest of it!

I know the American middle class is in the global 1% for income.

Just remember, calls for global equality would probably reduce the wealth of the American middle class