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honestly i don’t think people care. even if you were able to somehow shed more light on it or there was more media coverage on these issues.
i don’t think people care all that much about disparity in wealth, empire building, clandestine organizations. that’s the sense i get.
bnw,
Trump has repeatedly lied about our current military capacity, as have a huge number of his fellow Republicans. If we’re to believe them, Obama and Clinton have gutted and slashed the American military to the point where we couldn’t defend ourselves against Costa Rica. In reality, Obama has steadily increased defense spending, just like all other American presidents, and set in motion a trillion-dollar program of nuclear updates and more. Trump would have us believe we’ve never been weaker, and he vows to radically increase defense spending, including a massive increase in nuclear weapons, war ships and troops.
Trump wants war and empire just as much, if not more, than anyone else in the duopoly. And he’s willing to lie his ass off to make it happen.
honestly i don’t think people care. even if you were able to somehow shed more light on it or there was more media coverage on these issues.
i don’t think people care all that much about disparity in wealth, empire building, clandestine organizations. that’s the sense i get.
That may be true. But why don’t they care? Perhaps because we don’t talk about it, and the media and our educational system don’t bring it up.
It’s likely one of those chicken and egg things. Is that apathy a cause or an effect, etc.?
To me, judging from the success of marketing and sales in America, where people can be led by the nose to believe most anything about various goods and services . . . . it’s not too much of a stretch to think that a well-crafted sales and marketing campaign on behalf of the things in that list . . . and others like them . . . might be quite successful in changing that apathy and ignorance.
Another big factor when it comes to Americans’ seeming indifference to wealth inequality? Most Americans have no idea how bad it is.
A recent study demonstrated that brilliantly — and things have actually gotten more unequal since then.
http://www.rawstory.com/2010/09/poll-wealth-distribution-similar-sweden/
Link to the original study itself:
http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20press.pdf
92 percent prefer Swedish model to US model when given a choice
Americans generally underestimate the degree of income inequality in the United States, and if given a choice, would distribute wealth in a similar way to the social democracies of Scandinavia, a new study finds.
For decades, polls have shown that a plurality of Americans — around 40 percent — consider themselves conservative, while only around 20 percent self-identify as liberals. But a new study from two noted economists casts doubt on what values lie beneath those political labels.
According to research (PDF) carried out by Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University, and flagged by Paul Kedrosky at the Infectious Greed blog, 92 percent of Americans would choose to live in a society with far less income disparity than the US, choosing Sweden’s model over that of the US.
What’s more, the study’s authors say that this applies to people of all income levels and all political leanings: The poor and the rich, Democrats and Republicans are all equally likely to choose the Swedish model.
But the study also found that respondents preferred Sweden’s model over a model of perfect income equality for everyone, “suggesting that Americans prefer some inequality to perfect equality, but not to the degree currently present in the United States,” the authors state.
Recent analyses have shown that income inequality in the US has grown steadily for the past three decades and reached its highest level on record, exceeding even the large disparities seen in the 1920s, before the Great Depression. Norton and Ariely estimate that the one percent wealthiest Americans hold nearly 50 percent of the country’s wealth, while the richest 20 percent hold 84 percent of the wealth.
But in their study, the authors found Americans generally underestimate the income disparity. When asked to estimate, respondents on average estimated that the top 20 percent have 59 percent of the wealth (as opposed to the real number, 84 percent). And when asked to choose how much the top 20 percent should have, on average respondents said 32 percent — a number similar to the wealth distribution seen in Sweden.
“What is most striking” about the results, argue the authors, is that they show “more consensus than disagreement among … different demographic groups. All groups – even the wealthiest respondents – desired a more equal distribution of wealth than what they estimated the current United States level to be, while all groups also desired some inequality – even the poorest respondents.”
The authors suggest the reason that American voters have not made more of an issue of the growing income gap is that they may simply not be aware of it. “Second, just as people have erroneous beliefs about the actual level of wealth inequality, they may also hold overly optimistic beliefs about opportunities for social mobility in the United States, beliefs which in turn may drive support for unequal distributions of wealth,” they write.
The authors also note that, though there may be widespread agreement about income inequality, there is no agreement on what caused it or what should be done about it.
“Americans exhibit a general disconnect between their attitudes towards economic inequality and their self-interest and public policy preferences, suggesting that even given increased awareness of the gap between ideal and actual wealth distributions, Americans may remain unlikely to advocate for policies that would narrow this gap,” the authors argue.
Norton and Ariely’s survey was carried out on 5,522 respondents in 47 states in December of 2005. The results are to be published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.
honestly i don’t think people care. even if you were able to somehow shed more light on it or there was more media coverage on these issues.
i don’t think people care all that much about disparity in wealth, empire building, clandestine organizations. that’s the sense i get.
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Well what do you think Americans ‘do’ care about?w
vi think people are interested in protecting what’s theirs.
i think they like the notion of equality but not at the expense of their own security.
or maybe i’m just feeling really pessimistic these days.
Right now, the richest 20 Americans hold more wealth than half the population. The richest 1% holds more than the bottom 99% combined. Worldwide, just 60 people hold more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population — as in, roughly 3.5 BILLION people.
To me, that’s obscene.
Another likely factor in the indifference of some when it comes to inequality: They don’t get that wealth held by the rich is wealth no one else can then hold. Wealth is finite. Assets are finite. Money supply is finite. Payrolls are finite. A billionaire’s money can’t exist in his or her pocket and yours at the same time . . . so their wealth automatically and necessarily diminishes yours. That’s just math. A billion dollars in John Doe’s hand is a billion dollars taken out of the pool for anyone else.
Again, it’s just math. And too many Americans can’t seem to do math.
ya know. i say some of these things to people. how the number of billionaires increases every year. and the number of poor grows even higher.
most people shrug. or there’s a sense of resignation. the rich are going to do what they want, and we are powerless to stop it. a few even place the blame on the poor for taking their money from welfare and government assistance and whatnot and no mention of the rich and their greed.
i have no idea why that is. yeah a lot of it might be a result of indoctrination or just ignorance. but i think also. on some level. humans are just pieces of shit.
i mean can clinton or trump really help who they are? they just are who they are. i don’t think they’re evil. i think they’re no more evil than the “oppressed poor people”.
they just do what they do and have no idea why they do what they do just like every other human on the planet and the result is just one big hot mess.
perhaps i’m making no sense right now. just rambling.
One other thing I’d add:
Junk Science
Whether it’s creation science, bought and paid for oil company science, a war on science and intellectualism–you name it.
The country is misled, dumbed down, and wondering in circles with bad information.
Not good.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. " Philip K. Dick
The data alone disproves manmade global warming. The alarmists failed predictions disproves manmade global warming.
Yeah…no, it doesn’t.
And the fact that the United States of America is the ONLY country on earth where anybody even DEBATES this topic anymore ought to hint at something to you.
But…carry on.
If you are right, we will have spent a lot of effort making the planet a better place for nothing.
This isn’t a “hint”. Your “fact” is BS. Please do tell how your efforts make the planet “a better place”! Wow.
The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.
Sprinkles are for winners.
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