Posted on 06/24/2015 8:29:33 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Why are today’s working poor so quiescent? I’m not the only one posing this question.
“Why aren’t the poor storming the barricades?” asks The Economist. “Why don’t voters demand more redistribution?” wonders David Samuels, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota. The headline on an April 7 National Catholic Reporter article reads: “Why aren’t Americans doing more to protest inequality?”
There are legitimate grounds for grievance. For those in the bottom quintile, household income in inflation-adjusted dollars has dropped sharply, from $13,787 in 2000 to $11,651 in 2013. According to the Census Bureau, 64 million Americans currently live in the bottom quintile.
Still, it’s possible that poverty is less grueling than in the past, for several reasons. First, although incomes have declined, the cost of many goods – televisions, computers, air-conditioners, household appliances, cellphones – has fallen, leaving the bottom quintile less deprived than simple income figures might reflect....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Because the freebies are too much, the way they are now.
They’re too busy trying to get by, working long hours, double shifts and several jobs to do so.
The ones who are unemployed are so poor they are downtrodden. Downtrodden people don’t have much spirit to fight. They don’t feel they have any protection in their already lowered status.
Rise up and do what?
The “poor” in America live lifestyles which are the envy of half the world’s population.
Man the barricades, whatever the hell that may mean.
There may come a day when that culture is no longer a majority.
“Why don’t voters demand more redistribution?” In other words—THEFT. They have no power to steal, only the government can do that.
The kind of poverty that exists in the US is not the kind of poverty that makes people throw themselves on bayonets.
And the group-think apparatus does its job very well.
Another damn communist. Real Americans want to achieve and better themselves and be rich, not steal from those who are rich. The only ones screaming for “redistribution” or let’s call it what it is, theft are those who are too damn lazy or criminal to succeed on their own and those communists who want to control the lazy and ignorant for their own power.
As you get more equality of outcome, you get less freedom —they’re OPPOSITES.
We chose freedom, North Korea chose equality.
From the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in, to the day he left office: If you started in the bottom quintile, your chances of being in the TOP quintile were greater than your chances of still being in the bottom quintile.
I don’t know whether subsequent Presidents can match that record. I think not.
But economic ignoramuses, like the clergy of all denominations, and all Democrats, imagine that the bottom quintile really is one-fifth of the population, permanently languishing, starving in the streets, without jobs, etc.
Why aren't we doing more to protest massive immigration, which is doing a lot more to keep average wages down that some guy that has more money more than I do?
One of my pet peeves is people who say “It’s time to stand up.”
And do what?
They never have any ideas beyond “stand up.”
They want an American proletariat to hang Wall Street bankers from the lamp posts.
His salary is probably public record if UM is a state school. I bet he earns 6 figures and has an accountant arrange his books to pay as little taxes as possible.
The "poor" who are on welfare and a dozen other government programs or the working poor who generally work more then one job?
The welfare poor don't want to rock the boat and lose out on their freebies.
The working poor firmly believe that they can climb up out of poverty and they have no wish to steal from people that are higher on the income ladder because they don't want what they have stolen to give to the ones who are lower on the economic ladder then they are.
People figure there is nothing they can do about things today. They’re too busy trying to survive.
The federal government is bought and paid for on both sides of the aisle.
Washington has never been more removed from the plight of the average Joe. The destruction of the middle class illustrates that.
The government is on autopilot through the unelected bureaucracy and the Congress is worried about cashing checks and catering to special interests.
“The “poor” in America live lifestyles which are the envy of half the world’s population.”
Mostly correct plus “rising up” generally suggests a collective perception of unfairness accompanying an inequity. That is just not the case in the US and will never be unless politicians and the media continue with their lies and encouragement of class warfare.
“From the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in, to the day he left office: If you started in the bottom quintile, your chances of being in the TOP quintile were greater than your chances of still being in the bottom quintile.”
It was a great time in America.
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