Comments on: Happy Thanksgiving! Are You Better Off Today Than You Were Four Years Ago?

By: Dyscalculia Daisy

Dyscalculia Daisy — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 04:21:19 +0000

The Irish bailout, like the Greece bailout and the looming Portugal bailout, isn’t about saving the Irish people, it’s about preserving the privately-owned banking system that acts like a parasite on those same people. Soon there’ll be a Spanish bailout, perhaps French, German & UK bailouts too – when are people everywhere going to stand up and refuse to put up with this nonsense?

By: Exiled due to poverty

Exiled due to poverty — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 01:54:40 +0000

Thanks for this great blog! I have enjoyed some of the commentary. I can hardly stand to think about my life four years ago, though modest, so much better. I was employed, had insurance and a car, etc. Due to unemployment, health trouble which led to disability, I have had little choice (as a single older woman with poor health) than to leave the USA, which I consider my home even though I have nothing but contempt for we have allowed the government to turn into, to live in South America where I was born, as I can just barely get by with my few American bucks which may vanish at any moment. I can live in a decent place, eat and that’s about it. I have had to leave my son and grandchildren, my sister, my friends, everything I love, including so many resources one takes for granted such as public libraries to live in the Third World, where women are devalued, crime is high, hygiene is poor, ecological consciousness is almost zero, and even here, I don’t know if I can afford medical insurance, which is cheap comparatively, or dental care. Thank God for the internet and for blogs such as these. I made an attempt recently to go back and try for part-time work which failed and out of fear of homelessness and an inablility to continue hauling groceries on city buses, using a cart to do laundry, etc. decided I would have to face the music. This is not to say there is nothing to enjoy here, but I do not have a lot of respect for people who have cities with major intersections with no traffic lights, and will definitely run you down if you don’t get out of there way, who have terrible noise pollution, and much more.
After working hard as a single mother all my life, I never thought that I would see the day I would be an unwilling exile, although many foresee class warfare in the USA, and much worse. For those of you on food stamps and unemployment, thank god you live in a country that has them. This country does not.

By: Handog

Handog — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 17:01:39 +0000

I have lost most everything in the past three years. Its stunning to think that you can work hard for twenty something years and see it vanish so quickly. Oh, about a year into being underemployed I caught my wife hooking up with an old flame online. A sign of the times I suppose; Sell your soul for a feeling of financial security.

I’m thankful for our multi-millionaire “public servants” and their terrific foreign and domestic policies.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 01:31:48 +0000

The developed world joined in trade agreements with nations where the standard of living did not even include electricity and running water. The delta in labor compensation between the developed world and the newly developing world guaranteed a flight of manufacturing to the latter. That flight of industry was also a flight of wealth reaching 50 billion in USD per month; month after month. That wealth was loaned back to the “developed” nations and for a period of time replaced the former wealth creating enployment that was continiously fleeing. Various nations increased their currency supply without inflation due to the very low cost of goods made in the third world. Both private and public debt swelled and all was good until the increasing debt could no longer be serviced. The economy then contracts and because it was based on debt. More debt is both the short term solution and the long term problem. We’re not facing a recession or depression but rather a global realignment of power. In the end the developed world drops and the developing world rises.

By: abby

abby — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 20:21:48 +0000

My husband was squeezed out of his job last month from cuts the currant administration forced. I have a part time job I can barely hang onto because I was hit by a truck and his auto-insurance isn’t going to pay my medical bills and the pain makes it difficult to get through the working day. But at least one of us has a job and a $5 pizza on table is better then nothing. Dang, $5 is a real splurge now.

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 23:46:17 +0000

Republicans dont just hate hispanics and gays, they hate the middle class. The top 2% get a free ride at our expense.

By: Leo Strauss

Leo Strauss — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 19:56:10 +0000

Peace progress, and prosperity are destructive to oligarchy which requires violence and mayhem, including terrorism and war, in doses large enough to send world civilization back to the stone age. This implies genocide on a scale far beyond Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. Today’s world population is about 6.25 billion, and barely subsists on the basis of realized technological and industrial progress. But under hunting and gathering conditions (food, guns, & gold), the demographic carrying capacity of the earth would be reduced to 25-50 million. So when you promote the dismantling of the homogeneous state (big government) through nihilist revolution you are in fact endorsing genocide of something approaching 6 billion.

By: Gary2

Gary2 — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 15:33:36 +0000

Poor people provide jobs every time they purchase things. Business does not hire because of tax breaks but because of increased demand for their products or services.

So yes-we need to heavily tax the rich and the big corporations who are now having record profits.

The gross inequality of wealth and income is the major (90%) of the reason we are in the economic mess we are in.

Are people really so dense they do not get this?? (Bruce I am thinking of you).

By: sharonsj

sharonsj — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 15:29:28 +0000

We didn’t live in a tin shack, but my family was lower middle class. My father was a salesman and my mother a homemaker. We didn’t have much, but I never went hungry and I wasn’t envious because the entire neighborhood was the same way.

Now we have extreme consumerism that no one can afford. But so many people are broke that old-fashioned values are coming back.

That said, I have no problem with making the rich pay their fair share–which they haven’t for some time. The government gives out corporate welfare while the average American sinks under debt. I read that the oil companies make billions in profits but pay no taxes. We spend billions on foreign wars that do not make us safer, and the government ignores war profiteering.

Perhaps if the government put the people first, instead of big business, we’d have the social programs to help poorer Americans.

By: El Pollo de Oro

El Pollo de Oro — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 15:13:01 +0000

La Domanda: Are you better off than you were four years ago?

La Mia Risposta: HELL NO!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m a small business owner, and business ain’t what it used to be.

But I’ll tell you who is much better off than they were four years ago: the top 2%. They are doing better than ever, while the dying middle-class become the neo-poor and it becomes increasingly obvious that the former USA is now a Third World horror movie called The Banana Republic of America (BRA).

There’s nothing wrong with prosperity per se. Hell, I want the nerdy computer geek who’s developing some new software program in his parents’ basement to get filthy, stinking rich so that he/she can create some jobs, buy things and pump money into the economy. I love to see people who aren’t rich become rich. See, that’s called UPWARD MOBILITY, which is what the USA had back when it was still the USA and had yet to become the BRA. But what we have now, thanks to the globalist horrors that Ross Perot warned us against in 1992 and 1993, is DOWNWARD mobility for most Americans. This is now a Third World banana republic, where a tiny ruling class minority will be fabulously wealthy while the vast majority of people barely survive.

Benvenuti al terzo mondo. Benvenuti a La Repubblica Banana di America. Che dio ci aiuti.