Dear OP, pack up your things and get your commie arse back to Mexico. The poor are poor by choice.

Nonsense. The poor have been the victims of exploitation,and deserve compensation for that crime.

Hahahahaha! Leftist morons are funny.

Leftist morons is a redundancy

The Rich Are Making the Poor Poorer

A bloated overclass can drag down a society as surely as a swelling underclass. A great deal of the wealth at the top is built on the low-wage labor of the poor.

article from 2007 by  Barbara Ehrenreich

Twenty years ago it was risky to point out the growing inequality in America. I did it in a New York Times essay and was quickly denounced, in the Washington Times, as a "Marxist." If only. I've never been able to get through more than a couple of pages of Das Kapital, even in English, and the Grundrisse functions like Rozerem.

But it no longer takes a Marxist, real or alleged, to see that America is being polarized between the super-rich and the sub-rich everyone else. In Sunday's New York Times magazine we learn that Larry Summers, the centrist Democratic economist and former Harvard president, is now obsessed with the statistic that, since 1979, the share of pretax income going to the top 1 percent of American households has risen by 7 percentage points, to 16 percent. At the same time, the share of income going to the bottom 80 percent has fallen by 7 percentage points.

As the Times puts it: "It's as if every household in that bottom 80 percent is writing a check for $7,000 every year and sending it to the top 1 percent." Summers now admits that his former cheerleading for the corporate-dominated global economy feels like "pretty thin gruel."

But the moderate-to-conservative economic thinkers who long refused to think about class polarization have a fallback position, sketched out by Roger Lowenstein in an essay in the same issue of the New York Times magazine that features Larry Summers' sobered mood.

Briefly put: As long as the middle class is still trudging along and the poor are not starving flamboyantly in the streets, what does it matter if the super-rich are absorbing an ever larger share of the national income?

In Lowenstein's view: "...whether Roger Clemens, who will get something like $10,000 for every pitch he throws, earns 100 times or 200 times what I earn is kind of irrelevant. My kids still have health care, and they go to decent schools. It's not the rich people who are pulling away at the top who are the problem..."

Well, there is a problem with the super-rich, several of them in fact. A bloated overclass can drag down a society as surely as a swelling underclass.

First, the Clemens example distracts from the reality that a great deal of the wealth at the top is built on the low-wage labor of the poor. Take Wal-Mart, our largest private employer and premiere exploiter of the working class: Every year, 4 or 5 of the people on Forbes magazine's list of the ten richest Americans carry the surname Walton, meaning they are the children, nieces, and nephews of Wal-Mart's founder.

You think it's a coincidence that this union-busting low-wage retail empire happens to have generated a $200 billion family fortune?

Second, though a lot of today's wealth is being made in the financial industry, by means that are occult to the average citizen and do not seem to involve much labor of any kind, we all pay a price, somewhere down the line. All those late fees, puffed up interest rates and exorbitant charges for low-balance checking accounts do not, as far as I can determine, go to soup kitchens.

Third, the overclass bids up the price of goods that ordinary people also need -- housing, for example. Gentrification is dispersing the urban poor into overcrowded suburban ranch houses, while billionaires' horse farms displace the rural poor and middle class. Similarly, the rich can swallow tuitions of $40,000 and up, making a college education increasingly a privilege of the upper classes.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the huge concentration of wealth at the top is routinely used to tilt the political process in favor of the wealthy. Yes, we should acknowledge the philanthropic efforts of exceptional billionaires like George Soros and Bill Gates.

But if we don't end up with universal health insurance in the next few years, it won't be because the average American isn't pining for relief from escalating medical costs. It may well turn out to be because Hillary Clinton is, as The Nation reports, "the number-one Congressional recipient of donations from the healthcare industry." And who do you think demanded those Bush tax cuts for the wealthy -- the AFLCIO.

Lowenstein notes, that "if the very upper crust were banished to a Caribbean island, the America that remained would be a lot more egalitarian."

Well, duh. The point is that it would also be more prosperous, at the individual level, and democratic. In fact, why give the upper crust an island in the Caribbean? After all they've done for us recently, I think the Aleutians should be more than adequate.

http://www.alternet.org/story/53962/the_rich_are_making_the_poor_poorer

Ugh.  It's these kinds of nutty ideas that give denner and company their even nuttier ideas.

A person, to feel fullfilled, needs to do work that is actually constructive.

ok Im back and judging by the recent posts by you leftie socialist dreamers, you have no idea how the world really works or any inkling of human behavior. You just spout nonsense drivel about how it should be, how everybody should be free to persue their dreams and have endless food, clean water, shelter, electricity, gasoline, all the things that make civilzation AND luxuries like art supplies and hiking equipment. Well where do you think all that stuff comes from? Somebody has to do a job to make it happen. And they might or might not want to do it, they get paid to do it so they can have money to live their lives and persue their dreams on their own time. It's called an economy. Im sure everybody would like to be free to persue their wildest fantasies and live a dream life, but guess what? and this is where society has fallen down recently- YOU CAN'T. You have become mesmerized by "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" and think "I should be doing that-I should be able to live on a yacht and travel to Italy to paint the hillside for a week if I want to. Why do they get to do it and not me??. And everybody should be rich, why do they get to be..." The answer is because somebody in their family invented/did something that everybody buys and that made them rich. You have no right to their money just because you were born. You must be a contributing member of society in order to provide for yourself and your family and sometimes that means doing a job you don't want to do. But if Im going to trade thousands of hours of my life for pay, I sure dont want the government taking more than needed to run the country to give to those less skilled or less ambitious to buy votes to perpetuate their own power. This idea of a Star Trek economy with robots doing all the work, food spilling out of replicators and everybody persuing their hobbies unless they actually want to work is science fiction and Censoredreality,trysts and OP are trying to sell everybody a dream that has no semblance to reality. Just vote Bernie and all your dreams will come true... what a crock.

how is doing a job, paying my taxes, living my life without biggov getting bigger and not wanting to support an ever growing dependant class a nutty idea?

I think you just like to pile on bigpoison. I have yet to hear an original idea from you, just rocks from the sideline.

I certianly DO NOT blame the poor for not contributing. I wish everybody had meaningful work and supported themselves and their families, then we wouldn't have to have this discussion. But the rout to that society is not through more government. It IS through self reliance and hard work, which seems to be a rare commodity these days. And it wont happen overnight. If you think for 1 second that any politician is going to dismantle Wall St and the big banks you are not really paying attention. There is no way to eliminate the "super-rich". Rather, why not aspire to be one through your own efforts instead of getting the government to beat them up for you?

Is the system rigged? yes. Has it been that way for thousands of years? yes. I used to work for the phone company and my area was one of the wealthiest counties in America. I lived in that county but on the other side. I saw things you can only imagine. Was i jealous? sure. But it is what it. There will always be the top and the bottom. The problem I have with your statement is "provide for everyone".

Class antagonism.

When the financial system collapsed in 2008 the banks were bailed out by central government(s). No sooner had this happened than the central banks then turned to their respective governments and said "Look, look, look, you have the biggest deficit in the whole history of the world. This is an outrage, this deficit must be reduced immediately."

In other words, the very section of society that created this crisis in the first place demanded that the rest of society pay for it; and if that isn't a clear case of class antagonism then I don't know what is.

The time is approaching and that time is now, for ordinary working people to stand up and say "Enough." Sure, it requires courage, it requires organisation, but it's not impossible.

Another world is not impossible.

And this guy accuses me of not having an original thought.  You sound like a placemat at a north carolina restaurant.

"The gamblin' man is rich

and the workin' man is poor"

Many posts here blame poor people for being poor, and in the case of the US that's about 46million.  'Handouts' are regarded as bad by some people. Presumably not the handouts to the rich in tax breaks and a myriad of dodgy deals that smoothe the wheels of business, but the types tha keep the poorest in society from starving.

It would be very interesting to see what would happen if the 'handouts' that keep people alive were suddenly stopped.  I suspect that the advocates of such action would very quickly change their minds when the riots took hold.  I suspect that the rioters would very quickly realise their own strength too, especially if they develop organisational skills, as the trade unions have.

Tinkering with capitalism could certainly improve the lives of most of us.  However, the people who own everything won't allow it.  Globally, or almost, we have the corporate world pulling strings and the varying types of politicians all dance to the tune they're ordered to.  They all tell us that there's no other game in town except the current one, capitalism.

We know that the misnamed USSR provided housing, food and the essentials of life such as education and healthcare, but nevertheless maintained a privileged elite who never allowed democracy, or even the debate to occur.  A bit like the rest of the world now, and emphasises the monopoly of power of those who claim that we can have any democracy that we choose as long as it's capitalist.

'If you look for the answers to society in the cesspit of capitalism then you'll always come up with crap answers' (Connolly)

If the epitome of capitalist society is content to allow such a large % of its population to be undervalued, unemployed or rely on food stamps to exist then it doesn't say much either for capitalism or the US.  If the epitome of capitalism cannot provide decent jobs, education, health care or pensions for its population and some hope for the youth then is it any wonder that so many are looking for answers?

The fear mongering and threats to 'build walls' sounds like a throwback to the dark ages.  Any progressive discussion is met with out-dated insults by some of the more rt-wing people here, and racism by others attempting to deflect the structural problems that capitalism brings. Immigration built the US and apart from the indiginous Americans, then you're all the descendents of immigrants.

It's not skin colour, or religion or immigration that causes the financial problems but the people who currently own everything.  The tried and tested scapegoating of minorities is carried gleefully by the corporate media, eager to please their paymasters. And sadly repeated here by some who don't know better.

 Much of the economy is owned by a handful of $trillionaires.  They don't want change as they've never had it so good, getting wealthier all the time while the country's debt continues to rack up at the same pace.  We're told that there's no money which results in cutbacks to services for those with the least economic power, but an abundance of money for armaments and illegal wars.

 Things will change when those with the least economic power, that they can't buy politicians, decide to withdraw their services on which everyone relies.  When more sections of the workforce and population get themselves organised then we have a chance of challenging them. The powerful only look powerful because most of us are on our knees.  If we all stand up together their attitude will change as they realise just how powerless that they are. 

Change is constant, and the current system can't last forever but would benefit greatly from a great big shove from below, from the people it currently sees as only units of production.  The change won't drop from the sky and will rely on more people getting involved, and only then will poverty be eradicated.  The 1%, the wealth harvesters rather than the wealth producers, will never take any steps to eradicate poverty.

bigpoison: And this guy accuses me of not having an original thought.  You sound like a placemat at a north carolina restaurant.

"The gamblin' man is rich

and the workin' man is poor"

If you want to quote me accurately that would be fine. Do not misquote me. I said "I have yet to hear one from you", not that you don't have them. Sloppy.

I still haven't.

Firstplay Im not going to quote that tome, just answer me this; Why do socialist countries fail without a dictator?- wait first name one without a dictator. If everyone gets all they need to survive, why are people so unhappy with the status quo there also? Why do they try so hard to leave? And don't play the Scandnavian card on me either. Those countries have moved away from socialism toward the free market in the last couple of decades, that is the reason for their prosperity. Besides they have a totally different population make-up. And we have plenty of socialism here in the US now as it is.

We have yet to see a socialist society.

There is massive confusion over this point and it stems from propaganda. The two major proaganda systems in the latter half of the 20th century both insisted that the Soviet Union was socialist.

One was that based in the Soviet Union itself; 50 years ago most of the world's poulation saw socialism as a positive force, one that had real moral power, Soviet propaganda sought to exploit that. 

The other major propaganda system was that based in the United States, or more widely the West. This system also insisted the Soviet union was socialist, but for the opposite reason, the aim was to associate socialism with Soviet tyranny.

To understand what socialism really means it's necessary to put the propaganda aside, all of it, and deal with key principles. A core principle, right at the heart of socialism, is that workers control production.

If we take this as a working definition then it becomes clear that the Soviet Union, and China, and North Korea, have absolutely nothing to do with socialism whatsoever.

I understand you totally buy into the idea of the workers paradise. How realistic is it given that sometimes even a family cant decide which is the best course to say nothing of strangers vying for control? Your "system" completly ignores human nature. Strongmen will always find a way to seize control over a group. To deny it is to deny human nature. Now, do you want to elect your strongman or bow to him? Do you want the opportunity to succeed based on your efforts or settle for the "minimum". Evidently it is the latter for socialists. Must have something to do with self-confidence or perhaps lack thereof.

And Marx himself said socialism is the intermediate step to communism.