General
Half of U.S. Poor or Low Income
“Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. The latest census data depict a middle class that’s shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government’s safety net frays. The new numbers [...]
You Just Need to Work Harder
“Aside from the fact that it seems to be missing the point that drives the 99% movement – “the majority should not be suffering through pain and fear while a tiny percentage reaps huge rewards without risking their own”… Aside from the fact that they compare their situation, where many of them won the genetic [...]
99% Doesn’t Hate Success
“The 99% doesn’t hate success. On the contrary, they want the 1% to do well. They don’t want the 1% to do well at the cost of the 99%. Most likely, you are one debilitating sickness away from total financial ruin. If you are not self-employed, you are one round of layoffs or one branch [...]
One Day I Can Drive As I Please
“For many years my wife, who loves a garden, worked at making one with the help of two boys who used to come after school hours and one Saturdays. These boys came out of working-class homes, and were going to public schools and acquiring the psychology there officially imparted. My wife, curious about this, used [...]
Elizabeth Warren’s Second Choice
My first choice is a strong consumer agency,” she said. “My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor.” The Woman Who Knew Too Much, Vanity Fair
Unshared Gains
“They all seem to believe have been taught that the Occupy Wall Street 99%ers are all looking for a free government hand out. They’re not. Also the historical self-made-grandparent stories are true only because workers between 1945 and 1975 received a fair share of their productivity.” Commenter on Metafilter
Can You Hold Down Four Jobs?
“Do you really want to live in a society where just getting by requires a person to hold down two jobs and work 60 to 70 hours a week? Is that your idea of the American Dream? Do you really want to spend the rest of your life working two jobs and 60 to 70 [...]
Class Warfare in 1358
“This quote from Al Franken’s book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them is circulating around the web lately: “Any time that a liberal points out that the wealthy are disproportionately benefiting from Bush’s tax policies, Republicans shout, “class warfare!” In her book A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century, Barbara Tuchman writes about [...]
Strength in Numbers
“The goal (or one of the main ones, I think) of [Occupy Wall Street] is to reestablish citizens as the directors of their social contract by showing their strength in numbers. Bloomberg, and all of his cronies, want very much to stay in control of our government because they like making piles of cash by [...]
Money and Worry
“I remember catching Born Rich back when it aired on HBO. …. But what really haunted me about the film and the people it depicted, what frankly still haunts me, is that while every character in that film seemed to be basically a human being with all the good and bad that implies, they were [...]