well, I have, like many, "made it", and I also lost it. couple of times. or gave it away is probably a better way to put it. Matthew 19:21 and all that.
more than ever, I'd like to just point out that whereas before a lot of effort and hard work tended to pay off over time, now you need a lot of luck. and if life hits you with a whammy, it's tougher and tougher to get back on your feet. I've got a lot of friends who are swimming in this wreckage.
wages are suppressed, profit margins are forced to increase more and more, revenues and the ownership and control of those streams tends to collect- generally speaking- and that squeezes out the middle class not to mention what it does to the needed work populations to maintain the consumption of goods- entire towns and populations are practically enslaved.
90% of all corporations have predatory business models and rather than breed competition they tend to squeeze it out or swallow it up. that does allow for opportunity after the predation period phases into slowdown, but it's really rough out there.
I admire some of the rhetoric which OWS has introduced into the ether, god knows I'll take anything over those mouthbreathing idiots who usually dominate the political ether, and it's hard to deny what is at the core of the OWS message. Most people do not vote for their own self interests but for a false set of interests that if you thought about it, they couldn't really defend except by way of being irrational. with some people, how can you have a rational discussion about say, tax equity when they think man and dinosaur cohabitated or deny the foundation of many modern medical miracles as a 'theory'.
what most people in this country fail to come to grips with is that the system is rigged, and there are any number of things which some people have going for them, which others simply do not. we still live in a day and age when if your name doesn't sound right, you are less likely to get a call back for an interview, your access to housing, and lots of other things many people take for granted, is severely compromised. it takes a woman some ridiculous amount of time to reach wage equity with a male counterpart- like an extra year and some months. to this day. those are just the facts of life. on top of that, you have a 'representative' system of government, in which the people who ostensibly are supposed to represent you, have nothing in common with the average citizen, and indeed, are getting their beaks wet in the rigged system. Not taking anything away from say, Bush, for example, but people really believed he was this regular guy from a mom and pop farm in texas- when nothing could be further from the truth. You look at all the insider trading that goes on in congress, legally too, and it's no wonder income disparity is trending the way it is. it's all smoke and mirrors anyway, it's not like there's anything really backing our money up. during the second bail out on NPR the sec of treasury was asked literally how the bailout worked, he was like, you know, do they just type in a bunch of zeros and hit send and he was like, well, basically, yes....but people have short ass memories and they trust corporations to guard their own profit motives and keep them ethical. is there anything more crazy than that. Yet history continually repeats itself with many of the same crooks and liars.
sadly these days, if you are "making it", it has less to do with hard work, and more to do with being very lucky. sad to say.
