Umfaan A billionaire hedge fund guy wrote a book awhile ago saying the pitch forks are coming if the greed continues. As the nations wealth continues to be redistributed to the top incomes eventually there will be a tipping point. This presidential election cycle may be a glimpse of what lies ahead.
History shows what happens when a country responds to such huge disparities in class with "let them eat cake". How long will the corporate oligarchy / plutocrats continue to have it their way at the expense of everyone else? Time will tell.
Interesting that you mention this, I was reading an article from "In These Times", that was attacking working people and unions undermining the Maduro government which is in the middle of the failure of communal economic system.
Up is down and down is up.
I don't disagree with this, but I think there are several underlying factors playing a bigger role in all of this. I do think that morality comes into play on multiple levels, especially since you cited greed as an issue, which is certainly a moral issue.
I cite morality, mostly because if you lose your integrity, you lose your conscience, and you lose your fear of getting caught, and fear or the consequences of getting caught. There are a lot of different directions you can run with this, but let's just look at the nuclear family, and the disintegration of it over the span of my lifetime. I think I read somewhere recently that married folks are no longer the majority in our country anymore. Everyone is "hooking up" now. So, since the sex is "free", and you don't need to be married, people are having fewer kids. People are also waiting later and later to marry or have kids, if at all.
But back to greed - corporate greed certainly comes into play, and greed at it's core, is simply selfishness. When you think of yourself first, and screw over everyone else, you may be richer, but everyone around you is suffering. Eventually that selfishness will kill you. And sadly, I'd hate to be the rich prick living my life alone at the end, because I screwed over everyone on the way to the top. How can this define what life is about in any terms? Sure, you can buy anything you want, but who are you going to share that experience with? Go ahead, build your own golf course, just for you to play on, with no friends, and no family. You can play 54 holes a day and have no one to tell about it. But yeah, that's great for you. Sure sounds miserable to me.
Honestly, I think guns are the only thing that separates the USA now from China. The Chinese are kept in check because no one can shoot back. Go ahead and try and take over a town or city in this country outside the democratic process. I know a LOT of people who are heavily armed, and thanks to Obama, he's only made that issue more pressing, as more and more folks are arming up to the teeth in preparation for when the feds try and take over more and more stuff. Frankly, this nation was founded by a bunch of guys who owned guns. The British lost because the people had will on their side, and a lot of guns. Sure the red coats could and did go door to door, but they never knew which door would open to an armed citizen.
We live in a time when rules and law are subjective and interpreted differently all over the place. There is no national standard for anything anymore. Even murder and rape are VERY subjective, depending on the circumstances. And we've allowed a judicial oligarchy to make up the law as they go along. A select few in black robes dictating to the populace what is right and what is wrong. Honestly, even their rulings are so complex and convoluted half the time that no one can truly understand them. And I'm actually surprised there aren't more murders of judges, especially from the family courts, where fathers are stripped of their constitutional rights in favor of making them slaves to a mother who simply didn't want to be around the father anymore; using a child as a monetary weapon to bankrupt the father both physically and morally. Sure, I'm being vague and generic, but I could spend days talking about how the family courts have not only neutered men, but has easily destroyed the lives of thousands of men, all in the name of "what's best for the child." And yeah, if I'm a 20-something man, there is no way in hell I am getting married in this day and age where the courts can cut your nuts off without even your having a say so.
And some of you will disagree big time with what I am closing this with, but we've lost the fear of God in this country. God used to be our compass and our guide, and we lived by what God says was right and wrong. Now our country is basically telling God to go F himself, as we've kicked God to the curb in favor of personal social freedoms, so everyone can go screw anything and everything they feel good about, with ZERO objective standard in any of it. You may think this doesn't matter in the least, but whether or not you believe in God really has nothing to do with it. Ultimately, if you kick God out of the public square, you have to replace it with something else. And society has chosen chaos, which is the alternative. That's ultimately where we are headed, which leads us back to pitch forks and revolution. It's coming; not a matter of if, but when.