However, I happen to think there is easily enough blame to go around on all sides. Conservatives/rich people say the poor folks don’t work hard enough or smart enough, and they are right. The first thing poor folks do with a dollar is spend it like they know where to immediately get five more. For my adult years I have been watching more and more poor folks buy Mercedes-Benz's, BMW's, big trucks, campers, boats, and the like when they should have been putting it to better use, like educating their kids how not to be knuckleheads and looking for a second job to backstop the first.
Rich folks, for their part, turned their attention from manufacturing useful stuff to export, to figuring out to better fleece dumb poor folks by selling them imported crap they do not need, on credit they should not have. The government and politicians have continually lowered the bar on what it allows rich folks to get away with, in pursuit of gullible pocketbooks. To be serious, the rich folks, who should know better, have pooped in their own back yard and the smell has come back on them. The US has the most over-housed, accessorized, fancy-car driving, recreational-vehicle owning, poorly-educated, ill-mannered population on the planet – courtesy of the trend-setting, conspicuous consumption of the rich.
While the Occupiers may win the argument, the war is already over. The rich do not have enough ill-gotten money stashed away, even if they gave it up, to make up for all the super-sized wants and demanded entitlements of poor folks and their unabashed, non-apologizing ignorance of what drives economic and social advancement.
Lastly, who the hell is running Oakland now that Dellums is officially in the pasture? Thank goodness the city does not own any tanks!
James C. Collier
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Technorati Tags: Occupy Oakland Will Win The Blame Game But Lose The War, Jean Quan, Occupy Wall Street, Rich vs. Poor, Acting Black, Acting White
One should not discount the buying habits of Americans when one talks about the decline in the number of American jobs.
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Sad truth is, Americans willingly bought Chinese. Business people have to sell what people want.
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As for Oakland... the Mayor folded like a cheap tent. As for the rest of the Occupiers... it's time to go home kids.
Brother Collier don't forget another thing the poor does that puts them into an even deeper hole than buying a bunch of junk, having children they don't have the means to care for and the mentality or attitude to raise them decently.
ReplyDeleteIt's a hell of a vicious cycle some people put themselves in.
Anon 4:39, my point was not to single out the figurative 99% or the 1% as the leading culprit, but rather to present the dysfunctional, interdependent (symbiotic) nature of the two, in the decline we are experiencing.
ReplyDeleteWhat an incisive post Mr. Collier!
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