Why America Is Becoming More Divided

Why don't you watch the video?

Do you know anything about Fascism? They were on the warpath to kill socialists and communists.. Same with the Nazis.

 

Well, CA is the home of IT, the largest "wealth" creator in the US since the 1990's ... (I don't use face book myself, but google is vital to me).

Therefore CA will have the greatest wealth inequality (since many are not involved in the IT industry; in fact housing becomes unaffordable for many people in the latter category. And as for race, Oprah is doing quite well…..

Addressed above. Your ethnicity argument is very shaky.

No doubt there is plenty of unthinking ideological hypocrisy on all sides, to go around......

 

Since the 1990s Atlanta has boomed with newcomers.. young professionals with good paying jobs.. so we are seeing the same sort of split in income inequality here.

 

EARLY WARNING SIGNS OF FASCISM

1. Powerful and continuing nationalism
2. Disdain for human rights
3. Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
4. Rampant sexism
5. Controlled mass media
6. Obsession with national security
7. Religion and government intertwined
8. Corporate power protected
9. Labor power suppressed
10. Disdain for intellectual and the arts
11. Obsession with crime and punishment
12. Rampant cronyism and corruption

 

So what's the solution, taxes?

 

Obsession with crime and punishment?

What does that even mean?

 

So we supposed to look away when a citizen gets killed?

Shot in the back of the head ?

 

Just what it says.. Look at conservative Christian investors in the private prisons business.. start with Chic-Filet.

 

Huh? So you think private prisons and chic fil A are in cahoots with each other?

 

Christian's are now involved with private prisons, say what?..


LMFAO

 

They were the first investors I think.. Its a bad situation.. The private prison corporations have bed space that must be filled.

Its a VERY Christian group of investors.

 

For the past 25 years.. Investors in the corporate prisons are Christian conservatives.

 

Sounds insane, so no Jewish ones?

 

Wow do you have proof of this?

 

I think Home Depot was an early investor.. Its been a long time since I researched private prison corporations, but I was struck by the good old boy's club.

Betting on Crime: Investing in Private Prisons
https://thecollegeinvestor.com/4967/betting-crime-investing-private-prisons
Oct 08, 2019 · Valuation and Predictability. I find prisons to be highly-valued: Corrections Corporation of America (CXW) sells for 18 times forward earnings while Geo Group, Inc. (GEO), which operates in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and South Africa sells for just under 15x forward earnings estimates.

 

Well, don't take my word for it..

The Shocking Ways the Corporate Prison Industry Games the ...
https://www.alternet.org/2011/11/the_shocking_ways...
Nov 30, 2011 · Just a decade ago, private prisons were a dying industry awash in corruption and mired in lawsuits, particularly Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private prison ...

 

Prisons Inc.: The big business of incarceration - CBS News
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/prisons-inc-the-big-business-of-incarceration
Aug 19, 2016 · Prisons Inc.: The big business of incarceration. On the other hand, the private prison industry runs about 62 percent of all beds in immigrant detention centers, up from about 25 percent in 2005. The privatization of prisons and jails stems from the early 1980s, when the Corrections Corporation of America was formed.

 

I didn't know anything about this until the mid 1980s.. Most of my investors were also from Nashville.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoreCivic

 

All you links Mrs Margot dont mention Christian's

 

Corporations have an identity just like Chic-Filet has an identity... or HCA has an identity.. They were another early investor.

Who Owns Private Prison Stock? | Prison Legal News

https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2015/jul/31/who-owns-private-prison-stock/

Nov 05, 2019 · The nation’s two largest for-profit prison companies, Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Florida-based GEO Group (GEO), are publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Other private prison firms, including Management & Training Corporation (MTC), Community Education Centers (CEC),...

 

Huh?

 

I have no doubt you can contrive more self-pity. Your desperate, hyper-partisan zeal to blame the majority of Americans who agree, consistently and relentlessly, that Trump stinks apparently demands you play your victim card. The penchant of some white, heterosexual males in America for whining that their dominion in power and affluence belies their pariah status is quite remarkable.

 

Sounds like a discussion is on! That's good. I will apologize in advance for what I'm sure will be a lengthy answer.

By the line point-
Opportunity is everywhere- at every level. Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it requires a lot of vision. Sometimes it's easier- sometimes harder, but it is always there. People aren't equal in their talents, their abilities- and importantly, in their expectations. That doesn't mean some have less opportunity as much as different opportunity. The more people think of themselves as entitled to something like opportunity the less likely they are to recognize it and go after it when it is right in front of them. They expect it should be obvious, possibly even delivered to them. It just doesn't work that way- so they see nothing. This reflects differences in our thinking, not in opportunity. The greatest limit to your success, by far- is you. Not just what you think- but HOW you think, and by that I mean the parameters that control and limit what you can see and believe. Nobody can change that except the person themselves, and it starts when you start- you are learning it before you learn how to talk. With the right point of view, it won't be a challenge to see opportunity... the challenge will be which ones do you want to pursue, which would be the most successful. I have a list of such things, which I will never be able to pursue because of my age- but there are more today than there were 30 years ago, and then there were more then than there was 30 years before that. Strangely, the ability of people to recognize them has become less. It's not the hand you are dealt so much as how you play it. You have to believe in yourself, and that is something that can't be gifted to you in any way.

I will most certainly agree that parental role models affect the way people see opportunity. It doesn't change the existence of it so much as the ability to see it, to believe in yourself, and to reach adulthood armed with the right values and habits to make the most of what you have. That too is something that you can change- do more for your children. To say we can't because it wasn't gifted to us is a choice against ourselves. I had a great deal of animosity towards my father for things I felt he failed to do. It took many years to understand that I had failures too, that prevented me from doing a better job with my own children. I came to understand that every generation has the same problem. My father inherited flaws from his father, who inherited from his father. I eventually progressed to the understanding that my job is to take what I'm given, throw out whatever I believe is wrong, add what I think is right- and pass that to my children, who must do the same thing again. I forgave my father for not being perfect, stopped holding him responsible for my imperfections, and set about making myself the best person I could be; and a person who could respect my actions and decisions at all times. In other words I took total responsibility for myself, quit blaming anyone else for who I was not and my position in life. I discovered that decision empowers you in a way I had never thought possible, and the whole world changed. Not in physical reality, but in my perception of it. When you do that, you discover that opportunity is indeed all around you- and always has been. I never complain about a lack of opportunity- I now complain about the people trying to stifle it. The bureaucrats, the politicians who want people to become dependent drones, the people who fail to recognize how the nation benefits from people who are eager to make things happen instead of waiting for someone else to do it. I believe anyone can be such a person. Anyone. Whenever I get a chance to help someone along the way- I do.

Equality of income.... does indeed have to do with quality of contribution, or at least how we perceive and value that contribution. In the case of the usual point of contention, the wealthy- a key factor is scarcity. By that, if a particular CEO makes the difference between the company making X profit and making XXX profit, that person is worth a great deal. Companies want their money's worth when they hire a CEO, just as they do when they hire a janitor. If a person in an average job can be readily replaced by any of dozens of available options, that person's worth gets determined the same way- it is limited by the results produced and competitive options. I think the thing that gets in the way for so many can be described as envy or greed. Someone else has, so it's unfair I don't have. However money is not a finite commodity whereby it would be equal if one person didn't take more. It's more like a forest of apple trees, where you can have as many as you are willing to pick. It's not the physical work, it's the mental skills that come into play beyond a certain point. The very best of us make great things happen, and they don't steal their rewards, the consumers of the world pay them because they want those great things.

I would like to ask what you mean by the term "Complimentary roles for wealth creation". We do have methods for that now, such as investing in stocks, which anybody can do- but I'm pretty sure you aren't including that.

Right now, an employee has a vast advantage, and no recognition of it at all. The regulatory requirements on an employer are very extensive, while the requirements on an employee... are non-existent. The employer has everything at risk; the employee nothing other than keeping the job going. Yet he likes to think of his job as a possession, something he owns title to- but in fact his employer is his customer, buying the services he produces, and yet very rarely is seen or treated as a customer. Whether we excel or flounder keeps coming back to attitude, perceptions and ambitions more than anything external to the individual. I can't say what the average person demanding income equality would allow those super-performers to make if they could limit it, but I do know that the concept would do far more damage than good.

This brings us to the consequences that result from levels of motivation. Without question there are those who do because they choose to. Men climb mountains to see if they can, not to grab the gold nugget on the top. I invent things to see if I can make it work, and it may or may not turn our to be marketable. However a great many people are motivated to do no more than necessary to get by, and the level they will tolerate and accept can be as little as a guy sleeping in a cardboard box. So what happens if we give a person living in a ghetto level environment a chance to have something far better? We know, because we have done that. I have done that, been part of it.

Back in the 70's I had a construction business. Our city decided to build a subsidized low income housing project. Several of us specializing in various trades formed an alliance with a lead contractor, and convinced the city to build to a quality standard instead of a low price one. We contracted to build 100 new brick homes, 3 & 4 bedrooms, in- 180 days, start to finish. We finished on time, but by the time the last home was turned over, we had all kind of complaints that didn't make sense. To review this, myself, an architect and a couple of outside contractors did a review. We inspected 10 vacant homes, selected totally at random.
The first had 113 holes in the living room drywall; more all over the house; somebody took a ball bat too it. Then we came to one where the smell knocked people back at the door. A hostile tenant being removed had urinated down the heating vents, defecated in the kitchen sink, and turned up the heat. Another had floors buckling. We found out from a neighbor that the person who had lived there was evicted for selling drugs out of the house; when he left he threw a hose in a window, turned on the water and drove away. Of the 10 houses, all less than 6 months old, only one would have been ready to rent with a normal clean-up. There was a formula used here that started with a person's income, deducted all reasonable expenses, and then required the tenant to pay 1/4 of what was left as rent. The average rent was around $25. This project, like many others around the nation wound up being shut down as unfeasible. Many such projects were demolished due to levels of damage beyond repair. Our houses were repaired and sold on the open public market.

Even when we bend over backwards to raise the standard of living for people in poverty, it seems the majority fail to see a hand-up. They see a hand-out which they believe is a payment on a debt due them, and the fact we pay it validates their perception that we owe it and they are entitled. Of course, it's too small a payment and long overdue- so there is no gratitude, but the expectations grow and often the anger does too. Now this isn't true of everyone in such a position, of course- but it's common enough to define the overall benefit of trying to do for others what they won't do for themselves. Kind of like "No good deed goes unpunished".

These ideas become enablements which allow unmotivated people to avoid the consequences of their own actions, and those consequences are the only effective form of motivation that exist for them. It perpetuates the situation, the multi-generation welfare population. To recognize that, you must know that it is a miserable existence- but it will remain that way until the individual person decides it's not good enough and decides they will have to change it. I can't, you can't- because it is the result of a mind-set, not just economics. Until you an affect the mindset, you fix nothing, even do damage by interfering. I spent a few years teaching that, but quit because of the level of resistance; of people wanting solutions but insisting they fit neatly into what they already believed.

Do I think it's possible to have a nation with little or no poverty? Theoretically, yes. All you have to do is find a way to convince people to alter their mindset. Practically- no. Most good psychologists will tell you that's not going to happen because there is no way to gift it to a person. That leaves us with the concept of accepting and funding a wide-based welfare that crushes spirit, motivations, and self-respect. I simply cannot see any good coming out of that in the long run.

IF you have endured the entire post... my gratitude for your patience and consideration. Hopefully it helps you understand an alternate point of view.

 

As usual, spiritgide hits a homerun. Thank you for your wise contributions to this forum.

Instead, the employer is treated like an enemy. See it every day.

And aside from camping on private property, this guy should be given the freedom to live as he chooses, do-gooders notwithstanding.

"Greed" is often used to denigrate the rich, but what could be more greedy than expecting others to pay your way and giving absolutely nothing in return? What could be more greedy than a person insisting that you give your hard-earned wealth to someone else?

Absolutely.

That pretty much sums up the view from here. spiritgide for President!