The American mass resemble a bunch of powerless sheep

Landlord Landry · Mar 5, 2011

Karlfranklin said: ↑

You're an imbecile if you think the rich will willingly retreat from exploiting the mass.

From the past 30 years, the wealth of the rich increased 250%, the middle class? 11%. And they're gradually shrinking and disappearing. The corporation executives and the big sharks in wall street made a lot more profits even during the downturn of the economy, and the weak job market is a perfect excuse not to increase the salaries and benefits for the working class.

Do you think the trend is reversible?
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man your post!

glynch · Mar 5, 2011

Karlfranklin said: ↑

They don't resent the rich, they hate the fact that they're not rich;
They don't resent the structure, they hate the fact that they're not closer to the upper end of the structure;
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Have to agree with kfranklin here.

I would add that though they don't hate the rich they hate passionately those poorer than themselves and go through the roof if they stay on unemployment insurance an extra month or get $50/mo too much on welfare or have a kid out of wedlock, eat too much fast food etc. They pride themselves on not envying or hating the very rich as instructed in the media they consume or indoctrinated in in elementary biz school econ.

They also get upset about anyone with roughly their same income but better pensions, health insurance or vacations due to their union. Similarly they hate their counterparts in Western Europe, Austailia etc. who have these things and who did not subjugate themselves to The Holy Market but acquired these benefits through collective action, rather than waiting for trickle down..

Dairy Ashford · Mar 5, 2011

Karlfranklin said: ↑

Spending cuts to education is just one flip of the coin. The key is the decadent culture and loss of the true spirit. The pop culture alludes people to think that "Nerds" are not cool, sexually suppressed, not good at sports and a bunch of other crap. Thus the kids are not properly disciplined, self-indulgent and extremely short-sighted.
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American pop culture is one of the most lucrative and economically competitive products we give to the world. It's also reflective of the greatest communications and commercial infrastructure in history. Remember that education is a means to an economic end; and that if you've got the right demographics there are many more opportunities here to make money without grinding it out in college or even high school.

Pushkin · Mar 5, 2011

Karlfranklin said: ↑

From the past 30 years, the wealth of the rich increased 250%, the middle class? 11%.
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I do not know if those numbers are accurate and I do not disagree that there is a wealth disparity problem, but those types of numbers fail to take into account people who move from the middle class to the wealthy. It is that ability to move up or down in class that has helped to make America great.

FranchiseBlade · Mar 5, 2011

Pushkin said: ↑

I do not know if those numbers are accurate and I do not disagree that there is a wealth disparity problem, but those types of numbers fail to take into account people who move from the middle class to the wealthy. It is that ability to move up or down in class that has helped to make America great.
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True and there is greater opportunity to move from the middle class to becoming wealthy in nations like Canada, France, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Finland and several others.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/10/oecd-uk-worst-social-mobility

rocketsjudoka · Mar 5, 2011

Karlfranklin said: ↑

They're just useful tools to elect those who're against their interests into power. Actually they don't have a choice, because whoever they voted for, it's like peeing into the white snow in the dark night, it might made a difference, but it's hard to tell.

They're fed with white lies that they can change the direction of the country by voting. After being cheated and fooled around again and again, they still haven't waken up. They don't want to.

They think they're free, they are not. They're just happy keeping their belly full. As long as they're not starving, they're not motivated for a real change.

They can't do a damn thing about wall street, the biggest criminal clan in human history. They can't even control how their tax money is used.

Like the majority of the people of the world, they're just slaves of the powerful few.
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There is a lot to what you say but what do you suggest we do about it?

While there is truth to this post I see this just as a statement of despair and cynicism.

thadeus · Mar 5, 2011

Pushkin said: ↑

I do not know if those numbers are accurate and I do not disagree that there is a wealth disparity problem, but those types of numbers fail to take into account people who move from the middle class to the wealthy. It is that ability to move up or down in class that has helped to make America great.
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Understanding Mobility in America

April 26, 2006

This report discusses two aspects of economic mobility in the United States. The first is the question of intergenerational mobility, or the degree to which the economic success of children is independent of the economic status of their parents. A higher level of intergenerational mobility is often interpreted as a sign of greater fairness, or equality of opportunity, in a society.

The second aspect is the short-term question of the amount by which family incomes change from year to year. By studying short-term mobility we can determine whether incomes are rising or falling for families at different points in the income distribution. We can also determine whether the size of these income variations, or the level of annual income volatility, is changing over time. Increased volatility is undesirable to the extent that it represents an increase in economic insecurity.

The key findings relating to intergenerational mobility include the following:

*
Children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percent of the income distribution, versus children of the rich who have about a 22 percent chance.
*
Children born to the middle quintile of parental family income ($42,000 to $54,300) had about the same chance of ending up in a lower quintile than their parents (39.5 percent) as they did of moving to a higher quintile (36.5 percent). Their chances of attaining the top five percentiles of the income distribution were just 1.8 percent.
*
Education, race, health and state of residence are four key channels by which economic status is transmitted from parent to child.
*
African American children who are born in the bottom quartile are nearly twice as likely to remain there as adults than are white children whose parents had identical incomes, and are four times less likely to attain the top quartile.
*
The difference in mobility for blacks and whites persists even after controlling for a host of parental background factors, children’s education and health, as well as whether the household was female-headed or receiving public assistance.
*
After controlling for a host of parental background variables, upward mobility varied by region of origin, and is highest (in percentage terms) for those who grew up in the South Atlantic and East South Central regions, and lowest for those raised in the West South Central and Mountain regions.
*
By international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility: our parents’ income is highly predictive of our incomes as adults. Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Among high-income countries for which comparable estimates are available, only the United Kingdom had a lower rate of mobility than the United States.

Key findings relating to short-run, year-to-year income movements include the following:

*
The overall volatility of household income increased significantly between 1990-91 and 1997-98 and again in 2003-04.
*
Since 1990-91, there has been an increase in the share of households who experienced significant downward short-term mobility. The share that saw their incomes decline by $20,000 or more (in real terms) rose from 13.0 percent in 1990-91 to 14.8 percent in 1997-98 to 16.6 percent in 2003-04.
*
The middle class is experiencing more insecurity of income, while the top decile is experiencing less. From 1997-98 to 2003-04, the increase in downward short-term mobility was driven by the experiences of middle-class households (those earning between $34,510 and $89,300 in 2004 dollars). Households in the top quintile saw no increase in downward short-term mobility, and households in the top decile ($122,880 and up) saw a reduction in the frequency of large negative income shocks.
*
For the middle class, an increase in income volatility has led to an increase in the frequency of large negative income shocks, which may be expected to translate to an increase in financial distress.
*
The median household was no more upwardly mobile in 2003-04, a year when GDP grew strongly, than it was it was during the recession of 1990-91.
*
Upward short-term mobility for those in the bottom quintile has improved since 1990-91, with no significant offsetting increase in downward short-term mobility.
*
Households whose adult members all worked more than 40 hours per week for two years in a row were more upwardly mobile in 1990-91 and 1997-98 than households who worked fewer hours. Yet this was not true in 2003-04, suggesting that people who work long hours on a consistent basis no longer appear to be able to generate much upward mobility for their families.
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http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/b1579981.html

Ever higher society, ever harder to ascend
Whatever happened to the belief that any American could get to the top?

Dec 29th 2004 | washington, dc | from the print edition

*
*

THE United States likes to think of itself as the very embodiment of meritocracy: a country where people are judged on their individual abilities rather than their family connections. The original colonies were settled by refugees from a Europe in which the restrictions on social mobility were woven into the fabric of the state, and the American revolution was partly a revolt against feudalism. From the outset, Americans believed that equality of opportunity gave them an edge over the Old World, freeing them from debilitating snobberies and at the same time enabling everyone to benefit from the abilities of the entire population. They still do.

To be sure, America has often betrayed its fine ideals. The Founding Fathers did not admit women or blacks to their meritocratic republic. The country's elites have repeatedly flirted with the aristocratic principle, whether among the brahmins of Boston or, more flagrantly, the rural ruling class in the South. Yet America has repeatedly succeeded in living up to its best self, and today most Americans believe that their country still does a reasonable job of providing opportunities for everybody, including blacks and women. In Europe, majorities of people in every country except Britain, the Czech Republic and Slovakia believe that forces beyond their personal control determine their success. In America only 32% take such a fatalistic view.

But are they right? A growing body of evidence suggests that the meritocratic ideal is in trouble in America. Income inequality is growing to levels not seen since the Gilded Age, around the 1880s. But social mobility is not increasing at anything like the same pace: would-be Horatio Algers are finding it no easier to climb from rags to riches, while the children of the privileged have a greater chance of staying at the top of the social heap. The United States risks calcifying into a European-style class-based society.
In this special report

The past couple of decades have seen a huge increase in inequality in America. The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think-tank, argues that between 1979 and 2000 the real income of households in the lowest fifth (the bottom 20% of earners) grew by 6.4%, while that of households in the top fifth grew by 70%. The family income of the top 1% grew by 184%—and that of the top 0.1% or 0.01% grew even faster. Back in 1979 the average income of the top 1% was 133 times that of the bottom 20%; by 2000 the income of the top 1% had risen to 189 times that of the bottom fifth.

Thirty years ago the average real annual compensation of the top 100 chief executives was $1.3m: 39 times the pay of the average worker. Today it is $37.5m: over 1,000 times the pay of the average worker. In 2001 the top 1% of households earned 20% of all income and held 33.4% of all net worth. Not since pre-Depression days has the top 1% taken such a big whack.

More dynastic than dynamic

Most Americans see nothing wrong with inequality of income so long as it comes with plenty of social mobility: it is simply the price paid for a dynamic economy. But the new rise in inequality does not seem to have come with a commensurate rise in mobility. There may even have been a fall.

The most vivid evidence of social sclerosis comes from politics. A country where every child is supposed to be able to dream of becoming president is beginning to produce a self-perpetuating political elite. George Bush is the son of a president, the grandson of a senator, and the sprig of America's business aristocracy. John Kerry, thanks to a rich wife, is the richest man in a Senate full of plutocrats. He is also a Boston brahmin, educated at St Paul's, a posh private school, and Yale—where, like the Bushes, he belonged to the ultra-select Skull and Bones society.

Mr Kerry's predecessor as the Democrats' presidential nominee, Al Gore, was the son of a senator. Mr Gore, too, was educated at a posh private school, St Albans, and then at Harvard. And Mr Kerry's main challenger from the left of his party? Howard Brush Dean was the product of the same blue-blooded world of private schools and unchanging middle names as Mr Bush (one of Mr Bush's grandmothers was even a bridesmaid to one of Mr Dean's). Mr Dean grew up in the Hamptons and on New York's Park Avenue.

The most remarkable feature of the continuing power of America's elite—and its growing grip on the political system—is how little comment it arouses. Britain would be in high dudgeon if its party leaders all came from Eton and Harrow. Perhaps one reason why the rise of caste politics raises so little comment is that something similar is happening throughout American society. Everywhere you look in modern America—in the Hollywood Hills or the canyons of Wall Street, in the Nashville recording studios or the clapboard houses of Cambridge, Massachusetts—you see elites mastering the art of perpetuating themselves. America is increasingly looking like imperial Britain, with dynastic ties proliferating, social circles interlocking, mechanisms of social exclusion strengthening and a gap widening between the people who make the decisions and shape the culture and the vast majority of ordinary working stiffs.

It's sticky out there

All this may sound a bit impressionistic. But more and more evidence from social scientists suggests that American society is much “stickier” than most Americans assume. Some researchers claim that social mobility is actually declining. A classic social survey in 1978 found that 23% of adult men who had been born in the bottom fifth of the population (as ranked by social and economic status) had made it into the top fifth. Earl Wysong of Indiana University and two colleagues recently decided to update the study. They compared the incomes of 2,749 father-and-son pairs from 1979 to 1998 and found that few sons had moved up the class ladder. Nearly 70% of the sons in 1998 had remained either at the same level or were doing worse than their fathers in 1979. The biggest increase in mobility had been at the top of society, with affluent sons moving upwards more often than their fathers had. They found that only 10% of the adult men born in the bottom quarter had made it to the top quarter.

The Economic Policy Institute also argues that social mobility has declined since the 1970s. In the 1990s 36% of those who started in the second-poorest 20% stayed put, compared with 28% in the 1970s and 32% in the 1980s. In the 1970s 12% of the population moved from the bottom fifth to either the fourth or the top fifth. In the 1980s and 1990s the figures shrank to below 11% for both decades. The figure for those who stayed in the top fifth increased slightly but steadily over the three decades, reinforcing the sense of diminished social mobility.
Liz, meet the royalsCorbis

Not all social scientists accept the conclusion that mobility is declining. Gary Solon, of the University of Michigan, argues that there is no evidence of any change in social-mobility rates, down or up. But, at the least, most people agree that the dramatic increase in income inequality over the past two decades has not been accompanied by an equally dramatic increase in social mobility.

Take the study carried out by Thomas Hertz, an economist at American University in Washington, DC, who studied a representative sample of 6,273 American families (both black and white) over 32 years or two generations. He found that 42% of those born into the poorest fifth ended up where they started—at the bottom. Another 24% moved up slightly to the next-to-bottom group. Only 6% made it to the top fifth. Upward mobility was particularly low for black families. On the other hand, 37% of those born into the top fifth remained there, whereas barely 7% of those born into the top 20% ended up in the bottom fifth. A person born into the top fifth is over five times as likely to end up at the top as a person born into the bottom fifth.

Jonathan Fisher and David Johnson, two economists at the Bureau of Labour Statistics, looked at inequality and social mobility using measures of both income and consumption. They found that mobility “slightly decreased” in the 1990s. In 1984-90, 56% and 54% of households changed their rankings in terms of income and consumption respectively. In 1994-99, only 52% and 49% changed their rankings.

Two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston analysed family incomes over three decades. They found that 40% of families remained stuck in the same income bracket in the 1990s, compared with 37% of families in the 1980s and 36% in the 1970s. Aaron Bernstein of Business Week points out that, even though the 1990s boom lifted pay rates for low-earners, it did not help them to get better jobs.

There is also growing evidence that America is less socially mobile than many other rich countries. Mr Solon finds that the correlation between the incomes of fathers and sons is higher in the United States than in Germany, Sweden, Finland or Canada. Such cross-national comparisons are rife with problems: different studies use different methods and different definitions of social status. But Americans are clearly mistaken if they believe they live in the world's most mobile society.

Back to the 1880s

This is not the first time that America has looked as if it was about to succumb to what might be termed the British temptation. America witnessed a similar widening of the income gap in the Gilded Age. It also witnessed the formation of a British-style ruling class. The robber barons of the late 19th century sent their children to private boarding schools and made sure that they married the daughters of the old elite, preferably from across the Atlantic. Politics fell into the hands of the members of a limited circle—so much so that the Senate was known as the millionaires' club.

Yet the late 19th and early 20th centuries saw a concerted attempt to prevent America from degenerating into a class-based society. Progressive politicians improved state education. Philanthropists—many of them the robber barons reborn in new guise—tried to provide ladders to help the lads-o'-parts (Andrew Carnegie poured millions into free libraries). Such reforms were motivated partly out of a desire to do good works and partly out of a real fear of the implications of class-based society. Teddy Roosevelt advocated an inheritance tax because he thought that huge inherited fortunes would ruin the character of the republic. James Conant, the president of Harvard in 1933-53, advocated radical educational reform—particularly the transformation of his own university into a meritocracy—in order to prevent America from producing an aristocracy.

Pushy parents, driven brats

The evils that Roosevelt and Conant worried about are clearly beginning to reappear. But so far there are few signs of a reform movement. Why not?

The main reason may be a paradoxical one: because the meritocratic revolution of the first half of the 20th century has been at least half successful. Members of the American elite live in an intensely competitive universe. As children, they are ferried from piano lessons to ballet lessons to early-reading classes. As adolescents, they cram in as much after-school coaching as possible. As students, they compete to get into the best graduate schools. As young professionals, they burn the midnight oil for their employers. And, as parents, they agonise about getting their children into the best universities. It is hard for such people to imagine that America is anything but a meritocracy: their lives are a perpetual competition. Yet it is a competition among people very much like themselves—the offspring of a tiny slither of society—rather than among the full range of talents that the country has to offer.

The second reason is that America's engines of upward mobility are no longer working as effectively as they once were. The most obvious example lies in the education system. Upward mobility is increasingly determined by education. The income of people with just a high-school diploma was flat in 1975-99, whereas that of people with a bachelor's degree rose substantially, and that of people with advanced degrees rocketed.
Roosevelt's warnings go unheededCorbis

The education system is increasingly stratified by social class, and poor children have a double disadvantage. They attend schools with fewer resources than those of their richer contemporaries (school finances are largely determined by local property taxes). And they have to deal with the legacy of what Michael Barone, a conservative commentator, has labelled “soft America”. Soft America is allergic to introducing accountability and measurement in education, particularly if it takes the form of merit pay for successful teachers or rewards for outstanding pupils. Dumbed-down schools are particularly harmful to poor children, who are unlikely to be able to compensate for them at home.

America's great universities are increasingly reinforcing rather than reducing these educational inequalities. Poorer students are at a huge disadvantage, both when they try to get in and, if they are successful, in their ability to make the most of what is on offer. This disadvantage is most marked in the elite colleges that hold the keys to the best jobs. Three-quarters of the students at the country's top 146 colleges come from the richest socio-economic fourth, compared with just 3% who come from the poorest fourth (the median family income at Harvard, for example, is $150,000). This means that, at an elite university, you are 25 times as likely to run into a rich student as a poor one.

One reason for this is government money. The main federal programme supporting poorer students is the Pell grant: 90% of such grants go to families with incomes below $41,000. But the federal government has been shifting resources from Pell grants to other forms of aid to higher education. Student loans are unrelated to family resources. Federal tax breaks for higher education benefit the rich. State subsidies for higher education benefit rich and poor alike. At the same time, colleges are increasingly using financial aid to attract talented students away from competitors rather than to help the poor.

Another reason may be “affirmative action”—programmes designed to help members of racial minorities. These are increasingly used by elite universities, in the belief that race is a reasonable proxy for social disadvantage, which it may not be. Flawed as it may be, however, this kind of affirmative action is much less pernicious than another practised by many universities: “legacy preferences”, a programme for the children of alumni—as if privileged children were not already doing well enough out of the education system.

In most Ivy League institutions, the eight supposedly most select universities of the north-east, “legacies” make up between 10% and 15% of every class. At Harvard they are over three times more likely to be admitted than others. The students in America's places of higher education are increasingly becoming an oligarchy tempered by racial preferences. This is sad in itself, but even sadder when you consider the extraordinary role that the same universities—particularly Conant's Harvard—played in promoting meritocracy in the first half of the 20th century.

All snakes, no ladders

America's great companies are also becoming less successful agents of upward mobility. The years from 1880 to 1960 were a period of great corporate behemoths. These produced a new class of Americans—professional managers. They built elaborate internal hierarchies, and also accepted their responsibilities to both their workers and their local communities. But since the 1970s the pressure of competition has forced these behemoths to become much leaner—to reduce their layers, contract out some activities, and shift from full-time to part-time employees. It has became harder for people to start at the bottom and rise up the company hierarchy by dint of hard work and self-improvement. And it has also become harder for managers to keep their jobs in a single company.

There are a few shafts of sun on the horizon. George Bush's No Child Left Behind Act tries to use a mixture of tests and punishments for lousy schools to improve the performance of minority children. Senator Edward Kennedy bangs the drum against legacy preferences. But the bad news outdoes the good. The Republicans, by getting rid of inheritance tax, seem hell-bent on ignoring Teddy Roosevelt's warnings about the dangers of a hereditary aristocracy. The Democrats are more interested in preferment for minorities than building ladders of opportunity for all.

In his classic “The Promise of American Life”, Herbert Croly noted that “a democracy, not less than a monarchy or an aristocracy, must recognise political, economic, and social distinctions, but it must also withdraw its consent whenever these discriminations show any tendency to excessive endurance.” So far Americans have been fairly tolerant of economic distinctions. But that tolerance may not last for ever, if the current trend towards “excessive endurance” is not reversed.
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http://www.economist.com/node/3518560/print

Note that both of these articles were written and based on studies that took place before the current economic crisis, which has clearly made things worse in terms of social mobility.

Social mobility is more of a myth now than it has ever been before.

dmc89 · Mar 5, 2011

rocketsjudoka said: ↑

There is a lot to what you say but what do you suggest we do about it?

While there is truth to this post I see this just as a statement of despair and cynicism.
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If you know things are bad, educate others. Don't shy away from "oh it's not polite to talk about those things in public, dear".

Within your circle of friends, get each and every one of them to vote. If you have influential contacts, use their support as a platform to get behind a political candidate. Donate to that person's campaign, and get involved.

Besides voting and protesting (really hard to pull off successfully nowadays, you need charisma and popularity), there's less and less ways for Americans to effectively voice their opinions.

Either this or violence.

MoonDogg · Mar 5, 2011

Pushkin · Mar 6, 2011

thadeus said: ↑

Social mobility is more of a myth now than it has ever been before.
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I don't think I would call it a myth since I certainly moved up significantly from my parents, but it does involve luck and effort.

Deji McGever · Mar 6, 2011

Pushkin said: ↑

I don't think I would call it a myth since I certainly moved up significantly from my parents, but it does involve luck and effort.
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You are a small sample size.

pgabriel · Mar 6, 2011

social mobility is harder because the top is saturated. americans are more wealthy particularly because advanced jobs involving education are filled more and more. in other words, when your parents became engineers, there were no engineers, when they became accountants, there were no accountants. no competition to get in these jobs is harder because there are a lot more educated people. and lets not even discuss the manufacturing jobs that don't require college education. how many hs graduates are there to fill those jobs.

the key for america as always is an advancing economy that creates more jobs.

FranchiseBlade · Mar 6, 2011

Pushkin said: ↑

I don't think I would call it a myth since I certainly moved up significantly from my parents, but it does involve luck and effort.
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It's certainly possible to move upward. It isn't easy, and there is more upward mobility in nations like Canada Denmark, Canada, France and Spain than in the U.S.

Karlfranklin · Mar 10, 2011

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/03/09/national/a154928S03.DTL&tsp=1

World's richest are almost $1 trillion richer

By The Associated Press

(03-09) 15:49 PST , (AP) --

The global ranks of billionaires have added 199 people, but none came close to unseating Mexico's Carlos Slim at the top.

The world's richest man added $20.5 billion to his coffers in the past year, putting his total fortune at $74 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

Forbes counts 1,210 billionaires with a combined wealth of $4.5 trillion. That's up from $3.6 trillion last year.

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corp. and now a fulltime philanthropist, is No. 2 on the list with $56 billion. Investor Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway is third.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, saw his net worth more than triple to $13.5 billion, earning him the No. 52 spot.

dmc89 · Mar 10, 2011

Karlfranklin said: ↑

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/03/09/national/a154928S03.DTL&tsp=1

World's richest are almost $1 trillion richer
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It's pitiful to observe how many people were discussing this at lunch yesterday at the client's headquarters. The wonder, hope, and envy in their eyes that one day they too could be billionaires was easy to see.

If there was a way to measure the dirty tactics people pull on one another to climb the corporate ladder, anyone would've seen a surge after that list came out.

Do the higher ups ever laugh at those down below, or are they just as preoccupied with 'winning' the rat race to even bother?

basso · Mar 10, 2011

Heyyyyyyyy, Everybody!
won't you just look around?
Can't anybody see
just what's goin' down?

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="510" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/B7DEwnN3FqM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Karlfranklin · Mar 14, 2011

Now stop the evolution-creation, gays, black raping, gun rights and republican-democratic nonsense. Let's look at the real issue of this country.

Another Inside Job

Count me among those who were glad to see the documentary “Inside Job” win an Oscar. The film reminded us that the financial crisis of 2008, whose aftereffects are still blighting the lives of millions of Americans, didn’t just happen — it was made possible by bad behavior on the part of bankers, regulators and, yes, economists.

What the film didn’t point out, however, is that the crisis has spawned a whole new set of abuses, many of them illegal as well as immoral. And leading political figures are, at long last, showing some outrage. Unfortunately, this outrage is directed, not at banking abuses, but at those trying to hold banks accountable for these abuses.

The immediate flashpoint is a proposed settlement between state attorneys general and the mortgage servicing industry. That settlement is a “shakedown,” says Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama. The money banks would be required to allot to mortgage modification would be “extorted,” declares The Wall Street Journal. And the bankers themselves warn that any action against them would place economic recovery at risk.

All of which goes to confirm that the rich are different from you and me: when they break the law, it’s the prosecutors who find themselves on trial.

To get an idea of what we’re talking about here, look at the complaint filed by Nevada’s attorney general against Bank of America. The complaint charges the bank with luring families into its loan-modification program — supposedly to help them keep their homes — under false pretenses; with giving false information about the program’s requirements (for example, telling them that they had to default on their mortgages before receiving a modification); with stringing families along with promises of action, then “sending foreclosure notices, scheduling auction dates, and even selling consumers’ homes while they waited for decisions”; and, in general, with exploiting the program to enrich itself at those families’ expense.

The end result, the complaint charges, was that “many Nevada consumers continued to make mortgage payments they could not afford, running through their savings, their retirement funds, or their children’s education funds. Additionally, due to Bank of America’s misleading assurances, consumers deferred short-sales and passed on other attempts to mitigate their losses. And they waited anxiously, month after month, calling Bank of America and submitting their paperwork again and again, not knowing whether or when they would lose their homes.”

Still, things like this only happen to losers who can’t keep up their mortgage payments, right? Wrong. Recently Dana Milbank, the Washington Post columnist, wrote about his own experience: a routine mortgage refinance with Citibank somehow turned into a nightmare of misquoted rates, improper interest charges, and frozen bank accounts. And all the evidence suggests that Mr. Milbank’s experience wasn’t unusual.

Notice, by the way, that we’re not talking about the business practices of fly-by-night operators; we’re talking about two of our three largest financial companies, with roughly $2 trillion each in assets. Yet politicians would have you believe that any attempt to get these abusive banking giants to make modest restitution is a “shakedown.” The only real question is whether the proposed settlement lets them off far too lightly.

What about the argument that placing any demand on the banks would endanger the recovery? There’s a lot to be said about that argument, none of it good. But let me emphasize two points.

First, the proposed settlement only calls for loan modifications that would produce a greater “net present value” than foreclosure — that is, for offering deals that are in the interest of both homeowners and investors. The outrageous truth is that in many cases banks are blocking such mutually beneficial deals, so that they can continue to extract fees. How could ending this highway robbery be bad for the economy?

Second, the biggest obstacle to recovery isn’t the financial condition of major banks, which were bailed out once and are now profiting from the widespread perception that they’ll be bailed out again if anything goes wrong. It is, instead, the overhang of household debt combined with paralysis in the housing market. Getting banks to clear up mortgage debts — instead of stringing families along to extract a few more dollars — would help, not hurt, the economy.

In the days and weeks ahead, we’ll see pro-banker politicians denounce the proposed settlement, asserting that it’s all about defending the rule of law. But what they’re actually defending is the exact opposite — a system in which only the little people have to obey the law, while the rich, and bankers especially, can cheat and defraud without consequences.
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bloop · Mar 14, 2011

pouhe said: ↑

American individuals may seem like sheep, but collectively we go to the moon, split the atom, beat Nazis and invent entire industries and technologies from scratch.
Click to expand...

No unfortunately that's the elite few too. You know, the industrialists, scientists and explorers of yesterday that we now collectively name polluters, eggheads and exploiters.

The main thing about democracy is that it is equivalent to having a fuse in an electrical transformer. It doesn't actually help conduct electricity any better but provides a way to deal with the surge in anger in the electorate without blowing out the entire system. Democracy doesn't have to work any better than a dictatorship, but in a Democracy people feel like they can look forward to a change, which keeps them off the streets.

All that other **** you guys are b****ing about is about human nature, not America or Democracy. People have an evolutionary propensity to be sheep, to submit to authority. Those with a small advantage have an evolutionary drive to leverage that small advantage into a bigger one... save under the influence of religion, ethics or culture that channels that drive in more socially conscientious way. In the US, the trend has been the deliberate ruination of common religion and an increasing emphasis on tribal identity (Liberal, Conservative, Black, Gay, Jew, White, Asian, Atheist etc).

Most of us are sheep. There is nothing wrong with that. Being sheep is decent social strategy at least as sheep you can feel like you're part of the "winning" group and by submitting you get access to whatever resources the powerful have set aside for you. The alternative is to be excluded from that group and be on your own, which most men do not have the moral strength or practical resources to do.

American pop culture is one of the most lucrative and economically competitive products we give to the world.
Click to expand...

Again only a tiny fraction of the most elite get rich from pop culture. In the case of music even the artists themselves don't end up with much money except for the very very top (the record labels charge them for everything: promotion, production etc). The people getting rich are a small tribal cabal of producers, agents, executives and their small pool of fattened cattle they live off of: the artists they choose.

Phillyrocket · Mar 14, 2011

pgabriel said: ↑

the key for america as always is an advancing economy that creates more jobs.
Click to expand...

Our advancing economy is one towards "creative destruction." Basically any new innovation kills the jobs for the previous now outdated model. Problem is the new jobs that are created are not as numerous as the previous. We are automating ourselves out of the workforce. Think how many jobs will be lost when we go completely digital and you no longer buy CDs, DVDs, or video games discs? No blue collar jobs to create, package, or distribute you just download what you want with nothing tangible.

In an ideal society the more efficient you become the less you work. Well we've become more efficient but all of the wonderful profits of that innovation are stranded in a handful of corporations and extremely wealthy people.

We should be celebrating that we are more efficient. We should be all working less hours at higher salaries and spending more time with our families. Instead the median wage has FALLEN over the last 30 years while corporate profits and the wealth distribution have gone completely out of wack. Until trickle down comes to fruition this will continue to get worse.

As for the original poster. You are right. However you must convince an extremely large, uneducated and scared segment of the population to stop supporting legislation that is counter to their interests like tax cuts for the rich.

Good luck with that.

bloop · Mar 14, 2011

We haven't become more efficient. It's simply that what was once accomplished by expending human or animal energy is now accomplished by expending the stored biochemical energy of ancient plants and organisms in coal and oil.

If anything we've become less efficient and more wasteful. At one time an entire family would wash up using 1 bucket of well water, now one average person leaves the tap running for 20 gallons of wasted water just brushing their teeth and washing their faces twice a day. The computing power you use one day in your cell phone would have run all the fight controls to have gotten Apollo 13 to the moon and back.

The average American has enough that they live with more convenience and luxury than any other civilization in the history of the world. I can't understand what logical principle dictates that the poor deserve an equal share of the profits. I mean I guess if you were Christian and believed that all things come from God and that everyone is equal in the eyes of the Creator then it's one thing. Or if you were Greek and believed in a communal entity that supercedes the individual. We don't have that bull**** in the US. It's you and maybe the tribal group you belong to that you care about.

The rich already pay most of the taxes and almost half of the poor dont pay anything. How much more is one group supposed to subsidize another group simply because there's more of the other?

Again most of us are sheep. And that's the position that most of us were meant to be in. Those who are capable of more do more. What is the problem with it.

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