Cynical or hypocritical or cowardly or ineffectual establishment corporate Democrats have facilitated collapse across the board. Their response to DSA or social democracy-leaning candidates suggests they intend to stay the course. Out with them all.
Thom, this is one of the clearest explanations I have read of why so many Americans feel that something fundamental has been taken from them.
The American Dream did not simply fade through forces nobody could control. Over several decades, wages stopped reflecting productivity, unions lost their bargaining power, housing and education became increasingly unaffordable, healthcare began bankrupting families, and an astonishing share of our nation’s wealth accumulated at the very top.
But perhaps your most important point is what happened to the resulting anger. Instead of allowing working people to recognize their shared economic interests, powerful political and media forces redirected that anger toward immigrants, minorities, women, and fellow Americans with different political beliefs. People who should have been standing together were encouraged to blame one another.
That strategy does more than protect concentrated wealth. It divides citizens and weakens the democratic institutions through which peaceful reform must occur.
Ultimately, the only peaceful way we can take our country back is through elections that Americans across the political spectrum can believe in. Too many citizens have become discouraged or stopped participating because they no longer trust that their voices matter. Our comparatively low voter participation among democratic nations should concern every American, regardless of party.
We will never agree on every candidate or policy, but we should be able to agree on this: voting must remain secret, counting must be public, and election results must be transparent and publicly verifiable. Trust cannot be demanded. It must be earned through verification.
Thank you, Thom, for documenting this history so clearly. People should read this chapter, examine the numbers for themselves, and share it widely.
I was 22 when I bought my first house. I assumed the loan on a two br, one bath, rancher with carport from a Staff Sergeant who had used his VA loan to acquire the house. Price $9,000 that same house is $240,000 today.
I was 39 years old when I bought my 2nd house, three BR,one bath with garage, for $35,000 while it was still being built. I chose the color, the rugs and had them insert footings for the patio roof, which I would build.. Cost today $250,000 or more.
I bought this property in 2001, 5 acres, 5 buildings, in a depressed sale, as the previous owner, had allowed tenants to build a meth lab inside a travel trailer in the barn. Price $240,000. Market value over $1.5 million, tax valuation over $650,000
I see claptrap condo's (in reality apartments) and town houses, all made of inferior products and cheap, unskilled labor, go for $600,000 and higher, and they don't even own the land and are under the dictatorship of an HOA.
My brand new 1965 Mustang cost $2,000 todays Mustang is a computer on wheels and costs over $60,000. The 2013 Chrysler Town and Country, which cost me $31,000 is now over $47,000 and called a Pacifica
I owned a 1970 Maverick, which I drove for 13 years, back and forth across the country and down the Pan American highway to Panama. I carried pliers and a flat bladed screwdriver as my tool kit, did all of my own maintenance, including changing brakes and spark plugs, dropping the gas tank.
In March I bought a 2026 Maverick, pick up (not even the same type of vehicle as the 1970) it is a computer on wheels, and I still don't know most of the functions. I had to pay $27 for an owners manual, that even told me how many quarts of oil. the manual that came wit it, was about the computer display. Indeed it is a computer on wheels and there is no way that my local mechanic can do anything but change oil, filters and tires.
It is a different world,not mine. In my world you could be thrifty, save, have a future over which you had a modicum of control.
Today, you are born mortgaged to private equity, investors, the Broligarchy, financiers and the petro cabal.
And trump calls this the 'golden age???? I wish these figures were given more plainly to the MAGAs who are sooo thrilled w/trump and all he's doing!! What they don't understand is how much this war w/Iran is costing them!!! It won't be the oligarchs that struggle -- I understand trump's sons have shares of all sorts of war stuff and they will make $$billions on it while regular Americans send their sons and daughters to war because trump says so.
"Perhaps most grotesque, check out wealth concentration. In 1980, the top 1 percent owned about 20 percent of all wealth. Today, they own over 35 percent. The top 0.1 percent, one in a thousand Americans, owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent of all Americans combined. Just three white men own more wealth than the entire bottom half of Americans."
It could be that the ball was dropped before 1980 when "...the top 1% owned about 20% off all wealth". That might have been the time to question why so few had so much wealth. That is no less a mind-boggling statistic. What pathological conditions had to exist to allow such an imbalance? How was it missed that any individual could garner so much money and therefore power and control over the rest of the population in what was reputed to be a fair, just, and approximately equal society? We were all asleep at the wheel, apparently.
"this is one of the clearest explanations I have read of why so many Americans feel that something fundamental has been taken from them"
Over and over, again and again - the voters in Red MAGA America VOTED FOR ALL THE PEOPLE WHO ENACT ALL THIS BS and then claim foul. This voting sickness seems now a genetic fact. This rabies infested lunacy is what has to be overcome but I fear only a direct experience, over and over again, is what will be necessary for the RED MAGA people to reevaluate their position. But the rest of us will experience it also.
Cynical or hypocritical or cowardly or ineffectual establishment corporate Democrats have facilitated collapse across the board. Their response to DSA or social democracy-leaning candidates suggests they intend to stay the course. Out with them all.
Out with them all really is the final answer.
Thom, this is one of the clearest explanations I have read of why so many Americans feel that something fundamental has been taken from them.
The American Dream did not simply fade through forces nobody could control. Over several decades, wages stopped reflecting productivity, unions lost their bargaining power, housing and education became increasingly unaffordable, healthcare began bankrupting families, and an astonishing share of our nation’s wealth accumulated at the very top.
But perhaps your most important point is what happened to the resulting anger. Instead of allowing working people to recognize their shared economic interests, powerful political and media forces redirected that anger toward immigrants, minorities, women, and fellow Americans with different political beliefs. People who should have been standing together were encouraged to blame one another.
That strategy does more than protect concentrated wealth. It divides citizens and weakens the democratic institutions through which peaceful reform must occur.
Ultimately, the only peaceful way we can take our country back is through elections that Americans across the political spectrum can believe in. Too many citizens have become discouraged or stopped participating because they no longer trust that their voices matter. Our comparatively low voter participation among democratic nations should concern every American, regardless of party.
We will never agree on every candidate or policy, but we should be able to agree on this: voting must remain secret, counting must be public, and election results must be transparent and publicly verifiable. Trust cannot be demanded. It must be earned through verification.
Thank you, Thom, for documenting this history so clearly. People should read this chapter, examine the numbers for themselves, and share it widely.
—John R. Brakey
The Cassandra Series: Breaking Apollo’s Curse
I was 22 when I bought my first house. I assumed the loan on a two br, one bath, rancher with carport from a Staff Sergeant who had used his VA loan to acquire the house. Price $9,000 that same house is $240,000 today.
I was 39 years old when I bought my 2nd house, three BR,one bath with garage, for $35,000 while it was still being built. I chose the color, the rugs and had them insert footings for the patio roof, which I would build.. Cost today $250,000 or more.
I bought this property in 2001, 5 acres, 5 buildings, in a depressed sale, as the previous owner, had allowed tenants to build a meth lab inside a travel trailer in the barn. Price $240,000. Market value over $1.5 million, tax valuation over $650,000
I see claptrap condo's (in reality apartments) and town houses, all made of inferior products and cheap, unskilled labor, go for $600,000 and higher, and they don't even own the land and are under the dictatorship of an HOA.
My brand new 1965 Mustang cost $2,000 todays Mustang is a computer on wheels and costs over $60,000. The 2013 Chrysler Town and Country, which cost me $31,000 is now over $47,000 and called a Pacifica
I owned a 1970 Maverick, which I drove for 13 years, back and forth across the country and down the Pan American highway to Panama. I carried pliers and a flat bladed screwdriver as my tool kit, did all of my own maintenance, including changing brakes and spark plugs, dropping the gas tank.
In March I bought a 2026 Maverick, pick up (not even the same type of vehicle as the 1970) it is a computer on wheels, and I still don't know most of the functions. I had to pay $27 for an owners manual, that even told me how many quarts of oil. the manual that came wit it, was about the computer display. Indeed it is a computer on wheels and there is no way that my local mechanic can do anything but change oil, filters and tires.
It is a different world,not mine. In my world you could be thrifty, save, have a future over which you had a modicum of control.
Today, you are born mortgaged to private equity, investors, the Broligarchy, financiers and the petro cabal.
And trump calls this the 'golden age???? I wish these figures were given more plainly to the MAGAs who are sooo thrilled w/trump and all he's doing!! What they don't understand is how much this war w/Iran is costing them!!! It won't be the oligarchs that struggle -- I understand trump's sons have shares of all sorts of war stuff and they will make $$billions on it while regular Americans send their sons and daughters to war because trump says so.
The Numbers Don't Lie... which explains Trump's aversion to them.
"Perhaps most grotesque, check out wealth concentration. In 1980, the top 1 percent owned about 20 percent of all wealth. Today, they own over 35 percent. The top 0.1 percent, one in a thousand Americans, owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent of all Americans combined. Just three white men own more wealth than the entire bottom half of Americans."
It could be that the ball was dropped before 1980 when "...the top 1% owned about 20% off all wealth". That might have been the time to question why so few had so much wealth. That is no less a mind-boggling statistic. What pathological conditions had to exist to allow such an imbalance? How was it missed that any individual could garner so much money and therefore power and control over the rest of the population in what was reputed to be a fair, just, and approximately equal society? We were all asleep at the wheel, apparently.
"this is one of the clearest explanations I have read of why so many Americans feel that something fundamental has been taken from them"
Over and over, again and again - the voters in Red MAGA America VOTED FOR ALL THE PEOPLE WHO ENACT ALL THIS BS and then claim foul. This voting sickness seems now a genetic fact. This rabies infested lunacy is what has to be overcome but I fear only a direct experience, over and over again, is what will be necessary for the RED MAGA people to reevaluate their position. But the rest of us will experience it also.