US is no longer a democracy...

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Mrs.Lucysnow, May 28, 2014.

  1. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    According to a large study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University the US is no longer a democracy but an Oligarchy.



    There is a global trend of income inequality but the US is moving faster away from democracy than any other developed nation



    So why is it that so many Americans are still pretending they live in a democracy and have sway over their government?

    What are the potential results if this trend continues in the United States?

    *It kind of explains why the US government feels the need of a surveillance state. Bidding their time before the hoi polloi discovers they've lost everything*
     
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  3. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Time to have a revolution and get rid of the "elite".
     
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  5. mathman Valued Senior Member

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    For some reason (I'll leave it to others to speculate), the voters continue to elect people who represent moneyed interests.
     
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  7. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Well, yes. The US has been an undeclared class system almost as long as it's been around. I met a graduate student in a big city I was working in one time; I was describing one of the follies of having served in the army and his reaction was sort of a wordless horror, as if he could barely contemplate such a thing. He wasn't particularly bright and not too well learned, but his family was rich, so... A long way from SPQR, not that that was ever real, anyway.
     
  8. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    They have no choice since both parties represent monied interests. Obama doesn't show any more interest in confronting those powers than Bush. Just look at the superpac debate. Obama first spoke out against superpacs and Citizen United but once it was enacted he went along and formed his own superpac.

    Why anyone would think a political system monopolized by two and only two parties is democratic is beyond me. I mean you can state you are 'independent' but you still only have the choice of two parties. Any third party is forced to go broke before they can even go on the ballot. The system is fixed.

    @Geoff

    Its worse than its ever been. Problem is that this slide which will affect the middle class is fast becoming the status quo. Why is the public slow to react? That's what I find so interesting, the lack of reaction on the part of people. Maybe John Carpenter had it right in "They Live". its like the constitution is a museum piece, Americans are getting poorer, the government is a corporate state government and no one seems to mind. It must be something in the Hot Pockets. I mean do you vote? Why do you bother to vote?
     
  9. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    Thank you Mrs. Snow, but none of this is news to me. And I can guess that it's not really any surprise to you or many of our friends here at SciForum either. I once found a quotation so obscure that I have never been able to locate it again (maybe the folks at MobilExxon had it expunged from the Internet :/). I swear I read once that John Quincy Adams decried that a nation he and the other forefathers had established 'for the people, by the people and of the people' had been commandeered by ' a bunch of stock jobbers'. And how long ago was that if Adams was alive to see it?

    Similarly, in the novel Gorky Park an American policeman is in Soviet Russia is talking to a local cop. They are driving around investigating some murders, and they get lost. The Russian tells the American that his country, if you don't know where you are, then you are not supposed to be there. The American says that in his country they have free maps at gas stations and rest stops, and a million well lit signs on the road telling you how far it is to where you are going and where you have been, but no one ever knows where they hell they are!

    What I see is that I go to Subway where I have the right to choose from nearly infinite possible combinations by which to order a sandwich, Then I go to 31 flavors where there are often more than 31 flavors to choose from including three or four new weekly special flavors, plus the fixings, and I can request any possible combination I want. Then I am too overfed and confused to wonder what my city council is up to, and for whom I should vote. And with that said, I think I have answered the questions you have posed. Oh, did I mention that I grow fatter and more lethargic by the day?
     
  10. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    LOL. So its not the Hot Pockets its the 31 Flavors? Ok. But they do know that eventually even the 31 Flavors will taste like shit since the public have no means to demand quality. Some won't even be able to afford the luxury of 31 Flavors. Historically these scenarios don't end well for the general public. Eventually they wake up poorer with mediocre services living under a heavy boot.

    You seem to think they don't care because they have amusements but I think they can't care because they're impotent (overweight from ice cream and impotent). Oh yeah and there's also a psychotic denial of reality. Even you are blase by the facts. Its like 'yeah yeah I know...' and then no reaction. I blame the tv and its alien signals with its lullaby and goodnight bringing you sweet dreams messages.

    There must be a reason why Americans who propose long cherished values of fairness and democracy not to mention all of the supposed freedoms are suddenly content to go without fairness, democracy and dare I say "freedom".

    Russians didn't have to revolt since they went from complete shut down to a process of opening up their economy before the whole thing fell apart. The opposite is happening in the US. Its going from general freedoms, rights and economic mobility to the lack thereof. I would rather be in the state of the former than the latter.
     
  11. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    Then there's my old dad, born 1926, who said as far back as ten years ago that America was now worse than the Nazi Germany he remembers reading about as a teenager, and his elder brother remembers firsthand from fighting in Europe during World War II. This same uncle of mine, who fought in virtually every battle the Americans fought in that war, died of exasperation when he saw 'the stock jobbers' steal away his life savings and pension in 2009. I was living happily abroad, so I asked my father why he didn't do something about all this. Practically in tears, he answered, What can I do? I'm an old man with no money and a ninth-grade education?'

    I have also read that since 1926, the American worker has made no real wage gains. So in my father's long working life, he got exactly no where!
     
  12. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    I don't think there's anything 'sudden' about it. Freedom, democracy, truth, justice and the American way have always been just words. Fiddle faddle to make us think we live in 'the greatest country on Earth (ever).

    When I returned to America after many years abroad, I saw how it has always been, but I was too much of a child myself to see. Americans lurch from one holiday to another. The year starts off with a wild drunken orgy in paper hats and double 00 glasses to celebrate a contrived passage of another year. Then it's soon time honor that great hero of freedom and democracy Martin Luther King (big sale at Walamrt!) Not interested in civil rights? Watch the Superbowl instead!. Next is Valentine's day. Not to treat you sweet heart to material goods means not only do you not love him or her, you don't love America! And let's not forget the children! The stuff they will need! No worries, it's all on sale for Presidents' day.

    Then there's the decorations and parades and drinking on Saint Patrick's day, Easter Sunday, Veteran's day, graduation from everything and summer holidays, THE FOURTH OF JULY, back-to-school and end of summer sales, labor, day, the World Series, veterans' day, Halloween, thanksgiving and CHRISTMAS. Nearly every month there are plastic, paper, alcoholic, sugar and corn-based and meaty treats that you must buy. Think of what the children will miss if you don't! That is if you're not some goddamned buddhist pinko child-hating commie!

    As Zippy the Pinhead put it, it's a nation of black velvet paintings and soft ice cream.

    Others have called it a nation that went straight from inception to decadence without the usual intervening golden age.
     
  13. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    Is that how he put it? If so, then it's a shame that he didn't understand what he was investing in or how to do it properly.
    That factoid is almost certainly false and as a statement of averages, (assuming your father was average), it is false. It is a misunderstanding of the statistic. The statistic is for the average worker, as a snapshot in time. The average worker doesn't age, but real workers do and real workers make considerably more money when they are older than when they are younger. Again: on average. If he didn't, then he did very much worse than average.
     
  14. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    "Both"? Since when are there only two parties?

    The reason the system doesn't collapse is because the people hold the power. Even if they choose not to wield it, it doesn't change that they have it.
     
  15. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    If earnings rose with inflation the minimum wage would be $21 per hour.

    "Wages have not kept pace with inflation. Real incomes for full-time, private industry workers are down more than 7% since 2006. Therefore, a typical full-time worker's income buys them less than it did in 2006. What makes the drop in wages even more astounding has been the concurrent rise in productivity. Over the same time period, productivity rose more than 10%. People are being paid less for doing more." http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2014...-the-data-time-to-raise-the-u-s-minimum-wage/

    Your father worked all his life and had a savings to lose. You're looking at a younger generation who won't even be able to save at all and will make less money than your father. You are looking to the old and the past and I am asking why those who are presently young and have more to lose are not reacting. The taxes you pay are going into a government who is no longer reinvesting that money in a way that you can benefit.

    By the way some of the world's best revolutions began were won by people with no money and a ninth grade education. Its different now of course. The NDAA and surveillance state makes it a lot different.
     
  16. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    You only have two parties. To run on on a different ticket you would have to be as wealthy as Ross Perot and federal campaign laws help to fix out third parties. In 2012 there were other candidates so why weren't they included in the national debates? As a matter of fact they were so excluded by the media they had to stage their own event and the only one who would air the program was *drum roll* Al Jazeera. It was hosted by Larry King.

    If you believe "the people hold the power" then you are in the grips of what I call "psychotic denial". I say so because the study shows that the people do not hold the power only a very small percentage of the population hold any power. You read the OP and yet you still believe you are in a democracy. You still believe you have sway over your government by use of the ballot when evidence doesn't support this.
     
  17. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    @ Mrs. Lucy Snow:
    I guess you are referring to these fine gentlemen, and those like them:

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    Yet see how they are portrayed my our mainstream media. Look at 'Communist China', which now is said to have a an open market less constrained by law than the European Union. Also note that the rank and file there enjoy a per capita income on par with the good citizens of Zimbabwe.
     
  18. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    Oh hell no. Both of them had more than a ninth grade education. Where is your imagination anyway? Why does a revolution have to result in communism? Why can't a revolution not be the re-establishment of civil liberties and the hanging of speculators? Why can't a revolution be a re-establishment of American ideals?
     
  19. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    That would be fine, and it's great that you remain idealistic, but look at what I said John Adams observed, and wasn't that the greatest revolution ever with a whole posse of geniuses involved?

    I don't know how much education Mao received , but I do recall that when he was 12 he climbed the roof of his home and threatened to burn it if his father didn't send him to school. So you are right on that score.
     
  20. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    Politics starts locally, where very little money is required: The Presidential election isn't the only one.
     
  21. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    Oh I don't think I'm being idealistic. American problems need American solutions and that means being allowed to think outside of ideology.
    Was it idealistic for African-Americans to wage a civil rights movement? Maybe they were better off under jim crow? Maybe they were better off under slavery? I mean considering unemployment in the black community is 19%.
    Maybe the miners shouldn't have gone postal on the coal barons, government, courts and police and wage a strike that lasted almost a year. They should have kept things as they were since unions are now being undermined.
    Maybe the peaceniks shouldn't have wasted their time fighting against the Vietnam War since the country went on to wage the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Is that what you're getting at? Then you are not a pessimist you're apathetic. Right now the American people still have the right to free association and free speech. It should be used while it still lasts.


    @Russ Waters

    If that study is correct and if what Oxfam found is true then policymaking on a local level is no less influenced by monied interests than it is on a federal level. Americans are swept up in identity issues and the false right-left paradigm but they don't actually have any power to make systemic changes.

    For example where is the push on any local, state or federal level by either Right or Left to support say election finance reform?
     
  22. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    What ever became of the other 99% movement with Guy Fawkes mask and bad attitudes? were they all given McD's gift certificates?
     
  23. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    Probably their unemployment ran-out and they started looking for jobs.
     

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