You hit the nail on the head there Thom with your statement about winner takes all capitalism .The guiding principles of our culture are that we all seperate from each other and survival of the fittest add this to an economic system that at its core ,and as its purpose has to make a profit .This we call profit survival mentality.

Humans believe that there is not enough to go around so greed, fierce competition and individualism super-seeds the common good or highest good of all remember life is tough billions live in poverty around the planet .

The dominant forces are wealth equals power so ownership of stuff is called being wealthy .So yes the system is rigged because the rich and powerfull created the system based on what they believed about your cultural story ?

What about changing to a system where people can use the stuff of life without having to own it ?

This would be called a Use and Access economic model as opposed to a power and possessions economy.So the first thing we would do is reduce the economy not try and grow it endlessly ? If we began to share and cooperate with each other and redefine wealth as access to the stuff of life and availability .The western model is absurd training everyone to have there own copy of everything and paying enourmous amounts of money to buy the things they hardly use during the time that they own these items.

Two thirds of the planet would love to have use of many products that we individually own in the west.The easiest way to do this is not try and grow the worlds economy attempting for everyone to to able to buy the same stuff but rather create a new economy that gives everyone access to and use of the same things .

And how good would that be for the Ecology of our dying ecosystem ,fewer consumer items produced per person ,people are generally happy when they can get access to and use the things they feel they need and this is wealth.

Hey it's about time we matured as a species .We are being kept in the dark knowledge is power the new spirituality encourages the movement of power from the hands of the select few to the hands of the many .We need to localise our economies through decentralisation take the power back to we the people .

We need to create lots of little economies not one big one as is the case now. And as the gap between the rich and poor accelatates social system's will break down and civility will disappear .

But Richard, respectfully... how are we the "ordinary" citizens ever going to achieve the sort of collective action you're describing without politicians legislating and enacting the kinds of policies that re-empower us?! Lacking that, how have we a prayer of a chance to influence foreign policy ever again? I think Marc raises excellent points.

Back in the days of the Vietnam War, when we had a bigger, stronger middle class, we were able to mobilize and help put the brakes on that war through the sort of mass movement only within the reach of an educated, prosperous and empowered citizenry. Without public intervention and protest, the Vietnam War could have dragged on much longer and wiped out a few more million people, mostly Vietnamese but with significantly more American casualties than what we had. Back in the 1960s and '70s, this country was not the banana republic we have now. - AIW

One of the absolute truths of history is that revolutionary change (by which I include its nonviolent manifestations, as in the New Deal) has four prerequisites. These are:

(1)-solidarity -- in other words, a unifying ideology, or at the very least a unifying list of grievances from which a unifying ideology can evolve;

(2)-leadership, which includes the supportive organizational structure and discipline;

(3)-mastery of extant technologies, including military technologies;

(4)-the assistance and/or intervention of a significant foreign power.

Today none of these prerequisites exist in the United States -- nor for that matter anywhere else on this planet. Verily, we live in the darkest most hopeless epoch of our species' existence.

Moreover, history proves the absence of even one of these prerequisites is invariably fatal to significant change. Note for example the failed rebellions suppressed by ancient Rome (most notably the Spartacus uprising and wholesale war waged by Boudicca to free Britain), also the innumerable peasant revolts and other popular uprisings (including the French Revolution of 1789) that have been suppressed during the 15 centuries since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

The very few rebellions that succeeded -- the American Revolution of 1776; the Haitian Revolution of 1791; the Russian Revolution of 1917; the temporary successes of the New Deal; the Chinese, Vietnamese and Cuban revolutions of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s -- all did so because they possessed each of the above attributes, particularly (4). The American Revolution succeeded only because of the support of Imperial France; Haiti was aided variously by Britain and France; the Russian Revolution succeeded only because of the support of Imperial Germany; the New Deal was made possible only by the Ruling Class terror of a Communist revolution supported by the Soviet Union; the Chinese, Vietnamese and Cuban revolutions also succeeded only because of Soviet support.

Indeed even the Indian revolution -- the alleged "success" of which is surely debatable given the religious carnage it has fostered -- would not have ended British rule had Gandhi's pacifism not been backed by the Soviet threat of armed insurrection had he failed.

But there is no such force on the planet today, nor will our Wall Street overlords ever allow such a force to arise again. The Soviet Union is dead, most of its vast land mass now ruled by a government more capitalistic and theocratic than humanitarian, and the Chinese Revolution has been so co-opted by capitalism, it is but another mechanism for oppressing the Working Class: note the lesson of Tinanmen Square.

(True; neither the U.S.S.R. nor the People's Republic of China were ever the workers' and peasants' paradises they claimed to be. But their forcefully stated humanitarian principles -- no matter how often they were self-violated -- nevertheless compelled the capitalists to at least camouflage capitalism's innate malevolence.)

That said, let us now consider prerequisites (1) through (3):

The savagely reflexive anti-intellectuality and Ayn Rand moral imbecility and self-obsession with which the U.S. population has been conditioned since the coup of 22 November 1963 makes solidarity unattainable. The consummate Moron Nation anti-intellectuality prohibits the essential tasks of defining grievances and evolving ideology -- note the internal contradictions that would have destroyed the Occupy Movement even without the oppressive forces of the state -- just as the Randite moral imbecility prohibits the empathy that is essential for collective action. Designed and imposed by the most diabolically sophisticated psychologists in human history, this is not a condition that can ever be ameliorated, much less "cured." Analogy to the sociopathic conditioning given Nazi Germans is entirely apt; once a Nazi, always a Nazi. The same is true -- as the nation is demonstrating in its response to atrocities by militarized police against black males -- of racism: once a racist, always a racist. More to the point -- given that Randite moral imbecility is in its purest capitalist form identical to that of the serial killer -- once a serial killer, always a serial killer.

The same conditioning -- particularly anti-intellectuality reinforced by self-obsession -- prohibits the emergence of any effective leadership and thereby also prohibits the evolution of any effective organizational structure or discipline. As with item (1), the prohibitions against item (2) are (save amongst the fast-dwindling members of older generations) the result of conditioning that began at birth and are therefore effectively eternal.

Apropos item (3), there is on the Left a dangerously seductive and ultimately idiotic falsehood the existence of groups like Anonymous and Wiki-leaks demonstrate mastery of technology. But the ugly truth is the relevant technologies -- the technologies that need to be mastered -- are infinitely more alien to us than firearms were to the First Nations peoples of the Americas. There is, for example, no possible defense against the sonic weapons now being employed by militarized police for crowd control. Nor is there any defense against the secret-police reality of the electronic concentration camp the capitalists have already made of this world.

To date, our most fatal error has been to underestimate the intelligence, cunning and mercilessness of our overlords. We are -- and technically have been since 22 November 1963 -- a conquered people. Were our protests to turn into genuine battles, have no doubt the authorities would respond with every weapon in their inconceivably vast arsenal -- tactical nuclear bombs included. We are governed, as I have said before, by moral imbeciles -- uncannily perceptive men and women who have knowingly embraced evil in a manner that has no precedent in our species' experience.

What then are we to do? An environmentalist friend says it best of all: firstly, recognize that any effort toward widespread societal change is literally doomed at birth and is therefore the most useless, pointless, self-defeating sort of grandiosity. Secondly, work in whatever small ways we can at projects that actually help people improve their lives. My friend teaches people how to garden organically; old (74) and physically disabled, I nevertheless volunteer on such projects as I can. (Yes, I am abandoning any larger political involvements as a waste of whatever time I have left). Thirdly, remember this: from many seemingly insignificant self-help projects come precisely the experience of community that (should our species survive the looming wars and ecological debacles, which I frankly doubt), might foster a small-scale, quasi-tribal rebirth of humanitarian values. These were the wellspring of our collective survival and -- once the present world order has collapsed beneath the weight of its own excesses -- could therefore become so again.

Quote RFord:When the working people become so poor that they can no longer support the wealthy by buying their goods and services then the economy will collapse. That is when things will start to turn around for the working class. It doesn't have to happen like that because we can keep it from happening like that by electing those that will stand up to the anti-labor forces. Then the working class will be the dominant class.

RFord ~ I certainly hope you are right. Historically, your ascertains certainly are supported. Unfortunately, in a modern Global economy there are other many foreign markets available to take up the slack of a dwindling US market demand. I pray that I'm wrong; however, since all our good paying jobs went... somewhere... I might imagine that the money that went with them, went with them as well. That money represents demand. If demand is no longer in the US, then we former US workers could not be more 'screwed'. (To coin a phrase.)

In my opinion, the course of action that we must pursue is to overturn "Free Trade" at all costs. This is the last nail in the coffin of our democracy and freedom. Unless we reinstate our import tariffs we are destine to become a third world nation; along with, all the third world perks that go along with it. We must unite and stand up. If we do not stand up together, we will surely fall together.

Until we see what the problem IS (and few do), we will remain ONLY symptom solving. Some symptoms get resolved others don't and new symptoms are always being created. Somtimes the new smptoms are old resolved symptoms returning in a new form. A review of history shows us that.

I havn't been on here that much recently but I have to say it is kinda depressing reading this. It seems you have all given up. What happened to hope and change? Many countries including yours have been a lot worst off and pulled out of it. Living in Alberta Canada home of the oil sands I have to admit I am a little worried myself with oil prices dropping to nothing. I have cut back my spending and are buckling down expecting the worst and hopefully I'll make it through.

In my humble option. One of the reasons the middle class may be shrinking is they have changed. Have you tried to hire anyone lately? There is no good employees left. So anyone who is any good at all excels rapidly through the middle class to the upper class.

Oh well I know by now no one here wants to listen to a far right guy like me so I'll just say happy holidays to you all .

Wow! I'm with Stella Jane and DAnne Mark! But women have always been good at finding hope! Greed has no spiritual power! Some of us are old enough to remember when the Berlin Wall was an enormous fact and the USSR was about to blow us up. And look how far we've come! Yes, the Devil will scream harder before it dissolves in a pile of ashes. Remember your very first Sunday School lesson: God is all-Loving, all-Knowing and all-Powerful. That is enough! Merry Christmas, everybody!

It has been their purpose long before that and they had effected it for most of American history. It's capitalism in its unadulterated form, the New Deal was the anomaly. The self styled capitalist purists and free marketeers - Kochs and such with their dupes and suckasses - of our period pine for those days before the ND.

think it wasn't quite so deliberate. Much of this is the inevitable result of deindustrialization - which is the result of the decline of colonial empire. The oil embargo of 1973, Arab and other oil producing countries nationalizing their oil industries, was the final push to send manufacturing first out from American cities, then, out of the United States in the '70s. Everything then flowed from there.
Cities then became gentrified as manufacturing was the tax base for cities and states and the new tax base had to be property taxes and fines. Jobs were not as good as the manufacturing sector had been well organized (a main reason for the capital flight in the first place) and the service sector was not.
Maybe it was deliberate but it wasn't new. Only what they've been trying to do forever. Just rolling back the New Deal, trying to bring us back to the period of Upton Sinclair novels.

Lorin; If you believe in Jesus and the bible, we will have the
final victory. All that can love, as Jesus has loved us, will have
that victory. The last 2 chapters of the bible are my hope. Get
to know him before it is too late. The end of the this world is
about to start. see psalm 34-8&17,18,19

Hello Loren! Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

I've been calling him President Staus Quobama because I figured anybody that held a job at the home of Milton Freidmans Market Fundamentalism U of Chicago had to be neutered to social realities.