No wonder...

[DeistPaladin]

Thought I'd fill in the gaps you failed to mention. That was the point.

Not sure how those details relate to anything in this discussion. My point was that the French Revolution wasn't a socialist one and neither was the "old regime" a capitalist one and neither was Napoleon an advocate of democracy. Hence, all of this is moot with regard to our discussions over modern political and economic struggles in America.

It seems you have a lot of strange associations in your mind but I may be wrong. You can clarify as you like.

One good thing about a free enterprise capitalist system here in the good ol' U.S. of A. If you don't like the wages you're getting from the guy who makes 30,000 times more than you, there's always another guy that makes 30,000 times more than you who will pay you better. So set your beer down, turn off the NASCAR, get out of your Lazy Boy and go get that job like the rest of the taxpayers who support your beer and NASCAR habits....and don't forget to stop by the gas station to pick up a pack of smokes on your way back, another habit funded by the taxpayers.

And these are some of the strange associations I'm talking about.

I'm a business owner who's worked hard all his life and, in the early part of the last decade I invested my money in what I thought would be a "safe" investment. I fully wiped out all my debt in both the building my business occupies and the condo I was living in.

Little did I know at that time that some very bad people on Wall Street were bundling junk mortgages, slapping "AAA" credit ratings on them and selling them to unsuspecting investors. The music stopped playing in 2008 when the extent to the junk investments was revealed and everyone went scrambling for their chair. The real estate market crashed, along with most of my portfolio. Worse, since I invested in real estate and not stocks, my wealth was all in concrete assets. When my business went through a rough cycle (I cater to the middle class which really took a beating in the economic collapse, plus I'm now competing with China for a slice of the shrunken pie), I could neither sell my holdings nor use them for collateral in any loans (banks really tightened up and said "Oh, you own property free and clear? That's interesting. What else ya got?"). And then my wife's health collapsed because she committed the crime of having asthma and contracting a cold. Luckily, I'm one of the fortunate Americans who has health insurance, so her care was only ruinously expensive instead of unattainable. Funny thing is even after all that, I was still "on paper" a man with a net worth of a half million ...and living paycheck to paycheck barely making minimum payments on maxed-out credit cards. Yeah, it's been a little stressful for the last five years and not because of lack of hard work. One bright spot for me has been Obamacare, which stopped the company I'll refer to as "Health Insurance Bastards Inc." from raping me every year like they usually do.

Things are looking better these days. I've signed a contract to a buyer for my condo. They're buying it for $179 K. I bought it in 2005 for $277 K (K = thousand in business speak, in case you didn't know) and put about $50 K worth of upgrades into it. So hey, I'm losing about $150 K on what I had every reason to think was a "safe investment" but at least I'm finally going to get some needed liquidity.

So you'll understand (actually, no, you probably won't) when I say that some very bad people on Wall Street have effectively stolen $150 K from me and put me through Hell these last five years. They made great profits throwing poison pills into the system and letting someone else (me among others) take the hit. No new regulations have been introduced to prevent that kind of financial malfeasance again, never mind the "perp walk" that I'd like to see those bastards do.

Bernie Madoff made one critical mistake. He stole money from rich and powerful people instead of regular people. That's the only reason he's in jail. Nobody gives a shit when Wall Street steals from people like you and me. It makes me wish there really was a judgment Day where bastards like these might face justice and be accountable for their crimes.

But I'm one of the lucky Americans. I started off in this manufactured financial crisis, one created by Wall Street's financial malfeasance and Washington's complicity, fairly well-to-do so I had room to fall back. My father-in-law was not so lucky. He's worked hard his whole life, ruining his own health today, only to have his job shipped overseas and then his health collapsed. My in-laws went broke and currently live in my basement. He never took a dime in welfare. He didn't sit in his Lazy Boy all day. He didn't drink beer except socially. He's worked long hours his whole life and now has nothing to show for it.

So go ahead and hold on to your delusions that The American Dream still means anything. In reality, in the last 30 years, the rich have gotten fantastically richer. Recent studies have shown the top 1% now takes in nearly a quarter of the total American income, with the next 9% taking another quarter. It's not for lack of hard work by the rest. Worker productivity has significantly risen in that time but wages have remained flat. They're not getting a piece of the pie they are creating, as reflected in productivity numbers.

But there's still social mobility, right? That's what Americans value, don't we? American ideal capitalism is where we enjoy the fruits of our own labor and can rise by our own efforts from rags to riches. So how is that going to happen when the common people have no public education? In the modern market, you can't get anywhere without an education (this is not my grand father's economy anymore)? How can you rise when a collapse in your health or the health of someone you care about can immediately wipe out everything you have?

The GOP likes to scream in shrill tones that liberals and progressives are "socialists". In reality, we're fighting for the very form of capitalism that Americans idealize and keeping the American Dream alive (or, at this point, bringing it back from the dead).