The Ladder is Broken

[FayeforCure]

tacachale, I almost always agree with pretty much everything you say, but come on.  Fetishization?  Comparison by a European (I believe Faye has dual citizenship? or did at some point) isnt Fetishizing.

We make better films than the Europeans, (at least the Californians do) and some of their countries are bound to do education better than we do.

But claiming that you as a Citizen of the United States have any room to get judgemental about colonization with Europe in general seems a bit myopic.

Thanks Stephen.

Here is my timeline:

1980, came to the US after completing my free masters degree program in Economics at the University of Amsterdam
1996, became a US citizen
2003, Netherlands allows dual citizenship, but only for women who were married to a US citizen at the time they gave up their Dutch citizenship ( how discriminatory to the unmarried women!!!)

2011, my 17 year old daughter is applying for renewal of her US passport and getting a Dutch passport at the Orlando consulate............she has dual citizenship. Dutch citizenship is transferred through the mother or father ( I was still Dutch at the time of her birth)..........not by being born in the Netherlands.

[FayeforCure]

^On the other hand, why do people promote the practices of comparatively homogeneous and exclusive cultures as something to emulate in our diverse and immigration-dependent society?

I agree with Faye, for instance, on the for-profit college issue. As a student of the colonial period, I disagree with the fetishization of Europe.

Not sure I see anything wrong with attempting to emulate societies who succeed in education, health, transportation, social services, 'happiness' levels, birth mortality, et cetera, regardless of homogeneous or not. This isn't a European fetish. It's comparing facts to better our own society.

So True!

Why re-invent the wheel when other western societies have gone through similar developments but done better at maintaining the general wel-fare of their people.

Remember, jobs were off-shored in Europe as well.

[ben says]

This discussion reminds me of '06 when the Louisiana Corp of Engineers took a state sponsored trip to the Netherlands to learn how their levee system worked in order to benefit the City of New Orleans post-Katrina. I remember the 'fetishization' arguments that were hurled their way after that trip...

[FayeforCure]

How Income inequality became our defining problem:

Occupy Wall Street celebrated its two-month anniversary with large demonstrations in New York and across the country. Some cities had evicted OWS from the parks in which they had been camping.

What do OWSers want? Why should the public be concerned? What would be a proper response? I have found OWS participants to be politically diverse; most were not affiliated with a party, although Democrats, Republicans and independents were represented. I found young people and older people shared a similar view. The common bond a was growing awareness that the economic hand dealt to the vast majority of Americans was the equivalent of the "short straw." The once-prevalent belief that things will get better at least for "my kids" was fast fading. In other words, the American dream was more of an illusion than a reality.

America now seems to work primarily for the superrich. There are no readily accessible pathways for the rest of us to climb the economic ladder. Even people who have been steadily employed have found that during the past three decades they have at best stood still. There have been well-documented shifts in the wealth to the top 1 percent of Americans.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analysis of income and wealth trends dramatically shows the following:

America's top tax brackets have steadily been lowered. In 1945, the top rate was 66.4 percent. By 1955 it had fallen to 55.3 percent. The Reagan tax cuts lowered the top rate to 47.7 percent. The Bush tax cuts reduced it to about 35 percent. These massive tax cuts account in large part for why the incomes of the top 1 percent have soared.

A dramatic change has occurred in the proportion of taxes paid by varying sources. Corporate taxes used to constitute 25 percent of all federal revenues but have fallen to 10 percent despite incredibly high corporate profits (caused by loopholes). Individual taxes as a percent of the total revenues have remained between 40 percent and 50 percent. Payroll taxes jumped from less than 10 percent to more than 40 percent. The burden has clearly shifted from Wall Street to Main Street and from the wealthy to the middle class and to the poor.

The same CBO report shows that from 1979 to the present, average after-tax income went up less than 10 percent for the bottom 20 percent, but income of the top 1 percent shot up more than 200 percent!

This division of income is not sustainable in the long run because it is eroding the nation's middle class. The people most responsible for retail buying simply will lack the resources to power demand. One of the most quoted axioms in our political lexicon is, "It is the economy stupid." It should be updated to: "It is the income inequality, stupid."

Not surprisingly, RepubliCANTS political leaders are widely mischaracterizing OWS. Such leaders as Eric Cantor, Peter King and Newt Gingrich equate them to dirty hippies. Worse is a plan by a Republican-affiliated lobbying firm by the name of Clarke, Lytle, Geduldig and Cranford to have the American Bankers Association pay $850,000 to fund a campaign to discredit OWS. The firm has historical ties to John Boehner, the House speaker.

This is more than dirty tricks. It is more like an organized effort to keep the middle class hanging by the thumbs while corporations and the 1 percent devour the country. What should have happened is that the supercommittee tasked to find a minimum of $1.2 trillion worth of budget deficit reductions should not apply any further burden to the poor and the middle class. It should raise revenues by raising corporate taxes and income taxes on the superrich. Let's level the playing field. Instead, the committee announced, "No deal!"

That means the sequestration sequences of automatic cuts will take place. That means more misery to society.

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/nov/27/edward-white-occupy-wall-street-crowd-makes-good/