How America’s Quality of Life Imploded

[Follows link]

> "a blockbuster study released Monday by the relief charity Feeding America ... involved interviews with 60,000 people whose households are served by the charity."

This cites a source which cites a survey of people served by an anti-poverty charity, and finds they suffer from poverty. Then he restates it incorrectly, falsely stating that it applies to 66% of all Americans. This is a major distortion, and it cuts right to the central point of the article.

1/ US is left relatively unscathed after WW2 becoming the remaining superpower.

2/Unearned power without the corresponding sense of responsibility led to unsoohosticated methods of locking in interest. Domination oriented. Assassinating other countries leaders.

3/To rationalize the disproportionate wealth and actions due to innate "just-world" beliefs the culture evolves to dehumanize others.

4/The dehumanization revolves specifically around democracy and hard work. Hard work due to puratinical bsckground.

5/When wealth is abundant the externalities can be external. However when the rest of the world catches up much of the population has no competitive advantage.

6/The only well off people are those maintaining existing moats. Entrance requires strong status signalling.

7/The same people are already indoctrined into a fend-for-yourself culture and are in a bubble where they don't sense they are lucky. The residual programming is too successful.

8/new "good stuff" is reserved for the deserving. The undeserving are punished more to goad them to be more successful.

Also, a contrarian thought. It's not the rich who are the problem. They actually tend to create ecosystems that generate wealth for others because the capital seeks use.

Instead it's the middle class who can't deal with the guilt created by seeing the less well off. In their hearts they know they are living off moat surplus. Their internal rationalizations create systems that make them feel good instead of doing good. the "punish the wicked" mentality especially creates disastrous consequences. (e.g war on drugs)

Moreover,he lumps "strongmen" with "self-help" and religion with no obvious relation other than people "turn" to them. And generalizes by saying being "joel osteen enough" is what conservatives mean when speaking of family values.

This is how democracy works,americans simply don't have the same beliefs and world views as swedes or portugese.

No strings attached housing for homeless people is cheaper than leaving them on the streets. Treating drugs as a disease instead of a crime is cheaper. Earlier retirement of elders allows younger workers with more relevant skills to join the work force. A more humane prison system would result in less prisoners (cheaper). So,are americans simply unaware of this? Nope.

"Americans" are a diverse group of people with a diverse set of social divisions and conflicts. They simply don't think "free housing" or most anything "free" is a good idea even if free is cheaper than what we have now. Why should a criminal get treated better? Why can't homeless peoole get a low paying job just like immigrants? Etc.... That's how americans see these issues.

The homeless,poor,under privledged are "them" in the eyes of the american popular majority. In western europe,those people are "us" or "our people".

America spends 20% of it's gdp on the military. Yet spend a bit more to solve these societal issues and all the powerful (typically older) people would say "not with my tax money".

That being said,why is everyone so pessimistic? We know these problems. It might take a decade or more for the demographics to shift enough to where we can fix these issues but why panic?

Essentially, America needs to be united. Neither the leaders nor the population seem to have a strong interest in being united,this by itself is the equivalent of having a terminal brain tumor!