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Banned
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Originally Posted by mixedmedia
.......Host,
People could come up with scenarios for films that would make it seem quite urgent to make gun ownership totally prohibited. Fact is, we do not live in a mythical world where Russians are bad and Americans are good. I find the prospect of living under the tyranny of American militias just as frightening as the prospect of living under the tyranny of my own government or any other.
And I'm not at all comfortable with what you're advocating here. Who exactly are we supposed to be killing? Are we to go into wealthy neighborhoods and just start shooting rich people? Which ones? Corporate executives? Which ones? Politicians? Which ones?
And what then?
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mixedmedia, I was simply sharing with you an illustration of the reasoning against providing government, or any known central location......ownership lists and addresses of those with guns...it makes it easy for an opponent to confiscate the weapons and to locate and harass those who resist a confiscation order, whether it comes internally from government, or externally from an invader/occupier. In the example from the movie "Red Dawn", I did not intend to link or compare details of the actual storyline to this discussion, other than as a way to share what I knew of the mindset of anti gun control advocates......
....and I am not advocating violence.....I am saying that it is well past the time, considering historical comparisons and the recent level of deterioration and it's pace....of wealth equality and executive branch enthusiasm for "preserving and protection the constitution", for there to at least be more talk of violent revolt. I am saying that the movement initiated by Huey P. Long in Louisiana in the late 1920's, and the "progress on the ground" that it made...people could see it, feel it, live in it, even ride on it....and it was all the more influential since it occurred during the depths of a depression....that Huey Long's "Share the Wealth" program and his growing national popularity, intimidated the patrician gate keeper FDR into backing SSI and the other social and economic recovery programs that FDR is credited or condemned for creating.
FDR, an advocate of "balancing the budget" as his top priority, even after the onset of depression and before the 1932 presidential election, adopted as little of Huey Long's platform as was required to keep his 1936 reelection prospects viable. He called Huey Long, "one of the two most dangerous men in America". It is Huey Long who has so many pages devoted to his ideas in the "History of the SSI administration" website, as I linked to, two posts back, not FDR's ideas.....
I am saying that we are a nation that has lost it's way....eulogizing Reagan upon his death....shutting down the capital and shutting out the media from all other subjects, for the entire week that included his 2004 funeral, as if he had done the things for us that Huey Long did for the quality of life in Louisiana.
In the last part of the article linked below, there is this:
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......The long-term trend in American economic inequality is clear. The government has measured family or household inequality since 1947. In the post-World War II era of 1947 to 1968, the coefficient decreased. In other words, in that period of prosperity, economic inequality decreased; there was real upward economic mobility. Not coincidentally, during that period the top marginal federal income tax rate was 90 or 70 percent. The coefficient dropped from 1947 to 1969. <b>It remained stable from 1973 to 1980. Since around 1980, the coefficient has risen pretty consistently, under President Reagan</b>, under Bush I, under Clinton, and under Bush II. The government uses pre-tax income, making the coefficient numerically higher than disposable income; it has risen from 0.35 in 1980 to 0.46 more recently. Experts believe that a coefficient of 0.5 likely precipitates social unrest. So the national mood of political discontent and disgust with the two-party duopoly is consistent with economic reality.
When will the Second American Revolution begin? How much more economic misery will it take? Maybe just a little more will bring the American population to the tipping point. We can hope........
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<b>Consider how many of us admire the labor union busting and progressive income tax annihilating president who initiated, in 1981, our present course of declining labor union membership and economic inequality, Ronald Reagan.....</b>
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http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/04/06/021548.php
From Economic Apartheid to Political Revolution
Written by Joel S. Hirschhorn
Published April 06, 2007
.....Economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty have recently revealed just how horrendous the inequality gap has become. Way back in 1928, the last full year before the Great Depression began, the families that made up America's richest top hundredth of 1 percent had incomes that averaged $8.2 million, as measured in dollars inflation-adjusted to 2005 levels. That is one per 10,000 households. In 1928 that amounted to some 5,000 households. These super-rich averaged 891 times more income than families in the bottom 90 percent averaged. By 1955, in the midst of post-World War II prosperity, families in the top hundredth of 1 percent took home only $3.8 million, in inflation-adjusted dollars. They made just 179 times the average bottom 90 percent income. There was much more economic equality because of shared prosperity. Even in 1980, the richest of the rich took home 175 times more than Americans in the bottom 90 percent - still relatively good economic equality. Then things changed.
Consider the figures for 2005: the top hundredth of 1 percent, about 10,000 households, averaged $25.7 million in income, three times the money in 1928. This amounted to 882 times more than the bottom 90 percent average — an economic inequality gap in 2005 that's almost identical to the 891-to-1 divide in 1928! Welcome to the modern billionaire world of the rich getting much, much richer, while everyone else stagnates. Of course, the top 1 percent of households are also extremely rich - some 1 million families or 3 million people - relatively to the bottom, majority 90 percent.
Married couples with children now account for fewer than one-quarter of American households - the lowest in history. It is the Upper Class that now emphasizes marriage with children. Married households with children are twice as likely to be in the top 20 percent of income. Some 13 percent of the increase in the nation's income inequality since the 1970s results from the marriage of high income earners. Marriage is now for the rich. What does that say about American democracy and culture? That the Upper Class is like an inbred aristocracy. Children of the rich will marry other children of the rich.
Another critically important change in the real (ugly) America is the bursting of the traditional fantasy-belief that people can educate themselves into wealth. Is getting more Americans educated and trained all we need to do to attack economic inequality? If so, then inequality should fall over periods of time when people become more educated. Right? Americans have become more educated over the last three decades. In 1970, only three out of four Americans aged 25-29 had completed high school. In 2004, nearly nine of ten Americans that age had a high school education. In 1970, only 16 percent of Americans in their late 20s held a four-year college degree. By 2004, that had nearly doubled to 29 percent. Something else has nearly doubled since 1970: the share of national income that goes to America's richest 1 percent.
That means that the share going to average Americans has dropped. Lower Class Americans in the bottom 90 percent of the nation's income distribution took home 67 percent of U.S. income in 1970, but only 53 percent in 2004, despite their greater education and productivity. American reality: We've become more unequal at the same time we've become more educated. Why? Education doesn't determine how income and wealth - or macro domestic and global prosperity - are distributed in our unfair system. The Upper Class ensures that increasing fractions of income and wealth go to them.
Here is more painful statistical truth: In 2004, the most recent year with IRS data just about 25,000 taxpayers took home over $5 million. After exploiting every loophole they paid an average 21.9 percent of their incomes in federal income tax. Back in 1952, at the height of the Korean War, the comparable federal tax bite on America's richest 25,000 averaged 51.9 percent. About a decade earlier, in the middle of World War II, the 25,000 highest-income taxpayers in the United States paid 68.4 percent of their incomes in federal income tax. How things have changed for the wealthy. A greater fraction of the nation's prosperity has gone to the Upper Class AND they pay less tax! Economic power produces political power.
This is worth pondering: When will the economic inequality that has morphed into two-class economic apartheid provide sufficient pain and disgust for a few hundred million Americans to fuel political revolution?
When will the stranglehold of the Upper Class on the political system that criminally distorts the economic system be busted? When will Lower Class consumers that drive the economy take back their sovereign power? When will they understand they are losing the class war and revolt?
It will take historically unique action, not electing different Democrats or Republicans. Our Constitution provides the tool - not used for over 200 years because the power elites do not want it used - an Article V convention outside the control of the White House and Congress to consider political and government reforms. Learn more about it at www.foavc.org.
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Quote:
http://www.americanchronicle.com/art...rticleID=12800
Our Delusional Prosperity Results From Our Delusional Democracy
Joel S. Hirschhorn is the author of Sprawl Kills - How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health and Money and Delusional Democracy - Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government. He can be reached through www.delusionaldemocracy.com. He is a former Director of Environment, Energy and Natural Resources at the National Governors Association and a senior staffer for the U.S. Congress.
Joel S. Hirschhorn
August 23, 2006
Contrary to popular thinking, many revolutions have not occurred because of a widespread desire for freedom or democracy. They have been driven by mass hatred and rejection of economic inequality. <b>The poor have revolted against the rich for eons. For much of human history the lack of freedom was linked to economic inequality.</b> Those in power limited personal freedom so they could control the economy and prevent a fair distribution of wealth, allowing a relatively few to amass riches......
.....The unwritten theory seems to be that <b>if citizens have personal freedom they will ignore economic inequality.</b> And it seems to be working well here in the United States of Affluence.......
....What should be the talk of the town throughout the nation is rising economic inequality. Every time you hear some news report and statistic about how well the American economy is doing stop and ask yourself: But what's the story on economic inequality? Is economic prosperity being shared? Is wealth disproportionately flowing to the wealthy, not just here but also increasingly exported to foreign super-rich?
This new report presents powerful data on net disposable household income inequality. Data on the Gini coefficient is the most common measure of income inequality. This coefficient varies from zero – perfect equality – to one – just one household having all the income. Data for 28 OECD countries over the period 1990 to 2000 showed that the U.S. had the second highest coefficient, at 0.37. Only Mexico, at 0.49, was higher; it is the simplest measure of just how completely screwed up Mexico is and why its citizens, rather than revolting, are fleeing to the U.S (though they tried for political change in their recent election). But as the American coefficient rises, where will Americans run to?
Among European nations, the United Kingdom had the next highest level of inequality at 0.35, followed by Ireland and Italy, both at 0.33. Countries with the lowest levels – the greatest equality – were Denmark at 0.24 and Belgium, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden at 0.25.
There are other useful ways to measure economic inequality that shed more light on this issue. One is the distance between the 10th, the 50th, and the 90th percentiles of the national income distribution. Greater distance between points in the distribution signifies greater overall inequality. In the U.S, the 10th percentile household earned about 39 percent of what the median household earned, while the 90th percentile household earned about 210 percent of the median. The American 10th percentile earner was further below the median than everywhere else except Mexico (28 percent). In other words, being poor in Mexico is much worse than being poor in the U.S. That's why illegal immigrants risk so much to get here. Europeans mostly do better than us: Italy (44), Ireland (46), and the United Kingdom (47), and even better in Norway (57), Sweden (57), and the Netherlands (56). Being poor in Europe is better than being poor in the U.S.
As to the 90th percentile household, here the wealthy do very well at 210 percent of the median, with Mexico even worse at 328 percent, and the rich do slightly better in Luxembourg (215), and the United Kingdom (215), but much worse in Denmark (155), Slovakia (162), Finland (164) and the Netherlands (167).
Finally, the ratio of the 90th and 10th percentile earnings is another measure of income inequality, with Mexico at 11.55 having, by far, highest inequality. The United States (5.45) was next, well ahead of the United Kingdom (4.58), Australia (4.33), and Canada (4.13). The countries with the lowest "90-10" gap were Norway (2.80), Denmark (2.85), Slovakia (2.88), Finland (2.90), and the Netherlands (2.98). The point to remember is that there are fine democracies with far more economic equality than we have.
An American myth is terrific upward economic mobility. The report presents data on the share of low-income families (where low-income was defined as earning less than half of the national median income) that escaped from low-income status over a three-year period in the mid-1990s. The U.S. had the lowest share of low-income workers that exit their low-income status from one year to the next (29.5 percent). In contrast, rates in several European countries are greater than 50 percent: Ireland (54.6), the Netherlands (55.7), the United Kingdom (58.8), and Denmark (60.4)....
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I am saying that the blatant usurping of our bill of rights protections by the current executive branch is the icing on the cake....the breaking point, if there was to be one, and obviously.....there isn't one.
To argue seriously that the myth of the US as a "land of prosperity", vs. the reality that the bottom 150 million own only 2-1/2 percent of all US assets, along with the now 26 year old trend towards owning even less....I tried to provide a visual aid....is not a catalyst or justification for violent reaction....yet.....especially combined with the recent terrorizing of the citizenry to impress upon them the justification to gut their 4th amendment protections and transfer habeas corpus guarantees from the courts to the jailers, DOES NOT JUSTIFY OR EVEN REQUIRE A POPULAR, VIOLENT RESPONSE AS A REMEDY....just because there is no sign of one, is IMO, a mistake.
What we can say, reacting to our observations, is that claims that gun owners will "know when it is time" to take up their arms to protect their property and constitutional are false.....they have ample justification for having already done so. If it is "not bad enough yet"....with half the population reduced to owning next to nothing, and with key constitutional rights protections gone.....the right against unreasonable search and the right to a timely hearing of the evidence against you before an impartial magistrate, with an attorney at your side, even if you cannot afford an attorney....<b>what would further have to happen to make it "bad enough"?</b>
Even at the height of the Vietnam war, with involuntary US military conscription taking millions of young males off American streets and inserting them into a contrived (phony Gulf of Tonkin provocation) war that the government knew as far back as 1965 was "unwinnable", a US government campaign that failed even to persuade the South Vietnamese counterparts of young American draftees to fight and risk death for.....even when US deaths exceeded 50,000, <b>I am the only person that I have ever met or personally known of (not via media reports)....who resisted by refusing to register for selective service.</b>
My resistance at 18 years old was counter to everything that I had been taught. My logic included an opinion that anything other than a silent, stealth, resistance would probably result in being detained by the authorities who conscripted so many of my contemporaries to their deaths and who so emphatically resisted Cronkite's 1968 determination that the war could not be won, and the attempts by Daniel Ellsberg to release the Pentagon papers.
My experience resisting confirmed to me that open public resistance results in a high probability that it will be a "one time" effort, and that he who resists in subtle "low key" ways will live to fight another day. Today, I see no resistance, at all, and no expectation that any significant number, especially gun owners will "know" when it is time.
I predict that the US, with it's growing wealth inequity, with the highest incarceration rate in the devloped world, and with it's erosion of protected rights, is past being ripe for violent resistance. I predict that it probably won't happen until the government and the wealthiest complete ongoing steps to "lock us down" to the point where violent resistance is not even a viable option.....which is the best argument for "if not now.....when"?
I predict that the best possible outcome is the rise to power of a leader similar to Huey Long, and the worst...... I'm hoping that we've already experienced it between 2000 and 2008.....
Last edited by host; 06-21-2007 at 09:39 AM..
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06-21-2007, 07:06 AM
