I think what America lacks today is a sense of honor.

Muskrat said:
I also read the original post as “America had lost it’s sense of humor” …and totally agreed!!!
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"Humor and honor, humor and honor, go together like a glove and haummer". A little funny, not totally lost, we still have a good sense of humor...especially here at the SF, look anytime and the jokes, and pictures and memes the members post everyday day.
We put the Fun in Forum! :)
 
TennVet said:
Look at it this way. With prices inflated, and there just might be a little gouging in the mix, a company that simply maintains its historic profit margin is having a great year. Hence the earnings reports and dividend payouts will be up. At the heart of the matter is the fact that wages are not keeping pace with the rate of inflation, and the typical family's financial position is going backward. When you see reports of numerous jobs available and unfilled take a look at what those jobs are. The old saying, numbers don't lie, but liars use numbers.
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Gee, I think I was just called a liar. Hmmm.
 

Buckeye said:
{shrug} the DOW closed at >40,000 last Friday (5/17). Things can't be all bad.

YMMV
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I read someone who said that the future, unless we CHANGE COURSE, will be one of the DOW hitting 100,000 while homelessness levels increase to maybe 10 million Americans.

Could this really happen? Some say A.I. trading will make it happen: MSN

But in the meantime, as the investor class rejoices, in this "great economy", HOMELESSNESS HAS INCREASED by a lot:
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/15/business/homelessness-highest-reported-level-rents-up/index.html

Unless we make new rent control laws and/or build a boatload of new affordable housing, we're headed for a MadMax life for a lot of us, and an IDK, an I-don't-give-a-frick-life for many more - many of them "Christians" of course, led by mega-church pastors in all their "righteousness". Or the Pope. Another rich church. The Pope also lives in a gated community.

The future is not pretty if we don't change course.
 
images

Habitat for Humanity International, generally referred to as Habitat for Humanity or Habitat, is a U.S. non-governmental, and tax-exempt 501 nonprofit organization which seeks to build affordable housing. It was founded in 1976 by couple Millard and Linda Fuller. The international operational headquarters are located in Americus, Georgia, United States, with the administrative headquarters located in Atlanta. As of 2023, Habitat for Humanity operates in more than 70 countries.

habitat.org
 
Buckeye said:
And here's another number for you:

61% of Americans own Stock
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It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter at all. The Constitution does not say,

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Stock Market, establish a strong tax base, insure Domestic Strife so cable news has something to make videos of, provide for the partisan defence, promote the general Homelessness, and secure the Blessings of Feudalism to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Here is what is actually says:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Go ahead - read it. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript
Any mention of the Stock Market in there? Not directly. But you and others like you worship it, I guess? Whatever happened to Humanism? https://www.britannica.com/topic/humanism

Are you really trying to tell me that we ARE supposed to promote homelessness?
 
Vintage...your question is rather off kilter! Every time I see a post about America on this site, everyone gets on the 'pity party' and write about how hard things are and how the 'rich' others are, and they must be very bad people.

Our country is based on individual rights and freedoms... That means we get what we go out and get/earn. Some will do very well, and others may not do well. We all understand the rules. Don't spend time tearing down what we have, instead spend time trying to figure out how millions of people who started life with NOTHING, over a lifetime become very well off in many ways.

In America it happens all the time and most have no help from family, they do it all alone...

Trust me, in other places in this world it not very common that someone born with nothing can, over a lifetime, become rich. It does happen, but not anything like it does in good old USA! You can bet on it...
 
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Timewise your answer is a little off kilter. You say everyone In the US has an equal chance at success regardless of their starting point. That is not entirely accurate. Socioeconomic factors such as family wealth, education, and access to resources can greatly influence one's ability to achieve success. Systemic racism, discrimination, and other forms of inequality can create significant barriers to success for marginalized groups. These issues cannot be ignored or dismissed as purely individual failures. While hard work and determination are certainly important, they are not the only factors in achieving success. Luck, timing, and circumstances outside of one's control can also play a role.
 
Paco Dennis said:
Timewise your answer is a little off kilter. You say everyone In the US has an equal chance at success regardless of their starting point. That is not entirely accurate. Socioeconomic factors such as family wealth, education, and access to resources can greatly influence one's ability to achieve success. Systemic racism, discrimination, and other forms of inequality can create significant barriers to success for marginalized groups. These issues cannot be ignored or dismissed as purely individual failures. While hard work and determination are certainly important, they are not the only factors in achieving success. Luck, timing, and circumstances outside of one's control can also play a role.
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Well said.
 
VintageBetter said:
It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter at all. The Constitution does not say,

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Stock Market, establish a strong tax base,
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VintageBetter, I think you frequently point to some genuinely sad situations in today's world. Your frame of reference is usually your own society, the US. Being Canadian, I'm not in a position to tell Americans what you should do.

But... all of us in modern Western societies are faced with the need to acquire money, and (if possible) to accumulate some and hopefully provide ourselves with an income stream for our later years. None of us in our generation, or even our great, great, great grandparents' generation, invented money. Apparently that first occurred around 5000 years ago in Mesopotamia, and I'm sure that no matter what sort of society, from the ancient to modern, there have always been some people who were wealthy and some who were much less so.

Many people these days in much of the Western world (and certainly beyond) struggle to afford basic necessities like food, shelter, clothing, transportation. If 61% of Americans have become investors in stocks, it's probably mainly to get by reasonably as time goes on — I'd suppose that just investing in stocks doesn't offer the hope of becoming real wealthy. Complications of modern life plus inflation, etc still haunt most people.

In light of the history of the underprivileged and unfortunate, all modern Western societies have social safety nets to some extent. I'm not saying that reasonable support for the needy has been perfected or fine-tuned, and I'm not going to pass judgment on who legitimately deserves assistance. Such things are always a work in progress, aren't they? Judgment about what & how to address things always seems simpler for armchair observers than those "in the trenches". Each society has to find its way with the realities.
 
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officerripley said:
"Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women."
~~U.S. sociologist Jessica Calarco
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Quite a provocative and interesting statement. Is this a quote from her new book "Holding it Together"? It is timely and has a powerful message about the dangers we face as our social safety nets dissolve. Here is an overview of her work....

"America runs on women—women who are tasked with holding society together at the seams and fixing it when things fall apart. In this tour de force, acclaimed Sociologist Jessica Calarco lays bare the devastating consequences of our status quo.

Holding It Together draws on five years of research in which Calarco surveyed over 4000 parents and conducted more than 400 hours of interviews with women who bear the brunt of our broken system. A widowed single mother struggles to patch together meager public benefits while working three jobs; an aunt is pushed into caring for her niece and nephew at age fifteen once their family is shattered by the opioid epidemic; a daughter becomes the backstop caregiver for her mother, her husband, and her child because of the perceived flexibility of her job; a well-to-do couple grapples with the moral dilemma of leaning on overworked, underpaid childcare providers to achieve their egalitarian ideals. Stories of grief and guilt abound. Yet, they are more than individual tragedies.

Tracing present-day policies back to their roots, Calarco reveals a systematic agreement to dismantle our country’s social safety net and persuade citizens to accept precarity while women bear the brunt. She leads us to see women’s labor as the reason we’ve gone so long without the support systems that our peer nations take for granted, and how women’s work maintains the illusion that we don’t need a net. "
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/697130/holding-it-together-by-jessica-calarco/
 
officerripley said:
"Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women."
~~U.S. sociologist Jessica Calarco
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Well, women organize themselves and do a lot of good in Canada too.

But what about Obama Care? Also, a simple web search brings up programs called Medicare, Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Child's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and the Job Training Program. Pretty sure most of those didn't exist in the U.S. in the 1930s.
 
VintageBetter said:
I don't know how it is where you live, but where I live, the society in general has decided to embrace thievery by making it a misdemeanor for which the thieves are rarely caught.

The people who didn't want to survive in such a hard and harsh environment have decided to move away. The system is too massive to fix, so they give up and move. There is no shame in this. People fighting corruption alone and winning is only a fairy tale. It doesn't often happen in real life.

This thievery was rampant on Wall Street too in the Great Recession. That whole thing was a giant scam facilitated by our laws, or lack of laws. It shows up again in cryptocurrency. There have been some big winners in that arena, but the big losers have not been counted yet.

In our financial system, the press doesn't often write about the losers except to demean and denigrate them because the press is enamored with stocks and bonds and the whole thief system too. Never forget that the press often lifts up and promotes some of the worst scoundrels in our society before they are shown to be scoundrels, thieves, and even child molesters and murderers. The press gave so many of them hours and hours of free publicity because of its habit of chasing after shiny stories ONLY because they are shiny and because reporters, editors, producers are often followers of one another, like lemmings.

I think the America I hoped for in the 1970s, the post-Vietnam time when I hoped we'd turn from mayhem and war into construction of OUR economy, build up a nation that would be for 100% of us, and not just the top 10%, never came to fruition. Instead, the movers, shakers and financiers sold America to whoever wanted to buy. Now it's been parceled out in the name of "globalism".

The financiers told the politicians this would prevent war. Sell pieces of the land to the global community and then certain aggressors will not be aggressive, right? Because they wouldn't harm their own property, right? Ha! It was basically an appeasement strategy.

The other reason America has lost its honor is because in 'Murica, we attribute goodness and moral courage to wealth. We attribute good motives and character to the wealthy, we are TAUGHT to do this by our entertainment media, our general press, and our financial media, and we attribute evil to the poor just because they are poor.

Our whole system of data selling that runs Silicon Valley, and from which Wall Street benefits because these are publicly traded companies - it's all thievery. It's our data. They steal it, package it and sell it.

I don't know how to fix it. I know I cannot. I try to vote for leaders who can see this problem, but OMG, so many of them are blind to it. I mean intelligent people who have families they care about, but they don't care about the thievery that permeates American culture now. These same leaders will say, "We cannot go back to the old Welfare system with subsidized housing for all who need it because that system encouraged laziness!"

They say laziness is the great sin of America.

I disagree. I think the great moral failing of America these days is theft. The rich steal from the poor every day, in 100 million ways. But, that's OK in America because they are rich and therefore, "good".
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I profoundly disagree. IMO, the above is far too negative. And is not a healthy way to live. Turning a blind eye to the good things in life is not a great idea. .
 
The reality is we have the money and the system to fix so many of these issues. An example is what happened when San Francisco underwent a significant cleanup ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in 2023. Elected officials, business leaders, and ordinary residents noticed improvements in street conditions as world leaders and top CEOs arrived. Notably, there was a reduction in tents and drug activity along Van Ness Avenue, United Nations Plaza, and around the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building. The city pressure-washed sidewalks, cleaned streets, and relocated unhoused individuals to indoor lodgings for the event123.

Why don't we fix things if we can?
 
I recently took a small group tour on vacation and the tour guide mentioned there seems to be a lack of respect and a lot of selfishness amongst our population these days. Everyone on the tour agreed.

Then we saw a car holding up traffic in the parking lot while waiting for a parking space. Someone who could have moved to the right but sat smack in the middle so no cars could pass. Then we saw someone going the wrong way in a one-way area of the parking lot to get a parking spot. Check!
 
JBR said:
Well, women organize themselves and do a lot of good in Canada too.

But what about Obama Care? Also, a simple web search brings up programs called Medicare, Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Child's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and the Job Training Program. Pretty sure most of those didn't exist in the U.S. in the 1930s.
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IMO, the greatest problem in American nowadays is that States' Rights have taken over on nearly every issue be it abortion, low income housing or what kids should learn at public schools.

Even Obamacare was screwed up by State's Rights. Not all 50 states expanded Medicaid under Obamacare, which is the medical insurance for the poorest. They were offered the chance and the federal funds to expand, but they said "no".

On the other hand, California has swung completely the opposite way and has expanded Medicaid to cover even illegal immigrants. So, in California, you WILL NOT find housing if you are poor. You have to live out in the street first, often for years, and get in line for housing.

However, California will give you Medicaid as a homeless person so you will can potentially be well enough to fully experience your homelessness experience. Or you can even have a baby while homeless - Medicaid will cover that. Or you can have cancer and be on chemo but still live in a sidewalk tent. Medicaid will cover that.

IDJ - I feel ashamed that our nation is this sick, cold, uncaring and dysfunctional. If I ever went to Europe I'm sure I'd feel embarrassed to say, "Yeah, I'm an American. I'm sorry. I know my nation is kind of giant **** ****. I really like YOUR country, I'll take some of your ideas back home but I know no one will listen to me. But, thanks for letting us visit. So we can see for ourselves. "
 

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