America - The Official Thread

[Keef]

But they do know how to rile you and everyone else up. And these days that's basically what they get paid to do since they're of little other value to society.

 

[counter345]

May I ask why there does seem to be a large difference in wealth in the United States of America?

I originally thought that the USA had a lot of company leaders and headquarters, which would bump up the GDP of the USA significantly, but I may be wrong.

 

[Danoff]

May I ask why there does seem to be a large difference in wealth in the United States of America?

I originally thought that the USA had a lot of company leaders and headquarters, which would bump up the GDP of the USA significantly, but I may be wrong.

There is a large difference, it's not so much that it seems that way. The reason is because there are crazy rich people here (and sometimes statistics exclude government handouts making it seem like there are also crazy poor people here even though there are not).

My beef is with the words "slice" and "take". They both imply that there is a fixed amount of wealth - a "pie" if you will - from which each person gets a slice. If one person gets a bigger slice, someone else gets a smaller slice. That's not how economics works.

In economics wealth can be created or destroyed. The "pie" is effectively expanding or shrinking. You can create wealth out of nowhere, and destroy wealth as well. As a result, the money you earn is not a "slice" of anything, but just money you created, and it is also not "taken" from anyone.

 

[Badasp5.0]

May I ask why there does seem to be a large difference in wealth in the United States of America?
.

There is but I think that comes from being a large country population and size wise. Some areas will be richer or poorer. Granted I am no economist.

 

[Pupik]

May I ask why there does seem to be a large difference in wealth in the United States of America?

The real question is why do many people think that "difference" matters so much?

I'm in the top 25% of earners in the US, which affords me many possibilities. The highest percentile are complete outliers, and are mostly playing their own games, usually buying the most expensive gilded crap in an attempt to one-up each other. For what I do, where I am in life, earn my keep, be both cautious and aggressive, and still get to post fourteen thousand times on this site...yes, I'm damn fortunate in that respect. But I don't worry how to climb the so-called ladders and grumble how the wealthiest have more than I, when I have much, and I'm not living paycheck-to-paycheck or worried about a late bill payment.

Economically, if the rich weren't really getting much richer, then there's something wrong with that economic system. There's a lot of greed which drives that system, both in good, bad, and clumsy ways; while far from perfect, an economy based on collective fear or total mass-indifference wouldn't work for long.

The problems would be if one wasn't permitted to work harder, could not have opportunities (or fail to see them), wasn't wise in saving and spending, and we weren't granted free enterprise and commerce to buy/sell similar and varied goods and services along an entire spectrum of prices and values. Or grossly unfair laws based on class or net worth.

I think the so-called disparity is an effort to undermine satisfaction by creating a sort of social myopia, instead of acting as an propeller for understanding true wealth and hard work. I don't think that last part made any sense, but it seemed like a good way to finish my statement and meal.

 

[Keef]

There are no slums in the US. Our homeless people don't build entire cities within a city because there are so many of them. Our homeless people have access to free services, charities, food banks, living supplies, etc.

There are a few places in the country which deliberately make it hard for poor people to live - Chicago, for example, which works very hard to keep its downtown area free of crime and poor people for the sake of tourism. Then again, the south side of Chicago is the most dangerous area in the country because city officials have decided that's where those people belong.

Speaking of urban planning, Columbus, Ohio has a nifty trick for keeping sexual predators out of vast areas of the city. By law, these criminals are not allowed to live a certain distance from public schools, but also public parks. So what did Columbus decide to do? They simply designate more places as public parks, everywhere, some of them barely larger than a flowerpot. Which means sex offenders can't live that distance from that flowerpot, or that apartment's garden, or that bench...

 

[Keef]

I'd like to mention that I applaud Russia's efforts to solve the Syria situation diplomatically. Congratulations to them. Frankly, I'm embarrassed by how my own country handled the situation. We're nothing more than a bully to the rest of the world at this point.

 

[Badasp5.0]

I'd like to mention that I applaud Russia's efforts to solve the Syria situation diplomatically. Congratulations to them. Frankly, I'm embarrassed by how my own country handled the situation. We're nothing more than a bully to the rest of the world at this point.

+1 I find it odd considering the Obama administration was all about "soft power" and how it will handle issues better than "hard power" that was used by the previous president. But yet jumped to the "hard power" answer with out even trying something like this.

 

[arora]

In fairness who do you think Assad is more likely to listen to, it's also quite probable that Obama's pressure helped the possible diplomatic solution.

Of course there is much much more going on then just the chemical weapons part but I don't feel like getting into all that Israel, oil, Iran, etc atm. I'm sure someone else could pic that up.

 

[Keef]

It wasn't diplomatic at all. That's like saying a police officer standing 50 feet away with a shotgun over his shoulder telling you to get out of the car is diplomatic. The Russia-Syria conversation was diplomatic. The US-Syria conversation was threatening with a deadly weapon. The US government should be embarrassed by what Russia pulled off.

 

[arora]

I'm saying without the cop in your face the diplomacy might not have happened at all, I'm also saying I'm not convinced we are going to see this pie in the sky outcome where all these whatever weapons are retrieved and all is well in the land of oz.

Why the spin?

 

[FoolKiller]

May I ask why there does seem to be a large difference in wealth in the United States of America?

One thing I noticed was when the 99% protests were happening there was a lot of people sitting in front of the businesses tweeting about how they are standing up to the man and demanding their "fair share."

Last I checked, when you sit on a street for days/weeks/months doing nothing productive $0 is your fair share.

A portion of the discrepancy in anyone in the top 25%-50% and the rest is that too many of the rest pout and demand their share be handed to them. The top chunk is full of people who are too busy to protest at 2:00 on a Thursday.

Instead of people sitting around and asking why the 1% has so much some of us ask how the 1% got so much so that we can try to do it too. Some people wear Che T-shirts and "express themselves" on Twitter. Others read biographies of successful leaders of industry and economists and grind their gears at work every single day, and let nothing stand in the way of putting food on the table and gaining success. And as Pupik points out, success in life is relative. You trade money and personal life as makes you happy, but if you sustain your lifestyle without begging or demanding someone else pay for it and are happy then you are successful.

I'm saying without the cop in your face the diplomacy might not have happened at all, I'm also saying I'm not convinced we are going to see this pie in the sky outcome where all these whatever weapons are retrieved and all is well in the land of oz.

No end will be good. We are just trying to get at the chemical weapons, not end it, supposedly. Obama doesn't care about thousands killed, so long as it is by conventional weapons. Well, unless those conventional weapons are in American homes. Then he must intervene.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

No end will be good. We are just trying to get at the chemical weapons, not end it, supposedly. Obama doesn't care about thousands killed, so long as it is by conventional weapons. Well, unless those conventional weapons are in American homes. Then he must intervene.

Exactly, and that goes from even the guns the democratic party said they were fine with us having...well until they figured we could buy in bulk.

 

[sumbrownkid]

It's been 12 years since the fall of the WTC. I was a 6th grader at the time, and now I'm a college student on the verge of graduating. Man the time just flew by.

 

[Keef]

I think what should be on the news today is the 40th anniversary of the 1973 Chilean coup which the US played a heavy intelligence role in. We helped overthrow a democratically elected government.

I'm surprised the 9/11 terrorists weren't Chilean.

Sorry to **** on the party, but stop and think twice before reminiscing on a day like today.

 

[Danoff]

There's nothing wrong with recognizing the anniversary of the day thousands of innocent Americans were killed by terrorists.

 

[Dotini]

I'll never forget that morning.

As I was mounting my motorcycle to go to work, I looked up and saw a slender crescent moon opposed by a bright star (common symbols on Islamic flags), and an involuntary shudder (fear?) went through my body. An hour later, the towers went down.

All that summer there were strange warnings and alarms. For instance, there was unusual and incessant patrol boat activity near a Trident submarine base located near to my fishing cabin on Hood Canal, Washington State.

 

[Sanji Himura]

Keef's right though. Thousands of lives died that day, and there is no need to act like it is one blimp on a life line and say it is a good memory when it isn't. Remember the words of FDR, "This day shall live in infamy."

This isn't a day of service like Obama wants the day to be.

 

[Keef]

My point is that for every thing worth remembering about our country there is another thing that's been forgotten.

Did any of you hear on the news about the 40th anniversary of a time we helped ruin a government of the type we try to establish elsewhere by ruining other governments? No, you didn't.

 

[arora]

Did any of you hear on the news about the 40th anniversary of a time we helped ruin a government of the type we try to establish elsewhere by ruining other governments? No, you didn't.

Actually I did, it was on the news last night. Not only that, I remember something about it from my college schoolinz 👍

 

[Danoff]

My point is that for every thing worth remembering about our country there is another thing that's been forgotten.

Our country isn't perfect - doesn't stop me from remembering the lives lost on September 11th 2001 and the downward spiral it has sent us on since. I'm sure we murdered some native Americans or enslaved some Africans on a previous September 11th as well... but more recently than any of that was a pivotal moment in our nation's history where our biggest aspired virtue (freedom) was used as a weapon against us so effectively that we are still suffering new self-inflicted wounds that directly stem from that event.

You want me to think of the Chileans from 40 years ago instead of the assault on my country that still makes headlines in the form of NSA and TSA invasions of privacy? You want me to recognize something that happened a decade before I was born in another country instead of an event that has sparked the biggest wound to freedom on Earth to happen in my lifetime which happened to take place in my country?

No.

What I care about the most is what's happening right now, and September 11th 2001 is still unfolding in very obvious ways. I'll be relieved when it becomes a thing of the past, but even then, I'll remember it because I lived it.

 

[Nicksfix]

Who is Antonio West ?

Hello. Don’t recognize me? That’s OK; I understand.
My name was Antonio West. I was the 13-month old child who was shot in the face at point blank range by two black teens, who were attempting to rob my mother, who was also shot.
I think my murder and my mommy’s wounding made the news for maybe a day, and then disappeared.
A Grand Jury of my mommy's peers from Brunswick , Georgia ruled the black teens who murdered me will not face the death penalty... too bad it was me who got the death sentence from my killers instead, because Mommy didn’t have the money they demanded.

See, my family made the mistake of being white in a 73% non-white neighborhood, but my murder wasn’t ruled a ‘hate crime’.
Oh, and President Obama didn’t take a single moment to acknowledge my murder. He couldn’t have any children who could possibly look like me - so why should he care?

I’m one of the youngest murder victims in our great Nation's history, but the media didn’t care to cover the story of my being killed in cold blood.

There isn’t a white equivalent of Al Sharpton, because if there was he would be branded a ‘racist’. So no one’s rushing to Brunswick, Georgia to demonstrate and demand ‘justice’ for me. There’s no ‘White Panther’ party, either, to put a bounty on the lives of the two black teens who murdered me.
I have no voice, I have no representation, and unlike those who shot me in the face while I sat innocently in my stroller - I no longer have my life.
Isn’t this a great country?

So while you’re out seeking ‘justice for Trayvon’, please remember to seek ‘justice’ for me. Tell your friends about me, tell your families, get tee-shirts with my face on them, and make the world pay attention, just like you did for Trayvon.

I won’t hold my breath.
I don’t have to anymore.

The baby was in his stroller and out for a walk with his mother when he was shot between the eyes March 21 in the Georgia coastal city of Brunswick. West, and a younger teenager charged as an accomplice, both testified at trial that Elkins killed the baby after his mother refused to give up her purse.

Full article

 

[Pupik]

I agree that it sucks, even if the murder is nothing less than a total ****-bag. But we can't just bend the law to (supposedly) right a wrong. And rightfully or wrongfully, a line was drawn in the sand to protect juveniles from the death penalty:

Ultimately the judge sided with prosecutors who spoke of the brutal circumstances of the crime and that Elkins escaped facing the death penalty only because he was a few months shy of his 18th birthday when the baby was slain.

Crimes like this are thankfully very few, even if there's an enormous double-standard; but at the end of the day, unfortunately two children are now a statistic.

Unfortunately, this is what also pisses me off:

"Life without parole for a juvenile, our position remains, is cruel and unusual punishment."

He's lucky to be able to attempt to live out his life in jail. I'm sure the bubbas on the inside - even if they're fathers by proxy - in jail won't put him on any of their Christmas Card lists.

 

[Nicksfix]

Should / can be teens tried as an adult ?

These teens were tried as adults. Why not these two bozos. I mean seriously ... they deliberately shot a child, a 13 month old child. That's BS in my book.

 

[FoolKiller]

I have one issue trying teens as adults in order to seek death penalty or life sentences. I am not the same person today I was when I was 18. I'm 34. It hasn't even been 20 years. And God, was I a stupid reckless kid then. Some of my antics could have resulted in my, or another's, death. Sheer chance prevented that. I played with guns in dangerous ways, came seconds from using drugs, smoked, drank, and my driving antics were nothing short of insane. People I went to high school with died, some in horrible accidents that took multiple lives and even one that died at the hands of police (justified-he attacked with a weapon first) during a drug bust. And I was a white, rural kid, but I can see just where one event turned differently could have put me on a similar path.

So, a part of me, the part that hangs those lessons over every decision I make today, makes it very hard to picture a 50-year-old man sitting in prison because he got caught up in a bad situation as a teen. How many young kids, barely in puberty, get sucked into gangs in bad neighborhoods with parents that don't care where they are all night, or are too scared to pull their kids out? And it isn't just a street gang culture either. It makes me think of Goodfellas, when Henry was a kid and his old man found out he was working for Paulie and beat him for it. Paulie sent a couple of guys over to rough him up and tell him Henry wasn't going to school, but would go to Paulie's every day. A kid sucked in to the system. If he's busted at 16 for a homicide what is his choice or true understanding?

Maybe I'm naive, but when a kid is caught up in a situation, culture, or whatever, that he barely had the ability to comprehend his ability to avoid, I can't ever imagine more than 15-20 years. And I definitely can't see not giving a longer sentence a chance at parole at either 5 or 10 years, depending on age at the time of the crime and the situation around the crime.

But I'm also not dumb enough to think a person who enters prison as a teen will come out a better person by the time they are 30. Short of a full overhaul of our juvenile penal facilities, I don't know what the best situation is. I don't believe a life sentence or death penalty is the answer, but I don't believe they will come out rehabilitated with any less sentence.

 

[LeMansAid]

Horrific. I cannot even comprehend.

I see no reason not to have them tried as adults. The stupidity that sometimes comes with youth is poles apart from such a cold and brutal act.

 

[FoolKiller]

Horrific. I cannot even comprehend.

I see no reason not to have them tried as adults. The stupidity that sometimes comes with youth is poles apart from such a cold and brutal act.

Is it? Are you going to say that society doesn't trust them to think through smoking or drinking properly, but should treat them as having been able to think this through properly? Sure, doing this makes it highly unlikely they will become outstanding members of society, but that doesn't make them mature adults with rational thought now.

 

[BobK]

It's a pretty wide gulf, though, between the stupid stuff most of us did in our younger days and deliberately shooting a toddler in the face.

The real point of the article though, isn't juvenile punishment, it's the double standard in this country on racism.

 

[Keef]

Our country isn't perfect - doesn't stop me from remembering the lives lost on September 11th 2001 and the downward spiral it has sent us on since. I'm sure we murdered some native Americans or enslaved some Africans on a previous September 11th as well... but more recently than any of that was a pivotal moment in our nation's history where our biggest aspired virtue (freedom) was used as a weapon against us so effectively that we are still suffering new self-inflicted wounds that directly stem from that event.

You want me to think of the Chileans from 40 years ago instead of the assault on my country that still makes headlines in the form of NSA and TSA invasions of privacy? You want me to recognize something that happened a decade before I was born in another country instead of an event that has sparked the biggest wound to freedom on Earth to happen in my lifetime which happened to take place in my country?

No.

What I care about the most is what's happening right now, and September 11th 2001 is still unfolding in very obvious ways. I'll be relieved when it becomes a thing of the past, but even then, I'll remember it because I lived it.

I remember it too, but I refuse to ignore the fact that half the show is about rallying the people behind a cause, a very amoebous cause at that, in order to justify ridiculous security measures and military operations. As far as I can tell, the measures taken after 9/11 by our government have done nothing for our security and everything to increase their power, meanwhile 12 years later they still organize a national moment of silence that we all have to observe for fear of being labelled unamerican in the interest of making us believe their overzealous actions are necessary evils that must continue.

 

[FoolKiller]

It's a pretty wide gulf, though, between the stupid stuff most of us did in our younger days and deliberately shooting a toddler in the face.

Where were most of us raised? Gang-ridden inner city kids have a different form of peer pressure. Go even further in the environment story and look at the age of kids wielding assault rifles in third-world, warlord run nations. I was sneaking cookies and finding my dad's girlie mags with my older brother. He's participating in genocide. The common denominator is impressionable youth. The difference is external influences.

The real point of the article though, isn't juvenile punishment, it's the double standard in this country on racism.

Unfortunately, there were differing circumstances in this case. People must stop trying to compare case to case like this. There will never be a 1:1 comparison. It is all anecdotal. An infant shot by a teen is not a 17-year-old shot by a 29-year-old. A battered woman fleeing her husband and coming back with a gun firing warning shots at her abusive husband is not a homocide committed during a physical altercation.

Of course, the article's point falls apart the moment we ask why the only nationally reported on missing person cases involve cute, white, blonde girls or Casey Anthony. That guy in Cleveland had three women locked in his basement for years. We didn't even know they were missing.

The fact is, we don't hear about or don't care about thousands of cases of deaths, kidnapping, rape, etc from all races every day.