The big question is will the US handle a breakup or revolution attempt like China or the USSR, and will a Yeltsin-type emerge to lead, supported by the people.

It will be an interesting example to the world if the US turns on its own people when times are hard, slaughtering them with weapons to keep them from seceeding, when the evil empire USSR disbanded relatively peacefully (Chechens notwithstanding).

CHICAGO — Nearly half of all U.S. children and 90 percent of black youngsters will be on food stamps at some point during childhood, and fallout from the current recession could push those numbers even higher, researchers say.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/02/food-stamps-will-feed-hal_n_342834.html

This horse is dead, beaten, dragged off and turned to glue, but I had to throw this one thing in....

The logic behind feeding the kids in the first place is so that you do not have a lot of starving kids around, right?

But, the problem is, without negative consequences for being stupid and having kids that you cannot support, there is nothing to stop the moms (it is, the moms, isn't it?} from cranking out a dozen....In fact, there is a lot of incentive FOR cranking out a dozen. It's a nice career if you can do it.

So the taxpayers are ultimately supporting half of the population at some point? How is this sustainable by any stretch of the imagination.....

It only takes 1% of the population working in food production and distribution to feed the other 99%. The madness is that we force the other 99% of the population into producing and consuming piles of worthless trash or they don't get fed. This "forced" consumerism is what depletes resources and destroys the environment. That is what is unsustainable.

Yes. That is truly the madness of these times.

We could all live lives of leisure and grace, yet we have permitted ourselves to be placed in bondage. Why? Just to enrich the few already rich beyond their own imagination and beyond any reason or need? Is that the only reason?

People will never wake up from their own bondage. Because to do so would be unbearable. It would logically demand they fight for themselves and their planet and their children. It is easier to suck on the poisoned teat then fight.

There truly is no hope for mankind. We are doomed

I live in a county where over half of the kids get the free and reduced lunch. It also produces a lot of lumber and pulpwood. All this is done with giant machines that require a specialized workforce to harvest.

When I first got here about 20 years ago a lot of people talked about working in the woods, but now I almost never hear that.

Is it a fair trade that huge corporations take all the resources and give the kids who are residents in the area free and reduced lunch?

The population in our area is dropping, so the lunch isn't enough to keep them here.

One could argue the whole purpose for "civilization" as opposed to hunter-gatherers (who generally seemed to be able to support themselves at a lower population level) is to create a huge labor force of human beast-of-burdens to labor to keep a tiny portion of elites in material comfort.

The hunting-gathering the elites do is gathering the wealth that the masses create, and hunting for things to spend it on.

The illusion for the masses is that you too could win the economic "lottery" using "upward mobility" to become an elite, although the reality is that this is as likely as winning the lottery.

As much as BAU may be disfunctional, people in the 1st world do much too much complaining about their status in life. That we don't have our own personal yachts the way the "banksters" do doesn't change the fact that in many respects even the lower class in the 1st world have more comfort today than the kings of old.

+1 True But I didn't exclude 3rd/2nd? world civilization. Mexico has same issue, but with more poor people. India to greater extent.

A poor person in the 1st world might give up their dead end job and crappy crime-ridden home in the projects to trade places with a king of old like Louis XIV who had servants to dress him in the morning and even wipe his @$$.

I also wonder if on some level "people in the 1st world do much too much complaining about their status in life" because on some level they are afraid that that the banksters & allied looters will reduce life here to the 3rd world in the future.

I got a neat idea. All the young middle-class European-originated people in the US should emigrate back to Europe which will solve Europe's demographic issues (age & Eurabia). All the rich people and old white folks left behind can just hope the younger minorities who are left behind will take care of them. The Mexicans could have their "Aztlan".

That's right, they reproduce by parthenogenesis. No men are required in the production of offspring.

Exactly. Why do we always bash the "welfare queens" but not the kings? Grrrr.

You would be surprised by the average % of kids receiving free or reduced lunch for each state. Many states in the South average around 50%.

My county in Georgia is at 55%, and the Superindendent recently said that even the most affluent school here is at 33% free/ reduced. The percentages have jumped in recent years for sure.

I still think the average person has no idea how deeply impoverished some areas in the US are, often right on the other side of town. If you took people on a tour, they would first act shocked and upset (gasp - I had no idea people were living like this!), but then it would become clear that they really don't care.

Yep same here. And has anybody looked closely at exactly what they're serving in those free lunches? Nasty.Excellent observation and I agree 100%. I think it might have something to do with the popular meme in the US that if a person is poor, it is only their own fault.

Sorry for the politically incorrect slipup.... Of course, there is a mechanism, the child support system, for tracking down the deadbeat dads..... and after about a couple, the deadbeat dads probably ought to be neutered....

I have more to add on this issue, but the original topic was economic inequality, and all I am saying is that there is a system, and a culture in place that encourages a permanent American underclass.... there are plenty of incentives in place for all concerned....

This underclass starts out the life process with two strikes against them in a dozen ways, and the system is self-perpetuating.... even after the reforms of the 90's that supposedly made it a bit better....

As long as you have this in place, the whole society is vulnerable....

Either a zero-tolerance policy on drug users and sellers (where they are all basically executed) OR legalizing most illegal drugs would eliminate much of the bad environment for the underclass.

Eliminating LOCAL property taxes as the funding source for public schools and using STATE funds instead would go a long way towards both making funding more equitable as well as diminishing some of the incentive for people to move to more expensive neighborhoods for better schools. Other logic of using state or Federal funds to create better schools is that the illiterate a bad system creates can always move out of the area later where the illiterate was educated.

No one has the stomach or political will to do what would actually produce results.

I completely agree with some of the last few posts. I comend PUP for saying what alot of people think.

My 21 year old sister brought home some new freid the other night that I met and she has 3 kids from 3 different guys, She pretty much does not have to work for the rest of her life.