The Glade 4.0

Interesting counter-point. It certainly does disagree. It was certainly a head-scratcher. I'm also not sure that they were looking to change the system significantly. Did they ever figure out a coherent motive? Just teen angst? Was it driven by the wealth gap alone?

I have to admit, while I watched the riots unfold, I really didn't understand the point.

I'm not sure there was one. It seemed like a riot because they could. Mob mentality, anonymity of the crowd, etc.

Granted, that's my impression from across the pond, so it's not like I have the best perception of general sentiment and mood.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

People riot and destroy property after soccer, football and hockey games, too. For the most part, these people aren't poor.

None of these occurences are sustained civil unrest with the intent to effect legislative change. It's just people destroying stuff for fun because they think they will get away with it.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Yeah I'm having a hard time finding reason to complain. I keep getting told that I'm on the wrong end of an increasing wealth disparity, but I still own my own home, have just about any techie thing I feel like getting, including a home theater with 120" screen, surround sound, etc, with luxuries that my parents never dreamed of, I carry a device in my pocket that answers inquiries by voice and lets me keep connected in ways that even the wealthiest of previous generations didn't have...

Quite frankly, I don't buy the argument of "while the gap is increasing, the poor aren't getting poorer" for a second. We have a gigantic trade deficit. Someone is getting poorer. Somehow I doubt it's the rich people.

The amount of poor seems to be growing more than they are getting poorer.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

You have accountant tunnel vision. Look at the standards of living of the poor in this country and compare it to the that of decades past.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

A gigantic trade deficit does not mean anyone is getting poorer. Poor is measured in actual materiel circumstances. Poor in this country means you get a BoostMobile phone instead of a contract with Verizon - maybe. There are very, very few truly poor in this country.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And even those actual poor get to eat out of dumpsters rather than eating actual dirt cakes, because our country is so well off that even those "poor 99%'ers" are so well off that they throw away almost as much food as they eat.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I believe it is a combination of things:

Underclass with no visceral understanding of how good their lives are compared to those of Europeans 300 years ago, or those in feudal/famine conditions elsewhere within the world today

Food, heating, shelter available - but shitty, stratified from the main, and consumer luxuries out of reach

Constant advertising and entertainment reinforcement of how fantastic it is for others

A society that largely segments social classes, whereby little real engagement or conversation takes place between the higher and lower ends of the wealth spectrum

Frustration at the idea that they'll never have the iPod/Audi/holiday that is being set up as aspirational

Boredom

A lack of long term understanding/caring/thinking about what the destruction of the social order would mean for general availability of food, water, heat, etc


So, a sense of frustrated entitlement, little understanding of absolute wealth or poverty in the world, little appreciation of consequence of removing the insulators from the reality of the world


As I said - it's not revolution, but it is a counterpoint to the idea that relative wealth has no part to play in social stability, safety, etc. If you buy my hypothesis above, it's absolutely frustrated status and opportunity that drives violence, even for those with shelter and food.

There's probably also a cultural lack of belief that hard work is sufficient to make it; heavy industries shut down, mining and steel and shipbuilding gone. Work hard all your life to be a checkout teller while others do half the hours and lounge around on yachts.

Americans may still tend to have more belief in entrepreneurial success being widely available rather than lottery like freak outliers.

I also believe it's a mistake to take a look at what "poor" meant 100+ years ago and use that as the barometer.

Successfully navigating the world today is nothing like navigating back then. There are many more things that are for all intents and purposes required in order to be able to compete today. The bare minimums of food, shelter and clothing in some cases aren't enough to actually get you out of a constant state of poverty.

That's the problem with poverty. It's just not what it used to be.

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Except that this is irrelevant. This is true only for relative poverty. For absolute poverty, the standard never moves. Furthermore, that "100 years ago" thing applies to much of the world here and now. Our poor, even using today's standards, are not poor compared to much of the world.

Trying to talk about "well it's harder to 'navigate the world' these days" and what's "required to compete" is simply constantly upping what constitutes "poverty" so that it can never be dealt with. That's the beauty of "income inequality"; it plays on people's aversion to "inequality" so that no matter how much progress has been made on poverty, it is still always "unequal" and people are always "underprivileged" and "need more to compete."

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You're missing the point DE.

If you can't compete, then you can NEVER by yourself get out of poverty.

Thing is, you can compete unless you are brain dead. It doesn't matter how poor you are, anyone can make it to the top as long as they are capable of hard work.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

You only need to compete against other people also in "poverty" in order to get out, so you CAN compete. It may take a while, but you can pry yourself out gradually. The only way poverty keeps you from competing is if A) it's so bad in the absolute sense that your actual survival is threatened, or if it's kept in place by overt means such as Jim Crow-type laws. Neither situation exists in this country.

Here's the other thing: "Compete" does not mean "succeed". The majority of poor people probably won't actually improve their situation enough that their relative poverty is seriously reduced. That's fine. There are always going to be the relative poor unless we get to a post-scarcity economy somehow. It's to be expected that only some of the poor will work their way up within a single generation. Even then, however, the absolute situation of everyone is still improving as the economy grows and technology improves.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."