Greed in America

There has been little regard of how a lopsided economic society is destroying America from the bottom up. The high cost of living with the people paying as much as 75% of their income for housing due to this necessity becoming an "investment" has contributed to the Great Recession. It has taken awhile for the burden of the high cost of necessities to manifest within the middle class of America. However, it manifested itself 30 years ago when housing prices went through the roof and caused thousands of low-income people to become homeless. America turned a blind eye to the homeless crisis, which has continued to grow as a blight on this land of "prosperity". And now it's obvious that the people are paying too much for basic necessities as the Middle Class are being crushed under the burden of paying for basics. I am surprised it took so long for the public to just stop buying and charging and living beyond their means. This, of course, contributes to unemployment. How can unemployment be eradicated when no one can or should "buy stuff" and more importantly, pay for the necessities (housing, insurance, health care, food) that we've grown accustomed to, such as affordabale housing.

The Rich will always be rich and the poor will get poorer. I would like to include opinions on the "feeding" of the rich and the neglect of the average person in this country, as well as the poor.

Bob Herbert wrote in 2007 in his NY Times column: “Even as the Wall Streeters are high-fiving and ordering up record shipments of Champagne and caviar, the American dream is on life support.” We would all later learn that this time was the start of the Great Recession.

The following is an excerpt from the New York Times October, 2009 article by Bob Herbert

"We’ve spent the last few decades shoveling money at the rich like there was no tomorrow. We abandoned the poor, put an economic stranglehold on the middle class and all but bankrupted the federal government — while giving the banks and megacorporations and the rest of the swells at the top of the economic pyramid just about everything they’ve wanted.

And we still don’t seem to have learned the proper lessons. We’ve allowed so many people to fall into the terrible abyss of unemployment that no one — not the Obama administration, not the labor unions and most certainly no one in the Republican Party — has a clue about how to put them back to work.

Meanwhile, Wall Street is living it up. I’m amazed at how passive the population has remained in the face of this sustained outrage.

Even as tens of millions of working Americans are struggling to hang onto their jobs and keep a roof over their families’ heads, the wise guys of Wall Street are licking their fat-cat chops over yet another round of obscene multibillion-dollar bonuses — this time thanks to the bailout billions that were sent their way by Uncle Sam, with very little in the way of strings attached."

"Safety Nets for the Rich" by Bob Herbert, New York Times, Oct. 19, 2009