UKH

I notice that inequality is a pretty big part of the narrative for the riots in the USA. I have often wondered how much more unequal the distribution of wealth and opportunity in the USA has to get before the "American dream" can finally be seen clearly by the majority for the lie that it has become; a tool to keep the poor in their place and working themselves to death in the belief that one day they will have millions if they just grind hard enough.

So, how long will it take? How will this realisation happen? Will the USA be lucky and simply find itself electing "left wing" politicians from the Democratic party over a period of time to right the ship? Will a third party with centrist/left wing tendencies emerge and gain popular support? Or will there be a more violent breakdown of government? Will the USA fracture under the pressure?

I dont think you ever get rich of a rich/poor gap. Very few countries have managed and capitalism is built into US history (The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin is worth a read).

Voting dems will help somewhat but its been decades and huge problems like in most countries. Maybe worse in the US as some cities never recovered from the MLK riots and subsequent automation. But that is getting worse and progressing the world over. How many jobs do we need?

The US has a very strong live to work ethos too, my wife has it and its a considerable strain on our marriage. She will, and has, work 90 hours a week for some future dream as I'm much more 'lets enjoy life now'. That doesn't change overnight. But its why they accept so few holidays, and most of the country is tricked into thinking they'll spend their autumn days sat on a deck enjoying the fruits of their labor, in reality most die poor in a shit hole.

Historically the only thing that has flattened excessive inequality are violent revolution, wars, societal collapse,  and other catastrophes.

Given how things are going in the US this isn’t going to end well. A form of major civil war seem totally possible at this point.

I think of the USA as a third world country with a large upper class and an exceptional marketing department. The American Dream is a great capitalist story and the idea of America as a land of brave founding fathers traveling across the oceans is fundamentally untrue too as it dismisses both native Americans and the millions of slaves who were taken there against their will.

The systems - the media, worker's rights and conditions, infrastructure, taxation, governance, law and order - are all there to ensure that The American Dream cannot be significantly undermined. What is so sad is that a lot of people exploited by the system defend it on blind faith and naivety. You died poor? You didn't work hard enough. You don't support the country in everything it does? Then you're unpatriotic and a traitor. It is a very deep rooted thinking held by many millions of people and will be extremely difficult to overturn.

When you have people running the country that desperately want to maintain the status quo and who will do everything in their significant power to quash any threat to them then you have a very serious problem. And, while it's something we can label America with, it's something we need to keep a close eye on here too.

The American Dream is wider than the capitalist view. It includes freedom of speech and freedom to practise religion or not.Freedom from religious persecution is a big part of that dream.( thus the importance of the Mayflower ).

Well put. Some good observations in your piece I thought. I agree it is very difficult to see how the tide will turn unfortunately. 

I think it was Rich Hall who did a nice monologue about the founding fathers - escaping one system of religious suppression so they could set up their own. Freedom of speech and freedom of religion has always been prefixed by 'some' - freedom of some religions and some speech.

Good quote.

As a general rule though you can pretty much do what you want and it has the space to manage it.It always surprises me how many Muslims I met there for example.

The USA is still the dream for migrants globally ( irrespective of Trump). You do not have the same level of interest in other countries for example.

It is still a migrant country and rarely do you meet anybody who goes back more than 3 generations.

I think a big problem in America is that they make the poor invisible and not count. Huge numbers live in trailor parks and they have a lovely name for it 'trailor trash' and it is accepted as fine.

Completely agree with your characterisation of the American way of thinking. (I would say there are plenty of exceptions though, just not enough of them to make a difference on election day)

I don't love the UK system but I think there are very significant ways in which it is better and more democratic than the American system and while wealth inequality has been on the rise in the UK and it's bigger than it should be, it's miles away from the huge gap the USA has opened up. Despite Boris, I'm not overall worried about our democracy.

I think flattening the inequality rests on changing the governing powers and while history is replete with very destructive changes, there are also a notable number where there were largely peaceful protests and a somewhat orderly change; Apartheid, the velvet revolution and the arab spring in Tunisia spring to mind. Also, remember that unlike almost all revolutions (that I can think of), America does already have a democratic system so when enough people decide that a revolution _is_ needed, all they have to do is find representatives and go to the polls.

Fixed that for you. When Trump ordered troops to open fire on peaceful and law-abiding protesters because he wanted to go hold a bible upside-down in front of a nearby church, that freedom was subsumed by the executive branch. It's a small act in national terms but I think you can expect to see more of it, Trump's ego won't let him reason with people, he will attempt to crush dissent with an iron fist. However he is only a man so it will be up to the protesters and individual national guard/police men to decide what happens next.

And you have already seen the step back, like the Defense secretary saying no way. 

True. Especially on the west coast.  I loved living there but always knew it was never a country I'd live in forever. Seeing "middle class " people living out of cars in the richest parts of L.A. made me realise that some sort of social safety net is essential. God help you if you're born poor. 

Having an electoral system with elected representatives doesn’t mean you have a democratic system. Democracy us much more than that it is all about a large array of subtle checks and balances.
It’s pretty clear that the trump presidency has destroyed many of them, simply electing someone else isn’t going to change any of that. 

"America does already have a democratic system so when enough people decide that a revolution _is_ needed, all they have to do is find representatives and go to the polls."

There is also a massive attack on voting rights.
Again to remove the black/poor vote.

Yes; I have read a number of pieces by political scientists saying that the second step on the road to fascism (after getting a base who will defend anything you do because you tell them they're great and attack the people they hate) is to steal an election, and the Republicans are well up for that, including, as you say, voter suppression, but also blatant gerrymandering, defending the undemocratic electoral college to the death, internet campaigns using unlawfully obtained data, obviously appointing as many political hacks to the courts as possible, bribing foreign leaders to smear your rivals, and doing your best to stop any attempts to prevent foreign assistance. It should be a thrilling watch.

My answer to the question; how much more will it take, is a *lot* more. This is a country where many millions of people sincerely do not understand the difference between the NHS and Stalinism, and only last year the government introduced the biggest anti-redistributive tax change for generations. It's also a country where it takes massive amounts of money to run for office (as in all the best democracies, obvs). Any serious redistribution will require an apocalyptic convulsion of a type we can't even imagine. 

Just as likely, I would think - more, in fact- that the fascists win, and that however the American Dream eventually ends, it won't be through the achievement of social justice.

jcm

It isn't just about that though either, the poor are USED to make money for big business, you only have to look at the penal system (privatised) which both gets paid to have people in prison and used them to work for next to nothing (sounds a little like slavery, but they've got rid of that!).

Prisons need more prisoners, the poor have little to fight against the law, which often mean minor infringements end up with people going to prison. The poorer end of the population are black, so more black people in prison, etc. etc.

I think Louis Theroux did a program about it, there are whole towns, where every one works in the prison, just about. It's a massive business and many many people depend on it for their livelihoods.

Of course prisons are only one example.

I agree with a lot of what you say, I've been aware for a while of laws regularly being brought in to make it harder to vote, and of how these disproportionately affect the poor and ethnic minorities.

The electoral college system is not great but it is echoed by any first-past-the-post system where those in a given area might see their vote "not matter" (e.g. The UK). It would be nice to see it changed to an election based only on nationwide vote totals but I think it is a less egregious issue than everything else.

Maybe I'm too much of an optimist but I still don't want to believe that the fascists will win. I believe the courts are more resilient perhaps than you do and that the regular swing between the parties ensures that at least the politically appointed judges are a mixture of different shades of right-wing and not all loonies.

The chapter about Chicago drug dealers in Freakonomics is illuminating.

The street level dealer will on average be imprisoned once every two years and shot once every eighteen months while earning less than someone behind the counter in Macdonald's. They do it because all of them think that one day they'll be at the top of the tree and rich beyond belief.

So there you have in a microcosm, the American dream.

That applies to a number of occupations- tv and film or football being the clearest example. It is not a particulary unique issue to the USA.

Absolutely, it's human nature.

In America though, there's a greater belief in "the dream" than just about anywhere else.

It was Simon Reeves. Very illuminating programme. Think it’s this episode.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b1k0

You're right, I think he's great (Sorry Simon   ).

Well worth a watch for anyone that thinks, it's just people kicking off for no reason.

thanks for putting me right and posting.

this topic was covered in the 13th documentary on Netflix  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_(film) ) - recommended watching, albeit uncomfortable viewing.

It’s not a ‘lie’ or a ‘tool’, it’s a belief system with some fundamental faults. 
 

Most Americans believe that hard work will always get results. Therefore if you are rich you believe you got there from you hard work and anyone who is poor just needs to work harder. Plenty of people work hard, but they’re not very smart and will continue to do the same things but expect different results. Do the same thing, you’ll always get the same result. The converse then becomes true for the poor people who are working hard, but not working smarter, and who eventually start to believe that someone else must be to blame for their inability to progress because their hard work isn’t producing results. 
 

Couple this with a huge country with a massive natural market where you used to be able to sell as much as you could produce, you have a belief that it’s the work of the people that’s making them rich, not the unlimited market and lack of competition. 
 

Now introduce world wide competition and things start to become uncomfortable for anyone not selling competitively in a world wide market. 

A heads up.  (Perhaps worthy of its own thread, but I'll not do that myself until I've watched it.)

Netflix have made this documentary freely available to anyone to watch in full via Youtube here:
youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8&