[quote=flyer]
Actually, my point, flu, was that, imo, if the 80%+ of the population, which encompasses all parties, who are not in the top net worth categories in this country (another pesky little fact) are expecting any candidate to change their lives in any meaningful, bottom line way, they are SOL.
That said, if the voting masses are happy with the meaningless bones the candidates are throwing them–in exchange for their votes–they will, most likely, get what they deserve.[/quote]
Well, I’d say 80% of the population that aren’t the top income earners aren’t really screwed if they know how to manage their money well. Their fate has very little to do with what ‘rich’ people do, or what politicians do, especially in this country.
It has a lot to do with what they did with their own money when they were in their prime years earning. It has a lot to do with what they taught their kids to do with their money too, since financial education is rarely taught in the U.S.
There are plenty of solid middle class americans that will do just fine, because they manage their money just fine. This is not a lopsided country in which the wealth is concentrated in the %0.0001 of the wealthy owning 95% of the country’s wealth. If folks want to talk about wealth inequality, go to Russia, China, some of the eastern block, or the middle east, and most asian countries. People here really don’t realize how much “fairer” things are in this country relative to the rest of the world..This is not to say we don’t have structural issues, but clearly it’s not anywhere near as bad is it could be. Its just most people in this country have not really experienced extreme financial hardship to really understand what it means.
The problem is, many of the people in this country suck at money management. It’s a problem of how they spend, versus what they make. Most of the complainers about pay/job/income wouldn’t be complaining if along the way, they just took their education more seriously, or took their opportunities more seriously, or listened more to people who had a track record of investing better than them, or just didn’t spend their hard earned money on useless crap.. A small percentage of the population went through health crisis, which unfortunately in this country will probably bury you if you don’t have insurance. That is probably one of the few things that a person have very little control with. You’re just born with that. But beyond that, a lot of the financial hardships that people endure in this country were self-induced.
I’d say a good portion of the richer folks in this country would even fail miserably trying to survive if they hit a financial snag, since many of them do the exact thing same, except spend on a much larger scale.
