8 Comments

Kathleen,

Great wealth creates poverty, as you write. This is a truism rigorously ignored in society’s major institutions.

Seth

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Great Article, Kathleen.

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Tres Bien!

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Taking up from the previous comment by Diane: I see the same alarming increase in homelessness here in "nice, friendly" Australia. As implied in your piece, homelessness is the point, the suffering of the poor is precisely the point. The very wealthy are not just greedy, they are also cruel. Wealth makes people rationalize structural injustice, which is a form of lying, and habitual lying, in time, makes people lose their grasp of reality.

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I was banned by Robert Reich from his substack for suggesting that America writ large, as an entity aiding and abetting a genocide, throwing money down a rat hole in a lose-lose proxy war, and doing virtually nothing to address obscene wealth inequality and the oncoming climate chaos, deserved Donald Trump.

Our nation is so far removed from the idealistic narrative we were indoctrinated with in elementary school, and the ‘we are the good guys’ persona put forth as we lurched from one hubristic war, coup, or sanction to another, that we seem unable to put faith in anything other than celebrity and spectacle.

The better angels of our citizenry need to step up to their democratic responsibilities over and above casting a partisan ballot on Election Day, otherwise we’ll continue to circle the drain.

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I see the same alarming increase in homelessness here in "nice, friendly" Canada and the West Coast "tourist" city of Victoria. Except for encouraging developers to include "affordable" housing, which by definition is unaffordable at market rents, in their projects, every level of government passes the buck to the next. What is even more alarming is the cold-heartedness of politicians who have no qualms about squandering tax money to enable Israel's genocide. I guess life just isn't worth peanuts these days. By the way, Kathleen, I look forward to seeing more of your wicked work in my inbox in 2025!

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This reminds of something I read recently. When the US was founded only white male landowners could vote. The wealthy have always controlled the US, and it has never been a true democracy. In the current incarnation of China, the nation is working at raising the living standard of everyone and there is not the great discrepancy between the haves and have have nots.. It is actually more democratic than the US according to what I read.

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Zachary, true. China is a democracy, but try telling an American that. Russia is also a democratic wonderful place to live. Try telling an American that, either. Those two countries are clean, have no homeless, no ememployed and their leaders are respected. Do your ever wonder how much better the world would be without the U.S. and Israel. You can throw UK into that pile, too. [Thank god for BRICS.]

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