The U.S. is not only changing at the level of race demographics, the dispersion of wealth is super distorted; the lower and middle classes only earn 7% of our nations wealth...they definitely Are not "earning privilege" working and paying debt like that. In react, we might think of the middle class S the uber wealthy classes slaves..it's sort of like our own caste system and it's not easy to change social class in this country..it just isn't that common. I like the comment someone made, does the exception prove the rule...well...NO, that's why it's the exception. So take a few minutes, watch this video and consider that most of us are probably solidly middle class, loaded with trillions in school debt and we are financing the follies of the rich who earn interest on our "investment". I'm not mocking education, I'm just saying the rat race has gotten more expensive and the bazillionaires who are literally off the wealth charts, well they only have Amex Black because it looks cool; they don't need credit cards and the toy probably aren't carrying debt and racking up interest.
So is privilege changing? I'm sure it is. And while we can look at racial diversity as an indicator that privilege may be lessened to some degree in this country, we cannot overlook how social class is distorting privilege beyond the comprehension of our civil rights era leaders; debt and economic enslavement are topics we should be open to discussing because that will affect people of every colorin this country - it already does.
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ReplyDeleteMaria,
ReplyDeleteIn terms of privilege, and these percentages that people always throw out, I always wonder to myself: who are these people? Really? What does this look like?
And it's so much more shocking than just hearing the numbers as to where YOU actually fall. Then it's terrifying. I am so terrified by these statistics, and who these people really are that are truly running our world. It actually brings tears to my eyes, but here is also why: if you watch this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vViXk5fSayo), you can hear Senator Bernie Sanders say:
In the United States today, we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income since the 1920s. Today, the wealthiest 400 individuals own more wealth than the bottom half of America - 150 million people. Today, the six heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune own more wealth than the bottom 30 percent.
Today, the top 1 percent own 40 percent of all wealth, while the bottom 60 percent owns less than 2 percent. Incredibly, the bottom 40 percent of all Americans own just 0.3 percent of the wealth of the country. According to a new study from the Federal Reserve, median net worth for middle class families dropped by nearly 40 percent from 2007 to 2010. That's the equivalent of wiping out 18 years of savings for the average middle class family.
The distribution of income is even worse. If you can believe it, the last study on this subject showed that in 2010, 93 percent of all new income created from the previous year went to the top one percent, while the bottom 99% of people had the privilege of enjoying the remaining 7%. In other words, the rich are getting much richer while almost everyone else is falling behind.
What's primarily upsetting about the Walmart family, of course, is that their prices are low, so they naturally attract the underprivilege, who typically have low education levels based on privilege, and they just have no idea how they are sucked into this very real and scary globalized machine.