I'm beginning to think that this is the start of a widespread class warfare. Oddly enough it looks as if the plutocracy is attacking downward, trying to ensure and maximize it's gains, rather than the other way around.

The economic middle class has been under attack for some time and is shrinking. The systematic destruction of unions and small merchants has taken with it the "American Dream". At the same time, the percentage of the world's wealth held by the wealthiest is increasing, and they want to hold onto it.

Money buys elections. It takes just one Texas billionaire to fund a "Swift Boat" campaign (although there may be other contributors. When the country is for sale, the wealthy naturally will buy it. And has.

The Bush plutocracy blatantly attacked the middle class with it's tax cuts on the wealthy while borrowing trillions for war. With unparalleled chutzpah Bush even accused those not in favor of class warfare. His economic policies since then have been of the sort to leave the nation impoverished, with the government able to supply fewer and fewer social services and fewer and fewer people able to afford them on their own. The super-rich are not affected by that economic squeeze and therefore doesn't care.

And how many kids today, average kids, not going to go to college, have anything but a minimum-wage job to go to? No more is there a realistic opportunity for apprenticeship and moving on up to owning a house and paying for their kid to go to college.

It makes dealing drugs attractive. The US prison system houses more prisoners than any in the world, many there because they were poor. And those people are spawning an exponential rise in kids who know no other life and will deal drugs and head off to prison, too.

The underclasses are growing as the wealth of the upper-classes swell. Makes for an unstable situation in the longer run.

Arf