General Discussion

of national worth, that wealth has never been distributed.. Even my right wing dad complained that we knew how to create great wealth but we'd never learned how to share it with everybody.

Things were a little better before Reagan got in and transferred wealth from working people to the richest. Before Reagan, there were rooming houses for marginal workers and even most alcoholic vets until they became end stage drinkers.

Now the well has run completely dry, nothing left thanks to underfunding, no funding, and insane eligibility requirements. In addition, the old rooming houses have long since been razed to make way for high rises or turned back into mansions housing a couple of yuppies and a rug rat where once they'd housed 20-30 people. There is no longer anywhere to go but the street.

So the country might look rich on paper, but people are poor and getting poorer. Measurements of things like life expectancy are going down, not up. And the rich are obsessed with ever increasing numbers, so don't expect them to share voluntarily.

Yes, we know what to do about all this. We are just never permitted to do it unless there has been a crash followed by a reform period.