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I've been, at various times, so poor and down on my luck that I was sleeping on the street, up to solidly middle class. What concerns me is that being solidly middle-class now, with my husband and I combined making the most in a year that we've ever made, we're still not living as well or meeting our obligations as well as we have when we were arguably poorer. What would be an actual living wage keeps going up at a rate that actual wages are not keeping up with. I have no difficulty believing in a widening gap; I see it all around me every day.
I think the country at large is too apathetic for a revolution to happen now and the people at the top are too self-interested to let real reform happen without a revolution. I don't know that even a Napoleon could get a revolution going here, today. Why? Because the public at large wants someone else to do it for them. It's not enough to just stand on a soapbox and create outrage, not anymore. You can see that kind of anger by looking at any political website or publication or even just by sitting in a coffee shop for long enough. But all these people talking about how angry they are... are doing nothing to change things. They'll "support" change, by putting bumper stickers on their cars (just like those stupid yellow Made-in-China-I-support-killing-all-our-young-adults-for-oil ribbons that are plastered everywhere are supposed to be doing something for our soldiers) or by posting on their websites and blogs... but most of those people shy away when you start looking for people to actually DO something.
I think we might already be past the point of "critical mass". I can't see any way out of this, not one that's going to happen anyway, that doesn't involve violence, either in word or deed. But when it does happen, I doubt that there will be enough people willing to DO something for it to make a difference.
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