"Damn I'm rich! $$$$"

This was the post of someone I know on Facebook regarding a web site he went to on the relative wealth of most Americans. I know it was meant to show that We The People aren't really doing so badly compared to the rest of the world. I also know it was meant to engender gratitude for what We have. But it still is a gross over-simplification of what the real issues are (and to the conspiratorial mind-set, perhaps is meant to calm and mollify those of us in the 99% of this country).  

But the real issue is in all of this, that however much We Americans have (once again, at least in the 99%) more than the rest of the world, poverty is relative. If you only make a dollar a day and subsistence is $1.25, that's much better than making $6 an hour when you actually need $8 to truly survive. These sites and 'meters' don't take into consideration a great many things. For an increasing many in this country, they are skewing more towards Third (and Forth) World living every day. 

Americans need to simplify their lives for the most part. And they can do with a lot less in the material realm than they think they can. Americans have been led into thinking that they Need To Have so much, because... well, because They're Americans, dammit! The Country has been marketed into excessive material to prove how well We Are as a country (and to feed the 1% 's insatiable need to OWN EVERYTHING). Americans are now as a People being forced to cut back their expectations because those said expectations were not anywhere approaching reason (that's why most Americans are up to the tops of their increasingly disappearing hairlines in DEBT [called the "Sweet Spot" by the Credito-Industrial Complex]).

But that said, the incidence of homelessness is increasing exponentially in this country. I for instance was homeless for almost three years (living on the couches of friends, etc. with no money coming in). And I had these resources to keep me from the worst of it. According to this sites scale, I'm filthily wealthy -- and believe me, that ain't the case.

So, yes. I am relatively well off. I now have enough money to eat, and to pay my (adjusted due to disability) rent. I don't have a car still (in LA, that's sacrilege!). And here it is, yet another holiday, and I didn't have enough 'spare cash' to do anything besides go to a pot-luck party later today. In the meantime, I'm 'working' (writing). I hope someday soon to at least have a car to go for a (small luxury) scenic drive for a holiday. Perhaps soon, I'll have even more available funds to do even more.

But right here, right now, I'm grateful for what I have. I wish everyone else that gratitude as well. 

And I also wish that the World some day comes into more of an equitable equal distribution of quality of life. We're not there yet though. Don't let the truly Wealthy mollify you into believing that this is 'all right' (cause it ain't).

The Nuclear Fallout of the American Dream

Did you watch "60 Minutes" last Sunday night when they showed abandoned houses in Cincinnati, OH, being torn down because so many of them were 'under water' mortgage-wise? The majority of entire neighborhoods, evicted and demolished; while the banks that created these implosions go on business as usual, unscathed by these decisions that they made in the name of Corporate Greed and Profit.

The Occupy Movement was accused of being fuzzy on their demands re: this whole political/economic mess. But what was shown on TV were clear scenes of detonations of the American Dream dieing a rather somnalent, but ultimately violent death. Whole Communities have been laid waste, and yet the Banks that created the circumstances for this wholesale destruction remain unharmed and un-indicted in their responsibility.

How many more Cities need to die quick deaths before the mess of this nonsense is rectified and brought to some kind of justice? How many people need to be evicted, their houses going vacant and up for the Crony Bidders of the Banks that orchestrated this fallout? Some Communities might as well have had a nuclear bomb dropped for all the livability and sustainability that remains in them.

It's time to find a way to Indict the New Un-Indicted Conspirators, and take down the System that is obviously so corrupt that it can't even police itself.