Is the American dream fading?
With more people living on the breadline in the US, we ask if it is time to abandon the American dream.
- Drew Carey: John, welcome to the Price Is Right, where ya from, John?
- John: California.
- Draw Carey: California, what do you do in California, John?
- John: I.. uh.. I just lost my job.
- Awkward.. don't feel too bad, John cause here's a chance to win a new fucking motorcycle... Cause when you can't feed your family you can at least look cool riding around on shiny brand-name shit.
- (Note: This really did just happen... my Dad's watching The Price is Right in the next room.. John really said he lost his job on national television, the studio audience is still cheering...)
while I’m gone from tumblr for a while, do me a favor. watch and ruminate on this.
"The mistake you make, don’t you see, is in thinking one can live in a corrupt society without being corrupt oneself. After all, what do you achieve by refusing to make money? You’re trying to behave as though one could stand right outside our economic system. But one can’t. One’s got to change the system, or one changes nothing. One can’t put things right in a hole-and-corner way, if you take my meaning."
— Ravelston in Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Mohandas Gandhi leading the Salt March, which began March 12, 1930. The march was an important part of the Indian independence movement. It was a campaign of nonviolent protest against the British salt monopoly in colonial India, and triggered the wider Civil Disobedience Movement. This was the most significant organized challenge to British authority since the Non-cooperation movement of 1920-22, and directly followed the Purna Swaraj declaration of independence by the Indian National Congress on January 26, 1930
"The United States is the rich country with the most skewed income distribution. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the average earnings of the richest 10 percent of Americans are 16 times those for the 10 percent at the bottom of the pile. That compares with a multiple of 8 in Britain and 5 in Sweden. Not coincidentally, Americans are less economically mobile than people in other developed countries. There is a 42 percent chance that the son of an American man in the bottom fifth of the income distribution will be stuck in the same economic slot. The equivalent odds for a British man are 30 percent, and 25 percent for a Swede."
—
This article was adapted from “The Price of Everything: Solving the Mystery of Why We Pay What We Do,” by Eduardo Porter, an editorial writer for The New York Times. The book, to be published on Jan. 4 by Portfolio, examines how pricing affects all of our choices.
(via ankhorite)
(vía fucknopoverty)
