This...

[Melurkyoulongtime]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/how-could-such-rich-country-ours-produce-so-many-poor-people

And it's getting worse

[w0nderer]

1. K&R

Well part of it is forgetfulness, people don't want to remember or believe about 'bad days'

There was another bad time (percentage of wealth in less hands?) called The Great depression.

During this Great Depression and after it, measures were put in place to lessen the chances of it happening again or at least as harshly. As time passed and people got it better and better, these measures which cost taxes, became a pundit point for politicians.

It's too expensive!
People are freeloading!
We don't need this, we all have it good!
Unions aren't good, they stop our cheap labor which makes products more expensive!

The people, not all of whom remembered The Great Depression, looked to themselves and started voting their personal interest(less taxes) instead of community interest, and then after the communities largely went down they started voting their employers best interest instead of their own because their employer paid pr companies to convince people this was the good idea to do.

and Thus it happened a new Depression came, and every one ran like headless chickens and asked, how did this happen?

(the storybook format was cuter for such a sad topic)

[JNelson6563]

2. Well done!

Bravo!

[w0nderer]

3. Thank you very much :-) n/t

[ladyVet]

4. I remember reading somewhere that things went in about an 80 year cycle.

You have a really bad time (the Great Depression, say), after which the country tries hard to fix things and make it better. Then, a couple of generations go by and bam, it starts all over again. People forget how bad things were, and don't believe anything like that could happen again.

I haven't forgotten. My parents were children through the Depression, and I heard tales about how hard things were. My mother was lucky, in that her father worked and they had enough land to raise animals and large gardens. My father had it harder, his alcoholic father hardly worked, they didn't raise any food sources and they were often hungry.

I grew up poor, spent most of my adult life poor, and raised three kids without a lot of luxuries. We're used to it, and now we have land we can use to raise some food (and I love my chickens). My sister and I are thinking of going in on a pig next spring. Her boyfriend knows how to butcher. I've talked to her before about possibly getting a deer around here, but we'd have to get a license. And a gun, though I've got family that would probably lend us one.

So as long as we can keep the taxes paid, and the electric bill, we'll get by. It won't be fun, but we can do it. We're already thrifty, fix our own cars and houses, build stuff we need, and make do.

Oh, thinking about deer: A local store that sells guns and hunting gear has put up signs for a couple of years about giving away venison. I haven't looked into it, and I need to remind my sister (they are having it really hard), but that's something folks could look into in their area. It's that time of year.

[Pakhet]

5. Back when we were in Texas

I had a friend who went hunting every year and would bag me a deer if I paid for butchering and gas money. Sometimes she would give me the leftovers of last years pig when they butchered the new one. I really miss that. We had meat all year.