Being poor is not a moral failing as the ruling class would have you believe, but hoarding absurd amounts of wealth while there's people going hungry sure as hell is.
@MnemosyneSinger I'm originally from Los Angeles. Living now for many years in West Virginia has been an education. A lot of poor people here. Most of them believe that poverty results from stupidity. They believe that rich people are, by definition, good people, hard working, honest, and blessed by God. If you drive up in a nice car wearing a suit, they'll believe anything to tell them.
I'm sure this is the same in Kentucky, Tennessee, etc.
This is a huge problem that has to be fixed, but I have no idea how. I frequently disabuse people of these utterly wrong beliefs, but I'm just one person and there are millions of them.
b e a r d
@shuttersparks @MnemosyneSinger I realized that the only people who ever got rich while being a good person did it through pure luck, and a large portion of those people have concentrated efforts against them to push them out of whatever industry they made their fortune in.
I'll probably never be rich, and with the income gap increasing more and more I don't know if I'll ever even be stable. Best I can hope for at this point is that I get a family member's house when they die or something. But I'm not willing to step on and abuse people to get ahead. I'm too passionate about my work.
@shuttersparks @MnemosyneSinger Very much yes. I drove Route 66, and much of the US is completely soaking in national mythology, including the idea that the rich got rich by doing the right things. Even my family in Florida can't shake this; they ran a veterinary clinic and see people like Bezos and Musk as people who took their personal high risk entrepreneurship and just "did it harder". I come home with tales of the corruption of Silicon Valley and they just ignore me.
You talk like every other Yankee who moves to the south. You think you're God's gift to Appalachia, and these hicks just need to get a clue. @dixienationalist
@MnemosyneSinger