You can work a full-time job and still be substantially below the poverty line in America. Is that OK?

something is not working - maybe the system is rigged.

Russell Brand thinks so: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/russell-brand-is-far-from-trivial-on-newsnight-he-made-paxman-look-ridiculous-8901524.html

The system is rigged: A person making minimum wage cannot live without government assistance.

Government ends up subsidizing the wages paid by Walmart, McDonald's, etc, so they can make more profit. You would think that taxpayers would be more angry about this tan they are.

I hate that hard working people are living in precarity. The rent is too damn high! 

Why is rent so high? Look to the source of the problem.

3 words: Giant Sucking Sound

3 more words: Ross (Perot) Was Right.

Right about what?

Loss of Manufacturing. Bank Collapse. Culture war as distraction. Elites looting the treasury and the economy.

Did he have a solution to this set of challenges?

Holy smokes on that infographic:

Today's lowest earners simply don't make as much as they used to.

And yet corporate profits are at an all time high.

Amerca has become a zero-sum society, which is NOT based on the free-market capitalism it claims to espouse.  America is more like a private equity company, with economic policies set to maximize for high profitability for a few at the expense of the workers who in actuality earn it.  We've morphed into a very UNamerican America.

That's the consequence of Winner Take All policies, right?

Policies and mindset.

How a majority of the people go along with a mindset that benefits very few... is simply amazing.

Reminded me of this stash about why people vote against their own interests:

http://pandawhale.com/post/5983/why-do-people-vote-against-their-own-interests

It's not about workers vs management, it's about a class of corporate executives that have attained mandarin status and live to leverage large and mid-size public companies and their assets solely to enrich themselves at the expense of all others in society--shareholders, management, employees, customers, community and etc.

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If you look at the composition of business leadership and management in the US, the majority by far is mostly mid and small-size, private businesses owners and their families.  These folks struggle to survive as much as poor, minimum wage-earning households do--only at a higher standards of overall expenses.

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Many small businesses are built on using households and those living in them as the workers, management owners and office facilities.  Small, self-employed business operators struggle to make a net profit and many such owners can't even afford to pay themselves a salary--they make LESS than minimum wage.

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The difference between being a minimum wage earner and a small business owner is not a zero sum game regarding who is getting paid more, it is a desperate and not always successful quest for value creation and distribution.

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However, at the level of game played by those 1% corporate mandarins, it's worse than a zero-sum proposition: it's parasitic extraction from society and concentration of value at much larger multiples of self-enrichment wherever they can finesse it.

Also, there's a feedback loop built into the system that allows winners to keep winning more.

Reminded me of the stash "American democracy is a corruption: How .05 percent of our population have bent our republic into an oligarchy."

http://pandawhale.com/post/18795/american-democracy-is-a-corruption-how-05-percent-of-our-population-have-bent-our-republic-into-an-oligarchy

I think there's more awareness of this than ever before.

As a result we may soon be able to do something about it through political pressure on our leaders.

Tell that to Gates and Buffett

Didn't they give most of their wealth to the Gates Foundation for philanthropy?