Class
Page 7
- If Trayvon Martin had been born white he would be alive today. That has been established beyond all reasonable doubt. If he had been white, he never would have been stalked by Zimmerman, there would have been no fight, no funeral, no trial, no verdict. It is the Zimmerman mindset that must be found guilty - far more than the man himself. It is a mindset that views black men and boys as nothing but a threat, good for nothing, up to no good no matter who they are or what they are doing. It is the Zimmerman mindset that has birthed a penal system unprecedented in world history, and relegated millions to a permanent undercaste.
- Is high unemployment as certain as death and taxes? Of course not. But if we depend on the private sector to bring rates down, joblessness could join those two certainties.
- The more we become a nation of rich and poor, the less we can pretend to be offering the same opportunities to every American.
- Inequality provokes a generalized anger that finds targets where it can--immigrants, foreign countries, American elites, government in all forms--and it rewards demagogues while discrediting reformers.
- Inequality saps the will to conceive of ambitious solutions to large collective problems, because those problems no longer seem very collective.
- If the middle class dream flickers and dies, it’s a different America.
- Working yourself to death used to be the lot of the laboring masses. Now it is the ultimate luxury of the ultra-rich.
- If the middle class dream flickers and dies, it's a different America.