It’s nice when facts back up all the complaining I’ve been doing on this little site.

Such as the American Dream is a load of shit. A child born into poverty in America has a 1.3 percent chance of making it to the upper class. 1.3 percent. That’s it.

It’s not a question of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, it’s not a question of hard work over laziness or intelligence over ignorance. It is more akin to the odds of winning the lottery, which may explain why so many poor people are willing to put their faith and their cash into tiny games of chance with little likelihood of payoff, the odds are very familiar to them (us, me).

But this isn’t a natural human state. The division of haves from have nots is neither normal nor natural nor to be expected. Unemployment doesn’t exist in nature. Neither does credit or money. As a species, there are more than enough resources on this planet to feed and house us all, only complex and unnatural ideas of trade and surplus and profit and ownership prevent that possibility. No one really dies because there is a lack of food, but because there is a lack of money to buy food.