Today, on the heels of President Obama’s speech on income inequality, fast food workers in 100 American cities went on strike in an effort to gain higher wages.

The Guardian has an interview today with one of the striking workers, Laurentina, who earns $9.15/hr working at McDonald’s and is trying to raise four children as a single mother.

However you may feel about it, there can be no doubt that income inequality is a very real and very unbalanced condition in the United States. As the chart I published earlier this week clearly demonstrates, wealth is rapidly diminishing among the bottom 90% of earners. ?The story of the middle class in the last twenty years has been the story of its disappearance. Again, however you might feel about it, there can be no doubt that America is hurtling towards a new economic paradigm that will contain three possible states: the obscenely wealthy (~1%), the not-far-behind (~9%), and the poor (~90%).

Back to Laurentina. I wonder how many people will read her story today and think to themselves, “why does someone who works at McDonald’s think it’s okay to be a single mother with four kids?”

I know I certainly had this reaction at one point reading the article. And it scared me. Because as the remaining vapors of the middle class go quietly into that good night, as jobless rates remain stagnant and an increasing number of potential workers stop searching for jobs because there are none to be had, and as wealth continues to accumulate amongst the top 1% of the nation’s earners, what other opportunities to Laurentina and the hundreds of millions like her have?

And yet, that is how the United States contextualizes a case like this: it’s Laurentina’s fault. She shouldn’t have had those kids. She shouldn’t have allowed her marriage to end (or if she was never married, she should have). She should work harder.

Recent sociological work potently challenges these?antiquated notions of America as a land of opportunity in which anyone can rise to the top if they just apply themselves. But I think there’s another systemic assumption at play here, one that has thus far stayed largely in the shadows.

I would like to see a national conversation on the following topic: what do we as Americans believe are opportunities that anyone can/should have access to, and what do we feel should only be available to those who can pay for it?

Because I am concerned that as money disappears from the masses we are fast approaching a place where we decide that marriages, children, housing, and access to police and fire and even water should only be available to those who can specifically pay for it.

Certainly until very recently this is how Americans felt about access to health care. Challenging this ideology has proven to be extraordinarily difficult, meeting resistance at every turn, not just from the expected people and institutions who do not benefit from the dilution of what was previously an exclusive privilege of their wealth, but also from the very people who stand to benefit the most.

I don’t have much to say about this that I haven’t already said. I just thought it would be a good idea if this chart were spread far and wide around the internet.

Credit: Professor G. William Domhoff, Sociology Dept., University of California at Santa Cruz.

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

They?re both on the receiving end of hysterical attack marketing.

The most significant health care reform in the history of the United States, one that will make comprehensive affordable health care available to every citizen regardless of caste or medical history, is being called a failure in every major news media outlet because its website has some problems.

The world?s first non-gimmicked, non-planned-obsolescence electric car, the product of one of the nation?s most promising new innovative manufacturing startups, receives media attention mainly because three of its cars caught fire following collisions, the first occurrence of which suspiciously became a YouTube sensation when a passing motorist ?just happened? to notice that it was a Tesla.

What the hell is going on here?

Monopolies resist innovation and change. The most cost-effective way for behemoth institutions to maintain their size and power is to ensure that nothing can possibly compete with their products or services. Open markets are bad, goes the thinking, because an open market could potentially produce a competitor with a significantly better product or service. Monopolies win so long as the status quo goes unthreatened.

Since its origins, the financial paradigm at the heart of the auto industry has been the internal combustion engine and its reliance on oil. Huge institutional fortunes all over the world hinge on the continued success of this increasingly obsolescent machine and its rapidly diminishing fuel source, and the continued delay via any means available of the implementation of the proven technologies that will supplant and replace ICEs and their fuel source is in the best interests of the people sitting atop those institutions.

The auto industry?s resistance to change is well-documented. For decades, American automakers in particular relied upon patriotism and a ?who cares? attitude towards innovation, fuel economy, and emissions regulations to excuse a lethargic path-of-least-resistance guideline for product development.

Similarly, the nation?s health care providers have been complicit in creating an industry whose primary aim is to be profitable. Even common-sense measures with clear health advantages, such as the implementation of electronic medical records, have met with massive industry-wide resistance and only gained traction thanks to equally massive government regulatory efforts that have included tax credits and other forms of federal funding to financially reward health care providers for adapting the technology.

One effective form of resistance is to control the public conversation, and both the health care and automobile establishments have been successful in their attempts, overt or otherwise, to shape the news media?s presentation of both the Affordable Care Act and the development of Tesla?s next generation of cars as largely failures. Worth wondering is how much of a controlling interest those industries have in some of the nation?s news media outlets.

Given?the shrill nature of headlines about ?Obamacare? and exploding Tesla cars, it seems at least plausible that institutions with a vested interest in protecting their status quo are making some noise.