Freedom from What, Exactly?

As the rich get richer, they get smarter with marketing.  How else could the fashion industry make so many people think that $200 jeans made by Chinese slave children are better to have than cheap ones you can get for $21.99?   Remember always, as those of us who were alive in the sixties still can, that corporate backing is the push behind Republican politics - and the subtext of, "keep the government out of my life," is "I don't want rules that stop me from doing whatever I want, regardless of the effect my behavior has on anybody else." 

Freedom has more to do with being civil to others and sharing responsiblity than it does with letting the people who own the most own ever more without paying a proportionate share of taxes or being held accountable to the rules the rest of are bound to.  It's a falsehood to claim that deregulation (for one example) represents some form of freedom.   Well, I guess in some ways it does represent freedom - freedom from the American Dream.

Read:
Separate but unequal: Charts show growing rich-poor gap
by Zachary Roth

"The Great Recession and the slump that followed have triggered a jobs crisis that's been making headlines since before President Obama was in office, and that will likely be with us for years. But the American economy is also plagued by a less-noted, but just as serious, problem: Simply put, over the last 30 years, the gap between rich and poor has widened into a chasm."