Sheepless: "Tired of asking for change from the top down, they are taking their economy into their own hands."

As a Labor Day weekend op-ed in the New York Times observed, "The 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases, according to the latest research from Moody’s Analytics."

Using rope-a-dope notions like the "American Dream" to marginalize an excluded majority, while perpetually bedazzling its constituents with hopes of consumer materialism and delusions of religious/patriotic superstition, even as the overall playing field is kept tilted toward wealth where it already reposes ... well, that's one strategy. In fact, it's the whole of the Republican Party's platform.

Fortunately, there are other ideas. Thanks to A for the link.

An Economy Turned Upside Down

Folks at the bottom of the economic pyramid are not only finding ways to individually climb the path to realizing the American Dream. They are building ladders for others and organizing to flatten the pyramid, sharing a collective dream in which no one is left out and everyone is happier because of it. It is also becoming increasingly obvious that for most poor folks, the only way up is together. What would the economy look like turned upside down? As these experiments demonstrate, it might look a lot greener, more cooperative, participatory and fair.