“Basically if the richest most awesomest country in the world can’t provide, for most people who try reasonably hard (and a safety net for those it doesn’t provide for), enough money to have a place to live, transportation, ability to raise a couple of kids and send them to college, have some nice things and the occasional vacation or night out, then we’re doing something wrong.”
He doesn’t mean charity or handouts. He means a living wage.
Elsewhere, Kevin Drum has a insightful piece on Raising the Retirement Age.
I’m trying really hard to avoid becoming a cynical jerk about all this, but it’s difficult. From Matt Taibbi’s piece about the SEC skirting its responsibility to regulate, much less prosecute Wall Street criminals, to Barry Ritholtz’ excellent posts on what we did wrong re: banks following the collapse, the news just isn’t good lately. We did so many things wrong in the past three years, and that has compounded how much we got wrong during the prior 8. And it’s seriously depressing that the only people talking about this stuff are the ones being joked about by the administration. Smlarm.