Travels

I have wandered around various regions of this nations territory for the past ten years, so on this page you will find some of my writings about the economics of housing (and of homelessness) some recollections of some of the people that I met and some photographs that i recorded during my travels. As a result of my studies of finance (and investing) and of my observations and experiences while interacting with a fairly large number of people (from a fairly wide range of socioeconomic strata) I have formulated the conclusion that differentials in the levels of housing quality (and availability) are probably the single largest impediment when it comes to insuring that our nation provides "justice for all" (as so alluringly promised in the Pledge of Allegiance that most American school children were required to recite every morning before classes began in school).

Because of the rampant speculation in the residential housing market that has plagued our nation for so many decades, millions of Americans have been marginalized in to the weaker end of a highly disparate spectrum of socioeconomic strength (because they are unable to pay their rent or their mortgages) and thus: they are unable to afford to live inside like the vast majority of Americans do. While living outside they are subjected to (not only the assaults of the elements, but all so to) out bursts of random violence perpertrated against them by domiciled psychopaths who have seemed eager to utilize their dwellings (not to help the less fortunate, nor even to merely nourish and to sustain themselves but rather) as fortresses from which they can plan and perpertrate campaigns of intimidation (and physical violence) directed a'gainst people less materially fortunate than themselves... particularly the unhoused (a.k.a: the homeless).

In fact, reliable evidence has been compiled to support that observation, such as the data discussed in the following report, titled:

A Survey of Hate Crimes (and of Violence) Perpetrated Against Homeless People

(Which you can see, for yourself, by clicking on to those prior words in blue
or up on the following image):

Those crimes are just one side effect of the extreme inequalities of wealth (and income) that have been (so recklessly) engineered (and negligently allowed to come in to such poisonous fruition) here, in the disUnited States of America, during the past few decades and it appears that:

Those extreme differentials in degrees of wealth (and of income) are, in large part, responsible for the (too vast) disparities in physical strength that have (in many cases) allowed (and perversely: potentiated) the perpetration of such (past and, potentially future) craven crimes

and:

Those extreme disparities in degrees of accumulated wealth (and income) represent (not merely a grave threat to the physical safety of the many millions of Americans who are currently forced, by economic deprivation, to live outside, but all so) a catastrophic failing of our nations political (and religious) "leaders" and institutions.

People who live out side often have no place to hide when some one richer, stronger, or: more powerfully residentially fortified wants to physically attack them (even if their assailants motive was merely the fact that they were: drunk and wanted to hate, berate, and assault {or even maim <or to kill>} a convenient scape goat that no one {often not even the police} seems to care if is assaulted {or killed}). In addition to the statistics contained in that previously linked to report, from first-hand observation (and research) in to the topic, I have learned that the trend of attacking homeless people has been disproportionately prevalent in a number of our nations southern (and particularly western) states during the past decade.

That trend appears to be merely one (assumedly unintentional) side effect of the economic disempowerment of our nations middle (and working classes) and those politically, religiously, and intellectually engineered economic attacks perpetrated against the unsuspecting majority of our nations people have caused a simultaneous increase in both:

the number of people living out side

and in:

the intensity of the anger that many (suddenly economically deprived) people appear to feel as a result of their (often significant) financial losses sustained during this most economic recession

and (as a: result) a disproportionate percentage of that anger appears to be being misdirected at the weaker (and: less materially fortunate) members of our society... particularly the poor (and the homeless).

Even though our nations federal governmental officials attempted to claim that our nations economy merely entered into a "recession" in nineteen ninety seven, the fact is that for the poor and working class majority of our nations people, their economic experiences actually entered in to what should be more accurately described as a: Depression, be cause in truth "recessions" are not normally characterized by:

tens of millions of people all losing their jobs at the same time

and:

millions more losing their homes and having to "down size" in to apartments, home less shelters, or cardboard boxes situated up on city side walks and: alley ways.

Those phenomena are more characteristic of a Depression and recovering from a depression has historically been a process that many nations have failed at, some times with catastrophic results.

For example, consider the case of post world war one Germany (which spiraled down in to a severe economic depression after losing that first "world" war). As that nations economy collapsed for their poor and working class people, their national money became almost worthless, as evidenced by reported skyrocketing rates of price inflation witnessed in that countries commercial and business environments at that time, apparently manifesting as a weekly doubling to tripling of prices of consumer products such as food, clothing, shelter, and medicine.

As a result, many millions of poor and working class Germans could no longer afford to buy the basic lifes necessities that they needed to survive, and widespread misery resulted, causing large numbers of angry people to begin to coalesce and organize into angry mobs to demand positive change.

A small number of German industrialists became concerned that a violent communist revolution would occur, such as the one that had been violently perpetrated in the former Russia a few decades prior during which huge numbers of private property owners lost almost all of their material possessions through government mandated mass asset seizures, and unfortunately a significant number of them who fought against their desperate opponents during the ensuing series of "civil" wars between those two factions also lost their lives.

Before, and during that violent revolution, demonization of both wealthy successful people, and poor, destitute people was widespread, and as a result during the fighting that characterized the resultant series of increasingly violent "civil" wars, anywhere from millions to tens of millions of people were reportedly killed, while millions of other people were forcibly imprisoned inside of massive, subarctic, government administered prison work camps known as "gulags".

(One prisoner of those massive, subarctic Soviet work camps was Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who chronicled his, and other prisoners terrible suffering and brutal enslavement in one of the most famous books of Russian factual literature titled: "The Gulag Archipelago", a link to which is provided at the bottom of this page.)

Afraid that the same type of widespread violence and asset seizure of private property that occurred in the former "Russia" would be repeated in seething post world war one Germany, a small group of concerned German industrialists focused their political and financial support behind a gifted public speaker who they thought would be able serve as an effective public face for an alternative form of less radical change called "National Socialism" ("na.zi'ism").

Unfortunately, during the course of their attempts to retain control of their privately held corporations by preventing a violent communist revolution similar to the one that had just been perpetrated in the former "Russia" (subsequently renamed the 'Soviet Union'), the man they chose to represent their interests began to engage in a campaign of demonization, marginalization and dehumanization of identifiable groups of ethnic and religious German minorities in an attempt to "eliminate the problem".

How ever, people are not "the problem".

The problem is, that when there have been deep seated, paradigmatic shifts in the social, cultural, political or technological environments in which a nations corporations conduct their business activities, corresponding changes in policies and procedures have to be conceived of and implemented by the administrators of those corporations, lest those entities owners find themselves losing significant amounts of money, and begin to panic and attempt hoard their resources, causing that nations economy to contract, and plunging their peoples economic experiences into a Depression.

Because (in truth) despite the periodically recurring hysterical demonization and dehumanization of vulnerable segments of a nations population that appears to occur during the emergence of such tectonic and frightening alterations that can sometimes occur in a nations social, cultural, political and business environments, the fact is that blaming, demonizing and marginalizing particular groups of people is simply not sufficient when it comes to actually fixing the underlying problems created by such sudden and often unexpected changes, because those types of socioeconomic problems can not be blamed upon people that some unhinged individuals may psychotically shout need to be "eliminated", such challenges are merely puzzles that must be solved.

Unfortunately, in addition to the very real economic deprivation that many tens of millions of Americans here in the United States have already endured and are seemingly expected to continue to endure, the fact is that their misery is being unwisely intensified by they and their children being repeatedly exposed to gratuitous, televised depictions of standards of material living that they have lost the hope of ever possibly attaining, and as a result, severe resentment has begun develop, sometimes leading to hatred of others, particularly the wealthy... and when tens of millions of people in one particular nation all begin to hate an identifiable subsegment of that nations population, all at the same time, violent conflict is almost sure to follow.

In order to alleviate the misery that has been so recklessly and unwisely allowed to come into fruition into the lives of so many tens of millions of people on our planet, it will likely be first necessary to solve the very serious socioeconomic problems that our individual nations currently struggle with, and which appear to give rise to most of the resentment that is the root cause of the violence and contention that appears to repeatedly poison our interactions with one another.

While living outside for the past three years, I have had the opportunity to meet many dozens of other people suffering in such similar ways, and I am of the opinion that if someone as highly educated as myself is having difficulty attaining my economic goals, as are many millions of my peers, then something is seriously wrong with our nations approach to "solving" problems, and I believe that serious changes in attitude should be cultivated.

When I reflect back upon the time I spent talking with the large number of homeless people I met while visiting the city of Boston, Massachusetts during the spring of 2012, I can't help but notice that many of them appeared to have lost their jobs during the mass-layoffs of the late 1990's and early 2000's, and as a result many of them also lost their homes, their apartments or condominiums, and even their rooms (if they were even lucky enough to have ever had one), and as a result, wound up homeless.

It appeared that many of the people I met had completely given up on the idea of ever owning, or even living in, a home, and had simply accustomed themselves to the fact that they had to live outside in the elements, and might have to continue to do so for a very long time.

While exploring that city, and it's various suburbs and landmarks, I noticed that the number of people who appeared to be lost and confused was so large, that I began to become confused , often finding myself wondering if there was something peculiar about me to explain the fact that so many people exhibited the strange habit of staring at me for much longer periods of time than I had ever been accustomed to in the past.

As time went on (and I found myself conversing with more and more of the people whose seemingly fixated presence in close proximity to me seemed some what anomalous) I gradually began to realize that most of them were either unemployed, and not sure what to do with their all of their suddenly idle time, or homeless, with no real, stable, safe place to go to contain, and compose themselves.

The more I traveled (and the more people I spoke with) the more I began to realize that many of the home less people I was interacting with had no one to really help them and no place to really turn to for permanent, long term solutions to their predicaments. Conversely, many of them seemed to enjoy having some one sympathetic to recount their struggles to and a number of them described to me their frustrating experiences interacting with the formal (and informal) network set up to (ostensibly) help them.

How ever, it seemed as if no matter how well intentioned most of the staff working at the agencies established to help the home less were, the sad fact was (that in actuality) most of them appeared to be woefully ill equipped to do any thing of any lasting substance to truly help the legions of needy people in any sort of real, permanent way.

In fact (when it came to housing people whose primary need was just that) most of the organizations I spoke to seemed to offer every thing but. While food, clothing, toiletries, and (at a few of the better facilities) telephone calls (and less occasionally: showers) seemed to be available, real progress towards finding permanent housing for the legions of home less people seemed to be nearly continuously (and maddeningly) elusive. That lack of the One Crucial Thing that home less people need the most appeared to be generating a very high level of despair among many of the dozens of home less people I heard from and that despair appeared to lead many of them to engage in self destructive behaviors (such as substance use, self sabotage, verbal aggression {and some times: worse}).

The self hatred that many home less people appeared to feel after those (often comprehensible {yet sadly misdirected} out bursts) seemed to only intensify their despair and many of the people I heard from appeared to only be descending down in to a deeper (and deeper) spiral of self destruction... hurting (not only them selves) but all so others, through the negativity that they were (often unconsciously) projecting at many of the other people they were interacting with on a daily basis. Many of them appeared to feel the desire to resort to the habitual use of alcohol or drugs in a futile attempt to numb their feelings of bitterness and self hatred that appeared to be threatening to engulf them. When those same suffering people then went to seek assistance in securing housing, those incidents of self medication were too often included in their "client profile", and many of them were treated dismissively.

Some were forced to leave the homeless shelters if they did not comply with requirements that most people would find overly burdensome while already being homeless. As a result, many of the homeless people I met seemed to find themselves having no choice but to live outside for many months, even years at a time, sometimes in the ice and snow of the New England winters. I met a few men who had spent the entire previous, freezing cold winter outside, some in tents in the snow blanketed woods, and some feebly attempting to sleep through the night on top of heating exhaust vent grates next to office buildings, in an attempt to survive the sometimes deadly, often below freezing, winter, night time temperatures.

The idea that every few weeks a news story, or word of mouth report that someone was found dead in the morning after falling asleep outside in the bitter winter cold was an accepted reality. In an admirable effort to avoid such tragedies, police officers in progressive Cambridge, Massachusetts drove around all throughout the night during major snow storms, on the lookout for people who had fallen asleep outside.

It is a sadly accepted fact of life that in almost every major northeastern American city, large numbers of homeless people bundle up inside cardboard boxes, in a desperate and perilous attempt to survive through the night without freezing to death.

Another disappointing feature of the socioeconomic landscape of the United States of America that I noticed during my travels is that almost all of the cities I visited, such as:

Providence, Rhode Island

Boston, Massachusetts

Cambridge, MA

Manchester, New Hampshire

Erie, Pennsylvania

Miami, Florida

San Diego, California

Santa Monica, CA

Venice, CA

and:

Los Angeles, CA.

Appeared to have their main homeless shelters located in, or unwisely near, the middle of their downtown business and residential districts, often within close walking distance to, and often within the line of sight of, largely vacant, luxury high rise residential condominium buildings, many of which appeared to have just been built during the preceding few years. Apparently the building construction industry in this nation has not been very effective at predicting, nor adapting to, rapidly distorting demand curves, and as a result, many real estate investors are not going to be receiving their anticipated rates of return on their original investments.

Evidence of this fact was observed during the course of my domestic travels through five major United States cities over the last three years, during which time I had the opportunity to gather information on the current inefficiencies and deficiencies in our nations residential and commercial housing markets, and what I found was shocking. In just one city, Boston, Massachusetts, which I had the opportunity to tour during the spring of 2012, I saw very large numbers of "for rent" signs plastered to very large numbers of empty apartments, town houses, and condominiums, many of which appeared to have just been constructed in the few years immediately prior.

More disturbingly, those types of glaring inefficiencies in our nations residential housing market appear to have manifested during, and immediately after, decades of federal governmentally engineered macroeconomic policy based upon the myopic and sometimes disingenuous reassurances made by many of our nations most highly respected economists that free markets are naturally "efficient" at matching the needs of buyers and sellers of particular commodities, as if that claim alone were sufficient to justify the absolute absence of government intervention into the economic affairs of it's citizens.

But what many of those influential economists and their unwitting associates within our nations federal government apparatus did not appear to realize is that it is of little value for a market for a particular commodity to be "efficient", if that market is not also effective at accomplishing the original purpose of what a market is supposed to accomplish, which is to match buyers and sellers of particular commodities at terms that both can accept, until all of the buyers needs are fulfilled, and all of the sellers supplies are sold.

The fact that there are both millions of people living outside, and millions of unoccupied residential dwellings in our nation indicates that mere efficiency of markets for commodities such as housing is not sufficient enough justification for the near absolute absence of government intervention that we have witnessed into the economic affairs of our nation, and that new comprehensions of what constitutes effective economic policy for our nations government to pursue and implement should be considered.

When I reflect upon the wide scale economic misery that exists in this nation for so many millions, even tens of millions of our nations residents, I am of the firm opinion that the relatively small amount of rebellious violence engaged in by such marginalized and often exploited people within the borders of authority of our nations federal government is a testament to the innate goodness of the poor and working class people of this country, and that rather than our nations political and economic leaders continuing to put such already suffering people to further tests of self restraint, that it would be wise for them to instead marshall all of the resources at their disposal to alleviate the suffering our those millions of people within the borders of authority of our nations federal government, by adequately housing all of the people currently living outside, lest possible wide scale violent uprisings occur in the future.

Because of what utility is it for a property owner to retain control of large numbers of unoccupied residential dwellings, far beyond anything that they or their loved ones could possibly occupy, when at any moment some of the many millions of angry people in our nations military, police forces, psychiatric hospitals, prisons, and homeless shelters could coalesce around an as yet unforeseen triggering future event, and some type of large scale violent revolution ensue, such as the one that was witnessed in post world war one communist Russia?

Even if our nations "leaders" are temporarily successful in finding ways to prevent, or delay such a catastrophe, such blatantly alleviatable economic misery births deep reservoirs of resentment, anger, and hatred among many millions of our nations people, and those reservoirs of negativity are very likely to be the catalyst for the perpetration of violent crime, making increasingly large areas of our nations cities unsafe, undermining the qualities of life of, not only the dispossessed people who reside within those areas, but also for the wealthy people who may happen to own property in those areas, may reside on the fringes of such areas, or may have other reasons to visit or travel through such neighborhoods, even if by accident.

If those realities I witnessed in which, what appear to me to be, millions of impoverished people so angry and desperate that some of them are tempted to carjack or kidnap me or others, and either kill us or hold us for ransom were observed in just one major American city, or in just one region of this nations territory, I might be tempted to dismiss the existence of such phenomena as an anomaly, but after three years of witnessing and almost falling victim to such planned crimes, I have come to the firm conclusion that those experiences I had are symptomatic of a nationwide phenomenon, and that something has to be done on the federal level to ameliorate those problems.

So after five months exploring the city of Boston, Massachusetts, and many of it's smaller, outlying, suburb cities, I boarded a bus to Manchester, New Hampshire. It is a beautiful city, strategically situated on the banks of the Merrimac River, and I was happy to have the opportunity to explore it. However, within days I began to witness the exact same, inefficient economic environment, coupled with, what appeared to be, a fascistly suppressive attitude towards the homeless, many of which I had the opportunity to speak with and get to know.

Apparently some of the upstanding citizens of that city had somehow coerced the police into sweeping the homeless out from under the cities rivers bridges, where many of them had retreated in a feeble attempt to secure some sort of protection for themselves from the elements, which in a semi-sub Arctic city as situated as for north on the eastern seaboard of the United States of America, can be fairly brutal, and even life threatening at times.

It appears that significant numbers of our nations people are being allowed to identify socially "acceptable" scapegoats upon which they can displace their own personal, familial, or economic frustrations, and as a result, many homeless people in various northeastern American cities are finding themselves wandering around in bitter cold, New England winter nights, and reduced to seeking government approved shelters administered more like prisons, prior to entry of which homeless people are subjected to unwarranted searches of their bags and persons, and forced to pass through metal detectors scanning them for potential weapons, apparently to disprove the unfounded and unConstitutionally insulting and defamatorily implied misassumption that they were potentially violent "criminals" simply because they were too decapitalized to pay rent or mortgages, when in fact the vast majority of them are, and were, not.

After a few months exploring the city of Manchester and being unable to find suitable employment or residential accomodations, I decided to escape the imminent intensely bitter New England winter, and on November 3rd I boarded a jet to Miami, Florida, in hopes of becoming firmly established as a permanent resident there during their climates less intensely hot winter months. Upon my arrival at the airport I located a municipal bus to the city of Miami Beach, which I rode to that city. Within days I noticed the exact same, divisively unjust socioeconomic inequality that I had witnessed in various New England cities, occurring right alongside the buoyant, winter long festivities of the small percentage of our planets people who can afford to indulge in such unrestrained jubilance.

While in Miami Beach, I noticed what appeared to be almost the exact same type of luxurious, residential high rise condominiums that I saw in Boston, Massachusetts, many seemingly built within the last decade or so during the supposed "recession" that saw corporate profits skyrocket, sending our nations stock market, and the net worths of the mostly already wealthy people who own the vast majority of the corporate stocks who prices comprise that financial market index, to dizzying new heights, while poor and working class peoples jobs were shipped overseas to nations whose citizenry would perform the same work for barely subsistence wages, with the employment compensation differential being transferred into the bank accounts of our nations new, and already existing millionaires and billionaires.

Even more disturbingly, while there I noticed that many of the homeless women I met appeared to feel compelled to sell their bodies in order to be able to afford to pay for their basic life's necessities such as food, clothing, toiletries, and shelter, and many of them appeared to live in nearly ever present sadness and nearly all consuming fear of men. I managed to convince one of the women I met that despite the malignant advice of her male "friend" she didn't need to continue to do such things to survive, but the realization gradually dawned upon me that wealth inequality will always be a powerfully destructive impetus provoking people to exploit others or hurt themselves, and that any truly enlightened government should promote and pursue socioeconomic policies that attempt to at least minimize such inequalities, if not entirely eliminate them.

To make matters worse, many of the homeless people I met in Miami appeared to spend at least half of their time eluding the police helicopters, cruisers, and all terrain vehicles that appeared to patrol the beaches relentlessly, in an attempt to chase the poor away from the sight of the wealthy visitors who flock to that city all winter long. When not resting in my tent in the sand dunes adjacent to the famous "South Beach", I spent my days socializing on the seawall running parallel to the beach.

While walking by there one day, I met a homeless African American Iraq war veteran, just returned home from combat. He appeared to be suffering from a serious case of "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder" (P.T.S.D.), or what was formerly known as "combat fatigue". He seemed to be stuck in a near constant physiochemically induced feeling of "fight or flight", evidenced by the fact that he was almost always fearfully apprehensive, very rarely relaxed, and sometimes became angry and aggressive.

I got to know him quite well, and sitting on the public seating adjacent to the boardwalk, watching the jovial tourists stroll by seemed to help him relax and smile. The more we spoke, the more he told me about himself, and his time in Iraq. Tragically, he had had his foot severed off by a piece of metal shrapnel launched at him at very high speed by an explosion caused by an I.E.D. (improvised explosive device) attack on the Humvee caravan he was traveling in.

He appeared to be in terrible daily pain, even though army doctors had somehow surgically reattached his foot. While spending his days sitting next to the seawall adjacent to the beach boardwalk, he seemed confused, depressed, and very, very angry at the fact that he had been so grievously injured, and then apparently abandoned by our nations government after his release from the hospital.

After a few months of socializing with he and other homeless people in Miami, it became obvious that the police were being forced to repress them into hiding, and as they drifted away, and I became bored of the non stop flow of new tourist faces there for only a short time, I decided to relocate north, to Hollywood Beach.

Hollywood, Florida is an interesting city. Most of it is situated seven to ten miles from the Atlantic Ocean, separated from that beachfront by east Floridas "intracoastal waterway". It was very hot and humid, but the people there were almost all very calm, happy, and courteous. In contradiction, the beachfront area itself is almost entirely for tourists, and the small percentage of locals lucky enough to find a way to economically survive by helping the tourists to enjoy their visit.

However, while in the inland part of the city of Hollywood itself, I met men who revealed to me that one of the homeless shelters there was charging rent to people who slept there, even sending some disabled people out onto street corners to sell homeless advocacy tabloid newspapers every day in order to be able to earn the money to pay their rent. Then while walking around I met a man in a wheelchair with withered legs due to a serious neurological disease.

While listening to him speak, he revealed to me that after he had had a disagreement with the manager of that particular homeless shelter regarding his need for his pain medication, he was cruelly evicted out onto the sidewalk a few blocks away and left there all by himself, even though he couldn't walk. Some time later, the shelter where that disabled man formerly resided was seized by the city, condemned, and the man who operated it was reputedly chased out of that Florida town for "being too nice to criminally prone homeless people".

That was the first indication I saw that there appears to be a trend in many warm weather cities to stoke and project hostility towards the homeless, even those who are disabled. The more I learned about the mistreatment of homeless people in warm weather climates, the more disturbed I became. For example, in both Florida and California I heard repeated accounts of serious, even fatal violence being repeatedly perpetrated against homeless people, with some cities and towns in Florida appearing to have reached epidemic levels of such repeated violent outbursts being directed against poor, and sometimes disabled people living outside.

From my research, supported by a large number of television and internet news stories reporting such crimes against the unhoused, violence against homeless people appears to be on the rise in southern California as well.

I believe that at least part of the reason for this phenomenon is the fact that many people in our country are so angry and frustrated as a result of their recent economic losses due to the selective recession (that somehow only seemed to affect the elderly, the disabled, the poor, and the "working-class") that increasing numbers of people are unthinkingly striking out at convenient, socially acceptable targets, and in the contemporary United States of America where we worship money, and the rich people who appear to possess unnecessarily huge quantities of it, poor people within easy reach appear to be becoming the most popular targets of choice for those who need a weaker, passive target upon which to vent their rage.

The increasingly popular worship of very wealthy people that has been promoted by our nations news and entertainment media appears to have resulted in a new, distorted, dualistic national paradigm in which materially rich people are perfect, while materially-poor people are despicable, and as a result of the extreme wage, income and wealth inequality that was so unwisely allowed to come into fruition during decades of misguided, myopic, federal governmentally engineered (or sanctioned) socioeconomic policy, we now have almost unprecedented numbers of poor people living in the United States of America.

When I refer to "poor people", I am not merely referencing people whose meager incomes mathematically place them into categories officially designated as "poor" by our nations federal government, but rather I am referring to the fact that levels of wealth and poverty are relative to the levels of wealth and poverty of everyone else that one resides (or socializes) amongst, and because of the decades of malevolent social and economic policy that was pursued, promoted and implemented by our nations federal government, we now have a nation in which wealth is so unevenly distributed, that the poor feel poorer than ever, while the very wealthy are living lives of idle luxury that most poor and working people could not even conceive of in their wildest fantasies.

I am of the firm belief that in order to begin to fix the economic injustices that have been perpetrated against legions of poor and working class people in this country, our nations federal government should craft and implement more proactive strategies to address the apparently intractable impoverishment of so many tens of millions of people in our nation.

From my research it appears that the last time wealth and income inequality in the United States of America was so unequal was during the late 1800's: an age of economic inequality so extreme that the majority owners of the stock of the most powerful corporations of that time were derisively labelled "robber barons", who were perceived to have been lucky enough to have been born into a "Gilded Age", while their toiling masses of workers lived in misery, and poverty.

That is probably an oversimplification of the realities of that time, but as a result of the inability or reluctance of the corporation owners of that time to more equitably share the profits of their, their workers, and their corporations combined efforts, an organized labor movement began to take shape, resulting in the formation of workers unions, who lobbied for better pay and working conditions.

By the 1950's, those labor unions had managed to secure adequate wages and working conditions for their members, resulting in the creation of the often idealized "American Middle Class", which many credit for the relative social harmony and stability of that time, and the ranks into which induction of meant that a man and his family had finally managed to secure for themselves a piece of the "American Dream".

However during the 1970's, a new system of values began to be accepted into the hearts and minds of tens of millions of Americans, resulting in the phenomenon in which many of our nations economists began to rationalize, adopted and justify a new, intensely oppositional paradigm, which imprudently extolled the "virtues" of selfishness.

That new, disorienting national zeitgeist appears to have reached a peak of influence at the appearance of motion pictures such as the 1987 movie "Wall Street", in which the very wealthy protagonist of the drama, Gordon Gecko spitefully, and arrogantly spouted facile, self serving slogans such as "greed is good", and other such sociopathically myopic platitudes.

Other variations on such corrosively irresponsible slogans became popular during the 1980's, through the 1990's, and up until the mid 2000's, promoting a new paradigm of extreme selfishness, which was then reinforced by the projection of mind-warping television programs such as "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous", and MTVs "Cribs", which consisted of little more than long, covetous leers at rare opulent private residences that 99% of the worlds population will likely never spend a night in, never mind own.

How ever, that inconvenient fact didn't appear to interfere with the mindless coining (and repetition) of mindless (and irresponsible) platitudes such as the:

"you can never be too rich (or too thin)"

and:

"it's all about money"...

Paradigms (both of which) could be contested by either: concentration camp survivors or: executed French preRevolutionary nobility, a like.

Unfortunately (when broaching the topic of economic inequality) it isn't all that uncommon to see some contentious mass media commentators irresponsibly deploy socioeconomic extremist labels at their opponents, in an attempt to marginalize and demonize them, often contemptuously hurling one of the following nebulously ominous epithets:

"Communist"

"Socialist"

"Redistributionist"

or:

"Collectivist".

Yet very often little thought is invested into defining what the actual definitions of those terms are, so I thought I'd offer my opinion as to what I perceive to be the correct definitions, and appropriate usage of, those particular socioeconomic labels:

A "Communist" is generally accepted to be a person who believes in completely equal ownership of the means, and output, of production of a nations industry. In the past, that goal was sometimes achieved by government mandate, often through "nationalization" of a nations private corporations, a form of seizure and redistribution generally regarded as overly aggressive by most.

Then on the opposite end of the socioeconomic philosophical spectrum, we have those referred to as "capitalists".

A Capitalist is generally accepted to be a person who believes in allowing unequal, private ownership of the means and output of production of a nations industry. In recent American history, that philosophy had been pursued almost to the extreme by ill advised recalibration of our nations tax policy and codes, and has created additional tens of millions of working poor in our nation, whose ranks appear to be growing by the day.

Both of the socioeconomic extremist philosophies of Communism (and Capitalism) have generally proven to be ineffective models of economic theory, and government economic policies engineered upon the assumptions promoted by either of those two extremist models will usually prove to be misguided.

Sadly, the consequences of implementing such misguided economic policies can occasionally result in widespread violence, as was allegedly witnessed in the cases of both the French and Russian revolutions, during which anywhere from hundreds of thousands, to allegedly tens of millions of people, were reputedly killed. In order to avoid a similar fate, the ruling class of the United States of America might be wise to formulate an approach that combines some of the ideas of both into a healthy, and useful, balance, through a process known as "dialectical materialism".

That term refers to the process attributed to the German/Jewish economic philosopher Karl Marx, who is generally credited with designing the following method of arriving at a greater comprehension of any given problem:

Contemplate ones perspective (referred to as a "thesis").

Contemplate the opposite, refutational perspective (an "antithesis").

Simultaneously examine both perspectives at the same time, and resolve the resultant logical contradictions to arrive at a more comprehensive description of the initial phenomenon being contemplated, ideally resulting in what is called a "synthesis".

Although Karl Marx is generally regarded as being one of the founding theoreticians of the school of economic thought known as Communism, in actuality he and his contemporaries would more likely have referred to themselves as "socialists", because they were motivated by a desire to solve the social problems they witnessed in Europe resulting from the radical upheavals caused by the sudden onset of the Industrial Revolution.

Socialism, provided that it is not forcibly implemented through violence, or paired to racial, religious, or ethnically supremacist theories, is usually a superior philosophical approach to solving the problems we may find in a nations economy, as both the extremes of Capitalism, and Communism have historically proven to be ineffective models for meeting both the material and spiritual needs of a nations people.

Deficiencies in meeting the needs of a nations populace can sometimes result in violent, internal "civil" wars (or revolutions), as was the case in the former Soviet Union, which came into being as a result of a widespread social reaction to preCommunist Tsarist Russias rulers failing to adequately respond to their subjects grievances.

From my comprehension of the events that took place, it appears that the hereditary ruling aristocracy of that nation unwisely attempted to forcibly control their nations disgruntled workers, who were performing all of the unpleasant, manual labor in that feudalistic, agricultural economy. The workers apparently organized into a militant, anti-government revolutionary army, which then fought with the governments police forces, resulting in widespread, deadly violence, during which anywhere from hundreds of thousands, to millions of Russians were reputedly killed, while millions more were imprisoned in massive, subarctic prison camps known as "gulags", referred to earlier.

The other undesirable outcome that can result when the police of a nation are called to forcefully oppose a growing rebellion by workers, is that some of the nations leaders may conspire to orchestrate a violent, externally aggressive war, such as the one that our nation is currently fighting against a revolving, and seemingly never ending series of supposed enemies, such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and possibly soon, Iran, Russia, or North Korea.

Rather than continuing to allow our civilization to spiral down into the abyss of barbarism, perhaps it might be wiser for us to modify our current, extremist free market capitalist economic paradigms to accommodate realities more accurately described, and predicted by economic philosophies commonly referred to as "Socialism"?

When not contemplating such socioeconomic minutuae I am often traveling domestically and south Florida is one of the regions of this country I have had the opportunity to explore the most. The beaches there are beautiful, with very warm water and powdery white sand, the days are perfectly warm all winter (hot and humid all summer) while night time temperatures range from balmy during summer nights to refreshingly brisk during winter nights.

The humidity away from the coast from May fifteenth through approximately November first is very difficult to tolerate for those not acclimated to the (some times stifling) summer heat of the tropics, so if you can not tolerate humidity (or do not want to be exposed to the very frequent rain storms for those four to four and a half months) I would advise readers to avoid visiting there during those times and in stead visit some time during the six and a half months from mid November to mid May.

The City of Miami is more of a Latin American city than a traditionally American one and that can be great in many ways, unique in other ways, and in some ways dangerous if you do not understand the city, it's unique culture, and it's (some times combative) disenfranchised neighborhoods (a few of which I had the opportunity to pass through {and visit}).

There are some neighborhoods in central Miami that are best avoided (unless you are accustomed to hearing the sound of fire arms being detonated every fifteen to twenty minutes {all through out the night}). I was not afraid, but I was all so not very eager to stay there for any length of time, as I could tell the residents there needed some intensive socioeconomic help and since I have a tendency to get caught up in other peoples problems (and since I was in too weak of a position to help) I yearned to return to the coast.

I also did not have my eye glasses with me so I did not feel completely comfortable navigating around that particular suburb, so I in stead gradually made my way back to the cities main water front to get reoriented. I could write quite a few pages describing the city of Miami, it's architecture, economy, people, culture, and it's very numerous suburbs (and adjacent smaller cities) and still not cover it in it's entirety.

Until then, here are some photographs I recorded through my old mobile telephone during my visit there, as well as from some of the other places I have had the chance to travel to, and reside in:

According to economics professor Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa, Canada:

"In all industrialized regions of the world this most recent economic recession is deep seated, resulting in mass unemployment, the collapse of many state social programs, and the impoverishment of millions of people. The causal meltdown seen in the financial markets was the result of institutionalized fraud and complex manipulation of often defective financial derivatives, concealed by a web of deceit and mass media distortion. Just as in the past, this current economic crisis is accompanied by a worldwide process of militarization, and a 'war without borders' led by the United States of America and its N.A.T.O. allies", from a book of his, titled:

"The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the Twenty First Century"

Here's a relevant book I noticed in a Sociology course text book catalog which (to quote publisher Lynne Rienner) "explore(s) the complicated, and often dysfunctional relationship between efforts to address homelessness and the realities on the street, discusses a range of practical, cultural, and economic issues, and brings into sharp focus the barriers to, and opportunities for, overcoming this persistent social challenge." It'stitled:

"Ending Homelessness: Why We Haven't, How We Can"

by: Donald W. Burnes and David L. DiLeo

Further up the page I explained my perception of the difference between the generally categorized macroeconomic philosophies of "Capitalism" and "Communism". If you would like to read more about either of those two historically oppositional paradigms, here are some links to a couple books generally regarded as philosophical cornerstones upon which each philosophy was built, with a seminal text from Communism appropriately placed on the Left, and another from Capitalism symbolically on "the right":

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