[Figlio di Moros]

Redcarpet's statements was quite erroneous. This is not an issue of poverty. The issue is why Americans do not identify with what they are: the working class (albeit a relatively rich one by global comparisons). I, for one, grew up with pride as members of the working class - although this is not true of many who fall back on this 'middle class' category.

It depends, I identify as working class and lower middle class, the latter being based on relative wealth. However, we currently live in a "post-industrial" society, and despite how unworkable it may be, middle-management and various costumer-service representatives identify more with the pettite-bourgeoisie than the proletariat for rather obvious reasons. It has little to do with "American Dream" propaganda.

[Invictus_88]

Redcarpet's statements was quite erroneous. This is not an issue of poverty. The issue is why Americans do not identify with what they are: the working class (albeit a relatively rich one by global comparisons). I, for one, grew up with pride as members of the working class - although this is not true of many who fall back on this 'middle class' category.

That is one point, but there seems to be another relevant trend in the UK at least, in which in spite of an increasing level of material wealth and increasing tendency to self-identify as middle class, the demographic itself becomes in fact more proletarianised and less free due to the huge and necessary debt constraints which come with a place on the property ladder and the system of Higher Education.

[Vera Politica]

It was a study done in a low income part of Boston and how working class kids did not become middle class and why they didn't become that even though they aspired to it. It was very interesting.

But this still admits of a distinction between the working class and the middle class.

It depends, I identify as working class and lower middle class, the latter being based on relative wealth. However, we currently live in a "post-industrial" society, and despite how unworkable it may be, middle-management and various costumer-service representatives identify more with the pettite-bourgeoisie than the proletariat for rather obvious reasons. It has little to do with "American Dream" propaganda.

I do agree with the former (the middle management), but not the later (customer serive representatives). The former do tend to make high salaries (80k+ range) which may explain their identification. As it concerns the latter, salaries range between 20-60k, very average and typically working class. If any of those members identify with the petty-bourgeoisie, it is because of some ideological mechanism. I am not too convinced either that this is an 'American Dream' propaganda, I think it is more the product of intense anti-communist campaigns in the 20th century, something which Europe had limited exposure to.

That is one point, but there seems to be another relevant trend in the UK at least, in which in spite of an increasing level of material wealth and increasing tendency to self-identify as middle class, the demographic itself becomes in fact more proletarianised and less free due to the huge and necessary debt constraints which come with a place on the property ladder and the system of Higher Education.

I am not sure what role 'debt' plays in class identification. Although I agree that there is an increases trend in proletarianization. The exemplary case is the university and professors.

[Figlio di Moros]

I do agree with the former (the middle management), but not the later (customer serive representatives). The former do tend to make high salaries (80k+ range) which may explain their identification. As it concerns the latter, salaries range between 20-60k, very average and typically working class. If any of those members identify with the petty-bourgeoisie, it is because of some ideological mechanism. I am not too convinced either that this is an 'American Dream' propaganda, I think it is more the product of intense anti-communist campaigns in the 20th century, something which Europe had limited exposure to.

Perhaps they were less than equal examples, but costumer service reps are removed from production themselves, and the isolation from it is more likely the root of identifying as "middle class" rather than "working class".

[Invictus_88]

I am not sure what role 'debt' plays in class identification. Although I agree that there is an increases trend in proletarianization.

I'm no friend of Marxism, but to borrow a bit of their terminology; the proletariat have no assets but their labour, and this keeps them shackled to an exhausting system of employment from which can cannot build up any capital with which to free themselves.

In the modern context, someone with an apparently comfortable lifestyle (discount furniture and electronic good suppliers giving even the comparatively poor some semblance of 'luxury') can - with the presence of massive debt repayments - occupy a place in what looks like the middle class but is, in practice, a shackled proletarianism.

[DubiousDan]

find that, too, incorrect. That's similar to your statement about some folks no poverty.

I suppose your definition for "unreachable" is different than mine?

No, it's my concept of truth. I’m not dumb enough to try to define truth. The dictionary does, but the dictionary takes its meaning from usage. A lot of dummies use the word truth. The name is not the named.
It might help if you looked up the verb “know” in a really good dictionary.
Yes, most folks would agree with you. None of the really smart folks belong to that set.

Is that the answer for the United States?

Then we're warmongering imperialists.

You do so enjoy arguing with yourself.

What about Germany, Japan, Phillipines, Cuba, Iran, etc that the U.S. has conquered?

Except for Cuba and the Phillipines, we didn’t conquer those nations by ourselves. Now what about the USA. France no more owned the land that it sold us than we did. The same goes for Spain and Russia. As for Mexico, we didn’t buy it.
The Incas left the people on their lands and they usually left their original rulers in charge. They allowed them to keep their religions. We either killed them, moved them off their lands, or both.
Switzerland has the Ticino, there the people still speak Italian as their official language and are mostly Catholics. Switzerland conquered the Ticino before the US was born.

I don't see why not. The rifles of today really aren't that much greater than many of the outstanding rifles for the past century +, and horses are more versatile than any fossil fueled rig (you don't have to pack fuel for your rig...........horses can go literally for months without "fuel drops" or fuel stops).

They had high powered rifles in the last century. You have gone from hunter gatherer to subsistence, and a rather imprecise version of that. Horses don’t work out on the Ice for most of the year. To the Inuit, they are useless. In the race to the South Pole, Scott used horses, Amundsenused dogs, Inuit style. Amundsen won easily and returned safely, Scott died after losing.
A lot of the American pioneers lived largely by subsistence but they weren’t hunter-gatherers. Actually, for the purpose of subsistence, a flintlock rifle is probably better than a cartridge rifle. All it needs is powder, ball, and a few flints. However, the hunter gatherer folks did it with the technology of the early Neolithic After you develop agriculture, you aren’t hunter gatherers any more.

That's because:

1) There really are a smaller percentage of the population hunting today than yesteryear

2) The state limits the harvest, and sometimes too much

3) Correct, many natural predators (in some areas) are gone (not here in Alaska..................)

There was a famine in the "Starvation Triangle" even before the miners got here for the gold rush in 1898. There were almost no white men in Interior Alaska.

Alaska natives hunted wood bison and musk ox to extinction in Alaska before white men arrived (I'm sure other natural factors helped reduce numbers, such as wolves, bears, and "climate change"..........................)

Most of the megafauna that used to be in the Americas was probably exterminated by the wave of human immigrants coming in from Siberia. Man doesn’t really need much more technology than that of the late Paleolithic to be the supreme predator. The Amerindians reached a balance, but before they reached that balance, a lot of species’ were gone.

I’m not that familiar with the history of Alaska. It was quite common for the Inuit to reach near famine on a yearly basis. It was part of their life style and probably kept their population in check. Again, call it poverty if you will, and use it in your arguments, just don’t apply that meaning to my use of the word. The validity of my arguments rest on my definition of poverty, not yours. Since my definition is in the MWUD, it’s part of the English Language.
The Inuit were forced into a environmental niche by civilization just as the Bushmen were. Their lifestyle allowed them to live where civilized man couldn’t until civilized man developed technology to the degree where they could send appendages of civilizations into the Arctic. It wasn’t a soft life style, but there were worse lifestyles in civilization for most of civilization’s history. In civilization, life was nice at the top.
Before civilization, before agriculture, there were only hunter gatherer societies. Civilization’s great advantage is military, they can wage war better than uncivilized peoples can, at least until now. Civilization didn’t give people a choice of life styles, it mandated with the sword. Civilization is coercive, that’s why people who seek Anarchy in the context of civilization are on a fool’s quest.

The "war game" is a population control tool.

Damn sure didn’t work in the last century.

A higher form of power than violence is wealth. With wealth, you can buy violence. You can buy your opponents peace (if he's smart enough to sell it cheaper than buying the violence to control him).

Or you can use violence to acquire wealth. If you look at most of Human history, that’s the way it went. Then it was out in the open. Now they pretend otherwise. The difference between gangsters and politicians is that the politicians are in charge. Yes, the merchant buys the politicians but that’s only because the politicians let them. In Switzerland, the people let the politicians and the merchants play their game, up to a point. The rifle on the wall ensures that there is a point.
In the United States, we have a professional military and a population that grows more gutless with each succeeding generation. Now the merchant and the politicians play their game with the passive consent of the military. In most revolutions, the tide turns when the military goes over to the revolution. In the United States, I rather expect a coup before the revolution. Still, the really vicious revolutions are made by gutless people. If you grab a rabbit, he’ll bite.

Oh, Humanity will survive through the 22nd Century and well beyond.

I just don't think that century will be any more peaceful than this one or the last one.

Ignorance is bliss.

So has Sarah Palin.

Smart folks, them.

It sure beats posting on an Internet forum, huh?

To rephrase Epicures in words most people can understand today, don’t envy the whore unless you are willing to whore. And I’m not accusing Sarah or Rush of being prostitutes, not in the sexual sense anyway.

Society has written letters "down on a paper", and you call it predation.

That is a tenet in the Law of Violence. If you violate those laws, society has armed men called "policemen" who, acting under strict rules of engagement, can exercise violence to make you conform to those laws.

If the "policeman" violates those strict rules of engagement, I can legally engage him with violence. It is uncommon that way. Usually the "policeman" is well trained to act under the rules, and usually properly reserves the usage of violence to the individual who he can legally engage.

Sure, society wrote the laws in Nazi Germany and in Stalinist Russia just as it did in Rome and Greece.

As a citizen, you have the right to obey the law, and ignorance is not an acceptable excuse for disobedience.

With regard to the military explorers, they came with specific orders regarding intelligence on the natives. That is precisely what their journals are about. These early Alaskan explorations occurred after the purchase of Alaska in 1867 and during the Indian Wars in the West. The War Department wanted to know about the Interior Natives. They had some information from the Russians and fur trappers, and the Russians did not fare well with Alaska Natives.

With respect to Interior Alaska natives, the by and far best anthropological study has been by Richard Nelson, Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest.

Yes, the Indian Wars reflected our desire for truth and justice.
I’ll put the book on my list of books to read in spite of your endorsement, after all, you can’t always be wrong. Perfection is hard to come by, unless you use the TV huckster’s definition.

I understand your analogy and point. Modern man keeps busy, but really, much of it can't be described as "work" like catching a year's worth of salmon during a short run, then doing all the work to preserve it for the winter.

True, most of modern man’s work has nothing to do with the basics of survival. Most of it is make work to keep the social class structure in place. It takes a lot of work to create poverty in a social order with the resources that we have.