and you've described it well.

It's lot bigger than Bernie. The only real fix is socialism.

forces nearly every one of us to have to compromise ourselves at some point.

When I read your story, I felt sorry not only for the guy you had to fire, but also for you because you really did not want to do it. The system is eating every one of us up even those who work in the government. I was "eased out" of my job in local government because I had been there too long and it was costing them too much to keep me in pay and benefits. Never mind that I lost leave time two of the last three years I was there because I simply could not take it due to our work loads. For the management, it became all about the bottom line. At first, they offered long term employees a cash bonus to leave. I did not bite. I liked my job and felt I was doing something of public benefit. Then they offered long term employees the chance to retire and draw their pensions immediately. I began to see the writing on the wall as commissioners were talking about cutting personnel. So I took that option and was lucky that I did so. Because lastly, they started cutting positions and some of those were held by long term employees.

Even if you do not have a mortgage or children, many people stay where they are for health insurance or other benefits. It is the system that makes us become servants to our employers.

Markos is selling out for another reason that has nothing to do with bills, kids, or his mortgage. He is selling out in hopes of becoming a power player.

Is he a sellout for supporting Clinton? Is he a sellout for telling anyone that doesn't agree with him to get off his blog? I'm not seeing a sellout here that impacts his standard of living. Are you saying if he didn't get behind Clinton, his Daily Kos blog would go downhill and he'd have to get a real job and put off buying his Tesla?

I think about this all the time. Thanks for your sobering, honest and brutal summation of the kind of trap most of us in the 99% are in but avoid talking about with frank honesty.

I believe that were we to at least take the first few steps toward socialism, particularly to include Bernie's brand that would include at a minimum healthcare for all and free college education, we would see radical changes in the rationalizations and justifications you outlined.

Think of how vastly different everyone's station in life would be if we at least took away the specter shadow of being foreclosed upon by staggering medical or student debt. These are perhaps the two biggest worries strangulating the vast majority of people still slogging thorough the wreckage caused by the Economic Terrorists of Wall St. Had everyone had full healthcare coverage and no specter of being handcuffed by student debt you'd have firstly, a much happier populace, living without the day to day stresses of those enormous debt possibilities lingering over their heads. By extension also people would no longer have to stay in shit, dead end jobs just for the health insurance coverage (i.e. benefits). Fresh college graduates would no longer be easy predatory meat for the ugly colossal corporate monolith that sucks them in with immediate employment (i.e. Big Pharma, Insurance co's, banks, Wall St) and promises of big salaries, if they just pay the game, shut up and keep depositing all that hush money. No wonder the Arts have been slashed. In a general sense the PTB don't want to inspire creative thinking, questioning authority, imagining a different more utopian world. Everyone will now be a "business" major. Dow Jones and stock market reports every 10 minutes on AM radio remind us that we're not quite American (i.e. "successful") if we're not in the investor class ourselves. The American Dream(tm).

This is why Bernie's "socialism" scares the criminals who are benefiting from the crony capitalism status quo. Both of the aforementioned sectors either were the recipients of windfalls of taxpayer bailouts or funded by RW and Neoliberal (same thing) corps to keep their money-making scam running. They've got so much money to burn. And a good chunk of it no doubt is going to mold the next generation into junior capitalists who they hope will buy into this egocentric, self-centered, cultural Darwinism. We've allowed this become a deity through worship of the greatest lie ever perpetrated on the American public, the scam of "free market" capitalism/Every Man For Himself fiscal bullshit.

As Mark Twain put it another way, we all have "corn-pone opinions."

I can never forget it. It was deeply impressed upon me. By my mother. Not upon my memory, but elsewhere. She had slipped in upon me while I was absorbed and not watching. The black philosopher's idea was that a man is not independent, and cannot afford views which might interfere with his bread and butter. If he would prosper, he must train with the majority; in matters of large moment, like politics and religion, he must think and feel with the bulk of his neighbors, or suffer damage in his social standing and in his business prosperities. He must restrict himself to corn-pone opinions -- at least on the surface. He must get his opinions from other people; he must reason out none for himself; he must have no first-hand views.

You write of what so many conscientious people have to go through. I've seen it firsthand, working in nonprofits or virtually nonprofit companies, each of which has had to flirt and smile with the wealthy to keep the funding going. And the farther I go, the more I am deeply invested not in my company, but in my family's wellbeing. And that makes me question my motives for working even more, all the while looking at my family exactly as you do.

A cowotker, who has a pension from another job while working part time at my firm, challenged my support of Bernie: what are you going to do when he shuts down Wall St? What happens to your retirement plans, your future, your kid's future? And this is how too many people react (like Chelsea's pants on fire "He's agonna take our health care away!") Am I comfortable having my finances intertwined with stocks, IRAs, etc.? No, but the answer isn't ending it. It's assuring its legality and transparency. I think all we can do is be as honest with ourselves as possible and do what we can when we can to live in a just world. The astonishing thing is that we have a chance to see this happen at the top!

This is entirely about regulations, gained and lost. This must be corrected for the sake of society and the nation's wellbeing (the ability to deal with crisis) before we even get into socialism (aka: Investing in the commonwealth and human capital).

Take a look at this chart. It covers 100 years of the US economy. It shows two graphs merged. The green graph is the Regulation Index, which shows presence and influence of regulations at work in the financial sector. The red graph show the Relative Finance Wages (earnings/income inside the financial sector) as a ratio of the entire population's income.

Third Way economist, Paul Krugman, tried to finesse a similar chart of his own, also covering 100 years. Of course, it's relative to nothing that would indicate cause, and the legends make no sense, but he did add trend labels for his special needs readers.

Finally, here's a chart showing the Financial Sector Wages ratio, with specifics about the deregulations that killed the American middle class.

There is absolutely no mystery about either the problem or the fix for the US economy.

I could also show you a graph of the top marginal tax rate over a 100 year period overlaid by the Fin. Wages ratio line, — which would present a perfect negative correlation pattern.

When taxes and regulations are returned to the levels of the most prosperous 50 year period in US history, the stock market will keep chugging along just fine. No one will lose their jobs. Asset values will correct and normalize but nobody will go hungry.

Every single American is compromised and corrupted by deregulation, and criminally hoarked tax rates, at the present moment; the ethical actions of no one man can fix this.

A visionary in the White House could, though.

Pluto

PS: This was a great essay to read. Thanks, dakrle. You really humanized the dilemma.

It's astounding how insidious the system is. The only thing preventing people, such as yourself, from standing in solidarity with people like the guy you were forced fire is your family. From what I gathered from this essay, it seems that you find the work of making assholes even richer to be degrading. You rationalize your lot in life by telling yourself you're a good husband and a father. At some point, you must realize that all the pragmatic rationalizations in the world won't be able to erase any feelings of regret, and the increasing feeling of a life misspent.

The Wall Street system prizes greed and self-indulgence. Perhaps other folks that find themselves in the same boat would like to consider themselves to be selfless individuals, but would it be accurate to call someone selfless, if the only other people they look out for happen to be genetically related him? I would say that if the man can extend his selflessness to the man his is being forced to fire, and by extension, the family of that man, that is true selflessness.

It's one thing to want to start a revolution, it's gonna take some bootstraps and a whole lot of planning to stem the tide of corporate neo-feudalism.

As for Markos's selling out, let's not assume it's because of rent/mortgage, dependents, and bills. Maybe he just wants a bigger house, fancy sports car, and more crap.