I have the feeling that some of these stats are a bit misleading. Notwithstanding that, I think overall the message of those points is clear, substantially accurate, disturbing and disgusting. I have thought of several of them in a general way for quite some time, and the overall theme has been on my mind constantly since summer of 2008.

Many caught my eye as being particulary troubling. This one, if accurate, is one of the most disturbing to me: "At this point, U.S. households are now receiving more income from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes." Many others are equally awful, that one just happened to jerk my chain a little stronger.

The solution to so many of those points, many of which I'm confident (and afraid) contain way too much truth, is, for the most part, not known, near impossible, very, very difficult and painful, and a long time in coming. A huge cut in the standard of living (as seems almost inevitable) would hurt a lot of relatively innocent people, whereas those in the top 1% would be just fine.

While it's beyond my current belief that we could devolve into something like is happening in the Middle East right now, I can imagine changing that belief if things continue as they are.

Happy thoughts this evening, eh?