Will the kind of riots about austerity measures seen all over Europe (not just London) spread to the United States?

It’s been leading to that for some time. It will make the ones in the UK look like summer camp
I’ve been saying this for a long time before London.

We may be falling back into recession. We got out of the recession? I thought it just stopped being news that we were in a recession, not that things actually got much better…

I doubt it. What’s different about the US? All of our cops have guns. Nationalism is much stronger here, so the backlash would be much stronger – rioters wouldn’t just be thugs, they’d be unpatriotic and siding with the terrorists. We’re not as centralized as England is – where exactly would all these riots happen? DC or NYC? LA? What about smaller cities, like Seattle, Atlanta, Austin, Denver, Detroit? While I don’t know exactly how practical it would be with all the current craziness, if you live up north in England and want to go riot in London, it’s a 4 hour drive max. For many Americans, it’s a week-long road trip to get to the coastal cities where the riots would probably be happening.

@Aethelflaed We’ve had some pretty nasty riots. I suspect that any major riot could infect other cities via the instant-communications vectors. And by and large, American cities house large, fairly well-armed populations that lean heavily on government subsidy. The more nationalistic ones tend to be in the suburban and rural areas. We have quite a bit of general unrest, too; a few more elements and I’d bet that you’d go from riots to small-scale wars.

If the multinational oligarchs keep up their push to grab everything for themselves, yes.

@wundayatta Sadly, in spite of the fact that the U.S. has some of the finest colleges and universities in the world, we have become a nation that really no longer values education, is willing to support it or view it as an investment in our future. There seems to be this insane, counter-productive, anti-intellectual streak in our national character, at least among some, possibly large sectors of society, so the idea of Americans rioting over cuts to higher education, I just don’t see that happening.

We are not in a recession. For many, we are in a Great Depression. There will be a revolution here in America if the wealthy elite continue to turn the screws on the recently-made jobless homeless and pension-less citizens of the USA.

@lillycoyote I believe that it’s due to a number of factors acting in concert. The realization that college isn’t any kind of guarantee of a good job. Coming to terms with the fact that the family coffers just don’t have the money in them to send Junior to college. And stemming from actual impossibility is a huffy denial of its utility – a fairly valid claim, if you think about it.
As it is, the degree inflation is pretty bad.

@Nullo That holds if you view higher education, colleges and universities, as nothing more than “fancy” vocational schools, I think. And degree inflation arises, in part, from that faulty assumption, I think. When higher education is valued, more is expected of students, then the degree is worth more, less “degree inflation”. And there is very real, almost palpable, disdain for and hostility towards educated people in some sectors of our society, I don’t think you can deny that.

@lillycoyote Most people do see them as vocational schools. Really, what else is a business degree for?
I’ve actually lived in the same house as that disdain; I believe it to feed on feelings of inferiority – the “you think you’re better than me” attitude that came over with the Greatly British immigrants a century or two ago. My family was staying with that of my aunt during an awkward time. Dad was the only person in the house with an extensive education (MBA on top of a BS in Biology; first runner-up was Mom, with an AS), and he received a fair amount of sneering. However, had my uncle any such lettering, there wouldn’t have been a problem.

They will not really riot here like that because the police will be out three rows deep with assault weapons. After they use mace, pepper spray, teargas on the protestors and rioters they will up it to rubber bullets. When one of the rioters approaches the phalanx and tosses a rock or beam of wood, they will cut him/her down with a hail of bullets, and say it was a just kill because they feared for their life. The rest will see it is open season on them, and go home because they could be killed, and nothing done about it.

@Hypocrisy_Central Keep in mind that a lot of potential rioters have guns of various kinds and calibers.

@Nullo I wasn’t saying riots haven’t happened in the US, or that riots couldn’t happen in the US. I was saying that’s why I think these riots won’t carry over, and why it’s a bit “easier” for the UK to have riots than it is for the US.

I can’t comment on the US having riots, all I can say is I hope not, I live in a riot zone in England. Last night the police station at the top of my road was fire bombed and there have been children as young as 11 wondering around with ‘loot’. Tragic state of affairs doesn’t even begin to cover it…

@Nullo Indeed it is those very weapons held by rioters which apparently precluded any intervention on the part of the LAPD during the last riot in Los angeles which spilled out of the South Central L.A. ghetto into West L.A. and Beverly Hills.

We had an outbreak of riots preceding the passage of civil rights legislation. I can see it happening again. All this fuss about debt payments has taken attention away from unemployment, but the problem will not go away by ignoring it.

@Aethelflaed And I am thinking that we have plenty of our own stuff to riot about, if it came down to it. And that they might spread via our instant communications media.

we really could take lessons from other countries because we just sit back and say ” Thank You, Can I Have Another ” and work our way to the voting booth and vote for another mentally challenged person who will do absolutely nothing positive for the country.

@Hypocrisy_Central Madison resident here. For those of you living under a rock, we had some huge protests here a few months back (100,000+). Granted, the protests were peaceful. Regardless, the police officers I spoke with were by-and-large with the protesters. Why, because they knew that their benefits and unions were next on the chopping block.
Many states are looking to remove all public unions (teachers, nurses, police, firefighters… etc). When the police lose their rights, they’ll lose their incentive to defend the state. Then we’ll see some riots.

@Nullo Or, our police would shut down our instant communications to prevent protesters from talking to each other, preventing our riots from getting any traction.

@Aethelflaed Hmm. Well, we’ve done pretty well without them, too. Just need to get out of the interdiction and bam! Wire off to a new area.