For the most part, is the system set up to keep the poor, poor and the rich, rich?

Yes. Money talks, Congress walks. Every so often, politicians start talking about reforming the tax system. But they don’t because making it simple and fair would cut out all the little provisions that the top 5% use to reduce their tax rates. There has been a committee woking for the last year going through the tax code to simplify it, but every little thing gets challenged.

@zenvelo great answer ,and it seems that way for both our countries,Canada and the U.S.

And I just love when those people scream they are paying the most taxes,makes me want to barf, when I tell people it is the struggling middle class paying all the countries bills they say no, but it becomes more and more evident it is the middle paying all the bills is very much the truth.

The rich just know how to game the system.

@tranquilsea very true, it is just sad they get away with it.

It’s the latter. The poor are poor because it is NECESSARY if the rich are to get richer, and at maximum acquisition, EVERYONE else MUST lose.

@stanleybmanly sad simple and oh so true.

Very much so since the Reagan Revolution, and the right is feverishly working to make the game even more rigged. They may talk family and Christian values but “ye shall know them by their works.” Their real god is Cash, and it is a ruthless god if ever there was one. It’s willing to destroy the very planet that supports life for all so long as that drives the next quarter’s profits.

@ETpro Very true, but they will deny it, but it is getting harder for them to deny it.

As long as the poor want to be rich, the rich will control them.

@talljasperman and keep them poor, yeah I know all about the trickle down affect that the right so called love and believe in.

Yes… That’s all I got.

@DWW25921 Thanks.

Gotta have a class of underlings to do the actual work in the system.

There is actually no motivation for the ruling class to lower unemployment because it is a win-win for them. By having a large pool of unemployed who, hopefully, have to find their own way to survive between jobs, they a steady pool of labor to draw from if you get uppity and demand better wages or working conditions and they are forced to fire you. And, since you know there are people out there who will do your job because they are hungry and unemployed is a much lower chance you will make demands or quit.

The implied threat allows them to keep wages low, invest a bare minimum in workplace safety and by doing so put more money into their own pockets.

”we got the down, but we never got the trickle…” Al Sharpton

@Yetanotheruser nice answer.

So the rich need the poor to be poor for the rich to be rich.

someone has to wash out the poop bucket.