This, & many other countries have had 40 odd years of greed based Neoliberalism, resulting in inequality with the gap between rich & poor continually widening. The damage is massive & may take generations to heal if we don't soon begin to adress it.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/...ts-108014/
"Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.
And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won’t last.
If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.
The most ironic thing about rising inequality is how completely unnecessary and self-defeating it is. If we do something about it, if we adjust our policies in the way that, say, Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression—so that we help the 99 percent and preempt the revolutionaries and crazies, the ones with the pitchforks—that will be the best thing possible for us rich folks, too. It’s not just that we’ll escape with our lives; it’s that we’ll most certainly get even richer."
It seems greed is a mental illness....
https://www.talkspace.com/blog/the-psych...ir%20peers.
"Addiction is often about the pursuit of a reward in the face of risk. For dangerous or illegal substances, the reward is a high and the risk is bodily damage, dependency, or legal consequences. No matter how many times they use, people who live with addiction cannot fill the void that attracted them to drugs to begin with. If they don’t find treatment, they gradually up the dosage because the body develops a tolerance to the substance. The high isn’t high enough anymore.
Certain types of greed operate on similar principles.
Greed and drug use activate similar pleasure pathways in the brain, according to psychologist Victor Shamas, Ph.D. Unsurprisingly, gambling addiction has a particularly strong connection to avarice. In both scenarios, the feeling of pleasure comes from the process of pursuing the reward, Shamas said, not only the final result.
In an article for Psychology Today, psychologist Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D., argued that greed, like addiction, is often a coping mechanism for unresolved mental health issues. By obtaining incredible wealth or success, people with deep insecurities strive to feel like they are finally good enough, or at least better than their peers. The logic is similar to how substances can provide temporary relief for emotional and physical pain."
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/...ts-108014/
"Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.
And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won’t last.
If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.
The most ironic thing about rising inequality is how completely unnecessary and self-defeating it is. If we do something about it, if we adjust our policies in the way that, say, Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression—so that we help the 99 percent and preempt the revolutionaries and crazies, the ones with the pitchforks—that will be the best thing possible for us rich folks, too. It’s not just that we’ll escape with our lives; it’s that we’ll most certainly get even richer."
It seems greed is a mental illness....
https://www.talkspace.com/blog/the-psych...ir%20peers.
"Addiction is often about the pursuit of a reward in the face of risk. For dangerous or illegal substances, the reward is a high and the risk is bodily damage, dependency, or legal consequences. No matter how many times they use, people who live with addiction cannot fill the void that attracted them to drugs to begin with. If they don’t find treatment, they gradually up the dosage because the body develops a tolerance to the substance. The high isn’t high enough anymore.
Certain types of greed operate on similar principles.
Greed and drug use activate similar pleasure pathways in the brain, according to psychologist Victor Shamas, Ph.D. Unsurprisingly, gambling addiction has a particularly strong connection to avarice. In both scenarios, the feeling of pleasure comes from the process of pursuing the reward, Shamas said, not only the final result.
In an article for Psychology Today, psychologist Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D., argued that greed, like addiction, is often a coping mechanism for unresolved mental health issues. By obtaining incredible wealth or success, people with deep insecurities strive to feel like they are finally good enough, or at least better than their peers. The logic is similar to how substances can provide temporary relief for emotional and physical pain."
in order to be old & wise, you must first be young & stupid. (I'm still working on that.)