Walmart Owns Me

The rich really do have power. Why? because they could buy your house and everyone in your city's as well. Don't believe me? Check out this article. One of the more shocking facts is that "The Walton family's (Walmart's founding family) combined wealth of $154.8 billion is enough to purchase all 241,450 homes in the Emerald City, which are worth a total of $111.5 billion.." Wow.  This is kind of a scary thought. After reading this article I feel like the big corporations in America own me. Or could if they wanted to.

What really bothers me about this is that there are so many families in America  struggling to find a home. I think that this is embarrassing for America. The gap is getting out of control. Who really needs all this money?

I know what many people reading this post are going to say, that living in the area that I live in with the opportunities that I have that I really have no right to complain, and I don't. But I don't want to live in a country that encourages their people to strive to change their economic position when it seems nearly impossible. 

I think that something I have learned in American Studies this year is that many people like to deny the lack of freedom we have in our country. Relating to this blogpost, I think that many people are't aware of the fact that there is basically no social mobility in America. When someone ends up in a lower class, people "above" them like to claim that they did not work hard enough to move. But after a year in this class I know that that is most likely not the case. People need to forget the idea that it is all about personal drive. Rather, things like connections and opportunities given to you based on your natural social status affect where you land in this country.

Ignorance is Bliss...

We all know the importance of recycling and most of us would like to say we care about the environment, but why is it that so many people are choosing to deny the possibility of the serious immediate impact of global warming? A recent CBS poll taken shows that only 28% of Republicans believe that global warming has a serious impact on the environment now. While the democrats have a better percentage of 65%, I wonder why this issue seems to brushed off by such a large portion of the population.

In the CBS article analyzing this data, they suggest the denial might come from push-back from Obama's recent carbon emission standards. The states that say that global warming is not an issue are those that produce a lot of coal. I believe that some states take Obama's recent action as an attempt to satisfy democrats who are pushing for reforms. However, I know that this is a real issue and that what Obama did was the first step to changing the way people treat the environment.

It seems crazy to me that people could be skeptical of an issue that is obviously a problem. We see it everyday with changes in our environment. I think that the denial comes from wanting to make a profit from the coal industry. By the time some people choose to accept the impact of Global Warming, it could be too late.