It's mixed, blacks and some Asians moved here to work. Probably Mexicans too.

are they law abiding?

We don't have problems with gangs here. Our schools are safe. We have some crime but it's not like car jacking or drivebys. It's more like Dui's and shoplifting.

I have been in a convience store when a black guy was trying to steal beer. The owner wouldn't take his eyes off him for a second. They had an argument over it.

Ha, I cant over that concept of selling beer in a convenience store, we dont have that here, we want beer we have to go the Beer Store, we want liquor we have to go to the Liquor store.

I Know when I was in Quebec they sell beer in the convenience store,which like I said fascinates me.

We used to have a beer store here. They gave kids bubble gum. It was a drive thru.

Kia must be all the rage in Vegas.

a drive through beer store, God America fascinates me, that would a convenience here as the beer store people up here at least in my city are so friggen slow , if they were any slower they would qualify for driving Ms.Daisy.

Depends where you live.
In the US there is a huge discrepancy between rich and poor, between north and south.
The giny factor is huge in the US. The giny factor is a factor to measure the social inequality based on the incomes. The higher the giny factor, the higher the inequality.
So when the discrepancy between rich and poor is so huge in the us, it’s hard to speak from a middle class because everything in between that huge gap rich => poor , is considered middle class.

Obama care was a good first step towards more social equality. Sadly, Trump already modified it severely.

Here in Westearn-Europe, Belgium, everyone has health insurance. It’s obligatory.

Vacation is calculated for in our salaries. We get a vacation salary above our normal salary, at the end of May. Every year.

The US has a very unproportionally divided GDP.
Social inequality is higher in the US than in most other countries in the world.

That’s why the middle class keeps suffering.
Especially with Donald Trump now.
The current government is a government for the rich people.

If you want a better living situation for the middle class in the US you will first have to reform your political structure and your economical structure.

I'm sorry if this sounds rude, but you really dont know what you're talking about.

First thing is its not the "Gini Factor" its called " the Gini Coefficient" while its the most popular measure of inequality it has its flaws

data for the poor is all over the place and in poorer countries it harder to get aka "off the record”

The United States is a unique society while there is a gap between the rich and the poor, its the poor that is questionable.

Because America has Relative poverty and absolute poverty ( although on a small scale)

Relative poor in America doesn't compare to most second or third world countries poor.

Obama care was not the first step towards social equality, all Obama care did was make the insurance companies wealthier.

In Belgium you have 11 million people period, the entire population of Belgium can fit in the Entire state of Ohio , or you can fit the entire country into New York city and the surrounding towns

You guys pay higher taxes, anyone earning over 38 thousand euros pays 50% in taxes, so of course the government can afford to insure everyone

You cant do that in America with 326 million people not including illegal immigrants

By the way China did that with their 1 billion people healthcare for everyone .do you know how it works?

They had a three tier system with some barefoot doctors

then that ended when Mao died and the government came up with The New Rural Co-operative Medical Care Scheme and other reforms in the 90's and 2010

Every one gets covered but the costs are so high to do that, the government has to set medicine price so high and doctors salaries so low to pay for it, which doctors are not happy about .

And since the last reform in 2010, doctors and health care practitioners are seeing increase in violence towards them they call it" yinoa" as most hospitals are in the city not in rural areas

You want to see how government sponsor healthcare works China is the perfect example.


America does not want that.

You cannot compare the United States to any country in the world for any subject whether its gun laws, politics, healthcare or the military

She isn't perfect and its going to take strong leaders to get her back on track.

I have to disagree with that.
The governmemnt is supposed to represent the will of the people.
To get back on 'track' power needs to be removed from government and placed back into the say of the people.
Right now, the people are NOT UNITED.
Power is lopsided, out of balance.

Our founders knew this would happen.
Many of the rights in the Bill of Rights are geared to the power of the people protecting themselves from government.
For some reason, people can't see it.

Money and wealth has become the driving force in the world.
Doing the right thing is far down the list of motives for governments.
Society has become a tool that allows the power elite to stay in power and maintain their wealth.
The individualistic mindset of the people in this nation allow the power elite to maintain their influence over us because we are not united and looking at what is before us.

People are focused on me, me, me and mine, mine, mine.
As long as they get what they want, when they want it, nobody cares what the government does.

if the founding fathers had had enough insight to predict what the future would be like,i am sure that they would have written the constitution differently!

one of the main things that they should have done is to make campaign funds paid for out of public fund,instead of allowing private people/entitites to fund them,because that makes the elected official beholden to whoever pays for their campaigns,and taking the elected officials focus off of doing their job,and more on gathering enough funding to pay for their [re]election campaigns.

its hard to do your job of representing the WHOLE country properly,when you are not focused on what is best for the little people,who make up the biggest part of the population,but cant afford to donate large sums of money to a political campaign,is,and just on what your biggest campaign contributors want.

every political systems says the power should distributed to the people, but it has never come to fruition , because there is always a group that believes they know better and has the answer, look at the history of any country from America to Cuba to China to Australia to the European countries.

If you look at your country America, you had your founding fathers, In my country we had a group called the "fathers of confederation"

all brilliant people, but not the average person



and if you look back you can see where its starts to erode from Van Buren's administration and on.



Money and wealth has always been the driving force throughout history
its just we are living in it today, if you go back to the 1800's same thing, before the American Revolution, same thing, read some of the old newspapers of that day and you swear you are reading about today.







he or she who has the money makes the rules, not to sound like a broken record but its always been that way.

Its not going to change anytime soon, hence why I said you will need a strong leader that understands that and can slowly clean it up but dont count on it coming anytime soon.

I thought Trump might have been that person to at least get the ball rolling.

I agree with pretty much both of you.
To an extent.

This nation is founded on "We The People of these United States" It doesn't say "Some of the People of these United States"
The intent was that the people would be the government.
The power would reside in the people, not a select few.
It was a bold proposition that purposely went against the status quo of the few having power over the many.
It tries to introduce a condition where the wealthy power elite has the same value as the poor.
One citizen's vote has the same power as another citizen's vote.
The majority vote decides the outcome.
That is not what is happening.
Our nation has become defunct.

The arguments that it has always been this way are not important.
The wealthy do control the power.
This nation was an attempt to change that and it has failed miserably.
Our own government has become the dictator, and 'we the people' allow it.
Then, we complain about it but don't do anything to change it.
Because, We The People of these United States are no longer "United".

but we the people used to be only white men

then women were included

then other minorities were included and the black folks..


We the people doesn't mean anything anymore because you are not united.

how many people after Trump victory referred to Trump as "not my president"

practically all the people that voted for Hillary and makes the statement of "oh she won the popular vote" therefore she should have been president and life would have been peachy keen and only Hillary could have restored America to her former greatness.

One thing we know for sure that if she president there would havent been mass protests ( some violent) because Rightists dont protest for the most part, ( not including the alt right and other extremist groups)

I wonder how many restaurant owners would have asked "hillary supporters to leave their establishment?"

If that actually happen you could be place a bet in Vegas on how fast Hillary would have made the Attorney General do something about it

I cant remember which poster it was that said " if you can complain you can find a solution" I remember that because my grandfather says that all time.

People were divided when Obama was in the white house and even more now that Trump is there, its going to take a figurehead like a John F.Kennedy that will appeal to both political factions and can bridge the gap and uniting under one country of being an "American" vs a republican, democrat, or this or that.

I say that a lot because my dad said it a lot.


Agreed but times change and it doesn't say "We the White Men of these United States", does it?


At the time of the writing, men conducted the affairs of society. Women and children were dependent on the actions of men. However, People includes all people (Men, Women & Children).

Our government is meant to be United People.
Not groups, factions or parties United against the people for their own gain.
Political affiliations separate us and destroys our unity.
Its pandemonium.
With no unification of the people it opens us to power elitists that manipulate the nation for their own gains.
With no unification, the people have no power to make the changes needed to rectify a deteriorating state.
This powerlessness feeds individuality and it gets harder and harder to eek out a living.
Compassion, the power to do the right thing has been superseded by the ever present need to maintain a lifestyle at all costs.

Imagine what would happen if every citizen in a town or city were to attend every meeting. A Colosseum would not be large enough to hold everyone. To give every citizen the right to speak on the topics of the meeting would require months. Yet, most government meetings are sparse, attended by select few, stating their will, their concerns and casting their votes.

We have the technology to present every meeting to all people and allow feedback and votes. Why isn't it done?

Tell that to the leftist groups and alt right groups that create division.





only since Trump was elected, as much as the right despised the Messiah Obama mind you he started the race division and now Trump is the excuse for political division.



You cant have unification when you have undocumented people requesting amnesty simply because they dont feel the rules apply to them



You answered your own question because it would be time consuming and you will never get anything done.

I will give you two example, every leftist, Marxists, communists, will tell you that the Paris commune was the example of workers rule.

what they wont tell you is one of the reason why the Paris commune failed was because workers had committees of people and they were always discussing things and these meeting were attended by the actually workers themselves, they discussed, debated, argued, discussed ,debated, argued, discussed, debated and argued, they just couldn't get things done.

Lenin of the Soviet Union the same thing, when his bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government they went through a civil war, he gave power to the workers called " workers or soviets council"

they ran the factories and Lenin discovered not only that things weren't getting done, people were stealing, looting etc, so he went to the extreme of putting his revolutionaries brothers in charge vs the workers after and we all know the rest.



My point Tom, if every congressman/women invited all their constituents to voice their concerns things would never get done in Washington, they wouldn't have time to go to Washington if they had to oversee the meetings.

we are right in the middle, with half above and half below

I get what you're saying.
This is why government entities are needed.
However, government entities should never be acting on their own agendas.

Here's a suggestion: (not sure if it would work practically tho)

Cities and towns are divided into divisions where meetings are held needing a decision.
The people elect an individual to represent their votes/concerns and that person then takes those votes/concerns to the next higher level and REPRESENTS the will of the people that trust him/her to represent them.

In this second level meeting, it is composed of representative of the people in each individual's charge. The represent the will of their people no matter what they personally vote or think.

The people elect a representative to take the findings of this second level meeting and pass the will of the people as represented by the first level representation to the next level and so on.

This continues up the ladder, maintaining representation of the people to the POTUS. POTUS then uses this consensus to enact or remove policy according to the will of the people.

What is obvious is this is not being done. It fails at the first level.
It continues to fail thru all levels all the way to POTUS.

This is why property taxes rise uncontrollably. This is why we go to war over things we don't want to fight over. This is why the higher level representative enact their will instead of the peoples.
The system is broken.

Elections are focused on what that person can do. Their beliefs on a multitude of subjects. The focus of elections should be on how well that person can represent the will of the people not how well that person can enact their own will.

Trump's wall.
Obama's health care

People in this nation should be saying "My Wall, My Health Care".
Trump's ideas for this nation should carry the same weight as any citizen's. If we want a wall, we will tell Trump we want a wall and its his job to get it done.
If we want the wall painted pink with green polka dots, its Trump's job to make it so. It doesn't matter what color he wants it to be. He still only has the power of one citizen.

If you have a bushel of rotten apples you can pick the best of the rotten but you might just say, "ew" and throw them all away and look for fresh apples for your basket. If someone tries to put a rotten one in your basket you stop them.

Its past time to empty out the basket and fill it with fresh.