Which is the greater problem for America?

[leftofthedial]

Poll question: Which is the greater problem for America?

[waiting for hope]

1. These are the ones pulling the strings:

"The extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of 400 or so families."

[AndyA]

2. Follow the money.

When you follow the money, therein lies the answer to most problems.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. Extreme concentration of not only wealth, but power

in the hands of a few. This problem goes back generations, and is growing. It was the rich and powerful that were able to make sure the SCOTUS would declare that corporations had the rights of people. It was the rich and powerful who made a plant illegal and who started the "War" on drugs which has ruined many lives and allowed corruption in government to flourish. It was the rich and powerful who, through their own greed, started wars in the Middle East and collapsed our economy.

[rainy]

4. Corporate rule with the power of a person able to contribute to

politics and politicians and able to make policies. Corporate propagandizing media.

[Hugabear]

5. I cannot vote in this poll. You didn't include "the gays" as an option.

:sarcasm:

[DainBramaged]

6. Why was poverty left out?

And the person who voted for abortion, you belong in Freeperland not here.

[jobycom]

8. I suspect the vote for abortion was a vote against the anti-choice movement.

And I can accept that as a major problem, or rather, the symptom of a bigger problem involving equality.

[jobycom]

7. Control of the media by a couple of individuals with the same right-wing agenda.

I don't really care how rich people get. What destroys this nation is the misdirection the media provides for the crimes of the right wing. They lie us into war, they lie us into conservative presidents even when they lose the election, they excuse torture as "hazing," they convince us to see the trees and ignore the forest, they worry about the private lives of celebrities to acclimate all of us to the idea that our personal lives should be public and observed as well as to promote a right-wing concept of "morality" as a lesson to the rest of us, they use their resources to promote their parent companies as advertisers rather than keeping Americans informed, the ignore issues that affect the average person--poverty, crime, sexism, homophobia, racism--except as anecdotal stories meant to convince us that the problems are isolated and the culprits rare...

In short, I think all of your choices are the result of the media convincing us that things should be that way, or distracting us from the bigger issues. Even their attacks on the worst corporate criminals in the last year has been retaliation for bad corporate management, not for any sins or crimes of misplaced priorities.

[ThomWV]

9. Public gullibility accounts for all of the others

[leftofthedial]

12. one might also argue that #1 accounts for all the others.

We have been had.

EVERYTHING has been stolen.

[SmileyRose]

10. monopoly media / congress bought and paid for.

[taught_me_patience]

11. Extreme consumerism

Driving people to live beyond their means.