I concur on a vast majority of this. Very well put, Rick. I feel the problem stems down to greed and pure selfishness. The ideal that we have to kill one another (metaphorically speaking), manipulate, and use other various methods, that are borderline immoral, in order to survive here. This ideal of every man for himself has created a great amount of selfish thinking.

These ideals are pushed down from corporations and politicians paid by corporations as if it is a way that they can resonant with Americans, so we admire the wealthy instead of holding the ones responsible for a great amount of our nation’s poor and struggling middle-class. Many Corporations are vultures preying on capitalism. They own network news, which is just feeding the problem, and also have our politicians by the pockets.

This has allowed mass manipulation to spread fear and anger amongst we the people and very little towards the actual problem. Americans complain about and hate on people who are working 40 hours a week to still end up relying on government assistance, but when corporations are given huge handouts in the form of multi-million dollar tax returns because they make sure to keep employees reliant on welfare by paying atrociously low wages.

I feel like we need to push mutli-million to billion dollar companies to actually pay their employees just enough so they do not need any government assistance. We all should be getting paid higher wages, but we need to protect small business. We need only act against major corporations who take far more money than they truly deserve let alone need. Their greed is costing taxpayers millions of dollars and it is purely for the sake of greed.

I have ideas on how to revamp many of our programs and actually produce self-reliant citizens, but nothing can happen if corporations and their paid politicians shed at least part of their greed and just pay their taxes to help the nation of people that buys your products and is the sole reason they are even running these major corporations. They are nothing without us. Capitalism is suppose to make a nation into an economical powerhouse if our leaders would use the system properly.

It’s been made into a mockery at this point. It can work given our corporate and political leaders actually put our country before any pointless political party agenda and before money. About immigration, I have been living near the border for 10 years now. I have many problems with illegal immigration from identity theft, insurance fraud, hospital shut downs due to giving too many illegals free emergency services, and most of all as an American student who has struggled financially I am livid about the ways colleges cater to illegals with free tuition and other services yet us Americans are expected to pay for them? While we struggle? Angers me to no end the things I found out from an illegal Russian classmate.

I am not mad at illegals taking advantage of these opportunities, but my anger lies with our policy makers and colleges allowing them to do so. That being said, I really don’t believe the “they took our jobs” outrage is rational or that it is even a major issue. I and several other Americans worked in the fields here and we lasted 6 months. It is absolute brutal work and I have yet to see an American last more than a year doing it.

No one here wants the jobs of illegals. They come from Mexico at 4 a.m. then work until 6–7 p.m. then transport themselves back to Mexico getting across the border around 9:30 p.m. then wake up at 3 a.m. to catch the 4 a.m. bus to do all over again 6 days a week. Honestly, I hold the upmost respect to them because most Americans have maybe a quarter of some of their work ethic and they do it with no expectation of staying in America or even taking advantage of or poor immigration policies.

By all means they have no gripe from me working most of the jobs they work at. That is why I am getting a higher education because the thought of some of those jobs becoming becoming a dead end career scares the hell out of me. I haven’t met one American who felt robbed of a job because they never wanted the job in the first place. I am sure it has happened somewhere, but those people are just trying to keep to themselves and a survive because they can’t get any actual desirable jobs here because they lack adequate education.

The jobs are not even required skilled labor, so even the people who didn’t go to college, but worked a trade instead don’t have major competition. Construction I can see being an issue, but only small family owned construction companies consistently hire illegals and that is usually because it is a family member trying to make extra money for a few months then going back to Mexico as if they cycle through family members.

Not saying it is not an issue at all, but that aspect of the illegal immigration argument doesn’t hold much validity around this region of the border.