It's The Income Disparity, Stupid

Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Madison, London, San Francisco, Athens.  All of these places have been the scene of public uprisings and social unrest during the last six months.  All of the social unrest has one thing in common, something that most of those in power would like you to ignore.  That is that in all of these cases, the leading cause of the unrest was the increasing and alarming disparity between the incomes of the wealthiest percentage of the populace and the vast majority of the common people.

In cases such as Tunisia, Egypt and Libya the unrest led to revolution and the unseating of the corrupt dictators that perpetuated a society in which the majority of the population was kept in both economic and political bondage for the benefit of the political leadership and its friends.  In Athens and London the unrest led to mass rioting, violence and looting.  In San Francisco and Madison, the protests were smaller and more peaceful, but both the cause and the State's impulse to quell the unrest were the same.

There was little attention paid to the role that economic disparity played in the "Arab Spring."  However, much of the unrest that led to the uprisings against governments throughout the Arab world was led in great part by the unsustainable economic conditions which left many workers, especially workers who were young and educated, without any chance at a meaningful and prosperous future.  This hopelessness combined with the unveiling of the abject corruption in the leadership of these nations exposed by the WikiLeaks document dumps, was the key cause of the uprisings causing (so far) the governments of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya to fall.

In London, the government and media went out of their way to portray the youth rioting for several nights as mindless criminals and thugs out to have their fun destroying property and stealing.  The leadership responded overwhelmingly by issuing harsh sentences for relatively petty crimes (one youth was sentenced to 6 months in prison for stealing a $10 bottle of wine) and suspended sentencing guidelines in order to allow judges to impose even stiffer penalties to these defendants than would normally be allowed by law in order to deal with this criminal element.  Of course, they ignored or dismissed arguments that these riots had anything to do with the harsh austerity programs imposed by the Cameron government, or the high levels of youth unemployment, or the response to the corruption within the Cameron regime exposed by the hacking scandal of Rupert Murdoch which involves high level members of Cameron's government.

The fact is that the youth in London were acting no differently than the bankers in the institutions that were bailed out by Cameron and his cohorts throughout Europe and the United States.  The only difference was in scale (the bankers looted trillions of dollars from investors and central banks who were all to glad to bail them out once the bottom fell out of the economy whereas the rioters took mainly small ticket items) and status (the highly connected, highly paid, highly educated bankers were portrayed very differently by the leadership and the media than the youth taking part in the rioting and looting).

The fact that social networking sites such as Facebook were used by rioters to communicate (as was the case in the uprisings throughout the Middle East) caused the Cameron government to look for ways to limit access to such sites including blocking internet access during the riots, a tactic that was widely criticized when used by governments in Egypt and Syria prior to these uprisings, and subsequently used by BART police to quell protests in San Francisco.

But the fact is, that it wasn't Facebook or the Internet that led to the uprisings or unrest.  And denying access to such sites will not address the issues that led to the uprisings and unrest.  What the Cameron government and the leadership in the U.S. is failing to see is that the unrest is being caused by a broken system wherein criminal activity by the rich and powerful is rewarded and even encouraged by the government who creates laws to make such criminal activity easier and reaps the benefits of it while at the same time making it harder and harder on those that make up the vast majority of society who are finding it more difficult every day just to keep their heads above water.

Don't think it can happen here?  The United States reached the highest level of income disparity in its history in 2009 -- even higher than in the midst of the Great Depression, this according to the most recent Census results.  The ratio of youth employment (the percentage of non-institutionalized persons between the ages of 16-24) last month reached its lowest point in history -- 44.8%.  Congress and the President have passed spending cuts which will further disaffect millions of Americans as services and benefits on which they rely are reduced or cut off entirely.  At the same time, the Obama Administration is seeking to push settlements with the TBTF banks which would amount to less than a slap on the wrist for all of the illegal and fraudulent activity in which these banks engaged leading to the economic collapse of 2008, while at the same time delaying the implementation of reforms and regulations required under the anemic Dodd-Frank Bill which would help to prevent future such abuses.  Aided by Supreme Court decisions granting corporations First Amendment protection, political campaigns are being flooded with corporate donations dwarfing anything that could ever possibly come from common citizens all being made with the understanding that those politicians receiving the funds will do everything in their power to further enrich their corporate donors.

The United States is ripe for severe social unrest.  We are already seeing the first signs of this, not just in protests like in Madison and San Francisco, but in outbreaks of mass violence in Charlotte, Kansas City, Philadelphia and other major cities across the nation in the last few months.  2012 presents itself as the year in which the U.S. could see widespread and violent social unrest on a level we have not seen in decades, if ever.  While our leaders ask "Why?" and seek to quell the spread of violence through the use of tougher laws, greater criminal sentences and the repression of social media, I will be sitting back and reminding them "It's the income disparity, stupid."  Until that is addressed, we will continue to see the unraveling of our society economically, socially and morally.