here's minister workers walked out on their jobs in response to a new round of austerity measures passed by the government desperate to receive more bailout money from the european union and the i.m.f. greece is cutting public workers' pensions and x. brakes and furloughing thirty thousand government workers to prove that they're serious about trimming government spending but once again the banks toure's are left unscathed as the head of the athens chamber of commerce constantine knows mccollough greece is being turned into a poverty there's no compas this government doesn't know where it's going greece's pursued cuts in government services all year to meet the demands of the i.m.f. an e.u. and so far as done is further cripple its own economy and bring the nation closer and closer to default as the u.k. and now the united states is figuring out spending cuts kill economic growth which in turn causes bigger deficits but even more troubling than deficits austerity causes serious civil unrest as we see in greece today as we've seen sweep across europe in recent months but so far despite the austerity republicans are pushing

congress united states has yet to see the same sort of civil unrest in our streets so why is that and might it be coming so daniel nasaw joins me now is a journalist of the b.b.c.'s washington bureau daniel walker thanks for having me thanks for joining us tonight. america over the last generation or so has the last thirty years basically from from the reagan presidency forward has gone from literally being the most socially mobile of the o.e.c.d. countries with a fully developed countries in the world to being the least socially more economically mobile are economic and social mobility is is among the most rigid in the world. is that part of a prescription for disaster or something that might be driving this was this question that you ask in this article and was that addressed point of the experts that you interview about you know with or goes america well when you're talking about riots. social mass social protest i think you you really want to be careful

to distinguish between the two and in the u.s. in recent you know in the past century riots have always really been about race and you know you look at the race riots in tulsa oklahoma in the rodney king riots and or about sports frankly and what's going on now doesn't feel like it's about race it's about capitalism and about political dysfunction in in europe in the united states the u.s. in the u.s. there it's about capitalism now you're one of the people you interviewed in your article suggested. the the u.s. just doesn't do that you know that we don't have the riots about economics and another suggested but we may well be on the verge of it we we were sort of there with the bonus army you pointed out to we certainly were there in the late and the

end of the gilded age and after the crash of eighty three and some would argue that we were there that's what the civil war was all about after the great depression of the eighteenth forty's. what's your sense of these cycles and where we're headed well i think that what you're going to have to have to see broad social protests against the system the capitalist system in the u.s. right now is you're going to need a real direct grievance so what you see right now the protests on wall street for example of the past five days that kind of thing doesn't to me capture the public imagination because it's. it i think that's people who were on their day off from work and you know sitting in on wall street the bonus army that was world war one veterans who were destitute in the great depression and they marched on washington

and demanded payment of their bonus that was due to them so the but they weren't real they wanted it earlier yet it was due to come in one thousand nine hundred five and they wanted it banned in one thousand nine hundred to put it to the what is happening in this country with you know our unemployment rate rising income inequality i feel like a lot of that right now is it's still abstract it's i'm reading this in the newspaper that unemployment is bad and the populations that are hard hit so you know public school employees librarians bus drivers so they're there we had one hundred fifty thousand people show up and yes i spoke of this last weekend eight thousand people showed that there's. what one person one person i spoke to a historian of the one nine hundred sixty s. he said that that you know he pointed to that as the beginning of a you know a mass protest in this country it seems like there are some per i mean i was there for the sixty's. and remember it well and it seems that there are some significant

parallels a grievance that was my government wants to kill me yes some you have to be a no right there is people literally have that sense and now the grievances my government is to kill my job and there's there's in some ways not that much difference when you have a country where harvard university says forty five thousand people a year die from lack of health insurance or well again if you it's one thing to read that in the newspaper and another thing to sense that in your community and unlike if the bonus army and in the sixty's my sense is right now there is no organizing factor you know if you've got like what michael bloomberg referred to you've got kids graduating from college with no job prospects there isn't i don't see out there a force to organize them into a mass social movement so in the last decade we've lost forty six thousand factories in the united states but they've been being paid you know and week after

week and the people in ohio aren't talking to people in west virginia. is that. we're we're the frog in the slowly heating water or the it's you know that is that that it was davies was the guy who came up with a concept of the j. curve where expectations diverge from reality yet at a certain speed then you'll have a social explosion but if they diverge from reality at a much slower speed multi-generational speed then you simply have people living relatively quietly in poverty and in the slums of mexico city folks will absolutely be i mean the the working class in terms of manufacturing has been under results since that for decades and so. if another mill closes or another steel plant closes and you have you know more men out of work in a small town there is no i think that's not a population that's that's easily radicalised so it sounds like what you're saying

is that without without a galvanizing moment without a you know like in greece they they just chop thirty thirty thirty six thousand government lawyers off the rolls and it will show up in the streets or madison without focal national focal point there's you know the war in iraq we're a million people mistreats but it was a very clear thing yes without some national focal point can you envision a national focal point i it would be hard to say i think you know if these austerity budgets you know if i think if you really see public schools under a direct assault that is visible you know from the breakfast table in the kitchen table instead of just seeing on c.n.n. or on our t. that budgets are being cut and there's an abstract number that you know the republicans and the president agree on you know it could happen and you know maybe

the i think to some extent perhaps the flash mobs that yours you've been seeing this past summer you know on some level that may be. in abstract expression of you know disenfranchisement of these are being youth and well we'll see how it plays a d.v.d. interesting dana thank you so much for having me it's nice because great reporting you're doing look thank you writer it's not just high levels of poverty and increasing desperation that lead to civil unrest it's also wealth inequality the gap between the rich and the poor that breeds discontent violence and social ills for example. james wilkerson and kate pickett put together some great research in the u.k. the equality trust or good u.k. is the website where you can find the stuff it's from a book called the spirit level. and this looks at wealth inequality on the vertical index of health and social problems this is pretty much everything all the various

social problems and then across the horizontal of the bottom here is the income inequality so the higher the inequality the worse things are so the most on equal country in the united. is the usa and we are also at the highest with the index of throw the social problems or move to the next screen. this is an infant or mortality the next one oh i've got to clear the screen here or go in for mortality here again income inequality is always going to be across the bottom ok so a country that has low levels of income inequality for example japan also has low levels of infant deaths this is infant deaths per one thousand live births very low sweden norway these countries the the rich are not as rich and the poor are not as poor the middle class is much greater here along these lines what you're seeing is the countries where the rich the rich is the richest of the poor is the poor as the

usa also has the highest level of infant mortality looking at imprisonment rates in the united states our next screen. again around the world rather income inequality so the more on equal societies on the side less on equal and sure enough prisoners per hundred thousand people japan norway sweden very very low and what happens is we move all the way up to very very high levels of income inequality the usa incredibly essentially number one in the world here on this. the next one is teenage pregnancy so clear the screen here again this information from the. u.k. these are births per thousand women in the fifteen to. eighteen year olds those teenage pregnancies basically and what you see is with low income inequality countries countries where there's a large strong middle class and you don't have

a lot of billionaires and you don't have a lot of people in poverty keeping america in mind in america with four hundred richest people own more wealth or as a mother what an amount of wealth roughly equal to the bottom one hundred fifty million people. in the united states and so we are among the highest in income inequality in the world and we're the highest in terms of teenage pregnancies in the world looking at the next screen homicide rates income inequality what do you see as income inequality goes up so to homicide rates and one of the most societies in the world also has the highest homicide rate in the world looking at substance abuse substance abuse again very countries that are very equal very low levels of substance abuse and then the as you get to the most unequal country the most you also have the highest level of

substance abuse in the world and finally here we are looking at social mobility the ability to to. to move out of your social class or the economic class social mobility very low in countries where income inequality is very high the usa the most rigid in other words in norway if you're born poor you can you can. live out of that in the u.s. if you're born poor you're going to die poor or likely is going up and we have to change that's what the change this for a tax policies our government says. crazy alert don't forget the sauce a mississippi man was in a rage when he got home this weekend and opened up his taco bell bag only to discover there was no hot sauce included with his burrito so naturally jeremy calls

did what any of us do who are disappointed when take order takeout orders don't work right he drove back to the taco bell and pulled out a shotgun on the drive thru window employee demanding the missing sauce which by the way as we're calling it was promptly arrested and is awaiting a hearing this week rumor has a taco bell is now pulling its new t.v. ads off the year but we were able to get a copy before they were all polled take a look. at. the. chemical but also should. get. coming up as this nation morphed into the united secular psychopaths of america but

the execution of troy davis means for our country and my duty. drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through get through to be made who can you trust no one who is the imbue it with a global missionary see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more. for.

your take my take is your chance to have your questions opinions and criticisms heard here on the big picture or first comments and i noticed in the viewer rant line the world was watching last night as all of the efforts to stop the execution of troy davis were exhausted in the end the state of georgia took a man's life without being certain of his guilt case of troy davis has sparked outrage all around the world and reignited the death penalty debate here in the united states michael called in with this take. his time to do what we can to for fresh more cases like federal troy davis he didn't need to become a martyr in this cause against the family we need to work on these governors most

of them now are republican and. we have to get them through. requirements for that penalty or to get rid of it completely life with no parole maryland is one of the states that are you offer set up showing there's no reason for innocent people like troy davis to get so much doubt they think carefully and supreme court could not step in and at least mute the stand and force them or just occasions i can't believe it that it's that this is wrong this is wrong. i could agree with you more hating human life especially in a case where there is so much lingering doubt is wrong but the death penalty to me it's a much more fundamental issue what kind of society and we want to be as i said in the segment last night taking another human life is simply inhumane no matter what the justification for it maybe it's

a violation of the first law of every human society don't kill other people so when we behave brutally even via our state we brutalize ourselves the death penalty doesn't deter crimes it doesn't make you any safer it doesn't back bring back the victims of violent crimes it simply undermines the very humanity of american society and should be ended mediately our next comment is via twitter last night and along liberal side one of the show conservative commentator and analyst brian darling asked me a question that caused me to pause for a second take a look. these are two different conceptions one will give you something this is the definition of freedom to snoop just give up your your freedom to us you believe that i haven't met your right to protect myself with a firearm if i so choose. i'm not sure frankly. later brian tweeted out a segment or

a link to that segment of the show on you tube and. want to see a liberal stumped on whether whether the second amendment equals freedom rob ryan your sort of right this is me of my brother steve competitively target shooting with his wife's h m k forty caliber semiautomatic pistol well i'm damn good with that i'm also a pretty good shot with his thirty eight and twenty two and a cop at it with an m. sixteen a newsy i don't think guns should be outlawed either for hunting either even for hunting even though i've been a vegetarian since i was sixteen years old or for self-defense or target practice on the other hand i don't think it's a right to own a gun or use a gun any more than i think it's a right to own and drive a car but it should be regulated and only available to people who have demonstrated sanity and competence the second amendment was put in place in response to a raging debate led mostly by thomas jefferson about whether we should have a standing army during times of peace. jefferson wanted an outlaw like switzerland

today he wanted the army dissolved during times of peace and threaten to have the entire virginia delegation refused to ratify the constitution if that wasn't written into the constitution you can read it in a seven hundred eighty seven letters to james madison when madison was writing the constitution as an alternative jefferson wanted every man from the age of seventeen to forty seven to be taught proficiency with guns and to be a member of a local militia which would be activated if the country were attacked the first draft language of the second amendment was therefore much like the vet existing language of the pennsylvania constitution which both have banned a standing army during times of peace and drafted every eligible man in the state into a militia it said that while people had the and i'm quoting now from the pennsylvania constitution right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the state and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty they ought not to be kept up end of quote from the pennsylvania constitution this is before we were

published this is what they were imitating with the second amendment others though thought we should always have an army and then we'd be able to control the impulse of armies to form alliances with demagogues or with industry so we ended up with this weird hybrid it's our second amendment but i figured last night since the question was about gun rights or about but instead we were talking about freedom that i'd say that debate for another time but thanks brian for the tweet give me a chance to get out of my system that's it for your take my take tonight if you like your comments and questions heard on this segment of a picture listen up. we want to know your to send us your comments by visiting the tom hartman facebook page via twitter at tom underscore apartment or in the chatter among the message boards or the blog at thom hartmann dot can also leave a message on the ramp line at two zero two five three six fifty three zero six agree disagree sound it's all welcome to remember that your comments made the news on the air.

our nation's psychopaths got with a lot of less than the execution of a man who in all likelihood was innocent minutes after the lethal injection stopped troy davis's heart the former georgia prison warden allen. a man who's presided over many executions himself at this to say about what it all means. to the. people who. actually killing. people without conscience struck a perfect people some of the politician. creative. people. should throw somebody.

in the warden's words are especially poignant tonight the night after the death of troy davis are we have vengeful nation of psychopaths a bloodthirsty people who can sleep just fine at night knowing that the united states may have just executed an innocent man if you've watched the republican debates and seen the crowds applaud death and seen governor rick perry so that he has no trouble sleeping at night over the two hundred thirty four people he's killed in texas and it sure seems like we're. the your state has executed two hundred thirty four death row inmates more than any other governor in modern times have you. struggled to sleep at night. with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent you know sort of never struggled with that at all he's never struggled with that at all and imagine putting two

hundred thirty four people to death and never even thinking about it and this is a person that worth considering as president of the united states it's not who we are but it's not just in our criminal justice system and the census execution of troy davis where americans soak sociopathy of psychopath is on full display it's pretty much everywhere so look at our endless wars in the middle east complete with death from above drone airstrikes and turn the killing of hundreds of people into basically are morsels of video games millions literally millions of men women and children have been killed maimed or displaced as the result of our recent wars but has our nation lost any sleep over it have the defense contractors who build war machines and lobby politicians for more war thought twice about the damage their inflicted on millions of lives what about what just happened on wall street or banks gamed the entire nation and threw millions of people out of their homes or

how global insects played in derivative markets to make money in a way that distorted the price of food and triggered a global food panic that pushed a million people to the brink of starvation in the banks lose any sleep. a recent financial times article to this point titled alfred hitchcock's the bankers went right after this psychopath the on wall street it read the characteristics that make for good traders and investment bankers are pretty much the same as those that defied psychopaths surely only some of the serious personality disorder could have thought it was a good idea to sell a highly risky financial instrument like a c.d.o. squared to a naive investor who clearly did not understand the risks a quarter of our economy today is dependant on wall street and pentagon psychopaths doing incalculable arm to a nation without thinking twice about just to make orderly profit goals and to take

home a million dollar a month paychecks so could it really be that the psychopaths have taken over much of our nation when this isn't anything new it's as old as modern culture itself ancient native americans refer to the culture of christopher columbus brought to the new world as with a code meaning a culture of animals a culture that feeds off the life of others from the way we consume energy to the way we treat food animals to the way that we enslave and clearly each other it's always been a psychopathic strain in our culture in all of modern culture west seven thousand years for that matter one that in the last century was suppressed in some places by a more compassionate approach to the environment a more compassionate approach to criminal justice and social safety nets that allowed us to care for each other or create we societies like our an ancient tribal ancestors lived in but here in america these measures to root out psychopath they

are being overturned left and right by people whose behavior suggests they may well be psychopaths themselves. whether it be a more blunted an inhumane criminal justice system that kills people like troy davis or the dismantling of social safety nets that can demand condemn millions of americans to a life of desperation and sometimes death a psychopathic culture is back and it's been pushed by our own politicians by people who former georgia prison warden alan. are often psychopaths themselves this is a troubling reality americans today norway just experienced an unspeakable tragedy at the hands of a psychopath anders breivik but unlike here they didn't respond with psychopathic vengeance as a society prisons are actually decent places in norway where inmates are taught skills because most of them obviously not brothers but most of the will eventually

return to society and they don't have the death penalty and guess what it works in norway has one of the lowest murder rates or the lowest incarceration rates and one of the best prisoner rehabilitation rates in the world unlike here norway doesn't let their psychopaths into politics or into the criminal justice system so in the aftermath of troy davis' execution it's time for the united states to do some soul searching every nation is in constant change as grace slick said life is change and our culture changed for the more compassionate and the better with the new deal and changed again for the more brutal and selfish with the reagan revolution so what's next we become a nation of people who genuinely care for each other and build institutions to respect and help each other or we will be a brutal libertarian nation where it's every man for himself and country run by

psychopaths and as ron paul implied we're all free to die like dogs in the gutter. the choice is ours and the coming election will have a lot to do with determining that future as the big picture first night for more information on the stories we covered visit our website said tom hartman dot com free speech dot org and our team dot com also check out our two youtube chips or a link so tom parker dot com this entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes and we have a free child heart and i phone or i pad app in the app store it is honest feedback on twitter a top underscore our i face book at school our blogs message boards and one comment line at thom hartmann dot. don't forget ocracy begins with you get out there get active take a york city. wealthy

british style sun. times. market why not. why not what's really happening to the global economy with my stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on our.