You're under the belief that I don't sympathize for Adam's situation, which in fact it's quite the opposite. The problem however, is Adam thinks all of the problems going on today with the socio-economic system can be solved with the 1980's mentality of, "pick yourselves up by your bootstraps" or my favorite, "work harder." I don't know if he really understands the true ramifications of what Capitalism has done to this planet and how how it has warped reality. Another thing to point out, Adam externalizes his issues and consistently projects his issues to everyone else. Go back to the podcast when he asks how close Joe is to his sister, and look at his befuddled reaction when Joe tells him it's great, when the experience was quite different for Adam and his brother. Later, he boasts how a strong work ethic and busting your ass applies to everybody. Yea... tell that to /r/jobs.
He's stuck looking at the world from his own lens and too focused on the end result of an unfettered Capitalistic system without looking at the bigger picture. What he sees only: Lazy Americans. Welfare babies. Sue hungry sociopaths. Government is bad. "I got mine, so you can fuck off." Which I'm not disagreeing with by the way, he's essentially correct on some of his talking points, but he needs to understand how and why things ended up this way. Adam never grew up with the internet so he is limited in his exposure to the world, so I don't really blame him for his ignorance, he's simply a victim of his own time and I can't blame him for it he's just uninformed. It's easier to say ISIS hates the United States simply because they hate freedom instead of focusing on the 60 years of US and British intervention starting with the Project Ajax. Just like it's easier to say black people don't work because they're lazy, but it becomes infinitely more complex when you look at their lifestyle and how few options they have.
I'm going to go off on a tangent here but the point I want to make is the American dream as we now see it, no longer exists. The game is rigged and if you're one of the poor and disenfranchised of America, your chances of ever succeeding are nearly impossible. To get ahead in life you literally have to swallow your morals and willing to profit over your fellow man, and that's exactly what they do in Wall Street everyday: Take 8 minutes to watch this interview with Chris Hedges as he goes into detail explaining the willingness corporations will go to profiteer off the poor and disenfranchised of Americans.
A work force economy with inmates getting payed 3rd world wages through forced labor
Any debt they incur inside can send them back to prison even after serving their time.
Chevron, Victoria Secret, Target, Hewlett Packard, Starbucks, AT&T, Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, and Wendy's are examples of corporations exploiting prisoners through exorbitant phone fees, commissaries, and surcharges. Basic amenities are no longer provided such as shoes, which cost up to $45.00, so good luck paying that off with a $.20 an hour wage working eight hours a day, and because this is prison they don't qualify for social security for those hours. Same with medications and legal fees. If a loved one is dying, then they're limited to maybe 15 minutes of a deathbed viewing, and it's not uncommon for guards to make money off family members in situations like these.
It should be no secret to many of you the money generated through private prisons are in the tens of billions, a dramatic increase of 72 percent since 1997, and their lobbyists are some of the most well funded and resourceful in Washington. Which by the way are the same individuals responsible for writing these sick draconian laws. And instead of outsourcing slave labor, prison administrators are lobbying to corporations to return back home because prisoners have no union or benefits, and controlling them would be easier because they'll simply be put into isolation.
So think about your average prisoner who is just being released and in thousands of dollars in debt: Their job prospects are tenuous at best, and with criminal record on their resume I doubt many of them will get an interview. And to top it all off, between the economy being what it is today and a market saturated with millions of others also looking for work, these recently released prisoners are simply unemployable. So what choice does that leave them? Sell drugs? Rob a bank? That's their only options. The system is designed for them to fail, and it makes me sick that corporations see people only as a commodity rather than a human being. This is a text book example of why we need a Basic Income. Sadly, if and when this comes to pass it will already be too late for millions of Americans.
Now pretend that prisoner is black and living in [insert your favorite racist state here]. Welcome to an oligarchy.