I wanted to Reply to Captain Anands post but can't find it.

[As a sidebar I find myself wanting to find past posts or topics and spend an inordinate time doing so. Is there a way to put a search engine on this site?[

     However, the topic was poverty and the subject was the caste system in India. While that is true and very overt; England has a class system which is very difficult to break out of. Although there are efforts today to change this ancient heritage and tradition 

     What I wanted to add was the covert class / caste system in America. For example: In different subject areas that I taught, (political science, sociology, American History and Western Civilization), I introduce the idea that Any hierarchical society requires a broad impoverished base on which to subsist on.

     With that said I follow with the idea that classes in America are inherited. I also have heard countless times; I do what my Father did, he did what his father did, and so on. A few times, I also hear; "I am the first one in my family to attend college. Sociology studies have also demonstrated that is rare for a person to not stay within the bounds of their colleagues of similar economic status.

      The Industrial Revolution in England and America during the nineteenth-century, brought forth the Theory of Subsistence Wages. This means that employers pay their employees just enough to feed, clothe, and house their family; and procreate, to keep the labor force healthy. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries, in the Mills of New Hampshire and Massachusetts; Men, Women, and Children were dieing of disease from industrial waste, unhealthy environments, subsistence wages, (not a chance to maintain a nutritional balance), and God forbid you became sick or maimed, (a common occurrence), because that meant; no job, no wages, no health, and a slow death.

     This brought on the age of unions and the meaning of Conservative and Liberal. The Liberals pleaded with the Federal Government to intercede on their behalf, while the Conservatives violently fought back making it very clear that the Federal Government has no business telling them how to treat their employees. We can see remnants of this idea with at will employment and the shameful need for unions. A step up but hardly economic, social, or political justice. (See Homestead miners in Pennsylvania and owners hiring Pinkerton security to quell strikes in 1892). These Mill and Mine owners built towns for their employees and everything the employees were paid was spent at the company story. Hence the popular song; I Sold My Soul to the Company Store.

      So while the caste systems and class systems exist; it is perpetuated in the US. Most notably and of late is the student loan crisis. For more information on this please right me and my co-founder (a defense attorney from Fresno Ca). @ cedresq@gmail.com. People are going to be spending the rest of their lives paying off their student loans, denied consumer protections, not have the debt forgiven through bankruptcy which violates the first and 14th Amendment to the Constitution. (We are planning on challenging this in Federal Court but access to justice in America for the poor is hard to come by, unless you commit a crime, (See Criminal Justice one of the more popular college classes). Their loans default through no fault of their own and they become bankrupt. Lawyers who obtain their Juris Doctorate for example and then pass the Bar Exam or Graduates who pass their medical boards; are denied the right to be admitted to the Bar or receive their MD because they owe too much in student loans. 

      We at Citizens for an Educated and Democratic Republic (I) drafted a Bill and we have been trying to get legislative sponsorship for it. please write for a copy and if you agree please share with your legislator.

Sincerely yours,

Peter J. O'Lalor, Ph.D.