"We have lost hope"

I'm watching C-SPAN and David Gergen is chairing a panel on "Leadership in America." It's based on research done by U.S. News and World Reports. Howard Schultz, the chairman of Starbucks, just said the "chasm" between the haves and have-nots is so large in this country that most of the have nots "have lost hope." Jeff Canada mentioned that the government is spending $29,000 (I think a year, I could be wrong though...) to keep people in jail. But if he went and asked for $29,000 a year to help poor children, people looked at him like he's crazy. He cited a studying about how scientists used to drop rats in water to study their resiliency. Wanting to find what characteristics the rats that fought to survive had. His reaction was, "why are we dropping rats in water." That's the same thing we're doing with poor children. Dropping them in water and making it very hard for them to survive.

A lot of this panel echoed a lot of what Richard Harwood is looking at. The panel started by giving results of a survey that said most Americans do not trust leaders in general. It's scary. I don't think things are hopeless, but things need to change. But I guess this is what democracy is all about--discussing things and trying to make the world better.

Howard Schultz in interesting. He grew up very poor and is new chairman of one of the largest companies in the world. Read more about him here.