Occupy a bathtub already

I personally think that as Americans we have priorities screwed up. We toss people to the fire, have the longest work weeks, the shortest vacations, the latest retirements, we play craps with their 401k, we market ruthlessly to them to have the latest-greatest-fastest-brightest (and devalue them for not having it), we don't even have the common decency to give them a cough drop for a sore throat. Let's get real, we can't really do anything well. We can't manufacture anything, we barely keep it together, yet we think we are king shit and treat any dissenting opinion as an enemy of the state.

 

What country would you compare the US to that is better? The socialist states that are overrun in costs and are taxing the hell out of their people, the totalarian states who's dictators or kings or whatever rule all?

Imagine you put $1000 in a savings account. You come back in 20 years, and you'd expect to have at least $1000, but you find out you have $500, after 20 years. So the bank gets bailed out, the execs get bonuses, and you are still stuck with $500. Everyone told you this was safe, not a serious growth portfolio, so you balanced risk vs reward and chose the least risky, pitched as a no-risk in fact. What of your future?

 

You don't have to be a bleeding heart to have some bit of compassion or charity, you just have to have a heart.

 

I personally think that as Americans we have priorities screwed up. We toss people to the fire, have the longest work weeks, the shortest vacations, the latest retirements, we play craps with their 401k, we market ruthlessly to them to have the latest-greatest-fastest-brightest (and devalue them for not having it), we don't even have the common decency to give them a cough drop for a sore throat. Let's get real, we can't really do anything well. We can't manufacture anything, we barely keep it together, yet we think we are king shit and treat any dissenting opinion as an enemy of the state.

Okay where to start. First you do realize a savings account would be $1000 in 20 years since a savings account is just cash not an investment.

 

Secondly who plays craps with their 401k? who is using the money in someone else's account to gamble? I'm a registered trader, i trade no outside money, yet i still have to know every anti-laundering, account management, etc law regarding pretty much any possibility for people opening accountants and there are far more then enough warnings for people to figure out where their money will be safe, and where there is a chance it could lose value.

 

More over, I know its not true we have the longest work weeks, shortest vacations, and latest retirement age. Even if it was true i would point to to the fact that the poverty line in America exceeds the median income of 183 out of 195 countries. So I think thats a fair trade off for whatever negatives.

This is not about anybody paying for anyone else because if you thought about taxes even in the slightest, your head would explode. You already are paying for other people's healthcare, education, retirement, etc.

trust me. I think about it.

 

Truth be told, my dad is doing fine,

then why were you crying poormouth for him last night?

he did not retire out of NYPD, but another department. In the end his house was overvalued as the rest of the 'hood was too, because of bad lending practices, so he can still pay for his house even though it lost 20% of the value. This now makes refi a bitch and a half.

. Hold up a second. Retirees and soon to be retirees shouldn't be buying homes on mortgages they may have to refi. If he has a mortgage he can afford, he has a roof over his head, what's it matter if the value of the house has dropped? He can live in the house the rst of his life and then you can sell it and hope by then its broken even.

 

The people responsible won't be paying (either financially or legally), the government won't be helping... so fcuk him, you lose?

 

Imagine you put $1000 in a savings account.

. But he didn't put it in a savings account. He put it in a 401k. We have a couple of these. And you can pick the level of risk you're comfortable with. He could have picked "fixed income" which earns about 1% but the money is safe. He went with something more aggressive with a higher POTENTIAL Return and the trade off for that is RISK. The market takes a shit like it did it 2008 and that risk doesn't pay off.

 

How do I know this? In 2007 I converted all my investments to cash and fixed income. My 401s did just fine. They didn't grow. But they didn't shrink either. So don't piss on my leg and tell me its raining.

You come back in 20 years, and you'd expect to have at least $1000, but you find out you have $500, after 20 years. So the bank gets bailed out, the execs get bonuses, and you are still stuck with $500. Everyone told you this was safe, not a serious growth portfolio, so you balanced risk vs reward and chose the least risky, pitched as a no-risk in fact. What of your future?

 

You don't have to be a bleeding heart to have some bit of compassion or charity, you just have to have a heart.

 

I personally think that as Americans we have priorities screwed up. We toss people to the fire, have the longest work weeks, the shortest vacations, the latest retirements, we play craps with their 401k, we market ruthlessly to them to have the latest-greatest-fastest-brightest (and devalue them for not having it), we don't even have the common decency to give them a cough drop for a sore throat. Let's get real, we can't really do anything well. We can't manufacture anything, we barely keep it together, yet we think we are king shit and treat any dissenting opinion as an enemy of the state.

 

Its only interesting if you're not an American, or have no sense of American History or its purpose.

 

 

And I don't mean that in a derogatory way... I mean, that very specifically, that column, and the protestors, are concerned with "Equality." The article uses the words "Equality" and "Inequality" 14 times by my count... And specifically the concern is "ECONOMIC Equality.

 

 

Problem: America was not founded on the principle of "Economic Equality".

 

America was founded on the principle of "LIBERTY".

 

Want proof? Look at a penny, a nickle, a dime or a quarter.... Its right there, plain as day... "LIBERTY" You wont find the word "Equality" on any of them... You will on some other nation's money (The old French Franc comes to mind), but not ours.

 

 

LIBERTY and Economic EQUALITY, at least, are antithesis to each other. People are not BORN equal. We do not have the same capabilities, the same drive or the same interests...

 

We are born FREE. In America, we are FREE to go as far as our our individual talents, drives and interests will take us. But that necessarily means, we will have UNEQUAL RESULTS.

 

 

To make people EQUAL necessarily means interfering with their freedom. Interfering with their LIBERTY.

 

It means HOBBLING those whose abilities allow them BETTER results than others...

 

 

THAT'S NOT WHAT WE DO HERE. If you want a country that places the principle of EQUALITY above all others, there are lots of places you can go live... Especially in Europe.

 

If you want to live in a country that places the principle of personal LIBERTY above all others, THERE IS ONLY ONE PLACE IN THE WORLD... And I will fight to the death before I let anybody destroy that..

 

Really, really good post.

This thread is now closed to anybody with less than 200 posts.

 

Its only interesting if you're not an American, or have no sense of American History or its purpose.

 

 

And I don't mean that in a derogatory way... I mean, that very specifically, that column, and the protestors, are concerned with "Equality." The article uses the words "Equality" and "Inequality" 14 times by my count... And specifically the concern is "ECONOMIC Equality.

 

 

Problem: America was not founded on the principle of "Economic Equality".

 

America was founded on the principle of "LIBERTY".

 

Want proof? Look at a penny, a nickle, a dime or a quarter.... Its right there, plain as day... "LIBERTY" You wont find the word "Equality" on any of them... You will on some other nation's money (The old French Franc comes to mind), but not ours.

 

 

LIBERTY and Economic EQUALITY, at least, are antithesis to each other. People are not BORN equal. We do not have the same capabilities, the same drive or the same interests...

 

We are born FREE. In America, we are FREE to go as far as our our individual talents, drives and interests will take us. But that necessarily means, we will have UNEQUAL RESULTS.

 

 

To make people EQUAL necessarily means interfering with their freedom. Interfering with their LIBERTY.

 

It means HOBBLING those whose abilities allow them BETTER results than others...

 

 

THAT'S NOT WHAT WE DO HERE. If you want a country that places the principle of EQUALITY above all others, there are lots of places you can go live... Especially in Europe.

 

If you want to live in a country that places the principle of personal LIBERTY above all others, THERE IS ONLY ONE PLACE IN THE WORLD... And I will fight to the death before I let anybody destroy that..

 

 

Absolutely perfect. Can I quote this on my FB??

Absolutely perfect. Can I quote this on my FB??

 

Yeah... Sure.

The occupy movement is spreading...

 

On the NYT article, a few things:

 

Three factoids underscore that inequality:

 

¶The 400 wealthiest Americans have a greater combined net worth than the bottom 150 million Americans.

 

¶The top 1 percent of Americans possess more wealth than the entire bottom 90 percent.

 

¶In the Bush expansion from 2002 to 2007, 65 percent of economic gains went to the richest 1 percent.

 

He, like too many, is confusing income inequality with wealth inequality. They are two separate things. There is a view that income is something that is created by the economy and then must be "distributed" among the populace, and if the "income distribution" is skewed, then politicians must do something to "fix" it. But income is nothing of the sort. All income is, is what you get paid for the products/services/labor you provide on the market. Another mis-leading thing is when they talk about the income distribution being skewed "towards the top 1%." This implies that the highest-earning 1% are some fixed class of people who are hogging more and more of the supply of income the economy generates for themselves. The whole thing is an utterly ridiculous argument, but that's how it's portrayed.

 

For one, there is no "top 1%." That's just a statistical bracket. The actual human beings that make up the wealthiest 1% or the 1% with the highest incomes, changes constantly. Picture it this way. You measure the speed of the population of cars on the American highway system. At all times, you will have a "fastest 1%" of cars. Now imagine in 1970 that the fastest 1% is gaining in speed at the same rate as the rest of the car population. Now imagine in 2000 that the fastest 1% of cars is gaining in speed faster than the rest of the car population. A person with an agenda could portray this to the ignorant as meaning there is a fixed aristocracy of cars that make up the fastest 1% and they are now hogging more of the road for themselves at the expense of everyone else. The fact that the actual, physical cars that make up the fastest 1% of vehicles changes constantly, they won't mention. The actual cars that make up the fast 1% of cars on the road at 6 AM are not the same as the ones that make it up at 12 PM, even though the statistical bracket of the fastest 1% is always there.

 

The same applies with incomes. The income brackets do not reflect the actual people who move into and out of them constantly. If we see that the "distribution of income" has become more skewed towards "the top 1%," that is just the natural fluctuations of the people in the economy acting freely. If you see that the top 1% of earners earned 30% of the total national income in 1970 while in 2011 the top 1% now earn 60% of the total national income (I don't know the actual numbers, I'm just throwing out random ones for the example here), well I mean a lot of the people in the top 1% today were those in one of the lower income brackets back in 1970. But the political agenda types make it sound like it's a fixed aristocracy.

 

Economists used to believe that we had to hold our noses and put up with high inequality as the price of robust growth. But more recent research suggests the opposite: inequality not only stinks, but also damages economies.

 

That's very debatable. First off, there's a confusion regarding the issue of economic inequality. As Romandad has pointed out, freedom and economic equality are diamatrically opposed. In a free society, you will have economic inequality. But a major thing that is ignored is that, yes, while a country like the United States has economic inequality, we are a society in which people are very unequally wealthy. I have a smartphone that lets me watch movies, surf the Internet, watch Youtube videos, play games, read books, etc...on, while sitting at a computer by a quiet electric light, listening to music. I have instant access to all of the great works of music and all of the great works of literature in humanity's entire history. I have access to all the great movies. I can go buy fresh fruit or get a Starbucks coffee to drink, or any one of innumerable other beverages out there. I have access to clean cold or hot water, toilet, shower with bathtub, a bed, etc...

 

By global and HISTORICAL standards in particular, I am FRIGGING WEALTHY. I have goodies that even billionaires did not have as short a time as a couple of decades ago. This is because we are so rich a society, that unless you are flat-out homeless, even our "poverty-stricken" people are wealthy by global standards. But we are UNEQUALLY wealthy. Some people with an agenda thus have a problem with this. They never consider that the alternative is to be equally poor as opposed to unequally wealthy.

 

Where problems with economic inequality can occur is if one small portion of the population is advancing while the rest is declining. But that hasn't been the case, despite the claims of pundits to the contrary for decades. Society overall continues to see its standards of living increase. Fifty years from now, the average "poor" person will have goodies that billionaires don't have access to today.

 

That’s certainly true of the United States. We enjoyed considerable equality from the 1940s through the 1970s, and growth was strong. Since then inequality has surged, and growth has slowed.

 

We enjoyed good growth through the 1940s to the 1970s because World War II bombed out all of our economic competition. Meanwhile, the New Deal had built up a whole lot of infrastructure which then allowed previously rural sectors of the country to become booming economies. Also, this is kind of over-simplifying it. The 1970s were not exactly a period of healthy economic growth. We had recessions, stagflation (inflation combined with high unemployment), an oil shock, price controls which created long gas lines, etc...and a general sense that the country was going down the tube economically for good.

 

But inequality is also a cancer on our national well-being.

 

If there's some fixed aristocracy that is getting rich while everyone is starving, then yes, otherwise, I'd say no. Inequality is the natural consequence of economic growth which raises the standard of living for everyone.

Look what the kiwi students done after they saw the americans protests.

 

 

http://youtu.be/fWp-C5_169U

 

About 50 students have occupied a clock tower at Auckland University in protest of a proposed fee hike.

 

Sarah Thompson, speaking from the tower, said the students had broken into the Princes St building and had taken over an office.

 

The sociology student said the protest was against a proposed four per cent increase in uni fees and the university's refusal to meet with students about it.

 

She said police were present.

 

The protest came before the University of Auckland Council met to consider domestic fees for 2012 and international fees for 2013.

 

Auckland University Students' Association (AUSA) believed the council would agree to increase fees by four per cent, the same as they've done for the previous three years.

 

AUSA president Joe McCrory was calling for the council to reject the proposal.

 

"For years councillors have accepted successive governments shortchanging the future of their students when they approve massive hikes to student fees," he said.

 

Thompson, 30, said the students would stay in the tower until they found out where the meeting would take place.

 

The protest followed a rally at the student quad.

 

 

Look what the kiwi students done after they saw the americans protests.

 

 

http://youtu.be/fWp-C5_169U

 

About 50 students have occupied a clock tower at Auckland University in protest of a proposed fee hike.

 

Sarah Thompson, speaking from the tower, said the students had broken into the Princes St building and had taken over an office.

 

The sociology student said the protest was against a proposed four per cent increase in uni fees and the university's refusal to meet with students about it.

 

She said police were present.

 

The protest came before the University of Auckland Council met to consider domestic fees for 2012 and international fees for 2013.

 

Auckland University Students' Association (AUSA) believed the council would agree to increase fees by four per cent, the same as they've done for the previous three years.

 

AUSA president Joe McCrory was calling for the council to reject the proposal.

 

"For years councillors have accepted successive governments shortchanging the future of their students when they approve massive hikes to student fees," he said.

 

Thompson, 30, said the students would stay in the tower until they found out where the meeting would take place.

 

The protest followed a rally at the student quad.

 

 

 

Taking over an enemy territory to show that you CAN hurt them is warfare 101. I don't know why there aren't people in GS offices yet if they really wanted to occupy something.

On the NYT article, a few things:

 

 

 

He, like too many, is confusing income inequality with wealth inequality. They are two separate things. There is a view that income is something that is created by the economy and then must be "distributed" among the populace, and if the "income distribution" is skewed, then politicians must do something to "fix" it. But income is nothing of the sort. All income is, is what you get paid for the products/services/labor you provide on the market. Another mis-leading thing is when they talk about the income distribution being skewed "towards the top 1%." This implies that the highest-earning 1% are some fixed class of people who are hogging more and more of the supply of income the economy generates for themselves. The whole thing is an utterly ridiculous argument, but that's how it's portrayed.

 

For one, there is no "top 1%." That's just a statistical bracket. The actual human beings that make up the wealthiest 1% or the 1% with the highest incomes, changes constantly. Picture it this way. You measure the speed of the population of cars on the American highway system. At all times, you will have a "fastest 1%" of cars. Now imagine in 1970 that the fastest 1% is gaining in speed at the same rate as the rest of the car population. Now imagine in 2000 that the fastest 1% of cars is gaining in speed faster than the rest of the car population. A person with an agenda could portray this to the ignorant as meaning there is a fixed aristocracy of cars that make up the fastest 1% and they are now hogging more of the road for themselves at the expense of everyone else. The fact that the actual, physical cars that make up the fastest 1% of vehicles changes constantly, they won't mention. The actual cars that make up the fast 1% of cars on the road at 6 AM are not the same as the ones that make it up at 12 PM, even though the statistical bracket of the fastest 1% is always there.

 

The same applies with incomes. The income brackets do not reflect the actual people who move into and out of them constantly. If we see that the "distribution of income" has become more skewed towards "the top 1%," that is just the natural fluctuations of the people in the economy acting freely. If you see that the top 1% of earners earned 30% of the total national income in 1970 while in 2011 the top 1% now earn 60% of the total national income (I don't know the actual numbers, I'm just throwing out random ones for the example here), well I mean a lot of the people in the top 1% today were those in one of the lower income brackets back in 1970. But the political agenda types make it sound like it's a fixed aristocracy.

 

 

 

That's very debatable. First off, there's a confusion regarding the issue of economic inequality. As Romandad has pointed out, freedom and economic equality are diamatrically opposed. In a free society, you will have economic inequality. But a major thing that is ignored is that, yes, while a country like the United States has economic inequality, we are a society in which people are very unequally wealthy. I have a smartphone that lets me watch movies, surf the Internet, watch Youtube videos, play games, read books, etc...on, while sitting at a computer by a quiet electric light, listening to music. I have instant access to all of the great works of music and all of the great works of literature in humanity's entire history. I have access to all the great movies. I can go buy fresh fruit or get a Starbucks coffee to drink, or any one of innumerable other beverages out there. I have access to clean cold or hot water, toilet, shower with bathtub, a bed, etc...

 

By global and HISTORICAL standards in particular, I am FRIGGING WEALTHY. I have goodies that even billionaires did not have as short a time as a couple of decades ago. This is because we are so rich a society, that unless you are flat-out homeless, even our "poverty-stricken" people are wealthy by global standards. But we are UNEQUALLY wealthy. Some people with an agenda thus have a problem with this. They never consider that the alternative is to be equally poor as opposed to unequally wealthy.

 

Where problems with economic inequality can occur is if one small portion of the population is advancing while the rest is declining. But that hasn't been the case, despite the claims of pundits to the contrary for decades. Society overall continues to see its standards of living increase. Fifty years from now, the average "poor" person will have goodies that billionaires don't have access to today.

 

 

 

We enjoyed good growth through the 1940s to the 1970s because World War II bombed out all of our economic competition. Meanwhile, the New Deal had built up a whole lot of infrastructure which then allowed previously rural sectors of the country to become booming economies. Also, this is kind of over-simplifying it. The 1970s were not exactly a period of healthy economic growth. We had recessions, stagflation (inflation combined with high unemployment), an oil shock, price controls which created long gas lines, etc...and a general sense that the country was going down the tube economically for good.

 

 

 

If there's some fixed aristocracy that is getting rich while everyone is starving, then yes, otherwise, I'd say no. Inequality is the natural consequence of economic growth which raises the standard of living for everyone.

there is a bigger issue here, and that your post has exeded too many lines.

there is a bigger issue here, and that your post has exeded too many lines.

 

*Stand-up applause*

 

 

Thank you.

 

Signed,

 

 

Drunk late-night veteran of Lambo Power

 

Brevity is wheel's nemesis.

Brevity is wheel's nemesis.

 

I have the same problem. I will write a freaking book... which is why I rarely respond to a post in a long manner anymore unless it's about cars.

 

I mean.... you start typing and then you type some more.

 

But then you realize that you want to go off tangent.

 

So you type some more.

 

But then I find I've already thought about another thing so I type more and then I go off subject more. And more..

 

And more.

 

Then some more... but that's not all!

 

 

And more.

 

America was founded on the principle of "LIBERTY".

 

Want proof? Look at a penny, a nickle, a dime or a quarter.... Its right there, plain as day... "LIBERTY" You wont find the word "Equality" on any of them... You will on some other nation's money (The old French Franc comes to mind), but not ours.

 

LIBERTY and Economic EQUALITY, at least, are antithesis to each other. People are not BORN equal. We do not have the same capabilities, the same drive or the same interests...

 

We are born FREE. In America, we are FREE to go as far as our our individual talents, drives and interests will take us. But that necessarily means, we will have UNEQUAL RESULTS.

 

I agree with the idea that liberty is the founding principle of this country, but I'd go a step further and suggest that liberty and equality are not exclusive, rather that liberty IS the path to equality. Over the past century, many economists have related social programs and government attempts at engineered equality to actually contribute to the wealth disparity, to increase divisiveness, and to retard aggregate prosperity growth.

 

Liberty may not always be perfectly fair, but I'd rather go with a guiding principle that MAY not always be fair, against a system of government interventionism that is almost GUARANTEED to result in unfairness.

there is a bigger issue here, and that your post has exeded too many lines.

 

 

lol

 

Perfect.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhatt...K#ixzz1bE9Ovu00

Perfect.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhatt...K#ixzz1bE9Ovu00

 

 

Occupy Wall Street protesters said yesterday that packs of brazen crooks within their ranks have been robbing their fellow demonstrators blind, making off with pricey cameras, phones and laptops -- and even a hefty bundle of donated cash and food.

 

“Stealing is our biggest problem at the moment,” said Nan Terrie, 18, a kitchen and legal-team volunteer from Fort Lauderdale.

 

“I had my Mac stolen -- that was like $5,500. Every night, something else is gone.

 

Does this surprise you?

 

The groups entire message is "Rich people should give us what they have"- We haven't earned it... We haven't worked for it. But we're going to take it.... By intimidation or force if necessary. We have a word for that- THEFT.

 

And once you've bought into the idea that somebody ELSE's stuff SHOULD be YOURS, for the very fact that YOU WANT IT, then ripping off a laptop is easy.

 

This isnt really about RICH people.... This is about the ENVY and GREED of the protestors. How MUCH somebody else has is really irrelevant to the equation- 'If they have MORE THAN ME, THEY'RE "RICH." And the RICH don't deserve what they have. And since they don't deserve it, I can TAKE IT.'

 

Their answer to "Corporate Greed" is "GIVE IT TO ME".

 

You have to be blind not to appreciate the irony in that.

It seems both rich and poor have a serious problem in this country - greed and envy.

 

 

Taxing the wealthy is taking up an absurd amount of time compared to the results it could have. You could confiscated all the wealth of the forbes 400 and you'd still have less then half the annual federal budget.

This whole issue reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by ms thatcher, “The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

“I had my Mac stolen -- that was like $5,500."

 

I heard a wise person once say, " You could take all the money in the world and divide it up equally and within 2 years it will be right back where it started." Foolish people will continue to be foolish and smart people....well you know how it goes. Which goes right back to Roman Dad's statement of Liberty vs Equality.

“I had my Mac stolen -- that was like $5,500."

 

what do you get when you put a bunch of needy, opportunists looking for a hand out together?

A bunch of lying cheating thieves.