Forum Post: 1% Sociopath - With a Dollop of Arrogance
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 31, 2011, 10:07 a.m. EST by invient
(360)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
[Entire pertinent text follows]
"We are Wall Street. It's our job to make money. Whether it's a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn't matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn't hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone's 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I've never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.
Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.
Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you're only going to hurt yourselves. What's going to happen when we can't find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We're going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We're used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don't take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don't demand a union. We don't retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we'll eat that.
For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We're going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. I'll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.
So now that we're going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we're going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren't going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We're going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.
The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it's really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom.
We aren't dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply…will he? and will they?"
did you all know that if you invested your money in the stock market from say the 1960's to now. You would still have made more money than investing your money into Social Security.
The economy is full of ups and downs
but it keeps marching forward
I think the difficulty is that the "Market", whatever that actually is, does indeed march forward. But it leaves behind it a wasteland of humanity. For every up, there is a down that destroys lives.
Societies are judged by how the least fortunate amongst them are treated.
No. You could not be more wrong.
Please think about this rationally, try to take the emotion out of your argument and think about it.
The market has created and continues to create wealth and jobs through innovation. Innovation is what Capitalism is all about. Capitalism is Creative Destruction. When technology moves forward and labor is saved as the consequence. Companies, products, and people become more efficient, driving down the prices of sought after goods.
Just think, would you like to have the streets of NY cleaned up by hand after a snow storm? Or would you prefer plow trucks? Are you going to tell me that plow trucks (just an example) are worse for society as a whole? Do you think those laborers that lost their jobs shoveling snow over 100 years ago were better served or worse of because. Did they just die in the woods with nothing left to do. No, of course not. Those laborers got jobs in a new sector that was created. The Drivers, manufactures, transporters, parts, etc. etc.
Do you think technology is a bad thing? Has Technology not created a thousands of new jobs in new sectors?
One last point. Capitalism and globalization has given rise to the poorest nations now giving birth to true middle classes. In India they are seeing a true way forward to finnally address their ills. As a leftist, do you not care for the poor of the third world. Globalization has given them jobs, and better paying rates then they ever could have had.
Its' marching forward, but always to the next cliff. The issue now, is that the next cliff has no bottom. We will see what happens.
How is it investing into social security. Investors usually expect their money back plus some percentage... I know of no one that expects this extra percentage from social security. Also, seeing as markets are inherently unstable without strict regulations, it would appear the game is still out for those people who have invested since the 1960's to see their futures dwindle.
The time will come, when your faith in markets will fade.
Bitching about Wall Street and then saying that you expect your investments to have positive returns (which is Wall Street's job, to accomplish that) is very extremely silly.
People who have been investing in the market since the 60s still have a larger return on their money than Social Security can provide.
That is a Fact.
Even with the fall in the market and then the rebound/fall/rebound etc. They still have made more money.
Economics and the economy run in cycles. Just look at the numbers. We have a recession about every ten years. This past one and the future one (student debt) was helped along by gov't and created a larger burst than needed.
cool story bro
rth
Outstanding! I too don't apologize for the 'fruits of my labor'. Went to a good school, studied my ass off, been working every since graduation; continued my education and have climbed the corporate ladder. In addition, spent many, many hours improving my family's financial position. Raising my family is a big house, in a private community, with a gate; contributing monies and time to charitable causes (notice I didn't say entitlement programs), enjoying all the material posessions of success!, and; most importantly, teaching my children the benefits of community service and hard work. Don't apologize for a damn thing I've accomplished and will fight to continue my family's upper middle class lifestyle. Paid my debts, have equity & assets, continuing to build a solid foundation for my family; and WILL NOT support/subsidize anyone too lasy to work hard and achieve.
[Removed]