Forum Post: Rich and Poor America
Posted 5 years ago on June 12, 2019, 6:09 p.m. EST by agkaiser
(2552)
from Fredericksburg, TX
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Minimum wage is $7.25/hr. $22 billion McDonald's stock buyback is more than $100,000 for each of its 210,000 employees. $6 billion in McD's profits last year is more than $28,500 each or $14.25/hr for 2000 hours.
Why ''Raising the Minimum Wage Must Be a Central Issue in 2020 Election'' - by Sasha Abramsky:
multum in parvo?
Where that $22 billion came from to do the buyback was likely the source of much if not most of the conflicts in the world since the invention of money.
That $22 billion is most likely "created out of thin air!"
When the monetary control authority (in the U.S., it's the [non-]U.S. [non-]Federal [no-]Reserve in collusion with the Department of the Treasury) creates credit, whoever borrows the credit creates money when they spend it on real-world things.
McDonald's common-share holders have a claim on the profits (and losses) of the enterprise. They are therefore "pesky" to management because they are the ultimate bosses to the management bosses, being capable of firing any-and-all of the C-suite executives such as CEO, CFO, COO, the President, Chairman of the Board, etc. They do these through the votes of their representatives on the Board of Directors. I know this because I was involved in these corporate intrigues before as a member of several of these governing boards.
When a lot of money becomes available to buy up real-world things, the market prices of these things go up due to the competition ("sell to the highest bidder.") Most [simpleminded and unsophisticated] people fixate on the numbers representing these prices and their own wages, salaries, and incomes rather than how well they actually live.
I had actually reached "financial independence" when I was relatively poor monetarily. I had all my needs and wants at the time provided for. The numbers were smaller than later on but I lived well because my desires were modest. There was no debt hanging on my neck like a stone coin. Inflation created by monetary expansion makes the numbers bigger but they don't make one live any better or happier. They instead allow the craftier ones to steal wealth from the stodgy unsophisticated ones who tend to be the working stiffs. Just look at how greatly that "tax cut" in FICA withholding taxes has fared when the reduced income tax refunds come back. It's actually a loan in disguise as a "tax cut" for the working stiffs (the really high-income people pay a much smaller percentage of their incomes as FICA taxes due to the income ceiling for taxation; besides wages and salaries are NOT the dominant ways high incomes come by! as "wages are for the working stiffs!") but how many of these "too-busy-to-care" ones actually care?! Rather few.
Most U.S.-based workers really do make goodly wages which if translated via the prevailing currency exchange rates and spent in other countries could provide good livings. However, the catch is that these workers DON'T live in these other countries!
If most of the inflation accrues to the inflater, it has a greater percentage of the whole than it had before the [zero sum] game was played on the world.
Imagine what kind of spending would go on (result) in the overall economy of 1,000s of communities - where individuals were moved from earning like 15,000 per year to earning that 100,000 per year.
What would that do for those individuals and what would that spending do for sales tax revenue to support gov spending/budgets.
Does one think that there might be a couple of extra bucks to go into Education funding or emergency response services or into general health care or into infrastructure maintenance and upgrades? or or or or or or or or or or or or or
Does a rising tide raise all boats? No, as it rises on the rich shore it recedes from ours.
HuH. . . I always thought the tide came in but many boats didn't rise with it because the wealthy few holed the bottoms of most of the population's boats. . .
True, but I was thinking of ocean tides. When they rise in the east the recede in the west.
AHHhhhh . . . got ya . . . & The wealthy few from Western shores have relocated to the Eastern shores. . . .
I'm not that literal a metaphor user.
https://twitter.com/AGKais1/status/1139167327747026946
But your metaphor can reflect current practices.
https://twitter.com/DKAtoday/status/1139209905410314240
Trump is defending the working man from low wages and china. You guys sold us out. You just want power. Look at how quite Obama is now that it is evident that China fleeced him and us.
It's not a political party matter, whether Obama or Trump. The fact is that each of the ruling parties sold the U.S. workers out to the kleptocrats. The Clintons, the Bushes, the Obamas, the McConnells, and the Trumps all did their shares.
The Trumps coming so late to this traitorous game that they have to camouflage better than the others. The digging still lives and the stench shall never die. I wonder what's at the other side of the Earth if Fido digs through.
The Clintons got the peace dividends from the ending of the Cold War so the advent of the internet and the subsequent tech-boom shielded the hollowing out of the U.S. labor force through the outsourcing from China (via the importing of goods by Walmart whose board had Hillary onboard to help guide the sellout) and India (via the importing of several Silicon Valleys' worth of H1-B visa holders each year.) China hacked the U.S. The intelligence and security apparatus was told to stand down by corporate hush-hush interest. If no one talked about it, no one would know that we had a big huge hole between our legs in our trousers. Then corporate profits could be maximized by not having to stitch the hole shut. Years later, well.. we got ASS-FUCKED! Geez, who would have known that China was actually a Transgender Virgina with a Clintoris Dick installed at Wall-Street-Market above the fleshy lippy Bam-Boo curtains to guide it?
The Bushes got Dick Cheney whispering in their ears that "deficits don't matter" to the Idiots. At one time, the financial world was actually worrying about the total disappearance of new issues of U.S. Treasury obligations and hence one of the most important financial benchmarks. The projected federal budget surplus exceeded one trillion dollars in a decade. "What are we going to do with this tsunami of surplus?" We got drunk, dozed off, got shot bigtime, then gunning back biggertime for revenge and the so-called greening (e.g., into the Green Zone in Baghdad) of the religious desert. Some U.S. oil-service companies certainly got green money stuffed into their pockets. Hmm, guess who headed or owned these companies? Bushit subscribed to the bladder theory of Treasury finance, a bit like me answering the orange juice's call to run to offer my liquid gold to God (who likes Coca-Cola, too!) as I pissed, pressed, and got baptized by the bidét. I gained eternal life but he was just all wet with a depleted bladder. Answering God's calling made the huge difference between us.
The Obamas were cleaner in contrast with what the shenanigans of their predecessors showed. They were mostly incapacitated by the Retards or intimidated into doing nothing new or just following the olds. "Campaign with poetry and govern with prose." You can hear the duplicitous tone in that, can't you? It's much better for my taste if we had got "Campaign with prose and govern with poetry [as judged by the governed, of course!]" "Two parties. One aristocracy (corporate-only-socialists.)" simply didn't work.
Here comes the old truth testifying to our Founding Fathers' wisdom after having written down our First Amendment to the Constitution. The First Amendment needs the Second Amendment to back it up. Freedom without guns may be easily vaporized by a dictator. Although they are suboptimal, guns for freedom are our ancient heritage, right from the Revolutionary War. "We answer to a Higher Authority," Hebrew National kosher Frankfurter Herr Kikkoman mumbled from Hightstown, "but where are the two Corinthians when they need to stand as the two lampstands before God?" Do the Brits and the Saudis suffice? Do they know Greek?
The volunteer-army's citizen really helped with orienting the British tank crews. Peking is a confusing place to conquer, especially by the very macho Brits who were "never lost" and didn't want to ask for directions. (I intimately understand the British idea of not being lost because I am male so although I may be taking a "scenic" route, I know that I haven't gone past a river, to a seashore, a mountain, or crossed a railroad track while all the time I know where the sun is and time of day and that I am still on the Earth's surface so I'm not really lost because I'm actually enjoying serendipity.) Instead of blowing their faces yellow and red to puff up the Peking duck, they should have brought along oolong tea to share and drink with the locals. Red China under CCP is strong, hard, and brittle like a piece of monolithic Beijing-Standard-Time ceramic. Breaking it is most likely the only way to manufacture flexibility after taping it first with a duct tape. Nothing else has worked before. CCP's sovereignty means whatever promise it makes or made can be rescinded as "easily" as a tweet can. Tariff "war" is just governments exerting their sovereignties to discourage their own peoples' deemed-harmful buying habits. It's similar to my Dad's telling us that he would reduce our allowances if we bought goods from a shop which had ripped him off. We the customers had the rights to choose from whom and where we bought and we being members of one and the same family were subject to Dad's influence, leadership, and innervention. It's domestic U.S.A. intra-familial disciplining《国家，国家，有国先, 才有家。美国是一个国家。》 and NOT a big deal at all. To a deceitful shopkeeper, it's just karma coming real.
Red China must not interfere with the domestic affairs of the U.S.A. as tariffs are, as long espoused by Red China to be its state sovereignty. Unequal Tariffs and Treaties must be rescinded. Arise! All who refuse to be slaves! Let our flesh and blood become our new Great Wall for Greater America.
Stanley A. McChrystal drank much tea with the Afghans. How else could you make liquid gold in high-and-dry Afghanistan? What comes in will eventually go back out is a Law of Nature, quite a revelation to me when I heard it from a constipated kid who told me the tried-and-true method of solving constipation (I prefer drinking water instead of the harebrained but probably amerikanishe-Staatssicherheit-/A.S.S.-approved "eat more!") For example, the tides. Be fearful of anything which seemingly tries to defy this law (clorofluorocarbons, radioactive waste: Chernobyl and Fukushima, chemical waste: pesticides, paints, polychlorobiphenyls, biological waste, etc.)