Forum Post: Stockholm Syndrome… the only explanation I could come up with to describe the people that post in defense of an economic system thats been beating the crap out of them for the last decade..
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 16, 2011, 8:33 a.m. EST by unarmed
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Reminds me of the battered wife syndrome.
Good post. Some people just can't stop bending over.
Excellent example.
I was hoping to get an explanation from a defender of this economic system that also is perhaps, ill without medical insurance or unemployed due their job now being performed cheaper overseas, or hundreds of thousands of dollars under water because of crashing home values, or is a straight A student that can't scrape together $100,000 for tuition, or a parent of a straight A student that can't scrape together $100,000 for tuition, or someone working at a publicly traded corporation who's top execs are making 100-500 times your salary, or the parents of a veteran who's fighting God knows where for economic interest your family will never enjoy, or at retirement age with only a skeletal frame of your benefits left … The list goes on and on, but I got no responses, no one willing to step forward and explain this behaviour?
The only explanation I can come up with is that I feel I've done all right in life. I don't have a personal problem with the economic system. I've worked my whole adult life, one of my kids earned a scholarship, both went to a state school, both worked summers and part time at school and I took a part time job to get them through. I estimated once it cost about $105K for everything spread out over 7 years. I started the extra job when the older one was a freshman in high school.
My mortgage is close to being paid off. I use credit cards almost exclusively for everything, pay them off completely each month and make money of the rewards programs, not much true, but it comes out to be several hundred a year that banks pay me.
I don't see bankers or anyone in business as being my friend, they have product to sell, I have to look out for myself. Although student loans were a possibility I chose another way. As a school teacher I'm probably in the middle of your 99%, but have a good retirement and feel overall content with life. I've never allowed myself to consider myself a victim.
I'd like to see the government fix the tax codes and close off deductions and raise fees and taxes to cover the social services we want as a nation. I'm hoping social security will be there, but have taken steps over the past couple of decades to provide for a supplement to my retirement income. My view is that I can make my life what I want it to be. A million dollar bonus to a CEO effects me as much as some actor getting $20 million a picture, which is not at all.
Sorry this has become way too long, I'm not sure how much of a defense it all is, I've viewed my interaction with money and the world as a sort of battle.
I was a straight A student. There's no way I could pay 100K for tuition. There's also no way in hell I'd be stupid enough to pay 100K for college tuition. College here is 3K at MOST a semester. I'll get done when I get done. Until then, I think my job with benefits and investments in rentals was a way better use of my time and money.
Looks like 80k - 160k to me.
http://surveysez.com/joomla/index.php/education-a-employment/90-cost-college.html
I don't think anyone calculates the cost of college without factoring in room and board, books ect.
My college didn't get dorms until about two years ago, I think. I spent $150 for books for a full load in spring. Room & board? It's called my mortgage.
Good decision, the private schools keep raising their tuition and it's totally unreasonable. If you can live at home and go to a state school it is very doable.
I saw some of those tuitions when I was graduating high school. Forget that! Yeah I was 18 and maybe I didn't quite get how much money that was; but I just don't see where or how anyone thinks borrowing that kind of cash is an OK idea!!
You have to consider what you want and what you will get. If you're going to be a major in something like comparative religion, you're wasting your money.
But even engineering (which was my original major) wasn't worth going even 50K in debt for. By the time I got done paying that all off, I would be in the exact same place as I would have been by not going to school. I can't sell a college degree if I need cash like I can any other investment. It just doesn't make any sense.
I see no valid defense of such a highly infiltrated and corrupted system. It seems no one else does either. Good luck in your quest for unicorns.
Doesn't matter if he's successful, have you noticed what happens to a comment when it gets to a score of -4? No one will read any answer he gets.
Concerted efforts of subversives merely show an agenda.
There are a lot of people that are doing well in this economic system. Even though our minimum and average wage is much higher than many other countries we still have 91% of the country employed.
I believe it is the result of mis-education. Our education system serves the wealthy by creating an obedient servile citizenry.
That and they get paid to post. Considering that they spend their time kicking out thread after thread to bash OWS, then thread after thread of "take me to your leader", then thread after thread of -0h-Ron Paul is the answer.
"What's the Matter With Kansas?"
that's it
Great post, but I think they need to occupy the only republics left -- their state houses.
The United States of America, Inc. is a private, for-profit company incorporated in the state of Delaware, and so is the military (it is a separate private company). Private companies don't have to listen to The People; republics do have to listen to The People.
Occupy your state houses and demand that our federal level be un-incorporated in Chancery Court in Delaware, and that it be put into receivership into the hands of The People. Then, the U.S. will no longer be a private company and will have to operate according to the will of The People which is codified in The U.S. Constitution. Your states have to guarantee you a republican form of government. This is a clause written into the state constitutions.
If you tell them that you have not agreed to being ruled by a private company (a consortium of private companies in actually), they have to fix it because it is in their state laws.
This would be a very effective way to bust the federal government back to being a republic ruled by a body of laws instead of a body of tyrannts. You can then have state public hearings and ask the states to fix the out-of-control federal government. You can give the states your demands. But, be reasonable.
A short list of the worse offenses that need fixed. End Corporate Government. End the Wars, End the Fed. End the Income Tax. End Corporate Campaign Finance. Institute a Tobin Tax to Fund the Domestic Assistance Programs. Two Term Limit. Etc.
Don't get crazy with it; Do like Jefferson would want you to do and take the government back by mass action at the grassroots level. The People are the government, and the states Have to respect That and enforce the will of The People. It is the way our system is supposed to work.
Use It.
Working class Tea Partiers who are against social security? Stockholm/battered wife syndrome about sums it up. (Not to mention Merle Haggard's Big City, "forget your retirement and your socalled social security" - where does this stuff come from?)
I have hope though… Not for the, "Pop pop fizz fizz oh what a relief it is", "I'd love to be an Oscar Mayor wiener" generation, they spent most of their time dead-eyed and drooling in front of a TV, where they were completely programed to believe anything they were told.
It's the internet generation that will bring about change. The generation that chucked the TV and replaced it with the computer, a place where the whole fun of it all is to question, the accuracy and validity of anything you are told… with the click of a button.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20025607-93.html
Hilarious.
I am better off now tha I was 10 years ago. My parents are better off than they were 10 years ago.
I am better off at my current age of 32 than my parents were in their early 30s.
Too many of you cry foul because you don't have as much as others and are afraid you may never - cause it's really hard out there...
That's life. No trophy for showing up. I was raised by parents in the second from the bottom Quintile of income. My parents are now in the middle quintile. I started my adult life with a job that put me at the bottom of the 2nd from the bottom quintile and today am comfortably in the 2nd from the TOP quintile.
And it has been hard to get here. I didn't have a nice car, I still only have a mediocre home and car despite my income, I have a 5-year old laptop, and only this year did I get a smartphone. Because accomplishment and hard work are far more rewarding and valuable than petty items or "luxuries." I'm on track to retire on my own dime by age 50 if I choose because I do not let others define my destiny.
I am so sick of the losers that whine about their situation and the hardness of the road. Put on your big-boy pants, strap on your boots, and get after your dream. The end. No excuses. Failure is always an option but quiting isn't. You can succeed (despite the big-bad banks) if you change your attitude.
I am.
I hear you brother. I started a few companies, made a ton. But I would never claim I did it on my own. That would be foolish. And I would never let my success cloud my vision to the point where I no longer see problems in a system that may not effect me, yet effect others. That would be selfish as all hell.
I work with those "affected" day-in and day-out. I know the problems (from raised in poverty, to immigrant, to poor education, to intellectual-inferiorness, to bad luck). Most of the OWS activists I've met in the last 7 weeks can only really blame their "woes" on their own inability to persist through trials.
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I came to the exact same conclusion with regards to defending Oblama.
If you look for my posts they are probably rated -100
People can't handle the truth
I agree. These people that want more taxes, defend Social Security, want more regulation, a stronger central bank, & generally defend the institution (govt) that oppresses them are too much! I mean, we need taxes to pay for more wars. Ditto the central bank. OWS does want more war, right?
Then there's regulation. You know, those govt agencies that the 1% control & use to screw the 99%. We need more of that!
Let's not forget Social Security that by diverting money from savings to spending slows economic growth by 5% per year making us all immensely poor & unemployed. No that can't go, no way.
Games up people. Don't look to the problem for a solution. Let's ditch the fascist system & implement a free market already.
You may benefit from a economic system that is steadily transferring a greater and greater percentage of wealth from the average American to those in the top percent. I would not expect you to have a problem with this economic arrangement. The problem are with those that defend a system that is clearly laying ruin to them financially. Seems very strange.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/14/income-inequality-is-at-a_n_259516.html
unarmed - I'm not the one defending the present system. The point is that we live in a world with a govt of the progressive's creation. It is the left that defends what the govt is in terms of size & structure, not us free marketers. We're the ones advocating a change. The left should face the fact that what we see today is the failure of their ideas.
The unrestricted change you advocate would leave these jungle animals free to devour the public at will.
http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases.shtml
Liberalism, progressivism, whatever you want to call it is still a trap. It traps people into believing they NEED to be given things like food, housing, and medical care in order to survive in this world. We need to start empowering people to negotiate these things one-on-one with their employers, increasing the value of public educations, and making people MORE self sufficient rather than creating a government to "protect" us.
Wrongo, they devour the public at will now using the corrupt govt they control. Don't fall for their PR. According to themselves they're the knights in shinning armor. They say this while they loot & legally plunder.
Govt control has been tried & has failed. Face the facts & let's get on with some real reform like liberty & free markets.
Again, these are just some of the crimes committed under a system that DOES have regulation ( a system that I would agree is flawed). Are you saying that there would be LESS corruption under the system you propose, that has NO regulation?
http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases.shtml
Correct, it is the regulators that they use to mess us over. Govt is always corrupt & under the 1%'s control. Good govt is a fantasy.