Forum Post: What do you want from me?
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 15, 2011, 7:22 p.m. EST by whatdoyouwantfromme
(5)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
I am a person who paid for his own college education by officiating. I tried to become an MLB umpire and spent 8 years in the minors. I reach AAA and then got fired. My highest salary was around $10k per year.
I decided to go after a lot of professional degrees and spent 5 years in night school after going to work at jobs that paid very little.
I started a business and now am a millionaire. My children attended fine schools and I taught them how to do it and they both got jobs within 1 month of college.
I donate my "Bush tax cut" plus much more to charities each year. Much more.
Are you mad at me? What do you want from me?
I worked my ass off, got pretty well off, and give as much of my time and money back to society as I can do.
nobody is mad at you, unless you have ever paid a 40 hour a week employee less then enough to pay their way, their taxes, and their healthcare. if you do fit that bill, we are mad because that would make you a deadbeat employer. if not, you're fine.
yes indeed, now we get to the heart of the matter. you are fine and dandy as long as you do as you are told by SOME nefarious pay czar who knows NOTHING of you business or employees. This idiotic thinking is exactly what the 99% of this country are fighting
wow. you are so enraged you have no idea what i was saying.
true....
I have 9 employees. The lowest paid person makes $52,000 per year and the highest gets $150,000. I pay 100% of their medical insurance and contribute to a Defined Contribution retirement plan. I love them. None of my employees has ever left to go someplace else. If I ever sold my business, I would give them at least 1/3 of the sale price. The government would get 1/3 and I would keep the rest. I think that's fair.
That's good. I guess what OWS people would want is for people like you to spread the word, to be a role model, to show other people like you that it can be done.
i love you man!
This isn't an attack on the rich. There is nothing wrong with being rich. There is a problem with being rich and stealing from the poor. There is a problem with few people controlling the wealth, and to that end there is a problem when those who control the wealth are not helping their country and society progress.
David Walker, former US Comptroller General and chief of the GAO, warned before the 2004 election that if large economic changes were not made, by 2009 the United States and its taxpayers would not be able to afford the interest payments on the national debt. A study authorized by the US Treasury in 2001 found that in order to keep servicing the debt at its current rate of growth, by 2013 income taxes would need to be raised to 65%. If the United States cannot afford to pay the interest on its debts, that would be the final stage of economic collapse and hence result in a total textbook bankruptcy. The systematic crisis would in turn spread to the rest of the world.
How did this happen? Why is the US national debt $14,819,350,000+? Of the 203 countries in the world today, only four (!) do not owe others money. The collective external debt of all the governments in the world is now above 40 trillion dollars and this number doesn’t include the massive about of household debt in each country.
The whole world is basically bankrupt. But how? How can the world as a whole owe money to itself? Obviously, it’s all nonsense. There is no such thing as ‘money’. There are only planetary resources, human labor and human ingenuity. The monetary system regulated by Federal Reserve is nothing more than a game… and an outdated and dysfunctional one at that. Those in positions of social power alter the rules of the game, at will. The nature of those rules is guided by the same competitive, distorted mentalities that are used in everyday “monetary” life, only this time the game is rigged at its root to favor those who run the show. For example, if you have 1 million dollars and put it into a CD at 5% interest, you are going to generate $50,000 a year simply for that deposit. You are making money off of money itself… paper being made from other paper … nothing more - no invention - no contribution to society – no nothing. That being denoted, if you are a lower to middle class person, who is limited in funds, and must get interest based loans to buy your home or use credit cards, then you are paying interest to the bank, which the bank is then using, in theory, to pay the person’s return with the 5% CD! Not only is this equation outrageously offensive due to the use of usury (interest) to ‘steal from the poor and give to the rich’, but it also perpetuates class stratification by its very design, keeping the lower classes poor, under the constant burden of debt, while keeping the upper classes rich, with the means to turn excess money into more money, with no labor. That reality aside, there are other games in the system which have worked for decades, but are just now starting to bloom into the inevitable mathematic disasters that should have been anticipated 100 years ago. The point is, our system is broken. Simple policy change will not solve our debt problem. We need to alter the governmental paradigm if we wish to repay our debt. We need to end the Federal Reserve Board.
This is not a liberal or conservative issue. This is a matter of upholding the Constitution. Congress gave over the power of the purse in 1913 to a quasi-public-private bank called the Federal Reserve which manipulates global currencies. This is wholeheartedly unconstitutional, and at this point it's become immoral.
nothing. You are a slave like everyone else. Demand Peace.
What do we want -- Liberty and Justice For All? Many more people will come to your side when you are proactive (for “new” Business & Government solutions), instead of reactive (against “old” Business & Government solutions), which is why what we most immediately need is a comprehensive “new” strategy that implements all our various socioeconomic demands at the same time, regardless of party, and although I'm all in favor of taking down today's ineffective and inefficient Top 10% Management System of Business & Government, there's only one way to do it – by fighting bankers as bankers ourselves; that is, using a Focused Direct Democracy organized according to our current Occupations & Generations. Consequently, I have posted a 1-page Summary of the Strategically Weighted Policies, Organizational Operating Structures, and Tactical Investment Procedures necessary to do this at:
http://getsatisfaction.com/americanselect/topics/on_strategic_legal_policy_organizational_operational_structures_tactical_investment_procedures
Join
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/StrategicInternationalSystems/
because we need 100,000 “support clicks” at AmericansElect.org to support a Presidential Candidate -- such as any given political opportunist you'd like to draft -- in support of the above bank-focused platform.
Most importantly, remember, as cited in the first link, that as Bank Owner-Voters in your 1 of 48 "new" Business Investment Groups (or "new" Congressional Committees) you become the "new" Congress replacing the "old" Congress according to your current Occupation & Generation, called a Focused Direct Democracy.
Therefore, any Candidate (or Leader) therein, regardless of party, is a straw man, a puppet; it's the STRATEGY – the sequence of steps – that the people organize themselves under, in Military Internet Formation of their Individual Purchasing & Group Investment Power, that's important. In this, sequence is key.
Why? Because there are Natural Social Laws – in mathematical sequence – that are just like Natural Physical Laws, such as the Law of Gravity. You must follow those Natural Social Laws or the result will be Injustice, War, etc.
The FIRST step in Natural Social Law is to CONTROL the Banks as Bank Owner-Voters. If you do not, you will inevitably be UNJUSTLY EXPLOITED by the Top 10% Management Group of Business & Government who have a Legitimate Profit Motive, just like you, to do so.
Consequently, you have no choice but to become Candidates (or Leaders) yourselves as Bank Owner-Voters according to your current Occupation & Generation.
So please JOIN the 2nd link so we can make our support clicks at AmericansElect.org when called for, at exactly the right time, by an e-mail from that group, in support of the above the bank-focused platform. If so, then you will see and feel how your goals can be accomplished within the above strategy as a “new” Candidate (or Leader) of your current Occupation & Generation.
I would say educate yourself about the influence of corporate influence on our government and governments around the world.
Also look at what a corporation really is and consists of (to this end I would suggest watching the documentary The Corporation).
Then you should decide what you should do.
I'm pretty sure that most people who sympathize with OWS aren't mad at the actual individuals. I mean when you think about it everyone's favorite celebrities are part of the 1%. (remember?) It's not that people who are in the 1% are the problem, it's the laws in this country that support corporations over people, have brought down the housing industry, have people getting thrown out of their homes, and have involved corporations in the political system. People can't afford their own medical care, which is one of the leading causes of bankruptcy. And by the way if an individual declares bankruptcy they have to go through hours of "counseling" and "education". But if a business goes bankrupt do you think the CEO has to go back to business school or be told how to run a business and treated like an idiot?
Deepthroat-OK, I can see your point with that. In business school, you are taught that all actions are to maximize shareholder benefit. If you dont do that, you are held accountable. When corporate CEO's make big money, the SHAREHOLDER could complain since they own the company. I am ok with a tax increase on the VERY high income people. Obama's increase on people at $250,000 is too low of a threshold in my view. In my case, I have 10 employees and have to be personally responsible for $30,000 per month in overhead. If I dont meet, I go broke. There IS a concept of RISK vs REWARD for a small business owner like me. We feel the President hates us.
My point is the bankruptcy law that Bush got passed punishes the individual and assumes that they went bankrupt because they're stupid and they need to be educated. Not because they got sick and have hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills or because they got a divorce and their ex was going to declare bankruptcy either way and if they didn't as well the creditors would come after them......so why is it ok for businesses to declare bankruptcy and not have to go through the same mandated education? Why are they then allowed to go out and start another business the next day? I'm not saying that they should have to go through that education but I think the added insult of mandated "education" should be removed from chapter 7 and 13. Do you have a corporation? If not why not?
Deepthroat-ok, I get what you are saying. I remember when I was starting my family, I bought a home for $103k and 5 years later I owed $93k and the home dropped in value to $65k. How did I get out of the mess?- Well, I didnt hand the keys back to the bank. I did the following. I bought a new house with my IRA as a down payment. I decided to rent my home that was under water and waited 10 years for the real estate market to recover. I then sold it and more than covered the mortgage. In fact, there was profit. After the closing I used credit cards to replace my IRA within 60 days to avoid taxes and penalties. I then paid off the credit cards in a few years.
I think individuals who cant pay their mortgage should be offered a FORBEARANCE. This means the missed payments get rolled up and a new payment begins when the person can start paying again.
There are many solutions that banks and government could do to allow people to stay in their homes. I get what you are saying.
There are a lot of people on forebearances and getting repayment plans and modifications. The problem is that investors and banks are making the requirements sometimes ridiculously difficult and the requirements don't take into account extremely high medical bills, it's based on your housing expense versus your income most of the time. It's ludicrous that fannie mae and freddie mac started this problem and now are making it so difficult for people to get help.
deepthroat-exactly correct. The banks should work with their customers to create a "win/win" situation. They were re-capitalized under TARP and should help people. Agreed. What happend at Fannie and Freddie is disgraceful as well as the money the executives walked away with.
The problem is the majority of loans serviced by banks are not OWNED by the banks, they're owned by fannie, freddie, fha, VA, etc. The banks have to do what the investors want. And in the case of private investors, the little banks like Bank of the West, etc, many of them won't do modifications of any kind. Fannie and Freddie have no accountability to the american pulic and the media blames the banks. The banks are for the most part simply middle men.
agreed. A political leader could help solve that problem.......Treasury secretary would be an example. He could work with the banks and Congress to fix.