Forum Post: You die hard bloodthirsty winner take all capitalists are a bunch of cowards.
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 19, 2011, 10:18 p.m. EST by Mcc
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God damn it. You die hard conservatives and filthy rich pigs absolutely refuse to understand the following: First, that record high charges in health care, energy, and finance also mean record high profits and record high dividends. 1/2 of which are paid to the richest one percent. This causes more hardship and more concentration of wealth. At the same time, more financial aid in the form of welfare, Medicare, and Medicaid becomes necessary. Especially with those record high charges and profits. As even more wealth is concentrated, the lower majority go into debt and lose their relative buying power. This results in less demand, layoffs, and higher unemployment. This results in even more legitimate need for financial aid, a slower economy, less revenue, and higher national debt. It's a downward cycle tied directly to the relentless concentration of wealth.
I'm not making excuses for those who sit on the couch, make no attempt to find work, and sponge off the government. But God damn it. You die hard conservatives and filthy rich pigs need to stop being such cowards, open your god damn eyes, and finally admit that there is a downside as more and more wealth becomes concentrated.
THERE IS A DOWNSIDE AS YOU GET RICHER AND RICHER!
Winner take all economy http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-25/winner-take-all-economy
I just want to see your logic.
How is removing student loans going to bust the economy. It will shut down banks for your mistake. If you get rid of debt thousands of banks and people will go unemployed. Where does that get us?
I Didn't say that. Someone else maybe.
You make some very valid points, But I am afraid that you are wrong if you are blaming just the Conservative.
This whole thing is rotten to the core. When we change presidents we just change puppets and servants of wall street
Watch this video from beginning to end and tell me if you change your opinion.------ If you reply back to me your forum move up
http://vimeo.com/25142692 If you like it pass it on
I am going to reword my essays a little to make in clear that I don't blame only one side. I'll watch any video but only on Youtube. I can't risk getting a virus on this system.
go watch it on someone elses computer? Just kidding
I have a new disrespect for conservatives? but they are no more brainwashed than us. The whole divide thing is weakening us as a whole
Thanks for gettin back to me
Wholy crap. I couldn't agree more on that one. I do get harsh with conservatives now and then but I probably shouldn't. I already reworded one of my essays. Threw them a bone.
Yeah they like it when you throw a bone to them. Just kidding
Wait, what? I came here to finally read that "we've been fooled" diatribe and you don't paste it? Well, that ship has sailed my friend. You missed it.
I agree with what you say except for the part where you blame it only on the conservatives. I don't believe there is any difference in them. Just a facade of difference. They both serve their Global Corporate Masters to our demise
The whole liberal/conservative dog and pony show is just Good cop/ bad cop. It just gets us blaming each other and allowing them to manipulate us regardless of which cop is in charge This link will take you to another forum that address this issue. Click on his links they are pretty short but gets to the point pretty well
http://occupywallst.org/forum/two-videos-that-help-point-out-the-real-problem/
Also, if anyone knows how to spam users spread the word, there IS an insane influx of wacko saboteurs in the last day or so.
Don't let the haters get ya down man....they are merely saboteurs....and they are all either robots or imbeciles...
They can't stop this thing brother...change is happening whether they like it or not :)
Winning!
calmaste por favor. anger clouds your judgement
Have you ever heard of Dr Walter E Williams? Please read his work, it will do you a world if good. Economic ignorance is a dangerous thing.
I'll look into it. Just tell me why his word should be held in higher regard than mine. Or Albert Einstein, Mariner Eccles, Robert Reich, Edward Wolf, Ron Paul, or Allen Greenspan.
"The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide and is growing so fast that it might eventually destabilize democratic capitalism itself." Allen Greenspan testifying before congress in the spring of '05'.
Did you catch that date? Spring of '05'. Now tell me why I should hold Dr Williams' opinion in higher regard.
The income gap is not fixed. What makes our system so great is income mobility. No one is guaranteed income or wealth, you have to earn it. Hey there are a lot of rich fat cats out there. I work very hard in a competitive industry hoping to be one some day. In the mean time I keep it real and make a solid buck to support my family. Walter Williams is a national treasure...economic master.
Well, income mobility has also been going down these last ten years, the statistics are all publicly available. I get the rugged attitude but wake up. Most european nations now have higher mobility than you folks do, even with all their hierarchical traditions getting in the way.Experience, not just in the US but around the world, tells us that very high income inequality is bad. Bad for society, bad for economic growth, bad for the free market. No abstract and idealistic theory of capitalism can change that, no matter how alluring.
So what do you propose? Taking my income I have earned through a career of achievement an education and give it to people who can't do what I do? Where is the "justice" in that? If you can't hack get back on th sofa, but don't come whining to me about not having any money. News flash! No one will pay you forwatching Jerry Springer and eating potato chips on your couch.
First I resent that. I'm a graduate student in mathematics. I don't even own a tv. In fact, before I go on, an example. Once I work up to a doctorate, what are the best career opportunities? Is it to work on new and better modeling of tumor progression? Is it in developing ai? Is it in teaching the next generation? Is it working on the complex algorithms needed for all sorts of industrial automation? Is it trying to better understand the very sophisticated statistics that make understanding climate change so difficult? No. If I want to get rich, I work on clever little equations to gamble efficiently on the stock market. That seems fucked up to me. I won't do it, because I actually want to do something useful with my life, but that's the situation. And it's why the financial sector has been growing, unhealthily, at the expense of the productive side of the economy, for the last twenty or so years.
Capitalism and free market don't magically work for the benefit of society. Sometimes, degenerate aspects of the system reward destructive behavior, and we, as a society, have to correct that, usually by way of government regulations.
Second, you have achieved all you have achieved thanks to your hard work AND the opportunities offered by your society. Those opportunities require good public infrastructure and a working social order, with decent internal demand and a fairly content and educated population as a consumer and worker pool. All those things costed money and were there to help you succeed. Don't you think it's fair to help maintain them for the next generation?
Finally, free market is never free without equality of opportunity, and that means education and at least a baseline of health. Higher education should not come at the cost of debt but of effort. Why should kids not lucky enough to be born in wealthy families have less of a shot at success? And do we really think it's okay for people to make a business of exploiting the financial barrier of education?
I'm personally lucky. I live in Canada, and education is still pretty cheap up here, and besides my parents are well off. I even chose a subject that has some pretty decent job opportunities. I don't complain for myself. But a free market economy is not just about finding ways to get rich, it's also about getting fairly rewarded for the work you do. That means more if you do great things, sure, but it also means that an electrician who does a good job should earn a comfortable wage. Do you really think that the work CEOS do is 450 times more valuable than that of their average employee? Cause that's what the average pay ratio is.
And even if all the arguments of fairness don't get to you, again there is the simple fact : it is historically proven, in the USA and over the world, that large inequalities are bad for economic growth.
It seems to me that if you are as brigt as you purport to be, there will be a myriad of opportunities before you if you package yourself well and are an excellent communicator. Biotech, national research labs both jump out at me as places that would value your skills and pay you very well...then you will no longer be fucked. I'd be happier if I were you.
I am not fucked. My own personal future is bright (and sorry if I came off smug by stating my current studies. I really just wanted to tell you were I'm coming from.) And I really don't bemoan my future, I know I have it pretty good and if I do well enough there are indeed plenty of lucrative opportunities.
I'm just saying that if I approach this strictly from the perspective of getting the most money out of it, nothing beats the financial sector. By a long shot. And what that means is that a greater proportion of the best and brightest in my field will go there. Unfortunately, a significant portion of the work that's being done there does not really benefit society in any way. I have a problem with that. I don't mind that they make more than me, but I do mind that an often sterile, certainly bloated, activity is syphoning away so much talent.
The financial sector has a valid purpose : to ensure the flow of capital. That's their job, that's what they do for the rest of us. But the system is such that it fantastically rewards very sophisticated gambling that is at best sterile and at worst profoundly irresponsible and dangerous. The people working in the financial sector seriously screwed up their job, nearly brought us all down with them and then saddled all of us with their losses. Why are they so handsomely paid for such a serious failure?
I'm not saying I have it bad, or that I want complete equality. But I do want the guys that will teach to my kids, the guys that will fix my plumbing, the guys that build the bridges I'll use, to be competent and be able to live decently by providing a useful service. And I want their kids to be able to go to college just as much as mine if they work for it. And I don't want swindling people to be a valid way to make money.
Wall Street folks lead the pack in general, but it is a cut throat Darwinian world where far more wash out than hit th big time. Are they out if whack? Probably. However, they aren't holding a gun to anyones head to get paid. They have a comp agreement and if they hit targets they get paid. The firms are making money on their efforts so more power to them. My business is very competitive but not as much as Wall St and we don't haul in seven figure bonuses by any stretch. The reality is if I had worked harder in school and gotten into a better graduate school I might have been there too, but I made my choices and am okay with that. I dont begrudge those guys, I know several of them, but they have a downside and burnout factor that is pretty steep. The rage at those guys baffles me. I am a live and let live guy. If I am pissed it is getting the govt off my back and out of my life.
Good luck with your career , you sound line a smart person making choices that fit your values. Rock on, just afford me and everyone else the same option.
So you don't see my point about relative buying power. Are you really going to deny any link between the distribution of wealth and economic stability or poverty?
I still want to know what makes Williams so special. Did he predict any of this ahead of time? What's his claim to fame?
I understand your points, I just don't think they rise to the level of impotance you assign them. If I can't deliver value to the market to be Obama-rich and make 250k then so be it, may buying power won't becthat of someone who can...until I can deliver value that merits more income. I can't buy what Bill Gates can buy, but I didn't start Microsoft either, so I have no issue with the disparity.
What if the rich were to acquire 90 percent of all wealth through legal means and you had to watch your family go hungry? Would it bother you then?
I would alter my actions, behavior, or skill sets so that I was able to participate in the success that was available to me. The market isn't thrust upon me, I am an active and evving participant. I would figure out a way to win, as I have for the past 20 years.
You have no idea how bad it's going to get. When you see more widespread hardship and a global depression in 5 years, just look around. I promise you this: The rich will be even richer. You have no idea how bad it's going to get.
Time will tell. Things could get ugly, but our markets are tremendously resilient. I dont see 90% of wealth in a tiny % hands, and if that came to pass I'd make sure I was on the winning side of the ledger. You all have to understand, you can control where you land in this game, it's not entirely as open as it should be, but it's not rigged against you either. You might not be Larry Ellison, but you can be Obama-rich if you put your mind to it.
Because those names are accomplished thinkers. You are not.
Next.
"First, that record high charges in health care, energy, and finance "
President Obama states that under his cap and trade plan-energy prices will "necessarily skyrocket" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNSZ62xiD4M
Health care prices? Obama's force fed plan escalated them BIG time.
Finance? Interest rates are still lower than they ever have been.
"more financial aid in the form of welfare, Medicare, and Medicaid becomes necessary"
Because Obama's plan wreaked havoc on both systems.
What you just do not get, no matter how many times you are told is-CONSERVATIVES are tired of the crap too. No one screamed louder during the bank bailouts (even with a Republican president!) and the stimulus and the housing bubble BEFORE the housing collapse than conservatives did. Don't you DARE get up on your mighty high horse and try to change history.
Second, every single damn time the Democrats or liberals start tweaking the system-we get MORE unemployment, MORE people on welfare and other benefits, and MORE in debt with programs that sound all warm and fuzzy and benevolent but instead have created a generation of enabled, victim mentality, no ambition miscreants that think that simply because they exist they deserve whatever they want.
You just show me WHERE the liberal laws and regulations have done good.
You act like "wealth" or "money" or "success" is a somehow finite thing, a pie that only holds so much, and that if 1% are getting "MORE", that somehow that leaves LESS for the rest of us. You moron. That isn't how wealth or money etc works. If that was true, then the pie would have stopped growing a long time ago. But it hasn't. The "rich" couldn't get richer if the supply of money was static.
But you don't want to listen to reason, or actually learn anything. You think you already know it all. Keep posting the same response everywhere Mcc. The rest of us have work to do so the rest of this country eat, stay dry, and have clothes to wear.
What I stated at the top of this page has been going on for years. It started long before Obama was elected. I was referring to closing rates, NSF charges, late charges, ATM charges, and super high interest rates on credit cards. Not Federal interest rates.
I've had the debate over 'zero sum', 'static', 'finite', growth, ect many times. You conservative types just won't think outside of your little conservative box.
I never said that wealth is finite. But creating net wealth with no downside is very tricky. Otherwise, everyone who works would keep getting richer. They haven't been. Only those at the top. This is because virtually all wealth created over the last 30 years has gone to the richest one percent. Meanwhile net worth for the lower 90 percent has dropped drastically.
All of which, conservatives refuse to admit. Regardless of growth, when the rich get too rich, the lower majority get poorer. Not in spite of but because of. Greed kills.
I'm going to ask you to read this article from George Mason University. http://stats.org/stories/2008/myth_decline_middle_june9_08.html
I'm working on the premise that you are intelligent and I would hope, sincere in your quest to learn and operate using facts. This article discusses not only my point of view, but according to the surveys done on the American public the majority of Americans agree with me. it also shows mathematically that your statements about "virtually all the wealth created over the last 30 years going to the richest 1%" AND "the net worth for the lower 90% has dropped drastically" as being untrue if you compare apples to apples instead of apples to oranges.The details MATTER.
Here's a poll/survey taken last year that indicates how the American people VIEW which class they belong to-and that very few of them consider themselves to be "upper class" AND "lower class". It also explains the measures the average person uses to discern the "class" they think they belong to. http://abcnews.go.com/WN/abc-world-news-poll-us-middle-class-concerns/story?id=10088470
get out of debt and get healthy (good diet and lots of exercise), and you will have wealth that can't be valued.
You will be better off than 99.99% of the population.
ride a bicycle everwhere and eat a vegetarian diet.
buy used at thrift shops and deny big oil part of your $$ stash.
buy your food from local growers and grow your own veggies. trade the excess for fruit and the stuff you can't grow.
to change the big problems, you need to change yourself first....
Get physically healthy...get financially healthy....out of debt...........
I agree completely. We raise a garden every year, shop at thrift stores, make a lot of things ourselves (and repair them ourselves) etc. We also have no debt except our mortgage and we've made back up plans should we suffer job loss or other financial crisis.
It's called "good old common sense" except it's not very common anymore.
I will read it but keep in mind that a number of experts and reports have already supported the bulk of my assertions. Even Albert Einstein went on record with similar views. He was referring in part to the underlying cause of the Great Depression. I'm one hell of a sceptic. I've seen reports that appear legit but full of outright lies.
I will check out the links and I will take them seriously but I can't guarantee that I'll agree with any of it. We'll see. Thanks for the post.
This isn't a report. It's an article written by an economist that details the economic tools/numbers that must be used in order to determine the answer to this topic. Anyone who uses the wrong tools will come up with different answers, and many people have agendas. We all want to use the reports that agree with our agendas. That's normal. But my ONLY agenda is the truth. I don't want spin. I don't want lies. I don't want propaganda. I want facts and I want to look at them for MYSELF.
I start by asking myself simple, logical questions that I can find the answers for myself.
Are the people who are in the 1% today-the exact same people that were the 1% 30 years ago? If not-then the "wealth" of the 1% HAS OBVIOUSLY CHANGED HANDS.
Are there MORE people in the top 25% income bracket today than there was 30 years ago or LESS? If there are MORE people in that bracket-then OBVIOUSLY some of the "wealth" you are proclaiming has ALL gone to the top 1% HAS trickled down to others BELOW that level and caused them to move UP.
Do MORE people today say that they have it better than their parents or do more people today say they have it WORSE? If the majority of them say they have it better off than their parents-then they see advances in their own wealth situation that their parents did not have.
I appreciate your valid points but when I refer to the one percent over a specific time frame, I realize that some have left the group and others have entered.
I realize that the upper class are better off now than they were before Reaganomics. But that's not enough to prove 'trickle down' as a success. In fact, some of their wealth was drawn from those beneath them. The majority. There is more circulation at the top and more accumulation as well. There has been a net loss among the lower 90 percent. In my book, that's more than enough to prove Reaganomics an utter failure. Not in regard to GDP or growth but in regard to the promises of 'trickle down'. The promises of shared prosperity. An utter failure.
35 years ago, the vast majority would have told you they had more financial security than their parents did. Not anymore.
Just to be crystal clear. I believe in a reasonable scale of income and wealth. I do not consider the wealth of the 2nd -5th percentiles to be obscene. Only the top 1 percent.
"35 years ago, the vast majority would have told you they had more financial security than their parents did. Not anymore."
That would depend on what you mean by "financial security".
My point was addressing your insistence that "virtually all wealth created over the last 30 years has gone to the richest one percent. Meanwhile net worth for the lower 90 percent has dropped drastically."
If all the wealth in the past 30 years had gone to the richest one percent, the remaining 90% would have died from starvation and exposure. :)
Ability to provide for their families on 40 hours per week. That's what I meant. Benefits from growth. Newly created wealth. That's what I meant.