- Aug 16, 2011
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No American would submit to slavery.
I thought your business card said you'd do 'things' for food, Swallow.
Does this LOOK like the flame zone?
I'm not judging him, just sayin'.
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No American would submit to slavery.
I thought your business card said you'd do 'things' for food, Swallow.
Does this LOOK like the flame zone?
The OWS are born to be slaves. They are willing to work, if the can do as little as possible, preferably a job smoking dope and banging a pot they call a drum.
They would be happiest in a life of slavery where every facet of their lives was the responsibility of the master. As long as it was a generous master.
"The OWS are born to be slaves"?
You make them sound like a 'people' that can only be saved if Moses parts the East River and leads them into Jersey.
I think that schtick was already used, successfully to, from what I understand.
There has been a lot of talk in this country for years about the erosion of the middle class, however when I look at the income distribution in this country today I see that the income of the upper 50% of citizens is 87.3% of all the money earned in the country, and the income of the lower 50% is only 12.7%. There is in fact no middle class in America today; there is only us and them.
There are those who call this country is the land of opportunity, but as I live and breathe today I know without a doubt that this is a lie, it may have been true in the year 1900, but not having lived then I cannot say if it was just as much a lie in those days. The reality is there’s a glass ceiling in this nation at the 50% mark, if one is born above that line, one can have any opportunity under the sun and go as far as ones individual capabilities allow, but if one is born below that line ones only purpose in living so far as American society is concerned, is to work. And furthermore to work always for the benefit and profit of someone born above that 50% line.
Want your kids to go to college? Better be prepared to pay. Contrary to what the upper-class would have you believe federal student aid is of little use, the maximum a person of the lower class may receive is just over 30,000. This may sound like a significant amount to some, however in reality it will not even pay for an education at a state level university, to say nothing of the ivy league. Think your kids smart enough to earn a scholarship? Keep dreaming, the vast majority of scholarships offered are given to children from families who are already above that 50% line. Said scholarships are just given out as free benefits to coax kids with “the right breeding” in, or in some cases to help schools meet their minimum standards under affirmative action. Said scholarships will never go to a child from the lower 50% simply because of the kids own intellect. And as for that federal student aid money you can get, it will just about pay for community college, a degree that will get one nothing except a low level office job at best.
So in what other ways might the lower 50% “pull themselves up by the bootstraps” as republicans like to claim they should?
[snip ....]
Want to start any kind of business? Go give it a shot. While we have all heard the “success stories”, the reality is that such a small percentage of such ventures succeed as to make the real number of success’s insignificant. Of course good luck getting backing from the banks. The reality is if your born to the upper 50% like that idiot James O’Keefe, the banks will extend you a 50,000 dollar line of credit at the drop of a hat no matter how stupid your business model is, just like it did for him. But if you’re born to the lower 50%, good luck with the banks, No matter how good your business model is! Unlike the studios you will get the chance to be laughed out of every bank in town.
In the end it’s all a lie. If you’re born to the lower class, your sole purpose in this society is to work your ass off for the benefit of the upper class. Frankly I’m at the point where I would love nothing more than for a REAL class war to break out, because as far as I’m concerned that upper 50% can just kiss my fucking ass.
What really bothers me about America today, is how inaccessible a good college education is to kids from really poor families. Yes, there are scholarships for the top 5%. You can get a student loan that puts in you hock the rest of life but it may only cover half your cost.
When I went to college back in the 60's, I had a $400/yr government scholastic that paid for my tuition to a state university. Anyone who graduated from high school with above average grades could get one. There was no college savings plan, because it wasn't needed. I earned enough working summers to pay for my dorm room. My parents paid for my meal ticket and some misc. expenses. I just saw where our state university raised the tuition to $15,000/yr, $60,000 for 4 years and that's for in state students. The total cost would be about $80K for 4 years. A kid could go to a junior college for 2 years and 2 years in a cheaper state school and get the total cost down $40K, but for so many kids that just as well be a million dollars.
Then there is problem of being accepted at a university. Due to limited number of seats for new students, in most states if you're not in the top 15% with a good SAT score, you won't qualify. When you consider that really poor kids usually go to rather poor schools with poor college prep classes, their chance of qualifying for a good college is at best poor. Add in the financial costs and there are very few poor kids that can make it.
How can someone come here from another country, with no education, can't speak the language, no money, doesn't even know anyone and be successful? So successful, they can and SHOULD tell lazy good for nothing Americans to kiss their fucking asses.
What really bothers me about America today, is how inaccessible a good college education is to kids from really poor families. Yes, there are scholarships for the top 5%. You can get a student loan that puts in you hock the rest of life but it may only cover half your cost.
Then there is problem of being accepted at a university. Due to limited number of seats for new students, in most states if you're not in the top 15% with a good SAT score, you won't qualify. When you consider that really poor kids usually go to rather poor schools with poor college prep classes, their chance of qualifying for a good college is at best poor. Add in the financial costs and there are very few poor kids that can make it.
Travel ? I live it. The "poor" here are far better off than the murkin poor.No offense but this is what happens to Americans who have never travelled outside the U.S. and have never observed real poverty. America's poor have it far better than any other nation on this Planet. If you're gonna be poor,this is the place to do it. Trust me,i've seen real poverty. Americans are from being slaves. In fact i would call thet assertion downright insulting & preposterous. Travel people,travel.
Have you ever stopped to consider what the chances are of earning a scholarship to play college baseball, basketball or even football? Not only must you be tops in your sport but you also need to be a good student because your grades and test scores are vital to your chances of landing a scholarship.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has compiled the following chart that estimates the probability of high school athletes competing in college athletics.
Womens Basketball Mens Basketball Baseball Mens Ice Hockey Football Mens soccer
High School Athletes 452,929546,335470,67136,2631,071,775358,935
High School senior athletes129,408156,096134,47710,361306,221102,553
NCAA Athletes15,09616,57128,7673,97361,25219,797
NCAA Freshman Positions4,3134,7358,2191,13517,5015,655
NCAA Senior Athletes3,3553,6826,39388313,6124,398
NCAA Senior Athletes Drafted32446003325075Percentage:
High School To NCAA3.3%3.0%6.1%11.0%5.7%5.5%Percentage:
NCAA To Professional 1.0%1.2%9.4%3.7%1.8%1.7%
Percentage:
High School To Professional 0.02% 0.03% 0.45%
source
<H1>Intergenerational social mobility: the United States in comparative perspective.
</H1>Beller E, Hout M.
Source
University of California, Berkeley USA.
Abstract
Emily Beller and Michael Hout examine trends in U.S. social mobility, especially as it relates to the degree to which a person's income or occupation depends on his or her parents' background and to the independent contribution of economic growth.
They also compare U.S. social mobility with that in other countries.
They conclude that slower economic growth since 1975 and the concentration of that growth among the wealthy have slowed the pace of U.S. social mobility. In measuring mobility, economists tend to look at income and sociologists, occupation.
The consensus among those measuring occupational mobility is that the average correlation between the occupations of fathers and sons today ranges from 0.30 to 0.40, meaning that most variation in the ranking of occupations is independent of social origins.
Those measuring income mobility tend to agree that the elasticity between fathers' and sons' earnings in the United States today is about 0.4, meaning that 40 percent of the difference in incomes between families in the parents' generation also shows up in differences in incomes in the sons' generation.
Beller and Hout show that occupational mobility increased during the 1970s, compared with the 1940s-1960s, but there is some evidence to suggest that by the 1980s and 1990s it had declined to past levels.
Existing data on income mobility show no clear trends over time, but increases in economic inequality during the 1980s made mobility more consequential by making economic differences between families persist for a longer time.
In international comparisons, the United States occupies a middle ground in occupational mobility but ranks lower in income mobility.
Researchers have used the variation in mobility to study whether aspects of a country's policy regime, such as the educational or social welfare systems, might be driving these results.
There is as yet, however, no scholarly consensus about the sources of cross-national differences in mobility.
There has been a lot of talk in this country for years about the erosion of the middle class, however when I look at the income distribution in this country today I see that the income of the upper 50% of citizens is 87.3% of all the money earned in the country, and the income of the lower 50% is only 12.7%. There is in fact no middle class in America today; there is only us and them.
There are those who call this country is the land of opportunity, but as I live and breathe today I know without a doubt that this is a lie, it may have been true in the year 1900, but not having lived then I cannot say if it was just as much a lie in those days. The reality is theres a glass ceiling in this nation at the 50% mark, if one is born above that line, one can have any opportunity under the sun and go as far as ones individual capabilities allow, but if one is born below that line ones only purpose in living so far as American society is concerned, is to work. And furthermore to work always for the benefit and profit of someone born above that 50% line.
Want your kids to go to college? Better be prepared to pay. Contrary to what the upper-class would have you believe federal student aid is of little use, the maximum a person of the lower class may receive is just over 30,000. This may sound like a significant amount to some, however in reality it will not even pay for an education at a state level university, to say nothing of the ivy league. Think your kids smart enough to earn a scholarship? Keep dreaming, the vast majority of scholarships offered are given to children from families who are already above that 50% line. Said scholarships are just given out as free benefits to coax kids with the right breeding in, or in some cases to help schools meet their minimum standards under affirmative action. Said scholarships will never go to a child from the lower 50% simply because of the kids own intellect. And as for that federal student aid money you can get, it will just about pay for community college, a degree that will get one nothing except a low level office job at best.
So in what other ways might the lower 50% pull themselves up by the bootstraps as republicans like to claim they should?
Want to be a movie star? Better be prepared to pay. The only way to get ones foot in the door of Hollywood is to pay an agent, an incredible expense that a performer just entering the field cant hope to pay unless they are already members of the upper class, already born to that upper 50%. Without an agent, you wont get laughed out of every studio in town, because youll never set foot in one.
Want to write a great movie? Same thing, better get an agent, and dont think you can afford one unless you make over 100 grand a year already. Without an agent you will never sell a script in Hollywood, but take it from me, if your movies good enough you will darn well get it plagiarized in Hollywood, in fact you can get that in no time flat.
Want to write the great American novel? Better pay out the nose for an agent because without one no legitimate publisher in the country will look at your manuscript, unless its to allow an established writer from the upper 50% plagiarize you. Think youre going to self-publish it? Dream on. The volume of material available for sale on amazon, kindle, and similar sites and services dictates that unless you pay out the nose for advertising, you will have zero sales.
Want to start any kind of business? Go give it a shot. While we have all heard the success stories, the reality is that such a small percentage of such ventures succeed as to make the real number of successs insignificant. Of course good luck getting backing from the banks. The reality is if your born to the upper 50% like that idiot James OKeefe, the banks will extend you a 50,000 dollar line of credit at the drop of a hat no matter how stupid your business model is, just like it did for him. But if youre born to the lower 50%, good luck with the banks, No matter how good your business model is! Unlike the studios you will get the chance to be laughed out of every bank in town.
In the end its all a lie. If youre born to the lower class, your sole purpose in this society is to work your ass off for the benefit of the upper class. Frankly Im at the point where I would love nothing more than for a REAL class war to break out, because as far as Im concerned that upper 50% can just kiss my fucking ass.
I'll bet that same dollar that slavery is older than war. It doesn't stretch the imagination too far to see family groups taking in orphans, feeding and sheltering them in exchange for work - You don't expect those little bastards to get any of the family inheritance do you? How unfair is that?
War is as old as prostitution. But not as much fun.
If the first war wasn't over property, it was over pussy.
No. I don't have a link - look around you.
ALL work is considered a form of slavery to liberals. That's why it can never change.
No offense but this is what happens to Americans who have never travelled outside the U.S. and have never observed real poverty. America's poor have it far better than any other nation on this Planet. If you're gonna be poor,this is the place to do it. Trust me,i've seen real poverty. Americans are from being slaves. In fact i would call thet assertion downright insulting & preposterous. Travel people,travel.
No offense but this is what happens to Americans who have never travelled outside the U.S. and have never observed real poverty. America's poor have it far better than any other nation on this Planet. If you're gonna be poor,this is the place to do it. Trust me,i've seen real poverty. Americans are from being slaves. In fact i would call thet assertion downright insulting & preposterous. Travel people,travel.
The physicality of the poor overseas is much different. The feelings of helplessness and frustration are the same. The knowledge that the chances of getting out of poverty is slim to none, is also the same.
As for the slavery comparisson, I see it a little different. Slavery was unsustainable as the cost was huge to feed, clothing, shelter and provide medical treatment for the slaves. It is much more cost effective and profitable to free them, pay them a pittance, and than reap all their money by charging them for food, clothing, shelter and medical treatment. They discovered that if we pay them a minimum wage that doesn't cover their basic needs they will be forever indebted to the wealthy class. They will forever keep working and producing wealth for the upper classes for the illusion of freedom and getting out of poverty.
A power law is a special kind of mathematical relationship between two quantities. When the frequency of an event varies as a power of some attribute of that event (e.g. its size), the frequency is said to follow a power law. For instance, the number of cities having a certain population size is found to vary as a power of the size of the population, and hence follows a power law. There is evidence that the distributions of a wide variety of physical, biological, and man-made phenomena follow a power law, including the sizes of earthquakes, craters on the moon and of solar flares,[1] the foraging pattern of various species,[2] the sizes of activity patterns of neuronal populations,[3] the frequencies of words in most languages, frequencies of family names, the sizes of power outages and wars,[4] and many other quantities.
It also underlies the "80/20 rule" or Pareto distribution governing the distribution of income or wealth within a population.
[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Bold]
Abstract
[/FONT]
The Pareto (power-law) wealth distribution, which is empirically observed in many countries, implies rather extreme wealth inequality.
For instance, in the U.S. the top 1% of the population holds about 40% of the total wealth. What is the source of this inequality?
The answer to this question has profound political, social, and philosophical implications.
We show that the Pareto wealth distribution is a robust consequence of a fundamental property of the capital investment process: it is a stochastic multiplicative process.
Moreover, the Pareto distribution implies that inequality is driven primarily by chance, rather than by differential investment ability.
This result is closely related to the concept of market efficiency, and may have direct implications regarding the economic role and social desirability of wealth inequality.
We also show that the Pareto wealth distribution may explain the Lévy distribution of stock returns, which has puzzled researchers for many years.
Thus, the Pareto wealth distribution, market efficiency, and the Lévy distribution of stock returns are all closely linked.