The Greed of the Poor, the Entitled and the Powermad

Big Fitz

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Nov 23, 2009
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I feel as if I live in an Ayn Rand novel, and cannot shake this impression no matter how hard I try. The news time and time again reads like alternating chapters out of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. It is madness that we are living in someone's science fiction novel.

For over a month now, Greece has been descending steadily towards anarchy. Even the IMF may not be able to save it. It's only a matter of time before nations like Germany and England, embattled with their own troubles may try to cut the rope to keep from being dragged down into this financial disaster themselves. We ourselves are teetering financially as a nation and probably cannot avoid what has befallen Greece. As a matter of fact, the entire world will probably not avoid that fate at this point. Not even China.

An now the 'Entitlement Riots' have begun. Basic services that had been viewed as rights for decades and spending on social services long out of control have finally gone over the cliff. Currently forward momentum from the leap off the cliff is keeping things going, but with the support gone, and no one really able to 'catch' the nation now entering freefall with the reversion of their bonds to Junk status... the plummet is assured. In desperation, there is talk about privatizing the Greek state run medical service. That at least is a positive sign, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

But... why do those who had been collecting government checks and services believe that they should be immune from the same troubles and financial destruction as those long burdened with their support who now are also suffering? The social services safety net has it's limits. Too many strings of the net have been cut by the failing economy, and then became overloaded with too many demanding what they think is there inherent right.

So why the label of Greed on the poor? Simple, because they act as if their need, which is genuine supersedes the needs of those who can no longer provide for them. They are inured in a culture that has told them it was all right to be a ward of the state because there were enough people to support their indigent lifestyle. Of course, there were/are those who need that type of financial help, but I doubt they are the ones rioting. The ones rioting are the ones who should be working to support those in need, but instead have found it easy to keep voting themselves a lifestyle off the taxpayer.

This is why I call them greedy. They have no right to manipulate the charity of others to demand their life of 'lotus eating' and oddly pathetic luxury. Why work? Someone from the government pays me to just vote for them. And now, the checks are stopping, and by damn I'm going to do something about it! I'll get out there and be obnoxious and call people who suffered under my yoke of entitlement names and kill bank workers who are the embodiment of who is to blame because politicians that gave me checks are telling me so.

This is coming here. Fast. It is being orchestrated by those with vested interests in using those who are used to living off the system for potentially generations now. They have come to believe that life revolves around government check, apathy and voting for the politicians that say they deserve more because it's not their fault they're in the situation they're in. This pandering has gone on under the guise of charity, when it's only enslavement. It is not kindness when you enable laziness, indecency, criminal behavior, promiscuity and crime while eschewing positive social values like industry, charity, community pride and chastity. They have nothing of value to them invested in their neighborhoods, cities, states and sometimes even their own homes. They just demand for themselves.

But now, the butcher's bill is here and it is long and expensive. These people long used to being taken care of by Uncle Sugar will soon be bereft of support. And they will protest, and then, agitated by our activist in chief and agitprop artists like Sharpton and La Raza, they will eventually riot for what is 'owed them'. Sure as God made little green apples. But this is because they have been lied to for so long, the concept of a different way of life is alien to them. Work? that's for suckers! I can get me a gubmint check and sit at home smoking pot or playing xbox, or going to the bar getting drunk and pregnant. Personal responsibility is face down in a greasy puddle on some side street, robbed of his wallet shoes and jacket.

The worst part is, this is how Napoleon, Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao and every other tin pot dictator came to power. First the trouble happens and those at the bottom are stirred up in righteous indignation over losing what is 'rightfully theirs'. Sometimes this is true, other times... MOST other times, no. Then when the government is in suitable anarchy and overwhelmed, a new reformer sweeps in and promises the moon for nothing. Paints the overwhelmed regime rightly or wrongly as having lied to the people and easy solutions are just around the corner. All they have to do is trust him and give him unchecked power. And the anguished people do. Again and again... they do.

But at least we are not all ignorant of Santayana's warning. We are educated enough to know that history has shown us this before, and with this forewarning, we are forearmed. We know that those who desire to destroy the foundation of this nation are in power right now and are fomenting the means to solidify their own power permanently first by quasi legal methods, and then overtly after they've been given temporary authority to do so. Then it will be too late. Our worst nightmares of 1984, A Handmaid's Tale, Brave New World and many other Utopia to Dystopia tales will become reality.

The problem ultimately is for those of us who see what's coming is convincing those blinded by 'enlightened self interest' and are unaware, as well as those who are greedy and do not care about the consequences of what they are doing to change course. The means of what they are doing must be exposed to all, for they are not justified by the ends. Their desired conclusion is an illusion that cannot happen in this world, only the next. To try and force it on those who do not desire it is one of the worst atrocities that can be committed from one man on another. To do so out of ignorance is potentially forgivable with proper penance. To do so willingly and with knowledge is reprehensible.

Why rail about this, screaming at it like a lost soul at the moon? Because it's not too late to stop the opportunists, but it will take the convincing of many weak minded neighbors, long raised on the TV half hour solution and no pain penalties... a cost free discipline society.... that there will have to be pain, and hard work and it will probably have to last a long time more than a single TV season. They will, like their grandparents or great grandparents, do without the luxuries we have become addicted to culturally. They will have to support themselves or come together as a community, as we have done since Jamestown and Plymouth, and help each other survive, stabilize and then grow again.

The world is on the bring of either a new Dark Age, or a rekindling of western capitalist culture after a horrific battle for it's very soul has been waged. We have lost our spirit to materialism. Hopefully this time of cataclysmic trial will bring us back to things that are important. Family, Friends, Neighbors, Nation, God.

If it doesn't...

...God save us from ourselves, for we could not do it without you.

Here endeth the lesson.
 
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gb0mxcpPOU"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gb0mxcpPOU[/ame]

The view from the Titanic was to die for.
 
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I am not even sure that those of us who see the warning signs have a clue what is about to happen in this world.

We will enter a time where the smallest meal during the great Depression will be like a picnic feast.

We will see the dark ages as enlightened.

We will see worse death and destruction than even the World Wars and the genodices of the last century produced.

What's amazing is this is all avoidable. But yet our society is going over a cliff and those of us who see the cliff will be dragged along with them.
 
Pretty much. Going over the cliff because of an unholy alliance between those who have become enabled in their indigence by those who wish to maintain the political status quo or expand their own power regardless of the cost. It can only be stopped if they are derailed, and the ties that hold these two together is socialism. There are many ways to destroy the ties, and any front in which to erode them is good.
 
I feel as if I live in an Ayn Rand novel,
And that's where I stopped reading, because
I could give a shit about your feelings
So speaketh the vegetable.

You don't even have anything witty to say in being snarky. Or is this your attempt at something called "Irony"? Go back to the bunny slopes, you suck at it.

Oh and tuber...?

Fuck off.
 
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We will enter a time where the smallest meal during the great Depression will be like a picnic feast.

We will see the dark ages as enlightened.
I won't go that far, but we are witnessing the fall of Western Civilization.

Tis why I am learning Mandarin and skills useful anywhere in the world.
 
We arent viewing the end of the world with Greece, we are viewing the end of a glutinous government in Greece. Read up on how the government operated.
 
This is a precursor, and you're right. But don't forget the state Germany was in between the world wars. That is what I worry we are entering into.
 
And Obama,Reid and Pelosi,Boxer and the whole Democrat party are all staining their shorts with happy feelings running down their legs because they are determined to have our country run like the Europeans they love and worship.The left have this desire to be like those in Europe even as they see how the liberal policies are destroying those countries.
 
And Obama,Reid and Pelosi,Boxer and the whole Democrat party are all staining their shorts with happy feelings running down their legs because they are determined to have our country run like the Europeans they love and worship.The left have this desire to be like those in Europe even as they see how the liberal policies are destroying those countries.

:clap2: That's a lot of words for saying nothing.
 
I feel as if I live in an Ayn Rand novel, and cannot shake this impression no matter how hard I try. The news time and time again reads like alternating chapters out of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. It is madness that we are living in someone's science fiction novel.

For over a month now, Greece has been descending steadily towards anarchy. Even the IMF may not be able to save it. It's only a matter of time before nations like Germany and England, embattled with their own troubles may try to cut the rope to keep from being dragged down into this financial disaster themselves. We ourselves are teetering financially as a nation and probably cannot avoid what has befallen Greece. As a matter of fact, the entire world will probably not avoid that fate at this point. Not even China.

An now the 'Entitlement Riots' have begun. Basic services that had been viewed as rights for decades and spending on social services long out of control have finally gone over the cliff. Currently forward momentum from the leap off the cliff is keeping things going, but with the support gone, and no one really able to 'catch' the nation now entering freefall with the reversion of their bonds to Junk status... the plummet is assured. In desperation, there is talk about privatizing the Greek state run medical service. That at least is a positive sign, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

But... why do those who had been collecting government checks and services believe that they should be immune from the same troubles and financial destruction as those long burdened with their support who now are also suffering? The social services safety net has it's limits. Too many strings of the net have been cut by the failing economy, and then became overloaded with too many demanding what they think is there inherent right.

So why the label of Greed on the poor? Simple, because they act as if their need, which is genuine supersedes the needs of those who can no longer provide for them. They are inured in a culture that has told them it was all right to be a ward of the state because there were enough people to support their indigent lifestyle. Of course, there were/are those who need that type of financial help, but I doubt they are the ones rioting. The ones rioting are the ones who should be working to support those in need, but instead have found it easy to keep voting themselves a lifestyle off the taxpayer.

This is why I call them greedy. They have no right to manipulate the charity of others to demand their life of 'lotus eating' and oddly pathetic luxury. Why work? Someone from the government pays me to just vote for them. And now, the checks are stopping, and by damn I'm going to do something about it! I'll get out there and be obnoxious and call people who suffered under my yoke of entitlement names and kill bank workers who are the embodiment of who is to blame because politicians that gave me checks are telling me so.

This is coming here. Fast. It is being orchestrated by those with vested interests in using those who are used to living off the system for potentially generations now. They have come to believe that life revolves around government check, apathy and voting for the politicians that say they deserve more because it's not their fault they're in the situation they're in. This pandering has gone on under the guise of charity, when it's only enslavement. It is not kindness when you enable laziness, indecency, criminal behavior, promiscuity and crime while eschewing positive social values like industry, charity, community pride and chastity. They have nothing of value to them invested in their neighborhoods, cities, states and sometimes even their own homes. They just demand for themselves.

But now, the butcher's bill is here and it is long and expensive. These people long used to being taken care of by Uncle Sugar will soon be bereft of support. And they will protest, and then, agitated by our activist in chief and agitprop artists like Sharpton and La Raza, they will eventually riot for what is 'owed them'. Sure as God made little green apples. But this is because they have been lied to for so long, the concept of a different way of life is alien to them. Work? that's for suckers! I can get me a gubmint check and sit at home smoking pot or playing xbox, or going to the bar getting drunk and pregnant. Personal responsibility is face down in a greasy puddle on some side street, robbed of his wallet shoes and jacket.

The worst part is, this is how Napoleon, Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao and every other tin pot dictator came to power. First the trouble happens and those at the bottom are stirred up in righteous indignation over losing what is 'rightfully theirs'. Sometimes this is true, other times... MOST other times, no. Then when the government is in suitable anarchy and overwhelmed, a new reformer sweeps in and promises the moon for nothing. Paints the overwhelmed regime rightly or wrongly as having lied to the people and easy solutions are just around the corner. All they have to do is trust him and give him unchecked power. And the anguished people do. Again and again... they do.

But at least we are not all ignorant of Santayana's warning. We are educated enough to know that history has shown us this before, and with this forewarning, we are forearmed. We know that those who desire to destroy the foundation of this nation are in power right now and are fomenting the means to solidify their own power permanently first by quasi legal methods, and then overtly after they've been given temporary authority to do so. Then it will be too late. Our worst nightmares of 1984, A Handmaid's Tale, Brave New World and many other Utopia to Dystopia tales will become reality.

The problem ultimately is for those of us who see what's coming is convincing those blinded by 'enlightened self interest' and are unaware, as well as those who are greedy and do not care about the consequences of what they are doing to change course. The means of what they are doing must be exposed to all, for they are not justified by the ends. Their desired conclusion is an illusion that cannot happen in this world, only the next. To try and force it on those who do not desire it is one of the worst atrocities that can be committed from one man on another. To do so out of ignorance is potentially forgivable with proper penance. To do so willingly and with knowledge is reprehensible.

Why rail about this, screaming at it like a lost soul at the moon? Because it's not too late to stop the opportunists, but it will take the convincing of many weak minded neighbors, long raised on the TV half hour solution and no pain penalties... a cost free discipline society.... that there will have to be pain, and hard work and it will probably have to last a long time more than a single TV season. They will, like their grandparents or great grandparents, do without the luxuries we have become addicted to culturally. They will have to support themselves or come together as a community, as we have done since Jamestown and Plymouth, and help each other survive, stabilize and then grow again.

The world is on the bring of either a new Dark Age, or a rekindling of western capitalist culture after a horrific battle for it's very soul has been waged. We have lost our spirit to materialism. Hopefully this time of cataclysmic trial will bring us back to things that are important. Family, Friends, Neighbors, Nation, God.

If it doesn't...

...God save us from ourselves, for we could not do it without you.

Here endeth the lesson.

Here endeth the lesson? WOW...

Here's your lesson. HOW despots and dictators like Hitler and Mussolini come to power:

Create an enemy; an 'other', a group of human beings to be loathed. First, they must be dehumanized, denigrated and condemned by portraying them using phrases like: 'greedy', 'indigent lifestyle', 'laziness', 'indecency', 'criminal behavior', 'promiscuity'...

Then portray their plight as some form of nirvana...'life of 'lotus eating' and oddly pathetic luxury'.

Finally, separate them by easily identifiable physical characteristics, i.e. RACE: Sharpton and La Raza

Your lesson, you have just presented us with justification to loathe YOU.


If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
President John F. Kennedy
 
And yet you expect everyone else to care about you and your fucking coastline.

No Cali, I don't expect everyone to care about it! For instance, soulless trust fund babies who think they are better than everyone else but volunteer at homeless shelters to deal with their guilt - I don't expect them to care about it.

Though I do find it interesting that you find the feeling of living in a fictional work of literature to be on the same level as the feeling that its going to suck when you state's coastline gets drenched in oil and you have to buy shitty asian shrimp because all the ones where you live are dead.
 
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And yet you expect everyone else to care about you and your fucking coastline.

No Cali, I don't expect everyone to care about it! For instance, soulless trust fund babies who think they are better than everyone else but volunteer at homeless shelters to deal with their guilt - I don't expect them to care about it.

Though I do find it interesting that you find the feeling of living in a fictional work of literature to be on the same level as the feeling that its going to suck when you state's coastline gets drenched in oil and you have to buy shitty asian shrimp because all the ones where you live are dead.

God, you are painfully stupid. You're an embarrassment to yourself. You know NOTHING about me - as you show by your reference to 'fiction', which I do not write - and my 'guilt' which I do not feel. :lol::lol: The 'fiction' writer here is you - and not a very good one. Your fantasy of who I am is actually funny.
 
Watching too much Glenn Beck? You didn't cry when you wrote that did you? Why are conservatives such nervous Nellies? The glass is not half full but empty. Our only fear is fear itself as our greatest president once said, and you guys sure excel at fear. In power conservatives principles led nowhere. Well, they led to stupid wars and near depressions but aside from those accomplishments.

One thing is very clear when you read an OP like this, the writer has no understanding nor education in history. I would suggest books that do more than paint everything in a negative light, but that would contradict the narrative you live, and challenge you to wake up and smile maybe.

Ayn Rand is toxic for democracy. The recent financial meltdown is proof people left alone are not saints, it is only in a societal matrix of shared values and the golden rule that societies prosper. Your world is as bleak as Rand's life was.

Obama needs the courage to do as FDR did and regulate and tax and work so everyone has a piece of the pie and thus contributes. Will that happen? Not if the nervous nellies can help it.

My piece on 'Atlas the A-hole.' http://www.usmessageboard.com/writing/50820-atlas-panted.html

Read these and come back with a small modicum of reality.
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Glory-Dream-Narrative-History-1932-1972/dp/0553345893/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8]Amazon.com: The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972 (9780553345896): William Manchester: Books[/ame]
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Mind-Intellectual-History-Century/dp/0060084383/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8]Amazon.com: The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century (9780060084387): Peter Watson: Books[/ame]


And an excellent review of conservative reactionary thinking.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/HIRRHE.html?show=reviews



"What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable." Adam Smith 'The Wealth of Nations,' Book I Chapter VIII

"I. The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities..." Adam Smith
 
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We arent viewing the end of the world with Greece, we are viewing the end of a glutinous government in Greece. Read up on how the government operated.

You mean the exact same way as our government is operating.

We have absolutely nothing to worry about.
 
What is so strange about conservatives is they feel it's the "poor" who are greedy. You have to admire the Republicans. Their leadership takes advantage of poor party members deluding them into doing their dirty work. Fighting for the rich and blaming fiscal inequality on the "poor, who are obviously lazy and greedy".

A new study just published by the Institute for Policy Studies shows the CEO’S at the top 20 TARP recipients earned an average of $13.8 million last year as they were presiding over the financial collapse. CEO’s in other parts of the economy earned an average of $10.1 million.

Making matters even tougher to choke down, the overall CEO-to-worker pay gap is enormous. S&P CEO’s in 2008 earned 319 times more than the average worker.

20090303-taxrates.jpg


CBC NEWS - People who live in countries with higher taxes enjoy lower rates of poverty, have more equal income distribution, more economic security for workers and can expect to live longer, suggests a new study from a left-leaning think tank. Written by two Toronto tax law professors for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the report, released Wednesday, is blunt. "Tax cuts are disastrous for the well-being of a nation's citizens," say authors Neil Brooks and Thaddeus Hwong.

The study compares four high-tax Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland) with six low-tax Anglo-American countries (the U.K., U.S., Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand).

Economic Indicators compiled by the Progressive Review

debtCSM.gif


CNN - The average CEO of a large U.S. company made roughly $10.8 million last year, or 364 times that of U.S. full-time and part-time workers, who made an average of $29,544, according to a joint analysis by the liberal Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy. That gap is down from 411 times in 2005 and well-below the record high of 525 times recorded in 2000. But the comparison isn't exactly apples-to-apples, in part because IPS and UFE changed how they measured CEO options pay this year. . .

The IPS/UFE report also compared U.S. CEO pay to that of leaders in other fields and other countries. The top 20 CEOs of U.S. companies made an average of $36.4 million in 2006. That's 204 times that of the 20 highest paid U.S. military generals, and 38 times that of the 20 highest-paid non-profit leaders. They also made three times more than the top 20 CEOs of European companies who had booked higher sales numbers than their U.S. counterparts.

The pay gap numbers don't include the value of the many perks CEOs receive, which averaged $438,342, according to the report. Nor do they include the pension benefits CEOs receive. Senate tax-writers take on fund pay

**************

I remember when the "CEO to worker" pay gap was only 30 times and those companies were very successful and the CEO's still lived in mansions and drove Lexus.
 
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