The More Things Change?

[loosecannon]

ed...

I started working full time in the mid 60s.
Ten years later, one single minimum wage job enabled me to pay rent on a brand new one bedroom apartment and maintain a 6 year old Chevy Malibu.

At that time the apartment rented for $175/month.
Today it would rent for ten times that amount.

I haven't been able to afford a one bedroom apartment or a car of any age since 1993, and I see things getting much worse.

There is one last, vast store of wealth Wall Street has yet to get its hands on, and that's Social Security and private pensions.

Slick Willie apparently had Social Security in his sights after repealing Glass-Steagall.

Luckily for most of us Monica and the blue dress came to our rescue.

Obama may well have the same "success" with Social Security "Reform" as he had with health care.

Yup. I remember those days, too.

The problem here is that we are too often talking to kids who truly do not understand what life reall used to be like.

Well that and they cannot imagine that their life is their life and cannot be duplicated, of course.

Take Skull pilot, for example.

I don't doubt that the man worked for everything he has.

What he apparently has difficulty understanding is that many people worked just as hard but for one reason or the other, didn't have his string of successes.

Its the WILLIE MAYS school of thinking.

Since Willie Mays made it as a BLACK MAN, why didn't ALL BLACK men make it?

Basically what they're doing is living in (and demanding that we join them in, too) denial.

It's a conceit, you see, to assume such a preposterous thing as:

I made ergo, everybody can make it.​

That's so obviously absurdly untrue than one must assume that they're either dumber than hammers or simply being provocative so they can remind us how successful they've been.

Not everybody has the same ANYTHING, so claiming that we ALL have the same chances in life is just pure self agrandizing, right wing bullshit.

I hadn't made the connection to conceit.

That is one characteristic of most blue-collar conservatives I've ever met. Conceit and racism which may be related.

The need to remind others of their "success" is another conservative trait I've encountered over the years.

Do you think their tendency for self aggrandizement makes it impossible for conservatives to see the effects of tax bias on their level of "freedom"?

The conservative's moral code is based on obedience to authority that's always assumed to be legitimate. Does their inflated sense of self worth make it impossible for conservatives to even consider the possibility that freedom doesn't always come from obedience?

Or maybe they actually ARE dumb as hammers...

Money is power and power corrupts. Why drag conceit into it when Occam has a more direct explanation?

 

[georgephillip]

The economy or what people do with their money is not the government's business.


Many people made bad choices all on their own and they should be allowed to suffer the consequences of those choices all on their own. I never took out a mortgage i couldn't afford. I never refinanced my house every time the value went up. I never maxed out all my credit cards. I save almost 30% of my monthly income for the future because I live well below my means.

There are a lot of people out there like me who feel it's not our responsibility to bail out the fucking idiots who don't know how to run a budget.



I ask people all the time why they don't take responsibility for their own lives. And I never get an answer I only get whining.

There are, of course, things in one's life that one must take responsibility for.

Like not spending more than you make?
Like not taking out loans you know you can't afford?

There are also things that are completely outside one's ability to change.

Yes natural disasters come to mind but that's why there is insurance.

This is so obvious that I often wonder why people like you post statements that apparently insist otherwise.

It's obvious to me that one should save more than they spend or that one shouldn't have kids they can't afford.

It's obvious to me that if Americans stopped whining and took some responsibility that we'd all be better off.

Is it obvious how someone working 30 to 40 hours a week for minimum wage can save more than they spend?

Even with zero children.

It is obvious to me Wall Street is at least the disaster Katrina was but even winds and rain finally stop.

That isn't the case with those who profit from the two American economies - "the Big Money economy and the Average Working Family economy - will continue to diverge. Corporate profits will continue to rise, as will the stock market."

"But typical wages will go nowhere, joblessness will remain high, the ranks of the long-term unemployed will continue to rise, the housing recovery will remain stalled, and consumer confidence will sag.

"The big disconnect between corporate profits and jobs is likely to continue because America's big businesses are depending less and less on U.S. sales and U.S. workers.

"Their big profits are coming from two sources: (1) growing sales in China, India, and other fast-growing countries, and (2) slimmed-down US payrolls.

"In a typical recovery, profits lead to more hiring. That's because in a typical recovery, American consumers head back to the malls - and their buying justifies more hires.

"Not this time.

"All the hype about Christmas sales over the last few weeks masked the fact that American consumers demanded bargain-basement prices. And the price-cutting dramatically reduced sellers' margins.

"In short, profits aren't coming from American consumers - and profits won't be coming from American consumers in 2011.

"Most Americans don't have the dough. They're still deep in debt, can't borrow against their homes, and have to start saving for retirement."

"The Dow Jones Industrial Average is rising because of foreign sales.

"General Motors is now making more cars in China than in the US, and two-thirds of its total sales are coming from abroad.

"When it went public last month it boasted that soon almost half its cars will be made around the world where labor is less than $15 an hour.

Economic Prediction

It's Class War 2.0: The New World Order

 

[daveman]

You call me a coward for admitting I've felt fear at times in my life and then accuse me of changing the subject?

I believe the world owes me full compensation for my labor.
I don't believe capitalism pays workers the full value of their labor.
That's largely where private fortunes come from.

Are you too scared to debate these issues without resorting to personal insults?

You're not paying attention. I asked you what's keeping you down, and you said your fear.

Oh, and calling me a slave isn't a personal insult? Hypocrite.

My slave comment was out of bounds in this context.

The context my fear and the responsibility it plays in my current economic situation relates to a previous point in the same post.

Changing the status quo between the Dow Jones and the Popsicle Index requires one to step outside the matrix:

"Stop being socially acceptable. Our problems are too serious to stay inside the matrix in the hopes of clinging to respectability."

My fear was of losing what little respectability and social acceptance I had managed to acquire during my life.

And I'm not asking anyone else to pay for it.

Sure you are. If you weren't, you wouldn't be so envious of the rich.

 

[georgephillip]

It isn't envy that makes me think hedge fund honchos should pay income tax at the same rate as schoolteachers.

Empire or Republic?
Plutocracy or Democracy?
What's your choice?

 

[daveman]

It isn't envy that makes me think hedge fund honchos should pay income tax at the same rate as schoolteachers.

Empire or Republic?
Plutocracy or Democracy?
What's your choice?

Of course it's envy. Every single class warrior is driven by envy. And that includes you.

 

[georgephillip]

Kindly point out the envy in the following figures"

"According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, productivity gains during the 1990-1999 decade averaged just 2.1% per year. The prior decade, from 1980-1989, the average productivity gain was 1.5% per year.

"But between 2000 and 2009, when the economy suffered two recessions, the average annual productivity gain has been 2.9%, almost 50% higher than the prior decade, and almost double the rate in the 1980s.

"During this same period, however, wages have actually declined. According to the BLS, wages in 2010 rose 0.1%, but inflation, running at an official (and grossly under-measured) 1%, more than ate that up.

"According to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, for the whole decade from 2000 through 2009, wages actually sank for most people. In 2000, the median weekly wage for a high school graduate was $629.

"By the end of 2009, high school graduates were earning a median weekly wage, in inflation-adjusted dollars, of just $626--three dollars a week less than a decade earlier."

Serfing USA:

Are class warriors among the rich also driven by envy?

 

[daveman]

Kindly point out the envy in the following figures"

"According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, productivity gains during the 1990-1999 decade averaged just 2.1% per year. The prior decade, from 1980-1989, the average productivity gain was 1.5% per year.

"But between 2000 and 2009, when the economy suffered two recessions, the average annual productivity gain has been 2.9%, almost 50% higher than the prior decade, and almost double the rate in the 1980s.

"During this same period, however, wages have actually declined. According to the BLS, wages in 2010 rose 0.1%, but inflation, running at an official (and grossly under-measured) 1%, more than ate that up.

"According to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, for the whole decade from 2000 through 2009, wages actually sank for most people. In 2000, the median weekly wage for a high school graduate was $629.

"By the end of 2009, high school graduates were earning a median weekly wage, in inflation-adjusted dollars, of just $626--three dollars a week less than a decade earlier."

Serfing USA:

Are class warriors among the rich also driven by envy?

It's up there a little bit:

I believe the world owes me full compensation for my labor.
I don't believe capitalism pays workers the full value of their labor.​

 

[Skull Pilot]

There are, of course, things in one's life that one must take responsibility for.

Like not spending more than you make?
Like not taking out loans you know you can't afford?



Yes natural disasters come to mind but that's why there is insurance.

This is so obvious that I often wonder why people like you post statements that apparently insist otherwise.

It's obvious to me that one should save more than they spend or that one shouldn't have kids they can't afford.

It's obvious to me that if Americans stopped whining and took some responsibility that we'd all be better off.

Is it obvious how someone working 30 to 40 hours a week for minimum wage can save more than they spend?

Even with zero children.

Then work 60 hours a week. There weren't many times in my life that I had only one job.

 

[georgephillip]

Why not work to take back some of labor's stolen productivity gains over the past several decades?

"Historically, the relatively high and rising standard of living of American workers--both blue and white-collar--which once gave the US one of the highest standards of living in the world, has come courtesy of rising productivity, which has allowed US companies to produce more goods with less labor, and to then pass some of the enhanced profits on to workers in the form of higher wages, without having to raise prices.

"That has been important because, when higher wages are financed by higher prices, it tends to be a kind of zero-sum game: higher wages cancelled out by inflation.

"But beginning in 2000, the old system already creaky, broke down. (It must be noted that this system was never the result of the capitalists' largesse, but rather was because of a tighter labor market and, critically, a powerful labor movement.)

"The corporate onslaught against trade unions and against the minimum wage, which began with the Nixon administration in 1968, combined with so-called 'free-trade' deals that allowed US companies to shift production overseas and then to freely import the products of their overseas production facilities back for sale to Americans at home, by weakening the power of workers to demand higher wages, has led to a situation where companies can just pocket all the profits from productivity gains, leaving wages stagnant, or even driving them down."

Serfing USA