Despite all the loud talk of the “1 per cent” of Americans who, according to a recent study, receive about 17 per cent of the income, a percentage which has more than doubled since 1979, the existence of a very small group of very rich people has never bothered Americans. But the fact that some 20 per cent of Americans now receive some 53 per cent of the income is devastating.What?! "It seems..."? It doesn't seem that way to me! I'm securely in the "upper middle class" as Applebaum describes it, yet I don't see myself as easily grasping the things on that list of what it takes to feel you're doing "minimally 'well.'" Why would people distributed throughout the middle class feel left behind because they can't get all that? Applebaum seems radically out of touch with reality. Do people even want McMansions anymore? The professors I know seem to love modest-sized houses when they have a nice design and some pretty gardens. And I don't know anyone who comfortably shells out cash for college tuition. And who are these people who think it's necessary to get over to Europe in the summer?
I would argue that the growing divisions within the American middle class are far more important than the gap between the very richest and everybody else. They are important because to be “middle class”, in America, has such positive connotations, and because most Americans think they belong in it...
“Middle America” also once implied the existence of a broad group of people who had similar values and a similar lifestyle. If you had a small suburban home, a car, a child at a state university, an annual holiday on a Michigan lake, you were part of it. But, at some point in the past 20 years, a family living at that level lost the sense that it was doing “well”, and probably struggled even to stay there. Now it seems you need a McMansion, children at private universities, two cars, a ski trip in the winter and a summer vacation in Europe in order to feel as if you are doing minimally “well”. ...
Applebaum poses what she must think is a ponderous question:
[I]f Americans are no longer “all in the same boat”, if some of them are now destined to live better than others, then will they continue to feel like political equals?They? Why is she saying "they"?! I'd say we will go on as we always have. We look at those who have more, make some choices, and do what we can. Some of us get motivated to work harder at making money, and maybe we succeed and maybe we don't. Some of us decide not to work so hard but to control our covetousness and develop our capacity to love what we have. (Why not leave Europe to the Europeans and buy an annual pass to your state's parks and value the beauty of the landscape you live in? That's what Meade and I do.) And, yes, some of us fall prey to bitterness and cynicism, and if that happens, we can either perceive this state of mind as our own character flaw or plunge deeply into blaming others.
We're a diverse bunch, we Americans. But I think most of us understand the way we are equal in America. We have equal rights and equal opportunity. We have never had equal economic outcomes, and very few of us have ever believed in the kind of politics that say we need equal economic status to feel like political equals.
पोस्ट्स
२१७ टिप्पण्या:
217 पैकी 1 – 200 नवीन› नवीनतम»There are only two divisions: Those with class and those with no class.
Isn't this article, in fact, an admission that the income inequality argument is bullshit?
The demand for revenge for the financial difficulties of the past few years that I'm hearing loudly just about everywhere perplexes me. Everybody I know owns one car per person, has a smart phone, lives in an air conditioned house and eats damned near to obesity.
This is true even of my redneck family members who are mostly unemployed.
One of my closest, long term Facebook friends is a retired magazine writer. He and his wife life on the Upper West Side, but they routinely spend months in Southern California. Yet, he's angry as hell, and down with the OWS people. He wants revenge, too.
When I point out that he's living a life that I would have associated with wealth when I was a kid, he just changes the subject.
The widespread anger out there over the reality that boom cycles always terminate with a bust really perplexes me.
Being a second generation American I have a little different perspective. There are certainly people who love this country as much as my immigrant paternal grandfather, but none loved it more than he. Grandpa Steve came to this country as a teenager w/ nothing..like most immigrants @ the turn of the century. He was so proud when he became a citizen. Sadly, my grandmother, who was very smart, didn't have the self confidence to seek citizenship. Every January 2nd she would register as an alien.
Our family was taught that we can live in this great country and still hold onto our culture. We were taught to be good citizens, work hard, and to always be willing to help people, particularly new immigrants trying to find their way. There was very little class envy in our family. And our immigrant family was not unique in that regard. We knew there was opportunity and hard work was rewarded financially and spiritually. I fear this philosophy is eroding fast.
Sorry Ann, but this sort of makes Applebaum's case;
"The professors I know seem to love modest-sized houses when they have a nice design and some pretty gardens"
I do beleive her point is that there is a profound divide between the middle classes, and you make her point with that statement.
Ann, you nailed it again. Our economic situation changed dramatically, but we are more content with our lives than when we were working 60 hour weeks in toxic jobs. I just entered my 60s, and I think your perspective changes as you age. Other things are so much more important than materialism.
Until you're willing to pursue the issue of rampant fraud in American society, I think you and Applehead are both wrong in your conclusions and doing a disservice to the ideals you, both, claim to understand and/or uphold.
Whether you side with the Occupy crowd or the Tea Party, the question isn't whether you go to Europe or a National Park, but the integrity inherent in Western existence - an issue, I'm sure, two Obama voters have absolutely no interest in fully pursuing.
Much easier to put on a charade like the two of them arguing over nonsense is what's important.
The whole thing is fraud on top of fraud to the end.
Her expertise is Europe, where she's lived most of her adult life, and, I think, she currently lives.
Uh, Moose, I don't get that at all. Perhaps, you can rerun and explicate.
When my kids were small, I had the big house and big upkeep. Now, I own a very cute 900 square foot house, which I love. Nice garden. Minimal upkeep. Low heating bills.
A few of my friends didn't dump their big houses before the bust, and they're now stuck with 2,000 to 4,000 square foot monsters they can't get rid of in retirement.
Heating bills of $700 to $1000 a month in the depth of winter.
"We're a diverse bunch, we Americans. But I think most of us understand the way we are equal in America. We have equal rights and equal opportunity. We have never had equal economic outcomes, and very few of us have ever believed in the kind of politics that say we need equal economic status to feel like political equals."
There is a large segment of the populace that thinks no such thing. They are called liberals.
Hell, the guy you voted for in 2008 doesn't believe this.
I think a lot of it has to do with how secure you are in yourself. You live your life the best you can; and you don't worry too much about what other people might think of you. Some people do better, some do worse.
This sort of class envy is meretricious twaddle.
"if some of them are now destined to live better than others"
What does that even mean? This woman has clearly been hanging around with Europeans, for whom class differences are set in stone, for way too long.
He and his wife life on the Upper West Side, but they routinely spend months in Southern California.
How rich do you have to be to have a place in New York and a place out of town? I would think very rich.
Insty's comment was "It’s not the rich who are destroying middle America, it’s the upper-middle-class." I didn't get that at all from the article. The article seemed as off-base as Insty's comment though.
Now it seems you need a McMansion, children at private universities, two cars, a ski trip in the winter and a summer vacation in Europe in order to feel as if you are doing minimally “well”.
Huh? Not really, unless you're an incurable snob with too little money.
...and Europe needs paint.
Jesus, Crack, you are the last person on earth who should talk about integrity - you have none. You are a lying sack of excrement.
"I do beleive her point is that there is a profound divide between the middle classes, and you make her point with that statement."
I don't know what your point is? The professors are all within her definition of the upper middle class. Are you saying that people in what she calls the lower middle class somehow feel they deserve more than what is the unquestioned norm of the people they supposedly envy?
Do people even want McMansions anymore?
I think those were destined to come and go, even without the housing crisis. In the DC burbs they became ridiculous -- giant houses on almost non-existent lots. You had a big house to keep clean and maintained, but no private spot in the backyard to sit on a nice day. A temporary screw-up of some middle-class values.
I blame competitive white housewives of my generation, but that's just my experience.
Crack, the issue of fraud is separate for me.
Certainly, the fraud perpetrated around the mortgage scams and the bailouts that those scams precipitated is monstrous. Probably, the biggest political/financial fraud in human history.
What's interesting to me is that the fraud originated in do-gooderism. The Community Reinvestment Act was supposed to cure the alleged evil of "redlining," the purported practice of banks discriminating against minorities.
This do-gooder effort ultimate led to dropping all standards for borrowers in the mortgage market.
I think we need to ponder this in some depth. The ability to scam people by appealing to their do-gooderism is a fascinating aspect of contemporary politics.
I'd say it has a lot to do with the primacy of women in politics. Women really like that do-gooder appeal. The gender divide in politics is about 14 points, in favor of Democrats.
Re: the reason why the liberal upper-middle classes who live lives that kings of eld couldn't even dream of are so angry and say they support the OWS people and so on have more to do with their own spiritual emptiness than any actual concern about the gap between rich and poor. They know that their desperate status-jockeying -- their compost heaps and Prius-driving and buying only "fair trade" coffee and ostentatiously promoting "diversity" as long as that means cute restaurants and maybe a self-consciously "multi-ethnic" enclave near but not too near their own walled-up SWPL district -- is all meaningless and pointless. This causes them to feel inchoate feelings of rage that they can't bear to bring against themselves so they turn it outward to the only targets they've ever known: Mom and Dad, in the guise of "rich white Christians who run the world." The actual fact is, the supposedly indie, alternative, "other" or at least "other"-celebrating folks have become the Man, and they can't deal with it.
Ann, you are an academic,you live a in Madison and maybe you are a bit insulated from what is going on in other counties in Wisconsin, especially with those who work in banking or manufacturing.
I live in Waukesha County which is a McMansion paradise. Many of these folks continue to covet expensive educations for their kids annual ski trips and summer vacations in Europe. In no way has the economy affected them in any significant way, as it has for those in lower economic brackets.
I'm not disagreeing with you in that if one isn't satisfied with their lot in life that it can't be improved by working harder, well that USED to be possible. Even those that go back to school and acquire a higher degree are finding that the job market is closed to them.
It's going to take another decade of this economy for the McMansion types to feel the sting, they will eventually,because when even the poor can't afford Walmart goods the poverty will float upwards. The top 1 percent are safe, their money makes money and they can now buy Government and run it by proxy.
"a McMansion, children at private universities, two cars, a ski trip in the winter and a summer vacation in Europe"
Yeah, I'm pretty confident that my neighborhood is solidly middle-middle class, and I don't know anybody who does that sort of thing regularly, or is burningly envious of people who do.
Well, actually there are some big-ass houses on the edge of town. Somehow their existence does not trouble me.
Curious George,
Hell, the guy you voted for in 2008 doesn't believe this.
Shhhh! She - they - won't go there.
Mike,
This sort of class envy is meretricious twaddle.
I don't think so. I think it's an inarticulate grasping at a larger issue few in Ann, Applehead, or Glenn's position dare to address. I mean, if Steve Jobs and Glenn Reynolds can be suckers for quackery, what's the likelihood those like them will address the true nature of fraud in this country? Others in the same headspace don't - they take their loses and (if possible) keep going - but those of us for outting the con men are few and far between. Shit, the SEC didn't even want to go after Bernie fucking Madoff when they had him red-handed. THAT's what's wrong in this society.
Our ultimate problem is that those most able to point it out are part of it.
If there's a divide, most of us haven't seen it yet.
In fact, even the Demos are worried GodZero's class warfare strategy is tanking already.
Anybody who wastes their time thinking about how they compare to other people's lifestyles is a fool destined to feel disappointed. It's the only thing that thought process produces.
Success comes precisely from not thinking about how to keep up with the Jones, but rather how to help them.
In 2009, one-third of tax filers had incomes between $40,000 and $200,000. They accounted for 59% of the total incomes reported by all filers.
There were 48 million filers in this group and I believe they are our middle class. They represent about 40% of all households.
The income inequality meme is false IMO. It is nothing but a political cudgel being wielded by Dems and the MSM year after year.
In terms of the gender divide in politics, I think that Althouse's political transformation (as I perceive it) is indicative of where we might be headed in the future.
Althouse remains a social liberal. That means she's overly concerned with non-issues like gay marriage, which affects less than on percent of the populace. I can't figure out why this crap appeals so much to women, but it does. It's part of the do-gooderism that traditionally gets women by the short hairs.
Althouse, however, has become a fiscal conservative. She's tired of seeing money thrown down the toilet by government.
You've got to wonder when Althouse will get the connection between the incessant appetite of government, and the social do-gooderism. When will the light go on?
She's still fighting the feminist war, which was phony to begin with, and has been over for some time any way. Can't let go of it.
I meant to add that the average income for this group was $71,632.
Shouting Thomas,
What's interesting to me is that the fraud originated in do-gooderism. The Community Reinvestment Act was supposed to cure the alleged evil of "redlining," the purported practice of banks discriminating against minorities.
ST, it's all the same shit. Steve Jobs thought he was doing the right thing, too. But we're killing ourselves with this nonsense - because (as this post proves) we're not even close to addressing the topics that matter.
Do you seriously think Occupy [Whatever] will get all "Oh yeah, I see" if you break down our system intelligently for them? Of course not, because that's not the issue - like the Tea Party, they KNOW something's wrong in Denmark, but no one is willing to go there. Who is this doctor and psychic who "influenced" Jobs to kill himself? THAT we all understand. No college degree necessary. But we're not going after them, or their industry which is doing the same thing they did to Jobs all over the world - we're arguing whether Jobs deserved his money.
Did the charlatans that killed him deserve theirs?
That's the question.
The Middle Class does not provide the leadership. You can't become a "leader" unless you're an insider. And, those who are already inside protect the BANKSTERS.
It's not just the USA, either!
The EURO has also been a ripoff of sovereignty. You'd think everyone already knew the "colors" of the UN. And, the global warming "alarmists." And, all the other jokesters ... few in number, really. But who are owned by the media. Where the media no longer reports the truth.
It's like EARTHQUAKE COUNTRY. Where, when you're due for a big one ... the place it will happen is not something you consider under your feet. Earthquakes, however, is how the land builds itself up. As it destroys "what's on top."
What, so far, has happened is that middle class people no longer earn interest on the money they save. So, in essence,our politicians have destroyed our middle class.
They didn't make "more" middle class with sub-prime loans.
And, most people wouldn't "occupy" wall street ... because they'd recognize right off the bat ... that they'd be squatting on someone else's private property. (And, the middle class has a very decent respect for private property!) Politicians don't.
And, the marginal few who are "occupying" wall street aren't even the ones who get the big checks to pay for all the "free" food.
"It's going to take another decade of this economy for the McMansion types to feel the sting, they will eventually
You seem to be consumed with envy and a need to scapegoat. Why is that? I doubt those "McMansion types" are guilty of trashing your local economy.
Now it seems you need a McMansion, children at private universities, two cars, a ski trip in the winter and a summer vacation in Europe in order to feel as if you are doing minimally “well”.
Much of that feeling that you "need" these things is coming from the indoctrination through media, films, articles that you MUST have things and these things to be successful.
The McMansion, drummed into our heads during the real estate booming bubble which has now popped, by television shows such as flip this house. You MUST have a granite counter top and stainless appliances or you just aren't with it.
New cars every other year. Name brand clothing. Name brand colleges. On and on.
If you bought into this manufactured dream manufactured by people who want to sell you products and keep you indebted to ever more possessions, you have only yourself to blame when you realize that it was a dream.
Better to just keep on with your own life and be appreciative of your own successes and the 'things' that you have earned on your own than to be trained to become envious and bitter when you can't have it all.
What America has seen with the "occupy" demonstraters are the kids with at least $150,000 school loans. And, when you look at them what you see isn't even college material.
Just "owners" of credentials on par with sub-prime loans. (Which were given out to people who had no wherewithal to repay them.)
It's not the Tea Party!
And, the "occupy" jerks are more likely to be trust fund babies than middle class kids.
"Prattle" is a word that doesn't quite cover "FAKE."
PS: I don't think as movements go ... that "occupy" is all that successful. Maybe, though, it explains why so many young kids get drugged by parents and schools? They're not sitting in classrooms where they learn anything.
Brains that have been fried on drugs.
Aren't we arguing over the same thing?
Status symbols.
Towering hip roofs with vaulted entry vs, custom designed ranch with library and conservatory.
Fickle friend are hard to impress.
Andrea said:
"This woman has clearly been hanging around with Europeans, for whom class differences are set in stone, for way too long."
You are probably right. I think Applbaum is married to a Polish diplomat.
Another thought, there is so much talk of the lower economic class coveting the kind of wealth that the upper middle classes and rich have, that they hate them for their successes. This is not true for most.
People are struggling to maintain what they have in the lower to middle range. It's the fear that they will quickly slide into poverty and the fear that no matter how hard they try ,they won't be able to hang onto the what they have.
I find it admirable that some in the higher economic strata are finding that less , is better as long as it's of good quality. For too long we have been a throw away society. I am very picky about what I purchase nowadays, I would rather pay more up front and have the item last for many years, than purchase cheaply made and cheaply priced goods.
It's a column-inch essay.
It's what comes of banning bus-plunge fillers.
So far, too, moves that the Tea Party made ... where in the 2012 election you saw the House flip out democraps by the dozen ...
Is still political business.
With 2012 approaching. And, the GOP coming up with 8 lousy choices for top nominee ... You're still seeing politics played as a "money game."
Merkel is trying to "play" one in Europe, now. But except for about 48 hours of hype ... it didn't FIX what's broken "there." Where the EURO has to go! Countries have to default themselves out of the EURO. Take a beating in the short term. Go back to their own money! And, only then will the crazy stuff wind down.
The "occupy" bullshit is a flash in the pan.
It's already losing front page space. Violence isn't going to make it look any different, either. Even though, today, demonstrators carry their own cameras.
"Occupy" is a gimmick.
The Tea Party wasn't a gimmick. And, short of showing you large numbers of disgusted middle class people ... Those in DC don't really want them "well organized."
What's NOT controlled by the media ... remains within the Internet. Where people are free to talk among themselves.
WELCOME BACK, CRACK, IT'S WONDERFUL TO SEE YOU HERE.
I think that fear is a big part of what's going on, but the fear is that old bugaboo... the fear of death.
The Boomers are all headed for retirement and death.
I think most of them are in the same pickle I'm in. Social Security, a pension and some savings will probably keep me going for six to ten years.
What then?
We're all afraid of that future when we are in our 70s and beyond, when we might not be able to remain independent and remain in our homes.
The government probably can't fix this. Old age, dependency and death are just the realities of life.
Government cannot erase all the problems of life.
I have my morning coffee with a group of black men who run the gamut - owning their own homes, with several cars and vacations, to barely scratching out a living - and none of them has mentioned OWS or the supposedly-important issues it represents.
That's how on-point the Althouse's and Applehead's are.
Bring up what Obama represents now - THAT's how you get a conversation going.
The man was, and still represents, a fraud. A Oprah Winfrey-fueled, media-led "Black Power" fraud, with "Hope and Change" filling in for "The Secret."
We're all afraid of that future when we are in our 70s and beyond, when we might not be able to remain independent and remain in our homes.
This was ever so. When did we ever have this ability to be independent into our old decrepit years?
The government probably can't fix this. Old age, dependency and death are just the realities of life.
Correct. This is why people had (in the past) extended families and networks of relatives and friends to lean upon each other during hard times and to support and care for the elders of the family/tribe.
Government should never be the resource we look to to take care of us. Government cannot and should not replace the family.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what has happened and we especially see the horrific results in the degradation of the lives of inner city blacks.
I like Anne Applebaum, but she doesn't spend a lot of time in America with Americans.
She's an internationalist. She knows jack all.
I know people who don't have bank accounts with two children that feel perfectly content with their lives. They're striving for something better, but they're happy cause they've got something and know they can have more.
Ms. Althouse:
You are now getting a clear understanding of the modern left and modern Democratic Party view of the world. "Equality" means equal outcomes, NOT equal opportunity. Government is obligated to provide equal economic outcomes for everyone.
It's not just the older generation that is fearful of their future and the looming specter of poverty. It's young working class families and young college graduates that are feeling legitimate fears for their and their children's futures.
They want to be able to improve their lot in life or simply maintain. Until outsourcing of jobs that the middle class depended on to maintain their middle class lives, is addressed in a meaningful way, the slide of the middle class into poverty will continue.
Applebaum "phoned in" this column. It's part of the current conventional wisdom at Beltway cocktail parties that income inequality is the issue of the day.
Rob, you simply couldn't be more wrongheaded on this. Equality to liberals means equal opportunity, when millions of jobs have been lost to outsourcing, the opportunity is lost also. Can government make a welcoming climate for the repatriation of American jobs? Yes they can and if they don't find a way to work together and do it , what we see now in the form of OW will seem like childs play.
I think what skews Ms Applebaum's understanding of what constitutes the American upper middle class is that she lives, when in the States, in a DC suburb (Montgomery County, like me, I think).
What she describes isn't that far off from the horde of upper middle class families around here that pull in well over $225K a year.
This is the list of highest income counties in the US. Eleven of the 25 are DC suburbs or exurbs.
If you read Applebaum's piece, the solid example is not of the lower or middle middle class wanting revenge on the upper middle class, it's the upper middle class feeling out of touch with the lower middle class. Living and working in the Silicon Valley, you see a lot of this: the people in public sector jobs or industries like accounting that are closely tied to government get really uncomfortable when they discover that not everyone shares their faith in the regulatory state and their sense of what the regulatory state ought to promote.
The Tea party represents those who are making it on their own, but could use a little help from these people, thank you. The OWS folks are those who thought they'd done the right things and don't understand why they haven't joined them.
But it's not about McMansions and money, it's about one middle class living reasonably well by working damn hard to keep up and another middle class living reasonably well because of institutional structures that keep them a little more separated from the demands of the marketplace.
Who is it that looks down on Americans with no passport and kids in public universities? The political class.
How are candidates for office who went to public university treated by the media? Like Rubes.
AJ Lynch,
It's part of the current conventional wisdom at Beltway cocktail parties that income inequality is the issue of the day.
And that you should use "alternative" medicine to "heal" yourself - preferably bought at a "wellness" center.
Connection? There is to me.
And, Mito, this is a crisis of imagination - outsourced jobs are hardly the problem we make it out to be. The bigger issue, which I'm trying to address, is the lack of trust we've engendered through rampant fraud - try getting a few people to pitch in together to accomplish anything today. Good luck. There's not enough good will to do shit. Everyone's looking out for Numero Uno - and with good reason:
There's no integrity expected what-so-ever.
That's what we're suffering from, and until we decide to straighten that out, we will suffer.
We. Will. Suffer.
M-A:
I could not possibly disagree with you more, though I am certain you believe what you write. The modern Democratic Party's notion of what a government should do is bankrupting us all and has created a generation certain that government could provide them whatever they may desire, if only a few people were not allowed to keep more than their share. Sad.
Crack:
I don't get around here as much as I used to- but I want you to know how much I enjoy reading your posts. I think there has sometimes been another Rob around here, but I am a Milton Friedman-type conservative/libertarian in the midwest.
President Obama has declared people to be wealthy at an income well below what will support the lifestyle Applebaum describes.
I will say this about the college part. You don't have to have two kids in private university to feel well off. But it is very easy to look at the cost of college tuition- for both public and private universities- and feel not wealthy.
The estimated cost for this year at USC is $60,801. At UCLA its $31,544
Now imagine having two kids at either of these places and not taking out any student loans, and you are looking at someone who needs a decent income just to that. That's not snobbery.
"We have equal rights and equal opportunity. We have never had equal economic outcomes, and very few of us have ever believed in the kind of politics that say we need equal economic status to feel like political equals."
The second sentence is true, and on an array of interesting reasons. Basically, we're tough.
The first sentence is not true, not in either part. Furthermore, it cannot be true, ever. There are no equal rights and assuredly no equal opportunity. Again, on an array of interesting reasons. Basically, we're not born alike.
The cause of contention in the matter of equality as Americans almost uniformly regard that is the financial condition on which comparisons are presumed to stand. Assuming finance as the measure of equality is a treadmill.
Here's how I see equality measured. Three groups: those who do good thinking it is good, those who do bad thinking it is bad, those who do bad thinking it is good. The first two groups are equal because they have internal consistency. The third group is unequal to the first two because they lack internal consistency.
All the intractable problems of society and history come from that third group, and their inequality with the rest of the population, who do not understand them and are in awe of them, propels them into leader positions. QED
@Crack,
There's no integrity expected what-so-ever.
Couldn't agree with you more. The lack of expected integrity was for me the take away from the Wall Street debacle of 2008.
None of the guys at the top of these firms took responsibility. No one committed suicide. No one joined a monastery. No one quit and devoted his life to good works. The boards didn't rise up and demand a reshuffle of the deck. Nothing, nada! It was like what happened was a natural disaster and they were all bystanders.
Let me tell you: If I had been running Lehman Brothers when it went down, I'd be in a Carthusian monastery right now.
Yes Crack there was and still is rampant fraud in Wall Street and Medicare, did less regulation help or hurt the environment that allowed such fraud in the Wall Street model?
In Medicare fraud wastes are deplorable. We have a family friend who works in DC in the Medicare fraud area, so much can be done to reign it in and save billions, why aren't they doing it? Why is Congress consumed abortion laws and social issues when our economy lies in shambles?
What could the private sector do to improve our predicament, for those who don't trust Government. Individuals standing alone are not strong enough to affect change. Rugged individualism is fine if you live in Montana tangling horses somewhere. In the real world, we need each other.
[I]f Americans are no longer “all in the same boat”, if some of them are now destined to live better than others, then will they continue to feel like political equals?
Most working/middle class people--at least rational ones-- do not detest the ueber-wealthy just because they are rich: that's a common teabug misconception. They object to a system which allowed..a Billy Gates, a college school dropout ( from a rich family) to become a billioniare, while, say, their daughter Esmeralda (most likely more knowledgable in science than Bill or Melinda--certainly mo than rich scumbags such as Rush Limblow, finance-shysters, celebrities, crack dealers,etc) , struggles to become an RN or schoolteacher. In other words, they object to the casino-economics of finance capitalism.
Of course the Ayn Rand or pop-Nietzschean sorts of nihilists (or jus' redneck idjuts)
are unaware of that sort of authentic meritocracy (the Founders weren't and opposed aristocratic or financial dynasties--ie, estate taxes were in place early on)tocratsdyansties).
M-A: I am sure you will know what kind of idiot I am when I tell you Mark Steyn is my favorite writer on politics, but I still suggest you read this piece:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/281570
Mitochondri-Allie said...
Another thought, there is so much talk of the lower economic class coveting the kind of wealth that the upper middle classes and rich have, that they hate them for their successes. This is not true for most.
People are struggling to maintain what they have in the lower to middle range. It's the fear that they will quickly slide into poverty and the fear that no matter how hard they try ,they won't be able to hang onto the what they have.
I find it admirable that some in the higher economic strata are finding that less , is better as long as it's of good quality. For too long we have been a throw away society. I am very picky about what I purchase nowadays, I would rather pay more up front and have the item last for many years, than purchase cheaply made and cheaply priced goods.
10/30/11 10:24 AM
The higher economic strata haven't received an epiphany, they are just keeping a low profile. This is generally what happens during hard times.
Congratulations for figuring out on your own that the best economy is quality.
HA-HA-HA!!!!
So, J, your theory is that Bill Gates and Rush Limbaugh were the beneficiaries of "life's lottery", right? I take it that you don't think unbelievable hard work and huge talent had anything to do with their success? What color are the rainbows on your planet?
Jesus, you're stupid, J.
No "system" allowed Bill Gates to become a billionaire.
Gates invented and owns the Windows operating system, the most successful product on the market for the past three or four decades..
J, you've got shit for brains.
For once, you try to be coherent, and you utter an amazingly stupid, boneheaded comment.
OK Rob, in spirit of bipartisanship and a willingness to cross divides , I'll hold my nose and read the article, but Mark Steyn usually turns my stomach when I've heard him on Limbaugh.
Heating bills of $700 to $1000 a month in the depth of winter.
Where are they living, some place that has below zero for days?
[I]f Americans are no longer “all in the same boat”, if some of them are now destined to live better than others, then will they continue to feel like political equals?
Most working/middle class people--at least rational ones-- do not detest the ueber-wealthy just because they are rich: that's a common teabug misconception. They object to a system which allowed..a Billy Gates, a college school dropout ( from a rich family) to become a billioniare, while, say, their daughter Esmeralda (most likely more knowledgable in science than Bill or Melinda--certainly mo than rich scumbags such as Rush Limblow, finance-shysters, celebrities, crack dealers,etc) , struggles to become an RN or schoolteacher. In other words, they object to the casino-economics of finance capitalism.
Of course the Ayn Rand or pop-Nietzschean sorts of atheist-nihilists (or jus' redneck idjuts)
are unaware of that sort of authentic meritocracy (the Founders weren't and opposed aristocratic or financial dynasties--ie, estate taxes were in place early on).
Looks like cheap shot at the policies of the Prime Minister of her country.
Tomtom, illiterate wicca trash--just STFU--you can't write you bag of white tweeker trash. You have no idea what im talking about
Yr already a suspect in a serious case, little scooter fag-atheist trash. Comprendes, joto?
I piss on your mama's grave, masonic satanist
"The professors I know seem to love modest-sized houses when they have a nice design and some pretty gardens"
In terms of the Madison housing market, building a new house in the Madison suburbs is less expensive then buying one of those older, more expensive houses closer to the U.
In Madison it's less "cool" to live in the suburbs.
Bill Gates is a genius and deserves what he created. His success is exactly what a liberal should be lauding. I don't agree with some of the things he did later on , but on whole he is a decent hard working guy who made it big on his brains and creativity. No one should covet his wealth.
You're so proud of that bit of shithead idiocy that you think it deserves repeating, J?
Just trying to give you the pleasure of fulminating and name calling.
Have at it. I know that it makes you happy.
"...he is a decent hard working guy who made it big on his brains and creativity. No one should covet his wealth."
So, does that make him an "honorary 99%'er" or something?
Mitochondri-Allie said...
It's not just the older generation that is fearful of their future and the looming specter of poverty. It's young working class families and young college graduates that are feeling legitimate fears for their and their children's futures.
They want to be able to improve their lot in life or simply maintain. Until outsourcing of jobs that the middle class depended on to maintain their middle class lives, is addressed in a meaningful way, the slide of the middle class into poverty will continue.
10/30/11 10:50 AM
Outsourcing isn't a we must solve problem requiring some typical stupid liberal control. No business outsources unless their is a compelling business need. Usually the need arises from stupid liberal policies and regulations.
Only liberals can believe if the present level of regulation fails, more will succeed. Just remember every bank that failed was a regulated bank and that those banks were all blessed at some point by the regulators. Every toxic liar loan was blessed by the regulators and all of those loans were AAA thanks to the backing of the full faith and credit of the USA.
Of course colleges would not be so expensive but for government mandates and artificial demand creation.
The fears you mention are the direct result and culmination of eighty years of progressive policies. Everything the progressives touch eventually turns to shit. But they never learn. With them its always not the concept but the failed execution.
Seeing Red, yes they are. in Wisconsin a 6000 square foot McMansion costs more than a thousand bucks a month to heat. Lots of below zero days here in winter.
Carol Herman - Hi, baby!
Rob - Thanks, dude. I'm thinking about getting back to "pure blogging" soon (as opposed to just links) on TMR if you want to check out more.
YoungHegelian,
Couldn't agree with you more. The lack of expected integrity was for me the take away from the Wall Street debacle of 2008.
Not me. Wall Street isn't the villain here. Wall Street is expected to do one thing - make money - so what they did in 2008 (take our money) didn't surprise or disgust me. How Washington responded - giving Wall Street our money and then hiring Wall Streeters to fix the problem - did.
It seems to me we are determined to affix blame on the wrong entities because to go after the right ones will implicate ourselves - as I keep pointing out with my Obama/Althouse rants, we voted for these jokers. Wall Street wasn't elected to do right by us, Obama was. To pretend otherwise is a continuation of the problem.
Mito,
My sister blog is by a doctor, so I'm more than schooled on the problems we face in medicine, though he, too, focusses on fraud - including patients wanting something for nothing or endulging in waste. Again - WE are part of the problem - which I never hear brought up in Medicare debates. We're like children, and not very bright ones.
Why is Congress consumed abortion laws and social issues when our economy lies in shambles?
I don't want to get into abortion laws (I'm against R v. W) but my answer is we elected these people, that's why.
What could the private sector do to improve our predicament, for those who don't trust Government. Individuals standing alone are not strong enough to affect change. Rugged individualism is fine if you live in Montana tangling horses somewhere. In the real world, we need each other.
Fraud is a crime - not a job for the private sector - and it will be addressed when we, the citizens of the United States, decide we've had enough and want it prosecuted to the fullest extent to the law. Do it, and let the cards fall where they may, that's what I say. That's what should've happened in 2008.
But you weren't going to get that from any pal of Oprah's,...
"we are determined to affix blame on the wrong entities because to go after the right ones will implicate ourselves"
dingdingdingdingdingdingding!
You'll find out little TomTom Viagra, illiterate scooter filth. Stick to the chilton's manual and okie-doke talent-nite---Jefferson way beyond your little dyslexic white trash brain.
heh heh
con usura
Cubanbob, did you miss the part where I asked what can Government do to create a climate in which jobs can be repatriated, a climate in which manufactures are willing to bring their manufacturing back to the US? Those who are willing to allow our Congress to continue the politics of divisiveness until this country goes bankrupt will deserve what they get I suppose.
Bill Gates is a genius and deserves what he created. His success is exactly what a liberal should be lauding.
This is one of the problems with liberals...they want to dictate who deserves to keep their wealth and who does not based upon whether or not the source of income is in line with their own ideas of correctness.
Now, I think we can all agree that earning income or amassing wealth through ILLEGAL means, like drug running or other criminal activities should be another case.
But, why should your income be taken from you at a higher rate than other people merely because you are in a currently frowned upon business, or because you are the CEO of a firm. Just because you are fortunate enough or hard working enough to earn more, you should be punished? You don't deserve to keep your legally earned income? Punitive taxes.
Why should your lifetime of accumulated wealth be carved up and taken from you upon death? Because other people deserve the fruits of your labor and you don't? Estate taxes.
Picking and choosing winners and losers based on emotion, envy and political correctness.
is all meaningless and pointless. This causes them to feel inchoate feelings of rage that they can't bear to bring against themselves so they turn it outward to the only targets they've ever known: Mom and Dad, in the guise of "rich white Christians who run the world." The actual fact is, the supposedly indie, alternative, "other" or at least "other"-celebrating folks have become the Man, and they can't deal with it
I think that's called "KARMA" for the boomer generation.
Get that AA, AmazingCracki.
Maybe like finish your first argumentative essay you stupid little piece of shit.
And, J, my mama is still alive. 86 and still kicking!
So, she doesn't have a grave, yet.
You'll have to piss elsewhere.
I've buried two wives, but they are buried on opposite coasts.
Piss away!
I can always tell when I've really made your day. You take a trip over to my blog to release your rage.
Rage away!
Gates invented and owns the Windows operating system, the most successful product on the market for the past three or four decades..
Just to clarify, Gates himself, back long ago when he was still programming, did compilers. IBM found an operating system bundled with Microsoft compilers and thought that MSFT owned the OS too. It didn't. Digital Research did, and then when DR didn't do the deal that IBM wanted fast enough, MSFT went with a clone of the DR OS, which was ultimately MS/PC-DOS. This sort of clone wasn't illegal (yet) under the copyright laws, but ultimately probably became such - after DR had signed an agreement with IBM (and MSFT) to hold them harmless.
I had thought that Windows NT was the only thing that MSFT had actually written/invented on its own. Apparently not - it apparently originally came from DEC.
It has always been interesting to me that MSFT has done so badly in the OS arena. Gates got a pre-release view of the Mac, because MSFT was supplying the compilers for it. He apparently went back to MSFT and ordered them to duplicate the Mac look and feel. It took most of a decade and many, many, millions of dollars before they had a credible competitor.
What Bill Gates is/was, is/was one of the best businessmen of his generation. He could see where the industry was going, and ruthlessly go there, destroying all the competition. But, as a result, hundreds of millions of people have a decent GUI interface to their computer, and, indeed, the computer itself at an affordable cost. And, putting a usable computer on so many desktops around the world is what made him so rich.
BTW, also note that Bill Gates, Jr., was never really poor, or, indeed, in the lower middle class. He was solidly upper middle class, with a father who was a partner in one of the top law firms in Seattle.
BTW - I think Mark Styne is brilliant and am GRATEFUL that he's an American now, because we need him.
Few commentators are as focused on our collective frivolity and folly as he.
First off, A-tards, Gates ripped off many people (Xerox for one). He mainly hit it big at the IT casino by being in the right place at the right time, and having skilled programmers and engineers (he's not a programmer). For that matter MS has been hit with many anti-trust suits per US Fed law. Then most A-tards don't likely know US history from its crackpipes (ie, the anti-trust/monopoly legislation of early 20th century). Even Teddy Roosevelt opposed robber baron capitalism, dumbasses
Thanks for the correction, Bruce. Your depiction of Gates' role is better than mine.
Gates saw clearly that the operating system and the hardware were separable. Apple lost the PC battle precisely this reason. Apple was (and is) determined to bundle together the OS and the hardware, which pushes the cost of an individual PC up considerable.
Gates made the correct decision. The PC is a fungible commodity. The OS is the real source of value.
Also, if this becomes a thread for addressing J above all else - as it used to become with Garage Mahal - I'm getting out of here again:
I'm sick of that nonsense.
Idiots are idiots, and there's just no sense in addressing them.
Crack I couldn't agree with you more about the Government bailing out the banks , but to say no fraud happened on Wall Street is a bit naive. Bundling of shit mortgage backed securities and rating agencies that gave these a triple A rating, FRAUD.
It Is disgusting to see the very types that run Wall Street giving away tax payer money to banks that defrauded themselves ,then came begging . Corporate welfare and bailouts have cost this country plenty.
Gates didn't rip off anybody.
He bought the rights to the OS for a pittance because the owners didn't see its potential or know how to market it.
Every hugely successful company ultimate faces anti-trust lawsuits.
J is right as usual. Bill Gates had everything handed to him because he was a rich white man. While poor Rosita or Shaniqua struggle to become nurses. If only there were a program where poor struggling Latinos and Blacks were given a preferance over whites and those dirty orientals.
I think those orientals must cheat. Nobody works that hard.
I think there's something to what Applebaum is saying, but it's not the stuff. It's the attitude. I find it disturbing that many upper-middle-class people are openly condescending to, or contemptuous of, ordinary middle class people, particularly those without college degrees.
Also, there's less social mobility than when I was growing up. I'm 51 and my father worked for the post office. My parents sent their children to college, I went to law school, and we've all done pretty well. There are far fewer factory jobs and far less job security for many middle class people these days. The public schools have gotten worse, and college tuition has exploded, widening social stratification.
There is a lot of misdiagnosis about these divisions going around. It may be because most cannot figure out what is going on, and it may be because a lot of people have agendas (such as the elitist Democrats in D.C. showing supposed solidarity with the Occupy people).
Growing up back in the 1950s and 1960s, we were solidly upper middle class. My father was an attorney, and their friends were professionals, bankers, etc. And, if we tried to play with the kids of the car dealers or produce company owners in the neighborhood, this class difference was pointed out (those families also tended to be Catholic, which was another problem - and, even worse, the produce company owners were all Italian, and fairly rich). It was all about class - whether you had a college degree, what degrees you had, whether your grandparents had gone to college, etc.
Most of that has seemed to disappear over the last 40+ years. To a fairly great extent, an attorney in private practice, esp. in a small firm, often feels more sympathy for the plumber who has his own small company, than he does the attorney working for a government.
We saw with the Madison protests last spring/summer that probably a bigger division these days between the haves and have-nots is between those with government and/or union pay and pensions, and those not having them, but paying for them instead. The "haves" have bankrupted many a town, country, and state with their incessant demands for more, more, more. And, they have an unholy alliance with the politicians - the "haves" here put and keep these politicians in office, and the politicians vote them largess at the public expense in return.
So, no surprise that the left is desperately trying to change the debate from this dynamic, because their power is to a great extent based on that unholy alliance I mentioned above.
Yr the idiot, Amazing Cracki, not to say an untalented illiterate perp .As Glenn Reynolds himself agrees. Like I said, get the AA Einswine.
That was the point Doktor Hayden---Gates was rich to start (as is the case with most Merican "entrepreneurs"), and then got richer by being in the first wave of the software racket. He may be shrewd,and clever--but mostly just another corporate opportunist. And MS still faces anti-trust suits as do most of the big software biz
Mito,
Bundling of shit mortgage backed securities and rating agencies that gave these a triple A rating, FRAUD.
Those mortgages were backed by the government, which forced the banks to make them. That's fraud, but not by Wall Street.
It Is disgusting to see the very types that run Wall Street giving away tax payer money to banks that defrauded themselves ,then came begging . Corporate welfare and bailouts have cost this country plenty.
Those "types that run Wall Street" were in government at the time. And banks that "defrauded themselves" are guilty of only that.
The whole deal was a scam, and we elected the scammers.
Also, Bill Gates (like Steve Jobs) is guilty of being lucky enough to be interested in the right thing at the right time.
Applebaum uses the phrase "the income" several times as those this thing, this object, this concept of "the income" is taken as a whole and carved up by those we cannot quite identify but who are doing it unfairly. "the income" is like a big wad of dough that is being pulled this way and that and parceled out to him and her in a way that just isnt right and which is causing concen to journalists and big thinkers everywhere. The notion of static income and static strata in society is wrong.
J, you really are stupid.
Gates inherited wealth and intelligence from his father.
The intelligence is probably the bigger factor in his success. Gates knew how to structure deals and how to manage the paper work.
This is what is called "success." His father created success. Gates created more.
This is a good thing. Something for Rosita and her family to emulate.
The answer is not to punish the Gates family for their intelligence and success.
MA. would the fraud you refer to be that of financiers or of the rating agencies? I believe the rating agencies had access to the due diligence files and the hard contracts of the securities they were rating. Were these tampered with to cause the rating agencies to wongly rate the securities or were the rating agencies unilaterally deciding to fraudently wrongly rate them? If the latter what was in it for the rating agencies? If the former the altered documents and spreadsheets would be evidence of fraud. The govt has not found this later case to be so.
Bruce Hayden,
So now the "haves" are union and or government union workers? Do these government workers not also pay taxes? o they not put in a days work , like in the private sector? To paint government workers as taking away from the private sector workers is misguided at best. So it's Ok for private sector middle income workers covet government sector middle income workers? Why don't people stop coveting what others have and pay attention to improving their own working conditions?
Or did I misinterpret what the gist of your comment is?
Crack, you and I are in complete agreement, although we're using different terms.
What you call "New Age," I call do-gooderism.
Everybody got caught up in their sanctimonious stupidity about Diversity and New Age and all the other crackpot stuff that really boils down to "everything would be better if everybody would just be nice."
Yes, just about everybody bought into the bullshit. Electing Obama was the epitome of the Diversity, do-gooder, New Age bullshit.
We brought it on ourselves. And, now everybody's pissed of and wants somebody to blame. And, revenge.
Michael, oh now today I am worth addressing? Has my brain grown since yesterday? No more insults?
So now you trust the government ?
Mitochondri, you continue to impress with your "intellectual," leftist stupidity.
You apparently missed the entire contretemps over public worker compensation in Wisconsin.
Public employees are paid with something called "taxes."
In Wisconsin, as in other states and the Fed, public employee union dues were being funneled into Democratic Party campaign funding.
When Democrats were elected, they sat across the bargaining table from those public employees and "negotiated" salaries and benefits.
In other words, all cost controls were abandoned in a system of mutual kickbacks.
That's what everybody's pissed off about.
MA. Just asking a question to affirm that your assertion of fraud on the part of Wall Street is based on a slogan and not on any understanding of what you asserted.
I think we live in a remarkably commercial, material, and capitalistic society and that always invites all sorts of spiritual malaise and questions about meaning and purpose. Some fill that with God, some with secular Gods and causes, some with New-Age spiritualism, some with family, some with work, most with music etc.
I'm content with maintaining that commercial, material and capitalistic society and pursuing my own interests and meaning outside of the marketplace and mostly letting it be (and I'm morally repulsed at times. I don't need it to be a "public square" in the way that so many redistributionists go on about.
I just see Appelbaum hopping onto the latest bandwagon that people have made circling around...hovering above the city...feeling marginally in touch with her country as cosmopolitans are wont to do.
I respectfully disagree
Michael,
The notion of static income and static strata in society is wrong.
Hear, hear!
This is partially what I meant when saying we're suffering from a lack of imagination. That socialist line - there's only so much money, and not enough to go around, unless we take from those with more - is a prime example. Whatever happened to creating wealth? I used to do very well and, as a musician, I didn't have to take from anyone - I might have investors but, beyond that, I created my money by writing songs people responded to. That's what has gotten away from these kids - or was never given to them:
The sense you have to actually do something for it.
But why should it? Look around - we've been applauding anyone who has a dime, with no questions about how they get it.
I've got a friend who answers everything with "Well, they're making money." Jenny McCarthy and Suzanne Somers are killing kids with their anti-vax nonsense? "Well, they're making money." Oprah ripped off her audience with "The Secret"? "Well, she's making money."
This guy's 65 years old.
Who can blame ignorant kids for not knowing better? And whose responsibility is it to educate them now that they've been indoctrinated?
I say to start busting the criminals - really BUST THEM - then we'll all know who's-who and what's-what.
I betcha a lot of the fallen would be people held up as supposed heroes now.
Chrisnavin. Well put.
Our unionized public service workers are true heros. They should get everything they want and more. Why should they be denied anything they want? They shouldn't have to pay into their medical insurance plan like the rest of America. And they should be able to retire after 20 years so they can get a full pension while they work another twenty years and get another pension. This way they can double dip and have lots of money when they retired.
I mean they earned it! Especially the teachers. It's not their fault that the childrens can't read. It's the parents or TV or the Republicans who don't want to spend every available dollar on more money for our wonderful teachers.
STOP ATTACKING OUR BRAVE GOVERNMENT WORKERS YOU PARASITES!
Hayden's typical superficial generalization (and manipulation)-ie, the Demos are all elitists--is just BS. Some Demos may be elitist and wealthy.So are GOPers. Some aren't. Harry Reid does alright supposedly but nowhere as wealthy as Darryl Issa. The "elitist" point--typical Limblow hype-- doesn't mean jack.
You look at the politicians' actual record--who fights for workers/middle class, schoolteachers, environment, etc and then who always assists the wealthy, oil companies, developers, tobacco, etc. And yll note in that regard Reid, while hardly perfect, is superior to Issa. (unless maybe yr Exxon/big oil swine).
Of course the usual ...dirtbag teabagger thinks that policies which help Exxon, the kochs, etc and the wealthy help him-- he's been well-hypnotized by Fox,Limblow, Glenn Beckster, and supply side hype.
Gates didn't rip off anybody.
He bought the rights to the OS for a pittance because the owners didn't see its potential or know how to market it.
I think that it is a matter of opinion, and how you define "rip off". Gary Kildall, the founder of Digital Research and inventor of the CP-M operating system, sure thought that Gates had ripped him off.
What happened, that all can agree upon, was that after MSFT couldn't, or didn't, broker a deal between DR and IBM, they instead supplied QDOS to IBM for their brand new PC. What has never been clarified is exactly when MSFT bought QDos.
As noted before, QDOS was a clone of a DR operating system at the user interface level. This means that the same user commands would essentially work the same way. At the time that this all happened, the standard for copyright infringement was literal copying of the source code, which probably was not going on. Only later did copyright extend to the user interface, through "look and feel" (which, despite assertions to the contrary, is not dead). Right now, and for the last decade or so, the answer to whether MS-DOS would infringe the C/R for CPM/CPM-86 would likely depend on the Circuit in which the issue was litigated, with the 9th Circuit, in which MSFT and DR resided, being the most likely to find no infringement (i.e. Apple v. MSFT and HP), while I would guess infringement would be found in more than half the other Circuits.
I think that there is a high probability that QDOS, and thus MS-DOS and PC-DOS, would have violated DR's copyright, when the law swung from literal copying of code to look and feel. BUT, as I noted above, by then, DR had done a deal with IBM where they absolved both companies of C/R infringement. The deal seems to have been that in exchange for this release, IBM would put the DR OS (I believe CPM-86) in the IBM catalog - but it went into the catalog at such a high price that few were ever sold this way.
There is a saying that the victors write the history books, and it has sure been that way in the case of MSFT, IBM, DR, and the history of DOS. By the time the PBS special had come out, Kildall was, of course, dead. But maybe a year after his death, I was able to borrow a copy of his unpublished autobiography from the guy who was with him when he fell and hit his head after drinking, and then talked a couple times with his 2nd wife (the one in the PBS special was his previous wife) at a bar in downtown Austin.
Thanks, that wasn't in his parameters, I have a 3000sf in suburban Chicago and I only hit $500/m if we have a lot of below 0 days. I couldn't figure out how a house my size could cost that.
If we want to stop the outsourcing, we have to make ourselves more attractive.
So we either have pure food and pure clean air which will not happen, or we live with reality and deal with where we are now and lift these job-killing regulations.
And of course there are no mutual kickbacks between government and private sector employers are there?
On a personal note Shouting Thomas, why must you be so vicious, for once can you try to be civil?These threads usually come to a screeching halt when the insults start flying.I am not an innocent party in this , but usually get involved because I am defending myself. I'm willing to try civility but won't be anyones victim.
"And of course there are no mutual kickbacks between government and private sector employers are there"
Except that the government does not set the pay of the private sector employees.
Yesterday there were a couple of long posts by Bruce Hayden laying out in considerable detail the kind of life lived by those who reap the highest economic rewards in our society. Maybe the kind of life that must be lived would be more accurate. What it boils down to is that to achieve great wealth one must be intense, extremely focused,driven. And of course put in 55 - 60 hour weeks for what amounts to most of your life. Hayden was concentrating on doctors and lawyers but I'm sure the same is true of business executives, who are always called high powered for a reason. So the fierce and focused will, some of them, achieve top status. And the Anne Applebaums will resent the hell out of them but never once consider the life they have to lead to get there. In a sense those who achieve big time can't help it, they're driven, and those who are spectators are spectators because they're not driven. And what can be done about either condition? Resentment is like ranting against the sun coming up in the morning.
Mitzie is 100% right. Stop being so mean Shouting Thomas. And stop picking on schoolteachers like Mitzie's daughter who is a teacher and in the army and an astronaut.
STOP YOUR CRITZING AND PAY MORE TAXES YOU RICH PARASITES!
The actual corollary for your argument, Mitochondri, would be kickbacks between government and private employees, not private employers.
Private employees don't have any representation or any way to extract money from the government.
Certainly, yes there are mutual kickback arrangements between government and private employers.
Take Solyndra and the entire green industry and the Obama administration, for example.
Private employees shoulder the majority of the tax burden. I'm sure I speak for all private employees when I say that I'm just as annoyed by kickbacks to private employers as I am by kickbacks to public employees. I'd put an end to both if I could, because I'm the cash cow both are exploiting.
The notion of static income and static strata in society is wrong.
Got data? In fact the data contradicts your typical uninformed generalization. Social strata--ie class-- is fixed, for the most part. Bill Gates, from a rich family, gets rich. Amazing Cracki's stay po', no matter how much the mutha-f-ers be out flat-footin'.
Ahh yeah ... the power of positive thinking, peoples
You look at the politicians' actual record--who fights for workers/middle class, schoolteachers, environment, etc and then who always assists the wealthy, oil companies, developers, tobacco, etc. And yll note in that regard Reid, while hardly perfect, is superior to Issa. (unless maybe yr Exxon/big oil swine).
What you don't get is that a politician cannot be both for unionized government employees and for the rest of us. Their pay and benefits come out of our pockets.
They can pretend. They can claim to be protecting the middle class, but if they are supporting higher pay and benefits for unionized government employees, they are not working for us, but for the government workers. And, yes, when the President wants to send more money to these groups (a big part of his new "Jobs" bill), that is precisely what he is doing, shipping our money to his biggest constituents.
BTW - note how he brings Rep. Issa into this. Why Issa? Why not Boehner, Cantor, etc.? Think Issa's Fast and Furious investigation, and that it is now starting to draw blood, with the AG now having lied before Congress, etc. It is called smearing the messenger to divert attention from the message, which in this case, is that Holder's DoJ expedited the transfer of thousands of guns to Mexican cartels in a multi-agency, multi-district, multi-departmental operation, and hundreds died as a result, at least 2 of which were American government employees working to keep us safe.
Tell it brother J!
I love it when you speak Negro!
Ricpic, resentment is a wasted emotion. I don't think there is nearly the extend of resentment toward the rich and successful as some want to believe. There is however resentment by middle and low income workers that their wages over the last 40 years have remained stagnant and that jobs that used to sustain the middle class have been shipped to countries are now enjoying the middle class we are losing to them.
Again I say we need to have a government that makes jobs and bringing back manufacturing to our own country a priority over abortion legislation.
You're absolutely sure of that, J? The class system is set in concrete?
Then how do you explain this...
My oldest sister was born in a shotgun shack in the middle of the cornfields of Illinois, just like me.
She and her husband are now stupendously wealthy and own mucho real estate in Honolulu.
They made it all by working hard in the medical industry, and through clever real estate investments.
J. Check out the length of time people in the bottom 25% spend in that category. Not long. Find the data yourself if you are really interested in the topic, which i suspect you are not.
Ah Byro the stoner-sockpup. back again with multiple s-names (Mito, AM'sMom.etc) here to derail again and found a new phran--Shouting OkieDke. Talentnite palsies--Osmond medly!
Rational discussion is impossible in a klan bunker Mikey--so just call them "chandala".
Either way, as usual your biz school econo-hype is mistaken .Class is fairly fixed. In America, there is some movement--world wide--no.
I haven't notice that abortion is dominating the political agenda, Mitochondri.
Riddle me this...
I've traveled pretty extensively. The Philippines may be a poor country, but the populace is well educated, and most people speak fluent English. They are more than willing to work the graveyard shift in customer service and help desk jobs for $15,000 a year. How much to you think an American worker wants?
Same is true for India. India produces great programmers. They can bid on a job for $15 an hour and live as well in India as I can live in the U.S. on $75 an hour.
Extrapolate this to manufacturing.
You think that this is just a political reality, or it it just an economic reality? How can American workers produce a product at the same cost as a Chinese worker?
MA. When we were a manufacturing powerhouse we were the only nation on earth whose factories had not been destroyed in WW II. We had no competition for decades. During that time we also had no EPA, no Dept of Education, no TSA, no 20,000 pages of regulations on pending healthcare. The govt cannot "bring back manufacturing" as easily as passing a bill.
I'm going to clarify before someone bashes me, I mean to say that the Government needs to focus on bringing back manufacturing. NOT creating jobs, that won't work, it cannot create long term jobs,it would merely be a shot in the arm, our country must start producing goods again.
MA. Maybe a lot of jobs are in the shipping department where jobs are shipped overseas. Are cliches your only stock and trade?
I say we need to have a government that makes jobs and bringing back manufacturing to our own country a priority
How do you propose the government accomplish this?
Citigroup just paid 285 million to settle a case in which they sold a package of toxic mortgage backed securities to customers that had no idea it was shit, that Citigroup knew was shit, and bet millions it would go bust. And for the most part, financial firms own Congress.
Hmmmmmm, I wonder what OWS is all about?
Boring topic.
Michael, even though I really am still pissed off at you I will respond to you. I have asked several times now, what can be done to entice manufacturers back to the US? It will be way more than just simple legislation, I know. Perhaps when China's own bubble bursts, But then again there are other places in the world with poor willing to work for peanuts.
Ah well , maybe there is truly no hope and the poor and middle income bastards are screwed, maybe they will get used to poverty and embrace it as their lot in life. One can only hope , right?
Is that really what OWS is about, garbage?
Then why are they marching on Rupert Murdoch's house in Manhattan?
Why do I suspect that they are all going to vote, and serve as fodder in the upcoming election, for President Goldman Sachs (i.e., Obama)?
Michael, I knew my first instinct to not respond to you was right. I won't make that mistake again.
That last comment, Mitochondri, is why I keep referring to you as a stupid "intellectual."
Nobody is in favor of impoverishing the American middle class.
Well, except for people who favor open borders.
And, maybe those people who favor shutting down the U.S. oil and gas exploration biz. Like liberals... and Obama.
Taking the shackles off the U.S. oil and gas exploration biz would open up tens of thousands of jobs in the U.S.
Enforcing the border, and stopping HB1 immigration of, primarily, Indian programmers, would open up tens of thousands of jobs in the U.S.
Somehow, I think I know where you stand on these issues.
I have asked several times now, what can be done to entice manufacturers back to the US? It will be way more than just simple legislation, I know.
No. Seriously, what do YOU think can be done by government to encourage manufacturing in the US? We do need to have more manufacturing and industrial jobs.
I have some ideas, but I do want to know what you think or if you have any ideas about how the situation might be turned around.
Likewise, Mitochondri, I'm convinced that letting employers decide who they want to employ, i.e., ending racial and sexual quotas, will also open up tens of thousands of jobs in the U.S.
Are you willing to give up the liberal social engineering agenda in order to generate jobs?
That liberals social engineering agenda doubles and triples the costs of producing goods in the U.S.
Well, yr right, to some extent Herr Doktor Hayden: Cantor, Boehner Issa all belong in the class of GOP Vermin (tho Boner's a ..waffler, looks like-- even compromised on SS and HC at times..Sarah Palin doesn'tlike him--a little marian rat).
The jobs bill was not only aimed at union workers. Usual teabag hype. Do the fact checking yourself. The point holds--the GOP work for the wealthy, the yacht club GOP--. Some of their policies--tax breaks-- might help a very little,or appear to. But you don't know fuck about politics --or Reality--if think Issa, Boner,or Cantor care about the middle class and workers. AS with cap.gains slashes--does the average middle class person have a bunch of stocks and bonds?No.Perhaps a few upper middle class. But the cap-gains slash did help the yacht club, believe it. That doesn't stop the middle class teabugs from thinking the GOP-TP's helping them out. Hypnotized by Fox.
ST,
Please quit taking the bait from Garage and J.
Mito,
We don't have to bring manufacturing back - we're in the Information Age and, despite appearances, practically alone there. The question is, what do we do now? We have these amazing tools at our disposal and you're stuck wishing we can be back in a sweatshop. It's madness.
I'm looking for investors in my project - most of you know what it is already - whenever you decide to quit questioning my motives, and decide you want to make some money, I'm all ears.
THAT's what we should be doing,...
Thank the Good Lord that you are here to monitor the comment section J and please continue to grace us with your lucid and inspiring commentary.
I don't know what this comment section would be without your stellar participation!
Can you tell us more about the dangers of the Mormon, Wiccan, Homosexual and Progressive Jew danger to our wonderful country? Can you mock the Crack Emcee with some more Negro Dialect posts ?
I never tire of hearing about it.
I know the Althouse woman feels the same way!
You just stuck your hoof in your pie hole again, J.
Yes, very large number of middle class people do own stocks and bonds in something called "diversified funds."
These holdings are called "401(k)s."
The devaluation of these 401(k) is the source of all the anxiety, idiot.
Jesus, are you stupid.
wow ShoutingOkie-Doke and Dust-Nixon Queen with some cutting-edge tweek-fueled mumbling. Cut mah taxes, goldangit.
The TP trailer park -aka Mansonites-- in action
Hey Audie Murphys Mom, either get that tongue out of your cheek or spit out the tobbacy chaw, whichever applies. ;^)
No, Shouting Dumbass they don't . Capital gains cuts benefit the very wealthy (not you). Hardly the middle class at all. That you have some chintzy 401k doesn't mean jack,retarded Mansonite queer. Stick to the chiltons manuals puerca-mierda.
I don't have my tongue in anyone's cheek Mr. ricpic!
I am just here represent the liberal values that my son and all of his fellow liberals fought for in the Military.
When you mock me you mock the absolute moral authority that I claim as my right. When you mock you mock the insightful comments that are the hallmark of this blog. When you mock me you mock brave souls at OWS another puppy dies.
Why are so cruel? Are you Mormon or are you Wiccan?
Until we got started on the 401(k) shit, J, I had no idea how fucking stupid you are. I knew you were stupid as a rock, but I'm going to have to devalue my opinion of you intellect by several levels.
401(k)s are the common pension savings of middle class people.
It is common now for a middle class person who made $50 to $75k to have a 401(k) that holds in excess of $200,000. That's because they made paycheck contributions, and their employer made matching contributions.
You're a complete fucking economic idiot, J. Look up "diversified fund," moron. Get back to me and I'll interpret the words you don't understand.
There's no bait--,you're just another peasant, Cracki trash. As Instapundit knows, and most of Blogland--just untalented uneducated yokels and perps--like yr pal Shouting Okie-Doke, or Wicca Queen, and Byro the LDS stoner--aka AM's mom, Mito, 60grit etc..
Jus STFU and do Reason a favor Cracki
When someone laments that we have to manufacture stuff again, I say we make a lot of stuff like video games etc and that is what a lot of people are buying today. If I am wrong, why do I see all those TV ads for Madden NFL and Wii etc?
I am skeptical that any organized religion would accept Ricpic.
What could bring more manufacturing back to the US?
Well, first you have to determine what it is that manufacturers need.
1. Access to the raw materials in quantities and prices that make it affordable to produce.
2. Access to labor that is either skilled or trainable and who will work at a wage that is competitive while still attractive enough to draw and retain qualified personnel.
3. A tax climate that is not oppressive or punitive
4. A regulatory environment that is reasonable, stable (meaning not changing without warning) that allows for future planning.
5. Access to capital at reasonable rates and in reasonable time frames.
6. The ability to get their products to market and the ability to be able to factor those costs into future pricing structure with some certainty.
7. Lastly a market for their products, people who want to buy or can buy, and the ability to be competitive to other similar manufacturers and still make a profit.
PROFIT is the only thing that will bring manufacturing back.
Extrapolate from these "needs" to what the government can do or should not do and you will have your answers.
you're the idiot, shouting Tweek-swine-bag--illiterate, economically inept,incapable of coherent writing, pure shit--like your mama's panocha, -mansonite buttboy
And a perp,and headedback to prison, trash. Got that, scum?
There's no accounting for "Slate."
As with the Lithwick piece the other day, these people are lost in their own little SWPLtopia.
It's like "The New Yorker" magazine, without the funny cartoons. Except they have Doonesbury.
Applebaum would be well served to go out and meet some people in the classes she purports to write about.
Sounds like intervention NixonQueen. A no-no for Teabugs. Or, maybe ask some wealthy nicely to invest in RedBluff real estate! Doesn't happen that way.
Stick to the tweek recipes.
I'm supposed to be pissed that somebody else has a McMansion and goes skiing?
That is stupid.
Is that Applebaum's argument? That those of us below upper middle class earnings are stupid?
Crack, the information age also requires an education, brains, constant adaption and will possibly make a technological world elite (or at least the kind of Davos, Aspen idea festival type landscape that media types at the Atlantic suck up to and feel good about themselves)
There are plenty of cosmopolitan types invested heavily in equality of outcome and world government that doesn't necessarily look out for Americans and free trade.
There's plenty of room for Leftists there to take any inequality... exploit it and eventually make more of it in the name of equality.
This is where we could find common cause with Britain, by the way, in escaping the grip of endless bureaucracy and world Euro zone dreams, or providing another path away from its maladies
Take your hothouse Tina Brown, trashy tabloids, deeply rooted class system and resentment, Queen worship (we have more independence and good reasons than the Canadians and the Aussies) back.
Let's keep trading, looking out for terrorists, and maintaining our own economic freedoms at home.
THE FARCE IS UPON US!
Slang--the grunt of the human hog
Grunt on hoghouse
(Shouting Tweek-pig--you lost again, little aged pissant--checkmate in what 20 moves or less, everytime--(same case for yr new palsie Byro the AZ LDS-acidhead!) . Now, google yr hero Bush and his cap gains slashes and start over, dreck--maybe in a few months yll get it, single-wide)
"... Can government make a welcoming climate for the repatriation of American jobs?..."
Sounds wonderful. Any thoughts on how to accomplish this?
"... It Is disgusting to see the very types that run Wall Street giving away tax payer money to banks that defrauded themselves ,then came begging ..."
Were you equally disgusted that Obama circumvented Federal bankruptcy laws and bailed out GM?
I doubt that. I don't know from computers, but I recall reading something about COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) comoponents being used in some of our military equipment, the upshot being who-knows-what being programmed into our systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_off-the-shelf
Are you all aware that J chose that letter for 2 reasons? The first reason is because [J]erry Springer is his favorite show. The second being he's actually Judenrat, and is immersed in self loathing. But he sure drives up those numbers doesn't he, professor!!!
"I say we make a lot of stuff like video games etc and that is what a lot of people are buying today."
We're attracting quite a bit of these guys away from the US to Montreal and Vancouver. Montreal gives big tax breaks.
:)
In general I'd say Germany is an excellent model for keeping/ helping industry.
I'm not writing an article about it, but she reflects reality for my greater family, so I can't scorn it either.
I don't think the resentment is about the size of the house as the state of mind - relative ease. However, anecdotally, the men seem to more commonly get seriously ill much earlier - in their 40s despite healthy lifestyle, healthcare, money, so the accumulated stress will find a way out - usually through the hearts of the guys.
"Quebec luring video game jobs from the US"
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-tools/small-business-briefing/quebec-luring-video-game-jobs-from-us/article2154555/
Audie Murphy, You're a breath of fresh air. I hope you stick around.
AJ Lynch - "The income inequality meme is false IMO. It is nothing but a political cudgel being wielded by Dems and the MSM year after year."
===================
Lynch mentioned "one-third of tax filers had incomes between $40,000 and $200,000. They accounted for 59% of the total incomes reported by all filers.
There were 48 million filers in this group and I believe they are our middle class. They represent about 40% of all households."
His problem and others who are saying no income inequality problem exists is that most of those people within that bracket can come up with personal evidence that they are losing ground despite being harder working and more productive than ever, while America created considerable wealth in the last 30 years. Because that wealth creation went to redistribution to entitlements, and a lions share of the remainder to the Upper 1-2% of people. The very wealthy have, through illegal immigration, free trade, and outsourcing of jobs to China for profits that go to the 1% from chopping labor costs - managed to keep real income for most of the middle class flat or declining in the last 30 years.
They know that tax cuts for the wealthy created no net new jobs in the 2000's. They laugh when some right wing pimps for the rich refer to that class as "the jobs creators".
The amount of wealth controlled by the Top 1% now exceeds their share right before the Great Depression.
So some people feel a need to "keep up with the Joneses", eh? There's a breathtaking new insight.
She'd be better off sticking to her day job of shilling for Roman Polanski.
garage mahal said...
And for the most part, financial firms own Obama.
FIFY
Are they losing ground Cedar? Or are they just overspending? I can provide personal evidence that driving through 'poorer' parts of Indy neighborhoods there are no shortage of satellite dishes. How many kids don't have a cell phone it smart phone?
You guys make it sound like 19th century Dickensian England when instead much of the middle class losing ground is because they overspent.
DBQ - "What could bring more manufacturing back to the US?"
She lists several items, concluding only profit will site manufacturing in the USA.
Lets add some other things:
1. Tariffs or "voluntary quotas" like Reagan forced on the Japanese and Germans to site their factories here.
When you slap tariffs on, you automatically negate the lure of wealthy owners chasing an unlimited supply of cheap 3rd World labor..because tariffs cancel out the cheap labor advantage of moving millions of formerly high-paying jobs offshore.
(no one can dream that every job in America save the owner classes ones, and "national security jobs" is up for bid - while our domestic market is otherwise totally open and free for foreign plundering)
2. Eliminate the encouragement US firms have to park profits offshore tax-free and build manufacturing elsewhere while only a portion of that for the execs and main shareholders can filter back for compensation.
3. Pass the word that if multinationals persist in saying that they have no loyalty to America, only their shareholders and execs compensation - "That the execs and shareholders will have to be the ones that pick up rifles to take back their property if a foreign nation seizes it - not the US Armed Forces."
4. We have to acknowledge that many regulations we have for businesses regarding the environment, worker safety and rights are desirable and we cannot go into a race to the bottom to house minimally paid sweatshop workers in prison-like barracks with no health care benefits while factories churn out immense air and water pollution in an effort to "compete with rivals who do".
Called satire Audie-AZ-acidboy--a type of dissent (which tends to bother mormon trash--as with Twain's superb mockery of Brigham Dung--ie, Clemens cackled at yr white trash AZ-Utah peoples, Byro-boy).
Audie Murphy, You're a breath of fresh air. I hope you stick around.
yuk yuk yuk .,You mean... yrself??, "Spinelli" the terrorist with multiple accounts (the server admin's tracing all yr posts, perp--and yr email traffic too. Buh bye Byro Bendapen--now retaliating for people reporting his mail order fraud to the CA)
J Capital gains rates benefit everyone who owns stocks including those owned in 401Ks.
Hoosier Daddy said...
Are they losing ground Cedar? Or are they just overspending? I can provide personal evidence that driving through 'poorer' parts of Indy neighborhoods there are no shortage of satellite dishes. How many kids don't have a cell phone it smart phone?
==================
Well, instead of looking, ask your neighbors or storekeeps or friends. In my neck of the woods, the answer is it has been downhill since Clinton left Office and it wasn't nearly the boom times like the 50s-60s according to the oldsters, even before that.
Some manifestations you see are kids with cell phones because parents have given up believing higher ed is affordable. No college tuition fund, but at least the kids will have computers, video games, and cell phones.
The satellite dishes from people that are poor, in the lower middle class that have determined cable TV is cheaper than the winter vacation they used to do, is.
You can rail on the poor a bit - about how between welfare, Section 8 housing, WIC, free health care, and having SSI supplemental income for 6 of your 8 chilluns or illegal ninos and ninas can give the money to get nice sneakers, cell phones, satellite dishes......but the real problem is a middle class that is now joining the disaffected. And not over how persecuted the richest 1% are with taxes - but how for them personally they think the game is rigged against them in America now by the rich and by the government.
Cford- income inequality is a red herring. But yes, I agree with you that income redistribution and growing wasteful entitlements [medicaid, unemployment, welfare etc] aka social programs make it harder and harder for the 40% to save any money. If one can't save money, it is damn hard to create wealth.
Today, the fed govt spends about $700 Billion per year on welfare type programs. That money could instead go to every working age adult. They'd could each get $3,700 per year and could use to save and create wealth.
Bottom line is the govt is the biggest obstacle to creating personal wealth in the middle class.
The Crack Emcee said...
ST,
Please quit taking the bait from Garage and J.
Here's how it works. Sixty Grit gets his comment deleted for calling a fat bitch a fat bitch. In the same thread, J heaps his psychotic bile on half the commenters, but his comments get to stay. J is a gold mine for Professor Althouse's hit score. The more we respond to J's sick assholery, the more she likes it. The bottom line-- Boycott J.
J: By the way, Pynchon only wrote one great book and one fair one, The Crying of Lot 49. Not going to be read fifty years from now, barely read at the moment.
Tariffs!? Why interventionism C4. Verboten for libertarian-teabugs. Might work for like nasty statist germans . but not for noble capitalists (in fact Obama has implemented tariffs--on cheap chinese products for instance---so that Walmart can't put everyone out of business)
Michael said...
By the way, Pynchon only wrote one great book and one fair one, The Crying of Lot 49.
You're forgetting V, also not great, but similar in mood to Gravity's Rainbow. I couldn't finish Vineland.
TS: Vineland and V both, in my view, were derivative and self referential. Hard to categorize guys like Pynchon who are like comets.
"Hmmmmmm, I wonder what OWS is all about?"
Making sure people are distracted from Congress and the President, so such firms can publicly be derided, while maintaining sweet deals behind the scenes?
Capital gains rates benefit everyone who owns stocks
Did I deny that, Mikey, pal of the A-klan? No. I said that the benefits to the middle class were negligible (not non-existent). But the benefits to the wealthy--Rush Limblows,Kochs,Cantors,Exxon execs, Issa etc---,are not negligible but monumental, and remove a large amount of revenue that could --indeed should be used to pay off deficit, save programs--even for DoD budget. . Thats how supply side trickle-down hype works---the McTurnipseeds may see a few extra 20s--maybe into 100s-- on their 401k or corn futures when the cap gains are cut. The Kochs see 2 million+ for doin' nothing.
In fact, Byro-"Tyrone" never read a page of Pynchon in his life--did not know that Slothrop was a Pynchon character (in GR) until someone told him on here.
Im sure Pynchon, while aged now would want the Byro-hayseed--WASP conservative and teabug trash-- sued for plagiarizing his character--especially since "Tyrone" argues , or more like routinely belches for Paul Ryanish-Nixonish policies. The real Tyrone's no rightist--he's a freak more or less.
Señor Pynchon hates rightist-nazis (like Byro's hero Schwarzenegger) ..not even down with the usual corporate liberal clowns--Pynchon may not be a..marxista per se but def. anti-capitalist. Who was ..Tristero?? Not the TP that's for sure. So Mikey yr in effect helping out the klan again. This hayseed Byro-Tyrone doesn't know fuck about Pynchon's writing--he needs sedation. (and those of us who actually read and value COl49, GR,Vineland,V etc. should get a little petition together really against this scumbag..wont happen at A-house)
I come from a lumpenprole background and have scaled no great heights. Even so I'm comfortable with my station in life. That's my opinion now. Back in the seventies, I worked two jobs a week and sometimes ended the year deeper in the hole. Those were the inflation years, and money, itself, didn't make much sense. I didn't think much of market forces back then. I felt that my fate under capitalism was to work hard and die broke......In the eighties and nineties, things went right side up, and I caught a few breaks. There's nothing like having your portifolio double in value a few times to make one appreciate the plus side of capitalism.....I've been on both sides of this street. I don't think market forces are an exquisitely calibrated mechanism for measuring one's worth. A lot of rich people are just lucky or palmed a few cards. I will say, however, that market forces are a more accurate guage of worth than the Dept. of Income Fairness and the Plutarchy Adjustment Bureau. And, in economics, nearly everyone is in agreement is that their own self interest is the principle, ideal, and goal that society should strive for.
Since I'm not that old, I will pay capital gains taxes on my 401k distribution when I take my distribution?
I thought that was straight income tax?
Capital gains rates benefit everyone who owns stocks
Lower capital gains rates benefit everyone.
It is called the velocity of money: or how often a dollar is turned over through the economy.
Stagnant money sitting in unrealized gains does no one any good.
Realized capital gains that are then spent on goods or reinvested stimulates the economy.
C4 - you are anti-capitalists as usual. We already tried your trade war stuff in the 1930s.
America still #1 in manufacturing
Lord Keynes vs the Dirt Bunny Queen!: The introduction of a substantial Government transfer tax on all [stock market] transactions might prove the most serviceable reform available, with a view to mitigating the predominance of speculation over enterprise in the United States.
Alas, you appear to have been refuted, Miss DBQ (the evils of speculation a rather common theme in the Gen.Theory. Maybe take it on DBQ)
Wow Sorepaw, I looked up Dr.Deborah Frisch, you may be on to something. There is nothing scarier than when a psychologist has a nervous break down, our staff psychiatrist used to strip naked in the front lobby and be hauled off to the Psych ward once a year, like clockwork.
That's right, sorepaw the terrorist aka Byro Bendapen--IPs already been traced. Wait n see, you braindead LDS yokel. Po' lil J**ey
lets hear yr explanation of Maxwell's demon, genius and "Pynchonian". a googlin' time
Multiple spam accounts (note no info,no profile, no blog)--not too bright Byro perp. IN fact a felony at times. Heh heh. CDC time, terrorist. Yr the psych. case here little hs dropout. -druggie
Seeing Red. My bad, ordinary income for 401s. I was thinking mutual funds when i wrote.
What is really amazing about Dr Deborah Frisch has a daughter who is a Navy Seal that was in the team that got Bin Laden.
In her mind.
Government … cannot create long term jobs …
Every so-called job created by government comes out of the pockets of the taxpayers – most of the time at great cost. It would be cheaper to merely give the money away. But that would be a guaranteed annual wage which would also be hugely problematic. Anytime the government attempts to create jobs it only makes things worse.
Every “jobs program” ever created by government has been an abject failure – from FDR through Obama. The Manpower Development and Training Act of 1962, the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973, the Job Training Partnership Act of 1982, and others since those examples never really helped anyone get permanent jobs. Government paid-for training is usually a farce.
In the areas of jobs and employment the government can only improve these things by getting out of the way. I am by no means against some regulation of the private sector but much regulation only serves to hamper the economy.
Dr.Frisch is responsible for restoring the sanity of Audie's Mom after her son committed suicide in her basement. What a success story!
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