US is still a democracy unlike Hitler's Nazi germany. I know that this is something that most people never bother to think about: do you have any idea which banks held the funds for the Third Reich and who the executives were at the tops of those banks? Any idea which corporations made the bombs which the Third Reich dropped, and which banks held the accounts for those corporations, and who the bank executives were at the time? Any idea which banks dealt with the currency that the Third Reich used on the world market for trade and oil to fuel their airplanes and tanks?
I know this is completely against everything that everyone loves to believe but, the truth of the matter is, the plug could've been pulled on the Third Reich at any time by the forefathers of the very same people who fund the world organizations that pull 90-year old men out of their modest middle class homes in the Midwest and ship them off to prison.
Profit margin wasn't any different then than it is now. The people who died under the oppression of the Third Reich were sold out, not by the Nazi party, but by their own upper class.
If not the Brittish (and they're not) who IS occcupying the US today? In today's world there is no need for forced occupation. In today's world the "occupation" is made by the same private group of money grubbing weasels whose families and friends have held the US Federal Government $73 million dollars in debt since 1776 (Google "history US federal debt", Wikipedia has a rather concise entry on it). The debt has only gone up since then.
Must be nice to have an entire nation as perpetual tenants--and be able to write the terms for repayment such that the debt is never expunged. Must be even nicer to be able to continually sell those tenants further and further into debt with no more effort than a few $500 billion dollar spending bills (Patriot, DMCA, Homeland Security, Afghanistan, Iraq).
Maybe you weren't aware of this but every cellular telephone call made in the world goes through international airspace to a satellite in international airspace, making it an international call and subject to automated aggregator filtering.
The domestic wiretap spying is much larger than the major media would have you believe. They deliberately minimize its scope and application because, if they didn't, this whole situation would be a powder keg. Keeping people ignorant is the only way for them to maintain control over it such that they can resolve it quietly on their own before they have to face the people come next election year.
you can't change the behavior of crazy people, you can only identify them and limit their actions. Is that why the US continues to send hundreds of billions of dollars into the economies of nations with known terrorists?
Good thing the Feds are working to limit the behaviors of those terrorists because giving them money might enable them to do more...
even new houses often have working open fireplaces (hearths) That explains why we don't know what one is. Insurance companies (and managed communities with homeowner groups who can write rules and regulations for the color of your tablecloth) have all but banned those antiquated family gathering centers for all but the wealthiest Americans.
i try to understand how people like you think, and it just utterly escapes me.
You mean like the part where you'll acknowledge someone as completely and utterly lacking in moral character and fiber (an extremist terrorist) but then, if they say something which supports your personal bias, you'll quote them as gospel truth?
The rest of your post is a just a rant. Such as...
basically, you see westerners as responsible people, and you see middle easterners as irresponsible.
Completely unsubstantiated and also completely false. I don't draw responsibility lines based on geographic location of origin. I draw responsibility lines based upon making sure that, for example, the hundred billion which you send to Afghanistan to fight opium growth isn't really turned into AKs and plane tickets for international terrorists--something the US seems to be incapable of doing or even understanding.
you hold westerners responsible for what middle easterners do.
Wow. You're pretty accomplished at the skill of making things up. I hold the US government responsible for the millions of dollars of aid which it sends willy-nilly around the globe. I hold the US government responsible for the billions of dollars of business interest which the politicians and their business compatriots send willy-nilly around the globe. An Afghani with a bad attitude is no different from a New York slum dweller with a bad attitude. The difference is that the New York slum dweller doesn't have access to hundreds of thousands of US taxpayer dollars.
no matter what. EVEN when a nonwesterner attacks the west,
Yeah? Aside from the poorly contrived evidence of 9/11, can you cite one time when this has actually happened?
let's put it this way you blind propagandized low iq sheep:
Either you're deliberately ignoring the universal dependency of financing or else you're describing yourself.
in a world where only westerners can be held accountable
How about we start by holding the Western pseudo-royalty accountable for where they spend their (in reality, our) tax money? I understand that you can't bear to face the reality of financing. Doing so would eliminate the basis for your "it's all teh evil Muslims fault" rants.
If you enable a terrorist then, in my book, you are a terrorist. The US Federal Government has been enabling terrorists since at least WW-II and probably long before.
westerners will be in the middle east forever.
That has nothing to do with my ideas or my perspective or my frame of reference. That's just a fact that follows the multi-billion dollar rebuilding efforts that we (the taxpayers) have been forcibly committed to. It's like East Germany all over again. How much did that cost?
they are the only ones, IN YOUR MIND, who can fix anything in the middle east.
The Middle East was doing whatever they were doing before the US Feds decided to raise a hissy fit about it with a microscope. Now that the US Feds did take the leap to go ahead and break everything in the Middle East then, yes, it's their responsibility to fix it. Sadly they're avoiding that responsibility and doing nothing but passing the cost for that rebuilding onto the blue and semi-white collar taxpaying population who never really wanted to get involved in the first place. Who's dodging responsibility?
it's an extension of your retarded logic: westerner's 100% accountable and responsible
Don't you think people should be held responsible if they buy a hit man? Shouldn't they be held responsible if they buy a bomb and leave it in a building to go off? Shouldn't they be responsible if, under the guise of (faulty) intelligence and acting in the most rash manner possible, they decided to plunge an entire nation into turmoil?
Whether or not Middle Easterners were responsible for 9/11 (which I really, really doubt) the fa
I don't imagine it'll take too long to get a whole pile of information out of him when he sees pictures of his former employer sunning on the beaches of Belize while he's sweating his life away in court/jail/other. Good thing for Bush. Libby's sentence was commuted.
remember, ignorance of the law is not a defense When Congress, just the federal level, creates over one thousand new laws every year I think it's nothing short of fraudulent, and certainly predatory, to expect everyone to know every aspect of the law.
Another fine example of why the Constitutional framers included the 9th and 10th Amendment for the purposes of KISS. What true patriot encourages a government which actively engages in a game of creating laws for the rather ambiguous purpose of catching people who don't stay up 24/7 reading the Congressional RSS feed?
You don't see the obvious problem in your statement?
so you keep blaming the west for what terrorist assholes do. you earn my contempt First you acknowledge that the guy is a deplorable terrorist asshole... and then you go ahead and believe his rationale as gospel truth.
It never quite occured to you that, no matter what he says, he'll be lying for the sole purpose of artificially inflating the perceived importance and power of his extremist associates?
I think the KKK pulled the same stunts.
jihadists bomb the west BECAUSE OF THEIR OWN ORIGINAL RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY Maybe they do and maybe they don't--but I doubt they'd have the ready access to international level funding if the US weren't constantly meddling in, and pouring money into, the systems in their nations from which they can feed off of.
One hundred angry extremists of any religion, training in the desert, aren't going to have any impact until they can afford the plane tickets. That wouldn't be so easy if the US weren't pouring billions of dollars into their local economies.
This is because if he looked at ALL the facts, You mean the facts that show that the US government has been $73 million in debt since its inception and hasn't been out of debt once since? How about the fact that the debt does nothing but increase over the years? No. We couldn't have that fact. It's too obvious.
Classical conspiracy-theorist fact-finding Such as the fact that the easiest money ever made is interest paid on a $73 million dollar debt over the course of 200 years?
Look. In 1890 the average household was in debt twice what they made. 870/475 (about 400 dollars short) or something close to that. In 1998 the average household was in debt about the same as what they made, but about 200 dollars short. 33k/32800.
Now, figure in the growth in population, and the other side pyramids, and the effect of the number of people having to pay taxes on "stuff" (eg. in 1870 we didn't have gasoline taxes and alcohol/tobacco taxes were regulated significantly differently than they are now) and it almost seems as if...
WE'RE STILL PAYING THE SAME GOD-DAMNED PRINCIPLE 200 YEARS LATER!!!
The only way to get "bad" credit is to be fiscally irresponsible.
That's false. As far back as 1890 it was known, per census, that average household debt was nearly double average household income. As of 1998 average debt was still $200 less than average income. This isn't a fiscally irresponsible problem--this is a system of debt which has been deliberately allowed to continue.
Unless you would like to suggest that it's human nature, across a national population, and across over 100 years (documented) to be "fiscally irresponsible" at which point then it again becomes obvious that the credit reporting bureaus are a legal method of discriminating against those who aren't independently wealthy to begin with.
So if the poor don't screw themselves, they will have good credit.
False again. The poor are not screwing themselves. They are deliberately maintained in a system which ensures that they will have debt and statistically ensures that they will never be able to escape that debt. The fact that the federal government began, in 1776, $73 million dollars in debt (which the "poor" never signed for) doesn't help them any.
The government isn't taking her money and giving it to the rich. The government is taking nothing and giving her cash
For every $1000 which goes to some hapless single mother, how many hundreds of thousands are boondoggled in administration? Oh, wait, the expense of administration and the pork which goes along with the salaries for the upper managers and the contracted accounting firms probably doesn't fit with your high-and-mighty self-superior reality, does it?
My complete tax burden (all local, state, and federal taxes, including my $400,000 home and 100 acre farm's real estate tax) is under 20%
So you admit that you're on the positive side of the pyramid scheme and have never bothered to take a long hard look at where your wealth comes from. Congratulations. You're exactly the kind of people that the bankers want.
How you manage to make off with a complete tax burden of under 20% is either a result of some questionable accounting, outright tax evasion, or the exploitation of loopholes--the very things which cause the remainder (and majority of the population) to have to pick up the slack that you're dodging. Don't feel guilty, though, I'm sure you sleep quite well in your $400,000 home on 100 acre farm.
The welfare for the rich (assuming you mean payments for big famring companies, billions for oil companies and such) is tiny compared to the welfare for the needy
The welfare for the rich is not in subsidies. I'm not surprised that you've not bothered to actually look into this since ignorance lends itself so neatly to your argument. The welfare for the rich is in the first two or three levels of disbursement between the US Treasury, Wall Street, and the bank accounts for the recipients of those disbursements from the US Treasury. You have a farm? The first pigs to the trough eat the most and it's as simple as that.
The real welfare for the rich is the military-industrial complex.
No. The real welfare for the rich doesn't even go through the government. The real welfare for the rich is the insider trading information that comes from Washington DC when the people on the gravy train know when to invest in the companies receiving the disbursements, loans, grants, subsidies, etc. from the US Treasury and when to sell when there's a Congressional investigation into accounting coming along.
I would be willing to forgive your ignorance of these systems if you'd decide to face the fact of a deliberately contrived system of debt to ensure the perpetual profit for the same 5-10% of the population whose families have enjoyed the priveleges of the pyramid scheme for the last 200 years, or more.
getting a good paying salaried job
There's the first one. Most people don't get a "good paying salar
Your posts seem to be good intentioned but I think you need to recognize that our population has carried a net debt since it's inception. The Federal Government started out $73 million in the hole. In 1890 the average household debt was roughly twice the average household income. References for these figures are in my other posts and easily Googled.
Now, if 200 years worth of bankers, politicians, and accountants haven't been able to solve that problem--to the extent where today's middle class is disappearing and the wealth distribution gap is growing--I think it's time to face the reality that the system has been deliberately manipulated to, statistically, keep the majority of the population in debt as perpetual, generations long, debtors/rentors/sources of profit and extravagant lifestyle for the people on the positive side of the pyramid scheme.
A better understandng of "how money works" would be a great help to many A better understanding of a history of debt might help you.
But, by all means, go on with the "it's their own fault" rants because that's much easier than facing the reality that the institutions managing the debt deliberately keep them there, as the US government has known full well since at least 1890
The 1890 census discovered the average household had about $880 of debt and only $475 in annual income. Compare that to 1998 when family debt was $33,000 and annual income was $32,800. So, while the Federal Government can go ahead and sign away $500 billion at a pop, the rest of the nation can't even get that extra $200/year that it would take to live within their means.
But, yes, please continue with the "just live within your means!" rant. It's much easier than facing the reality of a manipulated financial system.
You will fall into debt through the fault of not reducing your standard of living Completely ignoring the reality of rent leases, auto leases, or the impact of relocation on employment because it's just so easy for you to preach.
What I have, I earned for myself Of the 278 executives initially named in the court filings for the Enron scandal only six ever saw the inside of a courtroom. The other 268 are saying the same thing you are,"What I have, I earned for myself."
Yes, there are a few people who, because of some disability, are just permanently screwed, nothing they can do about it. Maybe you should look at some census statistics as reported
The 1890 census discovered the average household had about $880 of debt and only $475 in annual income. Compare that to 1998 when family debt was $33,000 and annual income was $32,800. Maybe you'll begin to see that it's been a contrived numbers game since the beginning of our nation.
Debts incurred during the American Revolutionary War and under the Articles of Confederation led to the first yearly reported value of $75,463,476.52 on January 1, 1791. There aren't just a few people who are permanently screwed by bad luck in life. The reality is that the entire population of the nation has been deliberately maintained in debt for the sole purpose of exploitation by the bankers and institutions managing that debt.
Sorry to have to expose you to reality. I know that you were getting off by being able to blame the victims through your ignorance.
It's obvious to most of the world that, if you couldn't afford to pay the $200 balance on your credit card, you won't be able to afford a legal team capable of taking on a credit reporting bureau. You are aware that such an entity can probably afford a legal defense to be rivaled only by the Federal Government or Microsoft, aren't you?
Maybe you're not living in the same nation as the rest of us, but most people are born into debt and, when you couple that with the wealth distribution by population in the nation, it becomes obvious that the banks know that people are in debt, have known about it for hundreds of years, and are actively exploiting that fact to keep them in debt.
The credit reporting bureaus and the "blame the victim" mentality which you espouse are just sideline distractions to keep people from seeing the truth of the matter.
The 1890 census discovered the average household had about $880 of debt and only $475 in annual income Wow. It's just so darn easy to live within your means, isn't it? This is a system which the government has known about since 1890 and yet they still play lap-dog to it because they're on the winning side of the pyramid scheme equation!
Maybe, instead of citing a graph compiled from Encarta data (which is obviously fudged just a little bit to support someone's opinion) hosted on some private user page, you could look at some actual historical record?
Debts incurred during the American Revolutionary War and under the Articles of Confederation led to the first yearly reported value of $75,463,476.52 on January 1, 1791. The Federal Government was selling the citizens into debt to the bankers since the beginning. I suppose now you're going to tell me that the bankers didn't see instant and perpetual source of rent (profit) from this because they're all such good philanthropists who care about their lower class tenants?
there was no national debt increase for many years between the Civil War and WWII because there was no debt at all. Oh really? From the same Wiki (and it has references):
The first dramatic growth spurt of the debt occurred because of the Civil War. The debt was just $65 million dollars in 1860, but passed $1 billion in 1863 and had reached $2.7 billion following the war. The debt slowly fluctuated for the rest of the century, finally growing steadily in the 1910s and early 1920s to roughly $22 billion as the country paid for involvement in World War I [28]. Maybe you would like to revise your statement to correctly reflect history?
But don't let facts get in the way of your illogical and baseless rants Hey, guess what? That's you!
Adults with fiscal responsibility will raise children with fiscal responsibility That doesn't quite explain the need for the SNL bailout, the dot bomb debacle, the Enron scandal, the HP scandal, the Great Depression, and the $13 trillion federal debt... Still denying history and reality, eh?
Are you saying that the poor shouldn't be fiscally responsible because they were dealt a poor lot in life by who they were born to? Where did I say that?
Yes, those with rich relatives will be able to be saved from some of their financial troubles by others, but that won't make them have a good credit score Yes, it will make them have a good credit score because the way the system is set up your credit is at a level and knocked down much more easily than it is built up. If you can avoid the knock downs then you can get a good credit score by default.
and they are the ones that don't need a good credit score Again reinforcing the favoritism inherent in a system which exploits populations of people, living paycheck to paycheck, who have no control over their yearly debt load because, by and large, the government is spending their money for them (and spending it on those who are already wealthy).
So what does a credit score have to do with her style of life? A credit score with even a handful of minor infractions can deny, for the rest of your life, opportunities which are taken for granted by people whose familial wealth prevented those marks from making it to their credit scores. The implication is that, while everyone makes a few credit mistakes, the system is weighted to create a debtor class out of those who couldn't afford to avoid the mistakes which are inherent to human life. And the government supports it! Why would I want to pay taxes to or support an entity which is working for the perpetual indenturing of a large portion of their citizens?
But don't let the reality that you are wrong about what I said, what it means, and what actually happens stop you from continuing about how the man is out to punish the poor.
Don't let the fact that, according to the numbers, the man is out to perpetually enslave the poor affect your self-superiority over your personal good fortune in life. I certainly wouldn't want to encourage you to bite the hand that fed you your cake. It'd probably be too hard on your psyche for you to give up your ego boosting practice of blaming those who are caught in a cycle of financial exploitation. It would definitely be too taxing on your math skills for you to take a hard, close look at the path money takes from the taxpayer, through the government, to the contractors, companies, and other outlets, into the pockets of the already wealthy and empowered, and then doled out in a progressively more exploitative manner until a bare minimum for existence makes it back to the middle and lower class taxpayers.
I grew up in a lower middle class one-parent family. Unverifiable "I'm the same as everyone else" pity plea.
I'll die in the upper class. It's probably the guilt from the get rich quick scheme that you exploited that's causing you to ignore the reality of the system that everyone else is caught in.
None of the things you described, individually or collectively, prevent you from living within your means. Most certainly they do. If you're already living paycheck to paycheck, and someone else decides to increase your financial burden for you, then you will fall into debt through no fault of your own.
As usual, don't let the facts deter you from congratulating yourself on having fallen into a more advantageous position. Besides, it would probably be too difficult for you to have to face the exploitative reality of our economic pyramid scheme. Much better for you to just go on believing that the world is a philanthropic, supportive place and that nobody would ever take advantage of another for profit--most certainly not banks, or governments, or large corporations.
Or when you simply lack the money to spend on what you need. That's the concept that escapes the self-superior Slashdot financial trolls (who are probably employed in the collections business anyway) because, in their view, "what you need" should be reduced to bread and water living in a doorway if necessary. Don't bother to ask them how that would look to an employer.
It's still quite obvious to me, and perpetually sidestepped or outright derided by them as "conspiracy theory", that those institutions which create debt in this nation, statistically, are working to ensure that more and more of the population remains in debt. They can do this easily because the same people who manage the banks also manage the oil companies, and sit at the heads of the major employers, and the insurance companies, and the lobbyists who influence the politicians... But to point any of that out would, again, be derided as "conspiracy theory" because, for those self-superior Slashdot financial trolls, reality is just too difficult to face.
There hasn't been one single year since WW-II, and probably since the Civil War, and maybe even earlier, when federal debt didn't increase and, in lockstep, total taxes rise with them. That's never to be noticed, though, when the trolls are having a circle jerk posting "just live within your means!"
It represents the largest part of federal revenue, at 43% of the budget. So, roughly speaking, if 43% of the budget comes from income tax... and that is around 35% of total income... then the remaining 57% of the budget comes from hidden taxes and the total burden on the upper tax bracket would be closer to 70% of their total income.
So if someone else is spending close to 70% of your money for you then just who is creating the debt? It's obvious that the government is nickle and diming the population to death. Additionally, would you be so good as to tell us, percentage wise, which portion of the population is on the receiving end of that government budget when they spend it? You know, when the government spends that budget money, to whom are the checks written out of the national treasury, and who are the first people who can rely on that US Treasury money to pay their extravagant yearly salaries?
That's what a varied portfolio is for - if you don't have one, then you're not investing wisely, In what alternate universe do you expect a nation of blue collar and semi-white collar middle class workers to be stock market investment experts? You're so far distanced from reality that it's amazing you can find the proper keys to type real words.
The insider trading remarks and the like are just more conspiracy theory. Oh, you mean there's no insider trading? You mean that CxOs aren't compensated with priveleged grades of stock offerings? You mean there weren't 278 executives named in the original Enron filings? You mean that the the Senators and Representatives who manage the subcommittees who spend the taxpayer money don't know which companies and contractors they're going to pour their money into? You mean Bill Gates doesn't know which subsidiaries and affiliates, supported with his own money, are going to perform better than others? You mean that the traders on Wall Street don't have an inside track to preferred favorites or pump'n'dump targets long before the average family broker in the cornfields of the midwest do?
Please. Regale us with more of your fantasy about a world which has no greed, no ulterior motives, no generations long family wealth, no fraud, no exploitation, and in which the IRS gains the approval of the taxpayers before spending their money on boondoggles and pork.
If you are financially irresponsible and live paycheck-to-paycheck, There's an entire nation of people living paycheck to paycheck, and it has nothing to do with them being financially irresponsible.
But it's so easy to blame those who have no control over the financial system which exploits them. That way you never have to question the powerful politicians, bankers, and investment moguls running the scam.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm homeless. Thanks for the suggestion, though. I'll give it some thought when this situation is remedied.
I know this is completely against everything that everyone loves to believe but, the truth of the matter is, the plug could've been pulled on the Third Reich at any time by the forefathers of the very same people who fund the world organizations that pull 90-year old men out of their modest middle class homes in the Midwest and ship them off to prison.
Profit margin wasn't any different then than it is now. The people who died under the oppression of the Third Reich were sold out, not by the Nazi party, but by their own upper class.
Must be nice to have an entire nation as perpetual tenants--and be able to write the terms for repayment such that the debt is never expunged. Must be even nicer to be able to continually sell those tenants further and further into debt with no more effort than a few $500 billion dollar spending bills (Patriot, DMCA, Homeland Security, Afghanistan, Iraq).
Maybe you weren't aware of this but every cellular telephone call made in the world goes through international airspace to a satellite in international airspace, making it an international call and subject to automated aggregator filtering.
The domestic wiretap spying is much larger than the major media would have you believe. They deliberately minimize its scope and application because, if they didn't, this whole situation would be a powder keg. Keeping people ignorant is the only way for them to maintain control over it such that they can resolve it quietly on their own before they have to face the people come next election year.
Good thing the Feds are working to limit the behaviors of those terrorists because giving them money might enable them to do more...
i try to understand how people like you think, and it just utterly escapes me.
You mean like the part where you'll acknowledge someone as completely and utterly lacking in moral character and fiber (an extremist terrorist) but then, if they say something which supports your personal bias, you'll quote them as gospel truth?
The rest of your post is a just a rant. Such as...
basically, you see westerners as responsible people, and you see middle easterners as irresponsible.
Completely unsubstantiated and also completely false. I don't draw responsibility lines based on geographic location of origin. I draw responsibility lines based upon making sure that, for example, the hundred billion which you send to Afghanistan to fight opium growth isn't really turned into AKs and plane tickets for international terrorists--something the US seems to be incapable of doing or even understanding.
you hold westerners responsible for what middle easterners do.
Wow. You're pretty accomplished at the skill of making things up. I hold the US government responsible for the millions of dollars of aid which it sends willy-nilly around the globe. I hold the US government responsible for the billions of dollars of business interest which the politicians and their business compatriots send willy-nilly around the globe. An Afghani with a bad attitude is no different from a New York slum dweller with a bad attitude. The difference is that the New York slum dweller doesn't have access to hundreds of thousands of US taxpayer dollars.
no matter what. EVEN when a nonwesterner attacks the west,
Yeah? Aside from the poorly contrived evidence of 9/11, can you cite one time when this has actually happened?
let's put it this way you blind propagandized low iq sheep:
Either you're deliberately ignoring the universal dependency of financing or else you're describing yourself.
in a world where only westerners can be held accountable
How about we start by holding the Western pseudo-royalty accountable for where they spend their (in reality, our) tax money? I understand that you can't bear to face the reality of financing. Doing so would eliminate the basis for your "it's all teh evil Muslims fault" rants.
If you enable a terrorist then, in my book, you are a terrorist. The US Federal Government has been enabling terrorists since at least WW-II and probably long before.
westerners will be in the middle east forever.
That has nothing to do with my ideas or my perspective or my frame of reference. That's just a fact that follows the multi-billion dollar rebuilding efforts that we (the taxpayers) have been forcibly committed to. It's like East Germany all over again. How much did that cost?
they are the only ones, IN YOUR MIND, who can fix anything in the middle east.
The Middle East was doing whatever they were doing before the US Feds decided to raise a hissy fit about it with a microscope. Now that the US Feds did take the leap to go ahead and break everything in the Middle East then, yes, it's their responsibility to fix it. Sadly they're avoiding that responsibility and doing nothing but passing the cost for that rebuilding onto the blue and semi-white collar taxpaying population who never really wanted to get involved in the first place. Who's dodging responsibility?
it's an extension of your retarded logic: westerner's 100% accountable and responsible
Don't you think people should be held responsible if they buy a hit man? Shouldn't they be held responsible if they buy a bomb and leave it in a building to go off? Shouldn't they be responsible if, under the guise of (faulty) intelligence and acting in the most rash manner possible, they decided to plunge an entire nation into turmoil?
Whether or not Middle Easterners were responsible for 9/11 (which I really, really doubt) the fa
Another fine example of why the Constitutional framers included the 9th and 10th Amendment for the purposes of KISS. What true patriot encourages a government which actively engages in a game of creating laws for the rather ambiguous purpose of catching people who don't stay up 24/7 reading the Congressional RSS feed?
You don't see the obvious problem in your statement?
and then you go ahead and believe his rationale as gospel truth.
It never quite occured to you that, no matter what he says, he'll be lying for the sole purpose of artificially inflating the perceived importance and power of his extremist associates?
I think the KKK pulled the same stunts. jihadists bomb the west BECAUSE OF THEIR OWN ORIGINAL RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY Maybe they do and maybe they don't--but I doubt they'd have the ready access to international level funding if the US weren't constantly meddling in, and pouring money into, the systems in their nations from which they can feed off of.
One hundred angry extremists of any religion, training in the desert, aren't going to have any impact until they can afford the plane tickets. That wouldn't be so easy if the US weren't pouring billions of dollars into their local economies.
Look. In 1890 the average household was in debt twice what they made. 870/475 (about 400 dollars short) or something close to that. In 1998 the average household was in debt about the same as what they made, but about 200 dollars short. 33k/32800.
Now, figure in the growth in population, and the other side pyramids, and the effect of the number of people having to pay taxes on "stuff" (eg. in 1870 we didn't have gasoline taxes and alcohol/tobacco taxes were regulated significantly differently than they are now) and it almost seems as if...
WE'RE STILL PAYING THE SAME GOD-DAMNED PRINCIPLE 200 YEARS LATER!!!
You're such an ignoramus that you should be shot.
The only way to get "bad" credit is to be fiscally irresponsible.
That's false. As far back as 1890 it was known, per census, that average household debt was nearly double average household income. As of 1998 average debt was still $200 less than average income. This isn't a fiscally irresponsible problem--this is a system of debt which has been deliberately allowed to continue.
Unless you would like to suggest that it's human nature, across a national population, and across over 100 years (documented) to be "fiscally irresponsible" at which point then it again becomes obvious that the credit reporting bureaus are a legal method of discriminating against those who aren't independently wealthy to begin with.
So if the poor don't screw themselves, they will have good credit.
False again. The poor are not screwing themselves. They are deliberately maintained in a system which ensures that they will have debt and statistically ensures that they will never be able to escape that debt. The fact that the federal government began, in 1776, $73 million dollars in debt (which the "poor" never signed for) doesn't help them any.
The government isn't taking her money and giving it to the rich. The government is taking nothing and giving her cash
For every $1000 which goes to some hapless single mother, how many hundreds of thousands are boondoggled in administration? Oh, wait, the expense of administration and the pork which goes along with the salaries for the upper managers and the contracted accounting firms probably doesn't fit with your high-and-mighty self-superior reality, does it?
My complete tax burden (all local, state, and federal taxes, including my $400,000 home and 100 acre farm's real estate tax) is under 20%
So you admit that you're on the positive side of the pyramid scheme and have never bothered to take a long hard look at where your wealth comes from. Congratulations. You're exactly the kind of people that the bankers want.
How you manage to make off with a complete tax burden of under 20% is either a result of some questionable accounting, outright tax evasion, or the exploitation of loopholes--the very things which cause the remainder (and majority of the population) to have to pick up the slack that you're dodging. Don't feel guilty, though, I'm sure you sleep quite well in your $400,000 home on 100 acre farm.
The welfare for the rich (assuming you mean payments for big famring companies, billions for oil companies and such) is tiny compared to the welfare for the needy
The welfare for the rich is not in subsidies. I'm not surprised that you've not bothered to actually look into this since ignorance lends itself so neatly to your argument. The welfare for the rich is in the first two or three levels of disbursement between the US Treasury, Wall Street, and the bank accounts for the recipients of those disbursements from the US Treasury. You have a farm? The first pigs to the trough eat the most and it's as simple as that.
The real welfare for the rich is the military-industrial complex.
No. The real welfare for the rich doesn't even go through the government. The real welfare for the rich is the insider trading information that comes from Washington DC when the people on the gravy train know when to invest in the companies receiving the disbursements, loans, grants, subsidies, etc. from the US Treasury and when to sell when there's a Congressional investigation into accounting coming along.
I would be willing to forgive your ignorance of these systems if you'd decide to face the fact of a deliberately contrived system of debt to ensure the perpetual profit for the same 5-10% of the population whose families have enjoyed the priveleges of the pyramid scheme for the last 200 years, or more.
getting a good paying salaried job
There's the first one. Most people don't get a "good paying salar
Your posts seem to be good intentioned but I think you need to recognize that our population has carried a net debt since it's inception. The Federal Government started out $73 million in the hole. In 1890 the average household debt was roughly twice the average household income. References for these figures are in my other posts and easily Googled.
Now, if 200 years worth of bankers, politicians, and accountants haven't been able to solve that problem--to the extent where today's middle class is disappearing and the wealth distribution gap is growing--I think it's time to face the reality that the system has been deliberately manipulated to, statistically, keep the majority of the population in debt as perpetual, generations long, debtors/rentors/sources of profit and extravagant lifestyle for the people on the positive side of the pyramid scheme.
But, by all means, go on with the "it's their own fault" rants because that's much easier than facing the reality that the institutions managing the debt deliberately keep them there, as the US government has known full well since at least 1890 The 1890 census discovered the average household had about $880 of debt and only $475 in annual income. Compare that to 1998 when family debt was $33,000 and annual income was $32,800. So, while the Federal Government can go ahead and sign away $500 billion at a pop, the rest of the nation can't even get that extra $200/year that it would take to live within their means.
But, yes, please continue with the "just live within your means!" rant. It's much easier than facing the reality of a manipulated financial system.
Sorry to have to expose you to reality. I know that you were getting off by being able to blame the victims through your ignorance.
It's obvious to most of the world that, if you couldn't afford to pay the $200 balance on your credit card, you won't be able to afford a legal team capable of taking on a credit reporting bureau. You are aware that such an entity can probably afford a legal defense to be rivaled only by the Federal Government or Microsoft, aren't you?
The credit reporting bureaus and the "blame the victim" mentality which you espouse are just sideline distractions to keep people from seeing the truth of the matter. The 1890 census discovered the average household had about $880 of debt and only $475 in annual income Wow. It's just so darn easy to live within your means, isn't it? This is a system which the government has known about since 1890 and yet they still play lap-dog to it because they're on the winning side of the pyramid scheme equation!
As usual, don't let the facts deter you from congratulating yourself on having fallen into a more advantageous position. Besides, it would probably be too difficult for you to have to face the exploitative reality of our economic pyramid scheme. Much better for you to just go on believing that the world is a philanthropic, supportive place and that nobody would ever take advantage of another for profit--most certainly not banks, or governments, or large corporations.
It's still quite obvious to me, and perpetually sidestepped or outright derided by them as "conspiracy theory", that those institutions which create debt in this nation, statistically, are working to ensure that more and more of the population remains in debt. They can do this easily because the same people who manage the banks also manage the oil companies, and sit at the heads of the major employers, and the insurance companies, and the lobbyists who influence the politicians... But to point any of that out would, again, be derided as "conspiracy theory" because, for those self-superior Slashdot financial trolls, reality is just too difficult to face.
There hasn't been one single year since WW-II, and probably since the Civil War, and maybe even earlier, when federal debt didn't increase and, in lockstep, total taxes rise with them. That's never to be noticed, though, when the trolls are having a circle jerk posting "just live within your means!"
So if someone else is spending close to 70% of your money for you then just who is creating the debt? It's obvious that the government is nickle and diming the population to death. Additionally, would you be so good as to tell us, percentage wise, which portion of the population is on the receiving end of that government budget when they spend it? You know, when the government spends that budget money, to whom are the checks written out of the national treasury, and who are the first people who can rely on that US Treasury money to pay their extravagant yearly salaries? That's what a varied portfolio is for - if you don't have one, then you're not investing wisely, In what alternate universe do you expect a nation of blue collar and semi-white collar middle class workers to be stock market investment experts? You're so far distanced from reality that it's amazing you can find the proper keys to type real words. The insider trading remarks and the like are just more conspiracy theory. Oh, you mean there's no insider trading? You mean that CxOs aren't compensated with priveleged grades of stock offerings? You mean there weren't 278 executives named in the original Enron filings? You mean that the the Senators and Representatives who manage the subcommittees who spend the taxpayer money don't know which companies and contractors they're going to pour their money into? You mean Bill Gates doesn't know which subsidiaries and affiliates, supported with his own money, are going to perform better than others? You mean that the traders on Wall Street don't have an inside track to preferred favorites or pump'n'dump targets long before the average family broker in the cornfields of the midwest do?
Please. Regale us with more of your fantasy about a world which has no greed, no ulterior motives, no generations long family wealth, no fraud, no exploitation, and in which the IRS gains the approval of the taxpayers before spending their money on boondoggles and pork.
But it's so easy to blame those who have no control over the financial system which exploits them. That way you never have to question the powerful politicians, bankers, and investment moguls running the scam.