You can *always* invent excuses not to accumulate wealth, and the credit card companies will thank you for it! And the federal government is always inventing excuses to spend your wealth for you, and your employer is always inventing excuses not to give you a raise, and insurance companies are always inventing excuses to raise rates, and banks are always inventing excuses to reduce rates and increase fees, and oil companies are always inventing excuses to raise prices on gasoline, and lenders will always invent excuses to raise interest rates, and the stock market will always invest excuses about why your retirement funds tanked.
I know it's so much easier for you to blame the individuals who are stuck at the bottom of the system but the reality is that there's a larger system at work that they have no control over and, if you could be bothered to add it all up over the course of the year, the debt of the middle and lower classes comes primarily from avenues which they have no control over.
If you live in your means you do not need credit. So you're just going to flatly ignore the reports of the % of American households living paycheck to paycheck, and ignore the statistical occurence of unforseen financial expenditures, and ignore the increased debt spending by the federal government, and ignore the total yearly tax burden and its increase on households already living paycheck to paycheck? What's it like being able to dismiss so much of reality just to support your self-superior rants?
The first thing is to get a place to live that costs no more that 1/4 your wage! So you're going to ignore the profit motive of the housing industry, and the statistics of the housing industry, and the influence of real estate development groups on zoning within cities, or the fact that, for many major corporations, the same board members for the employer are major investors in local real estate developers and that they rely on placing a certain percentage of their employee population, whose salaries they control, in housing whose rents/mortgages they control? Nice denial of reality. Never, not once since graduating college, have I even been able to find housing within a reasonable distance of my employer that didn't sap 33% of my take-home pay.
Here is a good piece of advice, buy an older used car and pay cash for it. So you're going to ignore the reality that, for the significantly increasing majority of American households who are living paycheck to paycheck, the statistical and unavoidable occurence of a breakdown will cause a complete meltdown of their paycheck-to-paycheck monthly finances? How's that ivory tower?
For the last several years I have made $39,000 a year and managed to provide for a family of 4! I know several millionaires who make less than the poverty line and provide for a family of over ten. The unverifiable nature of your claims notwithstanding you've still proven nothing except that you're carefully hiding a source of privelege for the sake of casting yourself in the most innocent light possible.
t is only because I worked my A** of getting here! That's what every major investor who got rich quick off of dot-bomb pump-n-dump scams claims. How are you any different and, even if you are as honest as you claim, how does your good fortune negate the reality of life for the rest of the disappearing middle class?
Facts are facts, bub. If you don't believe that the sky is blue, or that water is wet, or that Santa Claus lives at the north pole, then that's your problem. It's become obvious over the last several months that there's some inner brain malfunction which causes you to enjoy being a griefer on Slashdot.
If you want evidence of the existence of the World Bank, or the Federal Reserve, or the International Monetary Fund, or if you want to know who sits on their boards of directors, or who their primary business partners and investors are, or if you want to know what families they are descended from, or if you want to know anything about PR, financial profiling, credit scoring, or the distribution of wealth by population in the United States you are free to query Google.
I've already done my research. I cannot help it if you refuse to do yours.
unless taxes are raised or created to pay for it, Name one year in the last 20... even one... where taxes weren't raised or created. Name one year in the last 20... even one... where the federal spending didn't increase.
No one's credit report score is related to the scores of their parents. How is "scores of their parents" the same as "financial solvency of their family"?
No, and I never stated anything that could possibly confused with what you asked. Your entire post was filled with examples of how people with a poor credit score are continually further relegated to paying more for nearly every purchase they will ever make. How is that not granting advantages to people whose familial wealth can afford to pay off their big mistakes while perpetually penalizing even the smallest of mistakes for people who weren't born with that privelege?
No. Perhaps you should read what's written, not what makes the best irrational rant. Again, your entire post does nothing but attempt to espouse how the credit score is injected into every aspect of a person's life. Are you saying you didn't write that post?
You replied to what I said, but you didn't address anything you said to what I said. You can't possibly be serious or, if you are, your attention is obviously distracted by something else (maybe you're at work) to the point where your reading comprehension has deteriorated to nil. Try reading Slashdot on lunch break.
Income taxes have actually dropped from a high of 39.6% in the late 90's to now. For which tax bracket is that? Maybe you're averaging all of them? Where did you make that number up from? Are you suggesting that income tax even somewhat represents the total tax burden that an average citizen pays over the course of a year?
The Dow is near record highs right now Is that every company within the Dow, or just the Dow as a whole? Are you suggesting that there are not funds which are stacked with profitable favorites? Are you suggesting that there are not funds which are laden with unprofitable duds and that the former are coveted by priveleged inside traders while the latter are dumped on the general public?
Every single one of your statements is so obviously an utter denial of reality that I can only suspect that your brain is severely damaged.
This is where your mental illness, or supreme inadequacy, is showing. Theory would be that international bankers are all philanthropic saints who are in business for the greater good of all humanity.
FACT would be that international bankers exist, they have held their businesses within their close circle of family and friends for centuries, and that they are shrewd businessmen who, through living in private communities with private security forces, have distanced themselves from the social problems created by their deliberate and cutthroat pursuit of profit margins.
But don't let the facts interrupt your rants and steady stream of daily hate which you direct towards me.
Proof? Evidence? Try google for Federal Reserve, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, shrewd business practice... whatever you like. It's easily available.
Live responsibly within your means and these are not critical problems. And that's becoming easier every year with middle class salaries barely meeting (standard) inflation, not counting the enormous increases in insurance premiums or the enormous decreases in standard investment paths available to those same middle class workingmen.
Where do you people come up with this crap? It's easy to live within your means, at any salary, when your government isn't continually saddling you with more and more debt while the stock market moguls are draining everyone dry.
It must be nice to live in a world where you've never bothered to take a hard look at where the money goes.
Learn to live in your means Is that what my Senator was saying while he was signing another $500 billion over to the Iraq debacle?
I love it when people on easy street preach. It's like listening to the speaker at an MLM/pyramid scheme presentation talk about how easy it is to get rich quick!
Sure, it should be the purchaser's responsibility to find out what they're getting themselves into, When investors lose money on the stock market then "that's the way the cookie crumbles".
When a bank loses money on a loan default, though, then it's all guns blazing it's all the fault of the consumer who took out the loan.
Must be nice for the corporate/banking overlords to have it both ways.
So basically you're all in favor of weighting a person's entire life based upon the financial solvency of their family before they're even born? Additionally, you prefer to allow those who make big mistakes (but have the family financial solvency to cover it) to be eligible for "sensitive government decisions" while those who make small mistakes (but without the financial solvency to cover it) will be eternally destined to swabbing toilets? Additionally, you're in favor of injecting that arbitrary credit score, based upon criteria which are obviously weighted to favor those who inherited wealth, into every aspect of a person's life?
I mean do companies legally have to report good and bad things to your credit report? The number of good things which can positively affect your credit score is much, much smaller than the number of bad things. This works in favor of those who are already independently wealthy (they don't have to worry about it) and those companies in the credit industry.
If not then you could pay on time for 10 years, then miss one payment and they could put that on your credit history w/o it reflecting 10 years of on-time payments. That's quite an accurate assessment.
Do other countries do this same kinda BS that we do here in the states? To a greater or lesser extent this is a system which is deployed worldwide. World banks and financial institutions have been running this game since world trade began to have a significant impact over a majority of the population. I estimate this to be about the time that Great Britain and Spain began their worldwide empires in earnest, around 1000.
Logically speaking, factoring in human nature, those who control the minting of a trading currency have always sought to use their control over that currency to influence and control the people who make use of it.
Asking for the government to step in and correct the system is precisely the wrong thing to do--politicians are easily bought and the buying is easily disguised. In all truth the most significant factor which has contributed to the downslide of the American middle and lower classes into perpetual debt has been their very own government contributing their tax money into the pyramid scheme.
There's really no way out of it now, though, unless you can think of a non-violent revolutionary way of wresting control away from the banks, businesses, and political movements which gained near supreme power after the Civil War and, forty years later, the creation of the Federal Reserve.
Unfortunately the catch is by doing so you are accepting the risk that your investment will continue to earn 13% in the future That's why it only works for people who are already wealthy or already socially connected with the insider traders (and the former usually contributes to the latter). For the average working American it's a losing proposition because they don't have the insider advantages enjoyed by those who are already independently wealthy and in the know about which funds are going to be stacked with Wall Street favorites and which funds are going to be the dumping grounds for bankruptcy and insurance scams.
If it's planned then it's a conspiracy. If it's not planned then it's Darwinian. Whatever it is, though, it's completely disingenuous to have the government nepotically assisting the American pseudo-royalty in running a pyramid scheme on the middle and lower classes--a pyramid scheme from which they have no choice to opt out of given the total percentage of their yearly income which is funneled into that scheme through taxes.
The Federal Reserve, the central bank which handles the printing of legal tender here in the US, is also not technically part of the Federal Government. Maybe that will help to put some perspective on.
The whole credit system just stinks. Yes. For all practical purposes it is a privately run pyramid scheme--with strong government support garnered by keeping the politicians themselves fat, well financed, and happy--meant to create debt, maintain debt, keep people in debt, and work them until they die of debt.
But don't get too excited. It's the same scheme that the international banks and financiers have been running for at least 500 years. I wouldn't call it a conspiracy. I would call it "smart future planning" executed flawlessly by people who found themselves in a position to create indentured servants out of entire nations and ensure rich and famous lifestyles for their progeny for centuries at a time.
And, in the original context, "interstate commerce" did not mean "everything under the sun". Maybe you could tell us what the Constitutional defintion of commerce was in 1776 because, reading the history book sections about the troubles the Revolutionary Era Patriots had with Great Britain, excessive regulation and abuse of the economic and commerce law was one of the primary reasons why we're not still a British colony.
The concepts expressed in the 9th and 10th Amendments also indicate that you're perception isn't in line with the true principles which founded this nation. You are in line with the conpiratorial overlords who have held power since the Civil War, though, so you can take solace in that.
The only people to blame for racking up debt are the people who rack up the debt.** It's a free society, you get to make your own choices, and you get to be responsible for the choices you make, good, bad, or ugly. Yeah? So who's responsible for forgiving France's WW-II debt? That would be the taxpayers. Who's responsible for the US WW-II debt? That would be the taxpayers. Who's responsible for the post WW-II rebuilding debt? That would be the taxpayers. Who's responsible for the debt incurred by Korea and 'Nam? That would be the taxpayers. Who's responsible for the debt incurred by runaway federal spending in the 80s and 90s? That would be the taxpayers. Who's responsible for the multiple government bailouts of the SNL/Insurance industry through the 80s and 90s? That would be the taxpayers. Who's responsible for the $500 billion spending bills, three of them for just Afghanistan, Iraq, and Homeland Security alone? That would be the taxpayers. What total percentage of your income is sapped through the thousands of taxes hidden everywhere in our economy? That would be somewhat over 60%.
If you're in the majority group of Americans making 30-60k/year, and already living paycheck to paycheck with college loans to boot, how well can you tolerate additional government debt spending?
Let's get the facts straight on who's spending the majority of the money here--and how little control the rest of us have over it.
Are you saying that every single one of the best AV software authors are too stupid to be able to write malware?
Or are you suggesting that every single one of the best AV software authors are, by some supernatural intervention, of such outstanding moral and ethical calibre that they would never do such a thing?
Or are you implying that every single one of the best AV software authors are so completely, single-mindedly, dry that they would never consider the academic exercise of writing extremely low-level "system administration software"?
Or are you trying to spread the idea that every single one of the best AV software authors are such mindless automatons that they would never brainstorm about new and novel malware methods in their course of duties?
And, if you're going to be rational enough to point out that "every single one of" is a little bit extreme, just what percentage of the global group of AV software authors do you suppose falls into the above categories? Of those, how many of them have family members, friends, social colleagues, or professional associates who have access to their ideas and experimental code and, of those family members, friends, social colleagues, or professional associates, what percentage of them meet the criteria of saintly moral and ethical fibre?
I think it's obvious that you're very wrong to dismiss the idea that a good portion of 0-day exploits and malware comes from inside the professional sector as "conspiracy theory" or "canard".
Some guys in a support center used logins that weren't theirs (but they were given permission to use) to gain access to software patches and support documents I don't know if I should be thankful that someone finally put all that into perspective or disgusted that so many other people run with the spin ("they stole code" as if they made off with an entire codebase repository and turned it into a multi-billion dollar OS after chaning the --version string) and try to make it stick as hard as possible.
Parent needs to be +5 and reindexed to the top of the page.
Sounds like somebody doesn't love our worshipful Great Profit I'd hate to see the color of the cotton in your ears. I love profit just as much as the next guy. Problem was that I wasn't getting enough of it and negotiating with management was like negotiating with a brick wall.
I wasn't willing to keep my mouth shut just to pay bills. If the bills are that important let someone else pay them. I'm in this, not just to pay bills, but for a nicer slice of pie.
Because, that sounds like a methodical way for an institution to restrict any citizen's rights. No way! That would be a crackpot conspiracy theory! Haven't you been reading the ACs who have been griefing me relentlessly for the last six months?
my place of employment falsely accused me of representing that they endorsed my own political goals, I decided it was best to shut my mouth so I would be able to keep paying my bills If that could've been properly documented I think there is federal protection for termination threats based upon political affiliation.
In the real world, though, that sort of thing is nearly impossible to document fully and, even if it is well documented, one must still retain the services of an attorney ($$$) willing to stake their reputation against what could be a multimillion dollar company, and their respective insurers and financiers, with more than enough legal backing of their own.
Not that I would know anything about how that sort of situation plays out. It would most certainly be indicative of an "OMG teh evil conspiracy!" if I were to suggest that I've been on the worse end of a similar situation.
We're not talking about business decisions. We're talking about the decision to use U.S. military force in external conflicts...If you'd like to have a rational discussion If you can't see the connection between US business decisions, the stock market, the Federal Government, and the usage of the military--especially in an era when the stock market bubble, 9/11, military subcontracting in South America, and the Halliburton-White House connection are so obvious--then you're beyond any possibility of rational discussion.
But if this is going to be "my dark conspiracy theories Venture capitalists don't have conspiracy theories. They have control over world economics and, through that, world politics and world military deployments.
What's it like living in a fantasy world simplified so that a preschooler can understand it?
Slashdot Mirror
I know it's so much easier for you to blame the individuals who are stuck at the bottom of the system but the reality is that there's a larger system at work that they have no control over and, if you could be bothered to add it all up over the course of the year, the debt of the middle and lower classes comes primarily from avenues which they have no control over.
Facts are facts, bub. If you don't believe that the sky is blue, or that water is wet, or that Santa Claus lives at the north pole, then that's your problem. It's become obvious over the last several months that there's some inner brain malfunction which causes you to enjoy being a griefer on Slashdot.
If you want evidence of the existence of the World Bank, or the Federal Reserve, or the International Monetary Fund, or if you want to know who sits on their boards of directors, or who their primary business partners and investors are, or if you want to know what families they are descended from, or if you want to know anything about PR, financial profiling, credit scoring, or the distribution of wealth by population in the United States you are free to query Google.
I've already done my research. I cannot help it if you refuse to do yours.
Your trolling is just laughable.
Every single one of your statements is so obviously an utter denial of reality that I can only suspect that your brain is severely damaged.
This is where your mental illness, or supreme inadequacy, is showing. Theory would be that international bankers are all philanthropic saints who are in business for the greater good of all humanity.
FACT would be that international bankers exist, they have held their businesses within their close circle of family and friends for centuries, and that they are shrewd businessmen who, through living in private communities with private security forces, have distanced themselves from the social problems created by their deliberate and cutthroat pursuit of profit margins.
But don't let the facts interrupt your rants and steady stream of daily hate which you direct towards me.
Thank you for promoting my journal. It's clear that I'm being swarmed by trolls... similar to this.
For all we know you're Pudge, you're posting AC, and you can't handle it when someone else posts the truth of matters which you profit from.
What rock do you live under?
Where do you people come up with this crap? It's easy to live within your means, at any salary, when your government isn't continually saddling you with more and more debt while the stock market moguls are draining everyone dry.
It must be nice to live in a world where you've never bothered to take a hard look at where the money goes.
I love it when people on easy street preach. It's like listening to the speaker at an MLM/pyramid scheme presentation talk about how easy it is to get rich quick!
When a bank loses money on a loan default, though, then it's all guns blazing it's all the fault of the consumer who took out the loan.
Must be nice for the corporate/banking overlords to have it both ways.
So basically you're all in favor of weighting a person's entire life based upon the financial solvency of their family before they're even born? Additionally, you prefer to allow those who make big mistakes (but have the family financial solvency to cover it) to be eligible for "sensitive government decisions" while those who make small mistakes (but without the financial solvency to cover it) will be eternally destined to swabbing toilets? Additionally, you're in favor of injecting that arbitrary credit score, based upon criteria which are obviously weighted to favor those who inherited wealth, into every aspect of a person's life?
Here's to the artistocratic plutocracy!
Logically speaking, factoring in human nature, those who control the minting of a trading currency have always sought to use their control over that currency to influence and control the people who make use of it.
Asking for the government to step in and correct the system is precisely the wrong thing to do--politicians are easily bought and the buying is easily disguised. In all truth the most significant factor which has contributed to the downslide of the American middle and lower classes into perpetual debt has been their very own government contributing their tax money into the pyramid scheme.
There's really no way out of it now, though, unless you can think of a non-violent revolutionary way of wresting control away from the banks, businesses, and political movements which gained near supreme power after the Civil War and, forty years later, the creation of the Federal Reserve.
If it's planned then it's a conspiracy. If it's not planned then it's Darwinian. Whatever it is, though, it's completely disingenuous to have the government nepotically assisting the American pseudo-royalty in running a pyramid scheme on the middle and lower classes--a pyramid scheme from which they have no choice to opt out of given the total percentage of their yearly income which is funneled into that scheme through taxes.
But don't get too excited. It's the same scheme that the international banks and financiers have been running for at least 500 years. I wouldn't call it a conspiracy. I would call it "smart future planning" executed flawlessly by people who found themselves in a position to create indentured servants out of entire nations and ensure rich and famous lifestyles for their progeny for centuries at a time.
And, in the original context, "interstate commerce" did not mean "everything under the sun". Maybe you could tell us what the Constitutional defintion of commerce was in 1776 because, reading the history book sections about the troubles the Revolutionary Era Patriots had with Great Britain, excessive regulation and abuse of the economic and commerce law was one of the primary reasons why we're not still a British colony.
The concepts expressed in the 9th and 10th Amendments also indicate that you're perception isn't in line with the true principles which founded this nation. You are in line with the conpiratorial overlords who have held power since the Civil War, though, so you can take solace in that.
Who's responsible for the US WW-II debt? That would be the taxpayers.
Who's responsible for the post WW-II rebuilding debt? That would be the taxpayers.
Who's responsible for the debt incurred by Korea and 'Nam? That would be the taxpayers.
Who's responsible for the debt incurred by runaway federal spending in the 80s and 90s? That would be the taxpayers.
Who's responsible for the multiple government bailouts of the SNL/Insurance industry through the 80s and 90s? That would be the taxpayers.
Who's responsible for the $500 billion spending bills, three of them for just Afghanistan, Iraq, and Homeland Security alone? That would be the taxpayers.
What total percentage of your income is sapped through the thousands of taxes hidden everywhere in our economy? That would be somewhat over 60%.
If you're in the majority group of Americans making 30-60k/year, and already living paycheck to paycheck with college loans to boot, how well can you tolerate additional government debt spending?
Let's get the facts straight on who's spending the majority of the money here--and how little control the rest of us have over it.
Are you saying that every single one of the best AV software authors are too stupid to be able to write malware?
Or are you suggesting that every single one of the best AV software authors are, by some supernatural intervention, of such outstanding moral and ethical calibre that they would never do such a thing?
Or are you implying that every single one of the best AV software authors are so completely, single-mindedly, dry that they would never consider the academic exercise of writing extremely low-level "system administration software"?
Or are you trying to spread the idea that every single one of the best AV software authors are such mindless automatons that they would never brainstorm about new and novel malware methods in their course of duties?
And, if you're going to be rational enough to point out that "every single one of" is a little bit extreme, just what percentage of the global group of AV software authors do you suppose falls into the above categories? Of those, how many of them have family members, friends, social colleagues, or professional associates who have access to their ideas and experimental code and, of those family members, friends, social colleagues, or professional associates, what percentage of them meet the criteria of saintly moral and ethical fibre?
I think it's obvious that you're very wrong to dismiss the idea that a good portion of 0-day exploits and malware comes from inside the professional sector as "conspiracy theory" or "canard".
Parent needs to be +5 and reindexed to the top of the page.
I wasn't willing to keep my mouth shut just to pay bills. If the bills are that important let someone else pay them. I'm in this, not just to pay bills, but for a nicer slice of pie.
In the real world, though, that sort of thing is nearly impossible to document fully and, even if it is well documented, one must still retain the services of an attorney ($$$) willing to stake their reputation against what could be a multimillion dollar company, and their respective insurers and financiers, with more than enough legal backing of their own.
Not that I would know anything about how that sort of situation plays out. It would most certainly be indicative of an "OMG teh evil conspiracy!" if I were to suggest that I've been on the worse end of a similar situation.
All that said: sell-out. =P~~~~
What's it like living in a fantasy world simplified so that a preschooler can understand it?