Not to sound like a smartass, but if you really find yourself expecting that you will be executed in such a fashion, then you should arm yourself and prepare to make use of said arms in your defense. Police response times in the cities are at least 5 minutes, a nanny state mechanism which itself is far too long for effective self-defense... but the revolutionary times you envision, your cavalry won't be coming at all.
Public disarmament in America just isn't working. Not only is the philosophy and action unconstitutional, but in practice it only disarms the citizens for actual criminals (and police) to take advantage of. So, I hope that you're not waiting for public disarmament to save you.
Now that we have a standing all-volunteer army, there is absolutely no need for citizen militias (which is why there aren't any).
Well, make sure you write your Congressional Representative and Senators, Roscoe, since despite the so-called lack of "need", the Second Amendment is still the Law of the Land and will remain so until the Constitution is amended to remove it. Remember, polls and popularity contests are not the basis of legal action in the United States -- the US Constitution is.
Do you honestly believe that the founding fathers encoded violent revolution into the bill of rights?
You should educate yourself on the writings of the Founders so that you sound less like a fucking moron. Here's a little quiz for you... tell me, who said:
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
(A) LMCBoy
(B) Saddam Hussein
(C) Pee-Wee Herman
(D) Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father of the United States of America
I'll give you a hint: there's no fucking way the first 3 cowards on that list said such a thing.
Oh, we outraged types are out here, all right. But we've no inclination to join hands with the side that wants to take our guns away.
As for George W. Bush and his completely Imperial government: Fight it yourselves. Like morons, most of you are disarmed, so perhaps you can shout him out of office... from all those far-away "free speech" zones that Republicans and Democrats like to set up now.
Either Jeb Bush wins for the anti-labor, pro-corporation, pro-globalist, pro-war Republican Party, or Hillary Clinton wins for the anti-labor, pro-corporation, pro-globalist, pro-war Democratic Party.
Suddenly, we have woken up in Soviet Russia, where no matter who you vote for, you end up with the Communist Party candidate in office.
If you actually differentiate between candidates beyond business casual appearance, you're simply a bit of a prick. Don't "dress up" your attitude as being "professional" or "responsible". You are simply and artificially removing people who aren't stroking your personal bias.
Shit, just admit it, man.
It's like with the long hair and beard thing. It doesn't matter how well you trim that beard, some asshole is going to think you're essentially a nigger or anarchist for wearing it. The difference between a suit and business casual is ZERO, just as the difference between a beard and a clean-shaven face is also ZERO.
What should matter are things like job skills and business-cultural fit. But you aren't even taking the tack that your particular business culture is suit-based. You're trying to objectify a highly subjective metric. Which is why people are beating you up so strongly in responses to your posting.
Well, unfortunately your anecdote of failing personal investments has been duplicated millions of times across America. This is how the stock market now works... for each new stock millionaire, you have to have 1000 people take a loss of $1000 each. I wish you luck with your investments, but I equally wish that you don't add to the housing bubble.
"The great American housing bubble, like its obese counterparts in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, and Australia, is a classical zero-sum game. Without generating an atom of new wealth, land inflation ruthlessly redistributes wealth from asset-seekers to asset-holders, reinforcing divisions within as well as between social classes. A young schoolteacher in San Diego who rents an apartment, for example, now faces an annual housing cost ($24,000 for a two-bedroom in a central area) equivalent to two-thirds of her income."
Well, when I say "perform", I specifically implied financial performance as an asset that generates wealth. A home simply cannot create wealth since it is ONLY a shelter.
True, it can generate income as a rental or sold item from the builder. But there's only so much you can get from those. In the end, if enough people are unemployed and overextended, the prices of housing cannot be sustained. This goes doubly so when the supply of housing is sufficient... as I'm certainly seeing. New houses are being mainly traded up, not built new to accomodate new entrants.
I recognize your sig. I spoke with you just today about this topic. Housing is currently in an enormous bubble. Places even as decrepit as Toledo OH were affected by the bubble. But Toledo is now in a free fall. There is NO economic activity to support the home prices (as they were circa 2003, which is the last year of my specific data). Rental signs have sprouted like mushrooms after a spring rain, but any moron can see that a $150K house simply cannot be afforded by the average Schmoe earning 12 bucks an hour. And interest rates are rising, as they must after having been artificially depressed to such a low level. This formula is a bursting bubble... and there's a long way to fall, friend.
I'm frankly looking forward to all of this. I've seen people selling homes with SEVERE foundation damage at high prices. This is just insane. It was irrational exuberance... fallout from the "wealth effect"... just another expression of financial wealth looking for unsustainable returns on material wealth... and it must provide the same steep falls in home prices as I saw (for example) in Massachusetts in the early 1990s.
"Sorry, you're not allowed to solve problem X using mental model Y because person Z filed some paperwork on it already."
But that's what happens when liberty disappears, and enormous and entrenched interests try to protect their market share. Since they can't or won't innovate to continue to prosper in the marketplace, they use force to secure a position.
I don't want to overuse the word "innovate" here. I am using it in the broadest possible sense. When you innovate, you change your business constantly... some years you will have small changes, but in other years they will be large. This change is necessary since profit margins tend to fall over time as the economy shifts around the business action in question. Basically and most crudely, you must innovate to compensate for a maturing market and a falling profit margin.
You have to have a wider understanding of the housing bubble. The point is, it IS a housing bubble. Why buy an asset when it is horribly overpriced?
In despressed areas like where I live (Toledo OH), prices for homes started to fall in 2003. Since they were outrageously (50%+) overpriced, they still have some ways to go. Hence, your "homes appreciate" folklore is simply not applicable. You can't have $200K homes in neighborhoods with rafts of unemployed people. The homes will at first convert to rentals -- as the owners attempt to continue the fiction of $200K worth. But then after some time those MUST fall in price as people's greed gives way to fiscal fuckin' reality.
I'm glad you didn't say "conservative" echo chamber!
That's because I'm not talking about real conservatives. I'm talking about a class of established elite, currently dominated by the Neo-Conservatives... which we could also call "warhawk Republicans". I must also place such blame upon the Neo-Liberals, who are as selfishly elitist as the other group. You might think of these as extremists who have hijacked both major parties.
I'd like to meet an old-style Republican -- a real "conservative" who respects the US Constitution and overall fiscal conservatism. But those people have disappeared, having drowned in a wave of a new class of hypergreedy people. The Neo-Libs whetted their appetites for public money over the 1990s, riding the faux wealth of stock inflation, credit expansion, and outright accounting fraud. In comparison, the Neo-Cons are now enjoying a little war economy, which is their sick little hook into the public treasury.
One of us is arguing for (potentially risky) progress, the other is resisting change.
That's a nice Orwell you just pulled. I feel like I'm watching O'Reilly.
I don't want my wealth poured into a loser. Retirement funds (and furthermore, the entire philosophy of the Social Security system) are SUPPOSED to be invested in the most stable investments that can be found. This implicitly MUST exclude stocks. But people nowadays are going completely stupid with the stock market, and cannot form a logical and reasoned thought about such finances since they are being short-circuited by hypergreed.
The stock market is highly overpriced. It must crash. Despite the overall performance of the corporations represented in it, people continue to believe that you can go from highly overpriced to even more highly overpriced. It reminds me of that other, irrational bubble: the housing market. These prices cannot be sustained since the underlying economic activity doesn't have the energy to support it.
At any rate, I'm perfect accepting of change in the Social Security system. Just give me my fucking money back. I know the perfect investment for myself, and that's MY POCKET. But that's not the intent of the current proposals for "change". The current proposals are all aimed at dumping even MORE retirement (i.e. long-term stable) money into the stock (i.e. short-term unstable) market to continue the process of "reflation" -- since reflation is the first thing people do when their outrageously overpriced assets start crashing.
It's all crookery. It's corrupt from top to bottom.
I said: your Social Security funds are NOW put into US Treasuries.
You said: The government steals all the Social Security funds for the pork-of-the-week, leving the taxpayer with a crap return.
Since the Carter Administration inclusive, SS funds have been put into US Treasuries. This is a fact. Go look it up.
You could argue that t-bills are the most stable investments for such a program. I partially agree. However, I opposed having the government do that since it is a clear conflict of interest. This is so since that yearly t-bill sale merely provides the US Congress with more income than it otherwise would have morally. And THAT is where your "pork-of-the-week" comes into the picture.
So, why isn't the ROI on t-bills reflected in SS payouts?
Well, the US Congress has been actually taking some of those t-bills and replacing them with IOUs, and then are selling them for even more Congressional income. Sure, in that case, it could be that the ROI suffers. But the problem is NOT the investment of SS into t-bills. The problem is that the US Congress is stealing the funds while the American public watches "American Idol" slack-jawed in their easy chairs. The problem is that the American Federal government is completely out of contr
I can see it now, instead of Windows NE (NExt) or something marketdroidy, they will produce Windows Free{tm}. "Microsoft will set you Free!" {tm} Of course, a legal copy of Windows Free{tm} will cost $395.
I was only half-joking, but since you've raised the points, let's address your subscription to the talking points of the Republican Echo Chamber:
Dude, yes, you are being "made" to put it into the stock market by the very temptation. You spoke about bonds and Treasuries, but sure as shit, the VAST MAJORITY of these funds will be plopped into the stock market by Joe Average as he seeks to regain the dotcom glories. Quit kidding yourself.
Dude, your Social Security funds are NOW put into US Treasuries. What's the fucking difference? This method has been used since the Carter years in order to make the US Federal budget appear smaller than it actually is.
If you really cared about privatizing everyone's SS funds, then surely you realize that the most private place for anyone's SS funds is their own pocket, right? So I can accept a 0-percent return (arguably, a better return than the negatives that have been recently endured in many stocks) on my money? After all, a guaranteed 0 percent return is as valid a choice as a CHANCE of higher returns in securities.
And while I speak of privatization, you DO realize that the Federal government will have to go on a borrowing binge to make up for the lost SS income, right? This has been publicly stated many times. Where do you think that these funds will have to ultimately made good from? Yes, that's right: YOUR TAXES. So, to be clear, you are advocating that the government "give" you your SS funds back so you can play with the securities market (which the elite benefit the most from), and meanwhile, you'd better make a damned good return since your future taxes are going to skyrocket.
Well, there's always the off chance. Also, between the tyrannies of complacency and Fascism, there are further chances for collective acts that perform the necessary breakout.
You must realize that a breakout MUST follow revolutionary methods. Primarily I mean that people must not on bend rules, but break them with ear-splitting cracks. No one is REALLY going to build up a space industry just to have Humanity colonize space itself "for the good of all". That's a load of idealist crap. What has happened time and time again is that plans go awry and people break free, by taking advantage of a collapsed oversight or a massive bankruptcy. This is why I loathe the current crop of astronauts as cultivated by NASA and the military... they are highly obedient elites who are heavily subscribed in the Status Quo, so we can expect no revolt from them at all.
When a pack of spacefarers finally says "fuck it" and then takes off on its own path (perhaps cutting loose of Cislunar space for the Asteroids), then I'll know that the "break out" has occurred. Until then, it'll just be the usual obedience and tight ties to the mother world, and those folk will retain the lines of dependence that will strike them with whatever also happens to befall the Earth.
"I hope this rock hits our planet [since it] may be the spur humanity needs to get us up off our collective keisters and establish a viable off-planet colony before it's too late."
I strongly doubt that. Such a catastrophe will push many governments and citizen groups over the edge of accepting Fascism as a survival tactic. Within such regimes, the ability to look outward to the liberties of space is very repressed. In effect, there will always be a constant reward for killing people and taking their stuff... and that environment isn't conducive to all the social prosperities and stabilities that we relied upon to even have a space program in the first place.
2004MN4 would merely whack Humanity back to the social depravities of the Middle Ages. It will take many hundreds of years before cultures rediscover the wonderful benefits of letting your neighbor live long enough to invest in -- and profit from -- your enterprises.
Supply and demand? You have gotta be kidding me. I'm watching people ABANDON houses in order to trade up. Cities have a lot of excess housing. And the trade-up trend means that ANOTHER house is created where the 1 before sufficed. This is NOT a supply/demand situation. This is price inflation based upon unrealistic ROI. And homes DON'T PERFORM. Homes DON'T CREATE WEALTH. Which was my entire point.
Home prices started falling in my city (Toledo OH) in 2003. Yes, Virginia, home prices CAN crash. After a bubble like this, they MUST crash.
But I didn't specify that the price was kept high. I specified that when prices LOWERED by 1 company, the other company either complicates its product or lowers its own price.
As for bankruptcy... yes, I read Emperor Bush signed the bankruptcy reform bill into law today. It takes effect SIX MONTHS FROM NOW. So telling people to bankrupt NOW makes perfect sense. Particularly since there's NO valid reason whatsoever why those medical bills are so high.
Onto the topic of note.
I stand by my 3rd paragraph most of all. You don't NEED to eat out. You don't NEED to rent videos, or watch cable TV, or rent hotel rooms that you whip out your credit card for. And most of all: You don't need to do those things so fucking often!
The upper class is trying to kill us with credit so that we drown in our own affluence. Don't help them do it. Live a simpler life. Saving money and living sustainably are the ONLY weapons that the middle class have. You can't honestly tell me that you would find reading a library book is less fulfulling then the latest tits-and-murder movie from Cockbuster Video.
And none of this means "living like a hermit". Get a fucking grip. Did your parents live like fucking "hermits"? NO. The previous generation simply lived within their means. They had modest homes. They even had modest luxuries like horses and boats. But they weren't purebred, and they weren't big-cock boats either.
Living like a middle class, sensible person is not a hermitage. Only a fucking yuppie who is addicted to being a "style bitch" would think otherwise. It's like the coffee thing. I still don't know WHAT a fucking latte is... only that it's a LOT more money compared to a simple cup of coffee at the coffee shop (and, NO, I'm not talking about a Starbucks or other, trendy, overpriced coffee shop). What the fuck was wrong with a goddamn cup of coffee? Well, apparently people like you think that having one of those makes one a "hermit".
Get over yourself. Get a sense of perspective. Reading a library book and working on your own used car does NOT make you a hick, a hermit, or a second-class citizen... which is highly in contrast to all the up-the-anus elitist programming spewing from the One Eyed God every hour, prompting us to become slaves to corporate consumerism.
While we're on the topic, stop watching TV. It's simply making you an asshole.
Was the cable company offering this wonderful service at below their own costs? If so, it's called "dumping", is generally illegal (since dumping is designed to drive your competitors out of business so you can then raise prices later without competition), and may have been the reason why it was refused. Got any further details for us?
I stopped watching TV many, many years ago... probably when I left High School. As the years pass, I noticed one thing about that:
People treat me like I'm a space alien.
My opinions run so counter to the norm that I must look like I have two heads. It long ago got to the point that I can't even have conversations, since the space-alienness seems to emit outward from my person, and that kills off a lot of conversation potential.
People are spending their entire lives being mentally-occupied by TV. I really can't relate to them anymore. Most of my attempts to talk about politics and finances is usually and obviously dismissed as "nonsense". After all, space aliens speak with weird noises, so that reaction is understandable. I've actually had people complain that I "babble"... you know, about the latest ballot issues, the rising prices of items, and stuff like that. The things to talk about are what make you happy, how your boss sucks as always, and did ya see American Idol last night? I tell ya!
TV has turned the American mind into mush. Literally, the less you watch TV, the more you see reality, but that just makes you one of the strange ones.
I figure that before 20 more years are up, I'll move to Europe, having been completely ostracized by the media-drowned, and hopefully will find some real people for a change.
I suggest you put this 50hr crap to bed. Tell your boss you'll do 4 days a week at 10hr per day. Sure, he'll probably try to get 11 out of you, but he'll feel he's getting his money's worth out of you already with the magic number 10... but you can get your sub-45hr worklife back. Then you get 3 days off. (The key thing here is to get the boss to understand that you have 3 days off, not 1 day of extremely on-call and then 2 days of kinda on-call.)
If this doesn't fly, then you really aren't chained to your job. This "strongly suggested" (i.e. mandatory) overtime crap is for lesser men. Find another job and move anything required to obtain it. America's big and you can always find another job... even in times like these, it just takes longer and you're apt to move farther.
Oh, and get cheaper stuff. "Paying bills" is the faux excuse of many people in America. The truth is, many people are awash in affluence, and you can see daily how it's costing you personally. If you're "buying" a car, stop doing that. Get a used car and dump your monthly payment. If you're "buying" a house, dump that too. All you're really doing is renting from a lender, and that's not ownership at all, as well as it being expensive over time as you slave to meet your payments. Rip up those fucking credit cards. Stop renting movies. Read library books. Cancel the cable TV. Bankrupt out of those nasty medical bills. Keep going until you understand that YOU are the biggest bill in your life, and all it takes is YOU changing that, hence YOU are your biggest obstacle to leaving the "rat race".
Yeah, you've got that right. I've been spittin' mad about this for many years. People treat homes now like stock certificates. But homes are for living in, and are not "economic engines" like a company can be. In effect, the housing bubble must crash, not just because it's a bubble, but because a home cannot sustainably appreciate in value like a stock can... because it's just a frickin' home. A pile of bricks! How does a pile of bricks produce real value to the population when all you do is live inside it?
It's tulip mania all over again. The trouble is, we went from a tulip mania to something even worse. We cannot expect stock-level ROIs off of piles of brick. Homes do not "financially perform". Somehow we have to bring this truth to the rest of the mortgage-papers-waving populace before we sensible people find ourselves living in Japanese-style closet motels just to avoid the overpricing.
When you have 2 vendors, and their prices are roughly the same, then why isn't there competition? If there is a real price disparity, 1 vendor will start to accumulate market share, which will send the other into a panic or product-complication mode, which will tend to bring prices close to each other again. A slew of product complications (so-called "differentiation") can't hide the underlying price-equalization pressure.
Forecasting catastrophes is for losers or weathermen. The "winners" pay little attention to portents of doom or loss. This is especially important and true, when you have all that financial chicanery going on... which is effectively a massive con game.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to sound like a smartass, but if you really find yourself expecting that you will be executed in such a fashion, then you should arm yourself and prepare to make use of said arms in your defense. Police response times in the cities are at least 5 minutes, a nanny state mechanism which itself is far too long for effective self-defense ... but the revolutionary times you envision, your cavalry won't be coming at all.
Public disarmament in America just isn't working. Not only is the philosophy and action unconstitutional, but in practice it only disarms the citizens for actual criminals (and police) to take advantage of. So, I hope that you're not waiting for public disarmament to save you.
Now that we have a standing all-volunteer army, there is absolutely no need for citizen militias (which is why there aren't any).
... tell me, who said:
Well, make sure you write your Congressional Representative and Senators, Roscoe, since despite the so-called lack of "need", the Second Amendment is still the Law of the Land and will remain so until the Constitution is amended to remove it. Remember, polls and popularity contests are not the basis of legal action in the United States -- the US Constitution is.
Do you honestly believe that the founding fathers encoded violent revolution into the bill of rights?
You should educate yourself on the writings of the Founders so that you sound less like a fucking moron. Here's a little quiz for you
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
(A) LMCBoy
(B) Saddam Hussein
(C) Pee-Wee Herman
(D) Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father of the United States of America
I'll give you a hint: there's no fucking way the first 3 cowards on that list said such a thing.
Oh, we outraged types are out here, all right. But we've no inclination to join hands with the side that wants to take our guns away.
... from all those far-away "free speech" zones that Republicans and Democrats like to set up now.
As for George W. Bush and his completely Imperial government: Fight it yourselves. Like morons, most of you are disarmed, so perhaps you can shout him out of office
Either Jeb Bush wins for the anti-labor, pro-corporation, pro-globalist, pro-war Republican Party, or Hillary Clinton wins for the anti-labor, pro-corporation, pro-globalist, pro-war Democratic Party.
Suddenly, we have woken up in Soviet Russia, where no matter who you vote for, you end up with the Communist Party candidate in office.
If you actually differentiate between candidates beyond business casual appearance, you're simply a bit of a prick. Don't "dress up" your attitude as being "professional" or "responsible". You are simply and artificially removing people who aren't stroking your personal bias.
Shit, just admit it, man.
It's like with the long hair and beard thing. It doesn't matter how well you trim that beard, some asshole is going to think you're essentially a nigger or anarchist for wearing it. The difference between a suit and business casual is ZERO, just as the difference between a beard and a clean-shaven face is also ZERO.
What should matter are things like job skills and business-cultural fit. But you aren't even taking the tack that your particular business culture is suit-based. You're trying to objectify a highly subjective metric. Which is why people are beating you up so strongly in responses to your posting.
Well, unfortunately your anecdote of failing personal investments has been duplicated millions of times across America. This is how the stock market now works ... for each new stock millionaire, you have to have 1000 people take a loss of $1000 each. I wish you luck with your investments, but I equally wish that you don't add to the housing bubble.
BTW, I came across this article just tonight:
Riotous Real Estate
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2329
OR http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0419-22.htm
By Mike Davis
Select quote:
"The great American housing bubble, like its obese counterparts in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, and Australia, is a classical zero-sum game. Without generating an atom of new wealth, land inflation ruthlessly redistributes wealth from asset-seekers to asset-holders, reinforcing divisions within as well as between social classes. A young schoolteacher in San Diego who rents an apartment, for example, now faces an annual housing cost ($24,000 for a two-bedroom in a central area) equivalent to two-thirds of her income."
Well, when I say "perform", I specifically implied financial performance as an asset that generates wealth. A home simply cannot create wealth since it is ONLY a shelter.
... as I'm certainly seeing. New houses are being mainly traded up, not built new to accomodate new entrants.
I recognize your sig. I spoke with you just today about this topic. Housing is currently in an enormous bubble. Places even as decrepit as Toledo OH were affected by the bubble. But Toledo is now in a free fall. There is NO economic activity to support the home prices (as they were circa 2003, which is the last year of my specific data). Rental signs have sprouted like mushrooms after a spring rain, but any moron can see that a $150K house simply cannot be afforded by the average Schmoe earning 12 bucks an hour. And interest rates are rising, as they must after having been artificially depressed to such a low level. This formula is a bursting bubble ... and there's a long way to fall, friend.
... fallout from the "wealth effect" ... just another expression of financial wealth looking for unsustainable returns on material wealth ... and it must provide the same steep falls in home prices as I saw (for example) in Massachusetts in the early 1990s.
True, it can generate income as a rental or sold item from the builder. But there's only so much you can get from those. In the end, if enough people are unemployed and overextended, the prices of housing cannot be sustained. This goes doubly so when the supply of housing is sufficient
I'm frankly looking forward to all of this. I've seen people selling homes with SEVERE foundation damage at high prices. This is just insane. It was irrational exuberance
"Sorry, you're not allowed to solve problem X using mental model Y because person Z filed some paperwork on it already."
... some years you will have small changes, but in other years they will be large. This change is necessary since profit margins tend to fall over time as the economy shifts around the business action in question. Basically and most crudely, you must innovate to compensate for a maturing market and a falling profit margin.
But that's what happens when liberty disappears, and enormous and entrenched interests try to protect their market share. Since they can't or won't innovate to continue to prosper in the marketplace, they use force to secure a position.
I don't want to overuse the word "innovate" here. I am using it in the broadest possible sense. When you innovate, you change your business constantly
You have to have a wider understanding of the housing bubble. The point is, it IS a housing bubble. Why buy an asset when it is horribly overpriced?
In despressed areas like where I live (Toledo OH), prices for homes started to fall in 2003. Since they were outrageously (50%+) overpriced, they still have some ways to go. Hence, your "homes appreciate" folklore is simply not applicable. You can't have $200K homes in neighborhoods with rafts of unemployed people. The homes will at first convert to rentals -- as the owners attempt to continue the fiction of $200K worth. But then after some time those MUST fall in price as people's greed gives way to fiscal fuckin' reality.
I'm glad you didn't say "conservative" echo chamber!
... which we could also call "warhawk Republicans". I must also place such blame upon the Neo-Liberals, who are as selfishly elitist as the other group. You might think of these as extremists who have hijacked both major parties.
That's because I'm not talking about real conservatives. I'm talking about a class of established elite, currently dominated by the Neo-Conservatives
I'd like to meet an old-style Republican -- a real "conservative" who respects the US Constitution and overall fiscal conservatism. But those people have disappeared, having drowned in a wave of a new class of hypergreedy people. The Neo-Libs whetted their appetites for public money over the 1990s, riding the faux wealth of stock inflation, credit expansion, and outright accounting fraud. In comparison, the Neo-Cons are now enjoying a little war economy, which is their sick little hook into the public treasury.
One of us is arguing for (potentially risky) progress, the other is resisting change.
That's a nice Orwell you just pulled. I feel like I'm watching O'Reilly.
I don't want my wealth poured into a loser. Retirement funds (and furthermore, the entire philosophy of the Social Security system) are SUPPOSED to be invested in the most stable investments that can be found. This implicitly MUST exclude stocks. But people nowadays are going completely stupid with the stock market, and cannot form a logical and reasoned thought about such finances since they are being short-circuited by hypergreed.
The stock market is highly overpriced. It must crash. Despite the overall performance of the corporations represented in it, people continue to believe that you can go from highly overpriced to even more highly overpriced. It reminds me of that other, irrational bubble: the housing market. These prices cannot be sustained since the underlying economic activity doesn't have the energy to support it.
At any rate, I'm perfect accepting of change in the Social Security system. Just give me my fucking money back. I know the perfect investment for myself, and that's MY POCKET. But that's not the intent of the current proposals for "change". The current proposals are all aimed at dumping even MORE retirement (i.e. long-term stable) money into the stock (i.e. short-term unstable) market to continue the process of "reflation" -- since reflation is the first thing people do when their outrageously overpriced assets start crashing.
It's all crookery. It's corrupt from top to bottom.
I said: your Social Security funds are NOW put into US Treasuries.
You said: The government steals all the Social Security funds for the pork-of-the-week, leving the taxpayer with a crap return.
Since the Carter Administration inclusive, SS funds have been put into US Treasuries. This is a fact. Go look it up.
You could argue that t-bills are the most stable investments for such a program. I partially agree. However, I opposed having the government do that since it is a clear conflict of interest. This is so since that yearly t-bill sale merely provides the US Congress with more income than it otherwise would have morally. And THAT is where your "pork-of-the-week" comes into the picture.
So, why isn't the ROI on t-bills reflected in SS payouts?
Well, the US Congress has been actually taking some of those t-bills and replacing them with IOUs, and then are selling them for even more Congressional income. Sure, in that case, it could be that the ROI suffers. But the problem is NOT the investment of SS into t-bills. The problem is that the US Congress is stealing the funds while the American public watches "American Idol" slack-jawed in their easy chairs. The problem is that the American Federal government is completely out of contr
I can see it now, instead of Windows NE (NExt) or something marketdroidy, they will produce Windows Free {tm}. "Microsoft will set you Free!" {tm} Of course, a legal copy of Windows Free {tm} will cost $395.
- Dude, yes, you are being "made" to put it into the stock market by the very temptation. You spoke about bonds and Treasuries, but sure as shit, the VAST MAJORITY of these funds will be plopped into the stock market by Joe Average as he seeks to regain the dotcom glories. Quit kidding yourself.
- Dude, your Social Security funds are NOW put into US Treasuries. What's the fucking difference? This method has been used since the Carter years in order to make the US Federal budget appear smaller than it actually is.
If you really cared about privatizing everyone's SS funds, then surely you realize that the most private place for anyone's SS funds is their own pocket, right? So I can accept a 0-percent return (arguably, a better return than the negatives that have been recently endured in many stocks) on my money? After all, a guaranteed 0 percent return is as valid a choice as a CHANCE of higher returns in securities.And while I speak of privatization, you DO realize that the Federal government will have to go on a borrowing binge to make up for the lost SS income, right? This has been publicly stated many times. Where do you think that these funds will have to ultimately made good from? Yes, that's right: YOUR TAXES. So, to be clear, you are advocating that the government "give" you your SS funds back so you can play with the securities market (which the elite benefit the most from), and meanwhile, you'd better make a damned good return since your future taxes are going to skyrocket.
Well, there's always the off chance. Also, between the tyrannies of complacency and Fascism, there are further chances for collective acts that perform the necessary breakout.
... they are highly obedient elites who are heavily subscribed in the Status Quo, so we can expect no revolt from them at all.
You must realize that a breakout MUST follow revolutionary methods. Primarily I mean that people must not on bend rules, but break them with ear-splitting cracks. No one is REALLY going to build up a space industry just to have Humanity colonize space itself "for the good of all". That's a load of idealist crap. What has happened time and time again is that plans go awry and people break free, by taking advantage of a collapsed oversight or a massive bankruptcy. This is why I loathe the current crop of astronauts as cultivated by NASA and the military
When a pack of spacefarers finally says "fuck it" and then takes off on its own path (perhaps cutting loose of Cislunar space for the Asteroids), then I'll know that the "break out" has occurred. Until then, it'll just be the usual obedience and tight ties to the mother world, and those folk will retain the lines of dependence that will strike them with whatever also happens to befall the Earth.
The Congress is waaaaaay ahead of you on this sort of plan. They're arranging to have you blow all your retirement money on the stock market. Enjoy!
"I hope this rock hits our planet [since it] may be the spur humanity needs to get us up off our collective keisters and establish a viable off-planet colony before it's too late."
... and that environment isn't conducive to all the social prosperities and stabilities that we relied upon to even have a space program in the first place.
I strongly doubt that. Such a catastrophe will push many governments and citizen groups over the edge of accepting Fascism as a survival tactic. Within such regimes, the ability to look outward to the liberties of space is very repressed. In effect, there will always be a constant reward for killing people and taking their stuff
2004MN4 would merely whack Humanity back to the social depravities of the Middle Ages. It will take many hundreds of years before cultures rediscover the wonderful benefits of letting your neighbor live long enough to invest in -- and profit from -- your enterprises.
Supply and demand? You have gotta be kidding me. I'm watching people ABANDON houses in order to trade up. Cities have a lot of excess housing. And the trade-up trend means that ANOTHER house is created where the 1 before sufficed. This is NOT a supply/demand situation. This is price inflation based upon unrealistic ROI. And homes DON'T PERFORM. Homes DON'T CREATE WEALTH. Which was my entire point.
Home prices started falling in my city (Toledo OH) in 2003. Yes, Virginia, home prices CAN crash. After a bubble like this, they MUST crash.
But I didn't specify that the price was kept high. I specified that when prices LOWERED by 1 company, the other company either complicates its product or lowers its own price.
As for bankruptcy ... yes, I read Emperor Bush signed the bankruptcy reform bill into law today. It takes effect SIX MONTHS FROM NOW. So telling people to bankrupt NOW makes perfect sense. Particularly since there's NO valid reason whatsoever why those medical bills are so high.
... only that it's a LOT more money compared to a simple cup of coffee at the coffee shop (and, NO, I'm not talking about a Starbucks or other, trendy, overpriced coffee shop). What the fuck was wrong with a goddamn cup of coffee? Well, apparently people like you think that having one of those makes one a "hermit".
... which is highly in contrast to all the up-the-anus elitist programming spewing from the One Eyed God every hour, prompting us to become slaves to corporate consumerism.
Onto the topic of note.
I stand by my 3rd paragraph most of all. You don't NEED to eat out. You don't NEED to rent videos, or watch cable TV, or rent hotel rooms that you whip out your credit card for. And most of all: You don't need to do those things so fucking often!
The upper class is trying to kill us with credit so that we drown in our own affluence. Don't help them do it. Live a simpler life. Saving money and living sustainably are the ONLY weapons that the middle class have. You can't honestly tell me that you would find reading a library book is less fulfulling then the latest tits-and-murder movie from Cockbuster Video.
And none of this means "living like a hermit". Get a fucking grip. Did your parents live like fucking "hermits"? NO. The previous generation simply lived within their means. They had modest homes. They even had modest luxuries like horses and boats. But they weren't purebred, and they weren't big-cock boats either.
Living like a middle class, sensible person is not a hermitage. Only a fucking yuppie who is addicted to being a "style bitch" would think otherwise. It's like the coffee thing. I still don't know WHAT a fucking latte is
Get over yourself. Get a sense of perspective. Reading a library book and working on your own used car does NOT make you a hick, a hermit, or a second-class citizen
While we're on the topic, stop watching TV. It's simply making you an asshole.
Was the cable company offering this wonderful service at below their own costs? If so, it's called "dumping", is generally illegal (since dumping is designed to drive your competitors out of business so you can then raise prices later without competition), and may have been the reason why it was refused. Got any further details for us?
I stopped watching TV many, many years ago ... probably when I left High School. As the years pass, I noticed one thing about that:
... you know, about the latest ballot issues, the rising prices of items, and stuff like that. The things to talk about are what make you happy, how your boss sucks as always, and did ya see American Idol last night? I tell ya!
People treat me like I'm a space alien.
My opinions run so counter to the norm that I must look like I have two heads. It long ago got to the point that I can't even have conversations, since the space-alienness seems to emit outward from my person, and that kills off a lot of conversation potential.
People are spending their entire lives being mentally-occupied by TV. I really can't relate to them anymore. Most of my attempts to talk about politics and finances is usually and obviously dismissed as "nonsense". After all, space aliens speak with weird noises, so that reaction is understandable. I've actually had people complain that I "babble"
TV has turned the American mind into mush. Literally, the less you watch TV, the more you see reality, but that just makes you one of the strange ones.
I figure that before 20 more years are up, I'll move to Europe, having been completely ostracized by the media-drowned, and hopefully will find some real people for a change.
I suggest you put this 50hr crap to bed. Tell your boss you'll do 4 days a week at 10hr per day. Sure, he'll probably try to get 11 out of you, but he'll feel he's getting his money's worth out of you already with the magic number 10 ... but you can get your sub-45hr worklife back. Then you get 3 days off. (The key thing here is to get the boss to understand that you have 3 days off, not 1 day of extremely on-call and then 2 days of kinda on-call.)
... even in times like these, it just takes longer and you're apt to move farther.
If this doesn't fly, then you really aren't chained to your job. This "strongly suggested" (i.e. mandatory) overtime crap is for lesser men. Find another job and move anything required to obtain it. America's big and you can always find another job
Oh, and get cheaper stuff. "Paying bills" is the faux excuse of many people in America. The truth is, many people are awash in affluence, and you can see daily how it's costing you personally. If you're "buying" a car, stop doing that. Get a used car and dump your monthly payment. If you're "buying" a house, dump that too. All you're really doing is renting from a lender, and that's not ownership at all, as well as it being expensive over time as you slave to meet your payments. Rip up those fucking credit cards. Stop renting movies. Read library books. Cancel the cable TV. Bankrupt out of those nasty medical bills. Keep going until you understand that YOU are the biggest bill in your life, and all it takes is YOU changing that, hence YOU are your biggest obstacle to leaving the "rat race".
Yeah, you've got that right. I've been spittin' mad about this for many years. People treat homes now like stock certificates. But homes are for living in, and are not "economic engines" like a company can be. In effect, the housing bubble must crash, not just because it's a bubble, but because a home cannot sustainably appreciate in value like a stock can ... because it's just a frickin' home. A pile of bricks! How does a pile of bricks produce real value to the population when all you do is live inside it?
It's tulip mania all over again. The trouble is, we went from a tulip mania to something even worse. We cannot expect stock-level ROIs off of piles of brick. Homes do not "financially perform". Somehow we have to bring this truth to the rest of the mortgage-papers-waving populace before we sensible people find ourselves living in Japanese-style closet motels just to avoid the overpricing.
When you have 2 vendors, and their prices are roughly the same, then why isn't there competition? If there is a real price disparity, 1 vendor will start to accumulate market share, which will send the other into a panic or product-complication mode, which will tend to bring prices close to each other again. A slew of product complications (so-called "differentiation") can't hide the underlying price-equalization pressure.
Forecasting catastrophes is for losers or weathermen. The "winners" pay little attention to portents of doom or loss. This is especially important and true, when you have all that financial chicanery going on ... which is effectively a massive con game.
{lowers rifle} Damn, I had ya for a second there in my sights. Better luck next time.