I know how you feel. Even worse: I wanted to vote for my primary choice of Ralph Nader, but a swarm of Democrat lawyers showed up in Ohio's capital and got him tossed off the ballot. It was hence and therefore too late to even register as a write-in. Talk about disenfranchisement. So I cast my vote for the 2nd best man for the job: Badnarik. Of course, Two-Party America wiped its ass with my vote. So we are certainly getting the government we deserve, more or less. {sigh}
55 million for FOR Kerry, and 59 million FOR Bush, which means 55+59=114 million people voted FOR a class of elitist assholes who are selling them down the river just to mint another millionaire buddy of theirs. THAT's how John Fucking Kerry would have changed nothing about it.
Make sure you continue to re-elect these politicians. The US Congress enjoys a, what, 98% re-election rate? Those pols are sure shaking in their boots, aren't they?
There was a bit of an upset in 1992, but that shakeup in the Congress was put smartly in its place almost immediately, and the managed environment of the legislature returned in record time.
Ho hum. Back to the business of continued concentration of wealth and the destruction of the middle class.
If your national legislature is so intent on fighting you, then you have no more civil government by definition. The honest man would have been shooting by now. (I suppose that things like widespread software and music piracy are forms of revolution. The war is on.)
And up to three years in prison for camcordering a movie? THREE YEARS?! Guys spend less time in prison for rape!
Government is becoming more and more concerned about making America safe for corporate profiteering, and correspondingly less and less concerned about the safety and security of people. 114 million people voted FOR this sort of government on Nov 2nd. Having once again made this bed, we will all have to lay in it. (Except those of us who are frankly criminal by deed and intent. {wave and smile})
That depends upon your definition of "war". Tax evasion is now at epidemic levels, and that only makes sense, since the Neo-Libs and Neo-Cons both want to make government power more focused: much more narrow and intense. As long as you avoid the withering glare of the All-Seeing Eye of the modern Sauron (i.e. the Federal Government), you can pretty much get away with anything you like. You little Hobbitses -- Sssss! -- can scrabble around in Eriador, raising tomatoes and chickens... just look out for Orcs^W National Guard on the march, and Nazgul^W Al Qaeda in the air.
In short, an environment it being created in which is will be difficult to obtain a welfare check of any sort, but it will be easy to evade all kinds of taxation. This is well within the Neo-Con vision of future government. Any fool can see it. And there's your civil war... fought very civilly.
I moved back to my hometown of Toledo OH in 1997 from Boston MA. It is THE WORST MISTAKE I ever made in my life. Learn from it.
Places like Toledo (which includes anything within a 1hr radius from it) are economic dead zones, stuck inside America like little Third World countries. I never in my life had (and have) seen such an old population of tech workers (what few there are, BTW). There's a reason for that. The reason is that a place like Toledo has permanently underemployed population sectors. Those old folks in "young men's jobs" are clinging to their jobs for dear life. They are clinging so desperately since outside that job, there's almost nothing available for years at a time but manual labor paying $6-$10/hr.
There's a reason housing was (note the past tense) so cheap in places like Toledo. It was cheap since there were no fucking jobs. It was cheap since the people who wanted to sell, really couldn't find qualified buyers.
This housing situation changed in some perverted mirror of the dotcom boom's effects on the coasts (as well as the credit boom that had apparently struck every bank in America as some sort of good idea -- bleah!). Housing has risen appallingly, even while thousands were and are being tossed out of work. It was only this year 2004 that Toledo's average metro housing finally reflected economic reality and fell 5%. But after years of steep rising, 5% is a nothing decrease. Homes in Toledo are still at least 50% overpriced when compared to the economic strength that can be marshalled here to buy them.
What I'm seeing here and now is a "renting adjustment". Houses are sitting on the market so long that many "owners" are making the adjustment of renting out their unsalable homes. Just to go by the small sample of what 2 neighbors have done, I'd wager that many of these are due to relocations... the owners are getting the hell out since the economy's so shitty, but -- what a shock -- they can't sell their homes in the same economy. Rather than take the loss from such a housing bubble, they elected to convert their homes to rentals and then take off for better fiscal climes.
You may be offered a job in one of these areas. You should strongly consider your future if you do so. That job may collapse under you in only a couple of years, and then where will you be? Yes, that's right: stuck in Loserville USA with a whole bunch of losers who will work for far less money than you will. And it will never get better. Not in a place like Toledo. (Case in point: The only McDonald's in downtown Toledo closed about 4 months ago.)
To rant a bit to support my thesis: I lost my home and have otherwise contracted my expenses down in size to what I never considered possible before (and I was a spendthrift before, to give you some idea). All the clothes I wear come from Goodwill or the Salvation Army stores. My shoes are bought used for about $4 each. I do my own maintenance on my vehicle (1988 Dodge Dakota), and bring in a mechanic friend who works cheap (he's essentially homeless himself). I eat out probably 12 times a year and never, ever rent movies (I waited until all 3 Matrix movies hit the library -- now, THERE'S willpower). I buy toilet paper in year lots. Etc.
I'm living such a hand-to-mouth existence (writing this now on a Pentium I, 100MHz, that I obtained in 1995) because I've been saving money. I'm at $18K and still climbing (no mean feat at $14/hr as a field service tech for a bank). (It would be $22K savings, but I've got loans out to friends who have had their own fiscal troubles... primarily revolving around years of un- and under-employment.)
The savings are necessary since I'm getting the fuck out of this place and will strike out on my own like I did in my 20s. Moving to Boston in 1990 was the best thing I ever did, and I may return there. I had found that I was undercutting tech workers
Why do people still act mystified about the AOL-TW stock scam? That's all it was. It was done to pump up stocks for the executives and assorted insider stockholders. Once they dumped their stock to take advantage of market stupidity, reality asserted itself and the whole thing collapsed. Even more accurately, it was always just a race between stock gambling and fiscal reality.
All the plans during the so-called merger were just fluff. The entire dotcom boom went in a similar direction. The arrangers were far more concerned about making a killing off of stock selloffs than they were for providing for a productive business environment after the event.
There was just no way in hell AOL could have had the market value to compare to TW. That fact alone dictated the entire thing was a stock scam. But people who are planning on continuing the stock-scam environment cannot admit to this. Even now, people refuse to admit it.
Look: Time Warner is a media conglomerate with a strong connection to real value, and there aren't many of its power. AOL is just a large ISP, and there are many ISPs. That's it. There's nothing more to see here. Merging AOL to TW, as opposed to offering TW media services through ALL ISPs, is just moronic.
No matter how bad the working conditions are, "at will" employment isn't slavery.
The phrase "wage slavery" must have never hit your ears before. You have essentially admitted the extent of your own ignorance. Go read some books and come back when you're educated on the topics you are speaking out on.
You only illustrate that it is becoming vitally important to save money. Many people are in a position to save money; if they aren't saving, then they just need to dismiss some number of their luxury purchases. For example, 98% of the cellphones in America are luxuries. A $24K car, when a $12K one will do, is a luxury. Keeping the thermostat at 72deg in winter and 65deg in summer, is a luxury. Once these things are totalled up, you can reach a big figure. I reason that the average yuppie makes over 1000 excessive decisions each year, ranging from a couple of dollars to hundreds of dollars per decision. At an average of $7 per decision, said yuppie is probably spending $7000 more than he really needs to each year... and after 8 productive work years, he's missing a $56000 savings account, hence is much more vulnerable to abusive employers.
I can cast blame upon abusive employers all I want, but until the worker owns up to being a conspicuous consumer, we really can't solve the problem.
It is imperative in a free society that two parties may engage consensually in a contract and be able to expect no retaliation so long as the contract is upheld.
The law in our "free society" covers the legal extents of contracts, hence places restrictions upon them, no matter how private or consensual they are.
If it's not worth it then leave, don't hold EA at the tip of a gun and make demands.
That "gun" is called the law, and it's just another market that EA will have to compete in with its employees. One would think that you -- being a free-market whore -- would respect that.
Question: How is that extra 1500-sq-ft of house qualify as "spending money to make money"? I mean, other than trying to flip that McMansion onto a bigger fool in 4 years?
These people don't have to work for companies that do this. [...] That is the beauty of the free market.
You are so correct! Another beauty of the free market is that when said worker gets into financial trouble, like all the corporations in his area he can just threaten to leave, hence his city council will give him tax breaks. He can also repatriate as a Bermudan citizen, while still living here in America, thus avoiding even more tax. Yes, the "free market" is truly wonderful and oh-so-applicable to the working man!
You know, all of you people who think that this is a bad idea are going to feel really dumb if it turns out to be the greatest invention in the 21st century.
Many would say TV was one of the greatest inventions of the 20th Century, but I still think TV is a terrible idea. The social costs we pay for TV far outweigh the benefits. It is a useful tool (imaging, and the potential to put a theatre in any home), but like many such things it has been severely abused.
Look at it this way: marijuana is popular, and if legalized will become even more prevalent. However, I want nothing to do with it... I will not grow it, handle it, buy it or sell it. Similarly, if celltv becomes popular, I will have nothing to do with it. People's dumbassed addictions are morally repugnant to me.
Insanely stupid? Perhaps. But is does feed the attention deficit of people who are prone to buy into such things. We should worry more about assjerks who will be actually watching TV while they're driving or operating heavy machinery. I may be exaggerating, since small TVs have been available for some time, and I've never heard about a driver getting an accident due to one of them. However, with all the problems with CWD (Cellphoning While Driving), I can freely speculate that adding TV to these already-troublesome devices could well be a further problem.
Sooo... have you actually written an article comparing similar versions of MSIE and Firefox? And if you did, was that article actually published? I think I already know the answers, but let's see what you say.
I said "common labor", and you're saying "labor unions and workers". You made seveal mistakes here:
Lumping "workers" in with unionized labor. Unions represent a small fraction of labor in America.
Saying the "workers all voted Democrat". At least half voted Republican.
I stand by my assertions. The Democrats are supposed to be the party of REAL labor... this means everyone who gets a periodic paycheck for the work they do for that period. A small minority of this population is in various labor unions. The large majority isn't, and too many live paycheck to paycheck, groaning under the weight of an economy that the Democrats have been supporting for some time.
Until the Democrats actually move to support universal health care, decreased income taxes for the middle class, better tax credits for the working man, and put a stop to abusive capital flight... then they will continue to be irrelevent to the working man who have voted the Democrats down in all their millions. And the Democrats will lose an average of 3 more Congressional seats in 2006. Elitism has aligned the Democrats to wealth and power, but has alienated them from most of the workforce, by definition. Many millions who voted for Kerry admittedly did so since they hated Bush so much... not because Kerry really represented their interests to any significant degree.
Wake up, guy. You have your head in the sand about as far as the average Congressional Democrat, and that makes you an endangered species... for no good reason, also.
In all fairness, your assertion about embracing constituencies is strangely on target, however. A redneck in some pickup truck is still in need of better health care and protections of his rights as a worker. But the Democrats hate him as much as they hate all low- to medium-skilled workers; they have sold out to elitist elements and will continue to pay the price for such a betrayal of the common man.
I don't know. I can see Toledo's problem party stems from being a blue-collar town that sank into a religious-fired cowardice when much of the factories fled. I can also see that Toledo too often served as a stopover for criminal gangs traveling from Chicago to Detroit. Both these things lead to a very weak society, prone to fear, sociopathy and religion. If you see signs of these kinds of things in the areas you mention, then I'd avoid them.
That's basically correct. Starting with the Carter administration, the SS "fund" was dipped into, by replacing real money with T-bills. The influx into the Treasury was naturally used to reduce the yearly deficit. Americans simply got used to this, but any moron could tell you that that sort of thing could only end badly.
But it got worse. Congress has been dipping into the SS T-bills, and is replacing them with glorified IOUs. They turn around, resell the T-bills, and use that money to pay down deficits too. It's kind of like having your cake, and eating it too, but again -- THIS CAN ONLY END MORE BADLY.
It is going to get EVEN worse. If benefits and retirement ages stay the same, and the FICA tax stays the same, then with the surge of baby-boomer retirements, the heavily overextended T-bill/IOU system will simply collapse. Americans simply don't understand the collapse (or reduction in benefits, or increase in retirement ages, or increase in FICA) is coming, since by the usual short-term mentality, it hasn't happened yet.
The very least we can say for sure is that the SS system must undergo significant change. But all such changes are likely to be painful.
Not really. It's pretty much saying that once the Democrats starve due to their own ineptitude, they may come to recall that they are supposed to be the party of labor, and there are still quite a few workers in America... hence they might go back to grassroots and align their politics to that of common labor... and that means economic alignment.
However, when you take someone who has earned X dollars for ten+ years, let them go and instantly make it impossible for them to get a job except by moving around, and that job only pay 1/10th of what X did, then something is seriously wrong. Now if this happened over say 10+ years that would be bad enough (like the manufacturing jobs) but this happened over two years. That is horrible.
When I was testing software in Mass. in the 90s, the most the company paid for me was about $70/hr. When I moved to Toledo (don't ask) in 1997, I eventually found a job for $7/hr doing tech work.
You're not exaggerating at all. This x/10x thing is pretty horrible. It has completely reset my expectations for America, and my place in it. Translation: You may as well consider me a native enemy (worthy of inclusion in some DHS database), since I'm so pissed off and willing to secure my future over others. Blame the Capitalists for playing the wage game to the extremes. I have changed into an extremely frugal man who is carrying the torch for bankrupting the common American corporation -- which has long since restructured itself into supporting a consumer environment of obscene irresponsibility.
America's Hypercapitalism needs to die (-- and violently, since people in the future need to cringe in horror instead of taking America down the same ruinous road). We're out here, working to that end. And when the more of us run into the extremities of x/10x, the more of us can "vote with our dollars" and lay utter waste to the Microsofts of the world. (Linux is a great example of how pissed-off programmers are actively killing Microsoft. Boo hoo.)
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Was your wife registered as a poll watcher? If not, you can bring her up on charges. 8^D
I know how you feel. Even worse: I wanted to vote for my primary choice of Ralph Nader, but a swarm of Democrat lawyers showed up in Ohio's capital and got him tossed off the ballot. It was hence and therefore too late to even register as a write-in. Talk about disenfranchisement. So I cast my vote for the 2nd best man for the job: Badnarik. Of course, Two-Party America wiped its ass with my vote. So we are certainly getting the government we deserve, more or less. {sigh}
On traffic law alone, this is true now, as it has been true for over a generation.
55 million for FOR Kerry, and 59 million FOR Bush, which means 55+59=114 million people voted FOR a class of elitist assholes who are selling them down the river just to mint another millionaire buddy of theirs. THAT's how John Fucking Kerry would have changed nothing about it.
Make sure you continue to re-elect these politicians. The US Congress enjoys a, what, 98% re-election rate? Those pols are sure shaking in their boots, aren't they?
There was a bit of an upset in 1992, but that shakeup in the Congress was put smartly in its place almost immediately, and the managed environment of the legislature returned in record time.
Ho hum. Back to the business of continued concentration of wealth and the destruction of the middle class.
If your national legislature is so intent on fighting you, then you have no more civil government by definition. The honest man would have been shooting by now. (I suppose that things like widespread software and music piracy are forms of revolution. The war is on.)
And up to three years in prison for camcordering a movie? THREE YEARS?! Guys spend less time in prison for rape!
Government is becoming more and more concerned about making America safe for corporate profiteering, and correspondingly less and less concerned about the safety and security of people. 114 million people voted FOR this sort of government on Nov 2nd. Having once again made this bed, we will all have to lay in it. (Except those of us who are frankly criminal by deed and intent. {wave and smile})
So when's the next civil war?
... just look out for Orcs^W National Guard on the march, and Nazgul^W Al Qaeda in the air.
... fought very civilly.
That depends upon your definition of "war". Tax evasion is now at epidemic levels, and that only makes sense, since the Neo-Libs and Neo-Cons both want to make government power more focused: much more narrow and intense. As long as you avoid the withering glare of the All-Seeing Eye of the modern Sauron (i.e. the Federal Government), you can pretty much get away with anything you like. You little Hobbitses -- Sssss! -- can scrabble around in Eriador, raising tomatoes and chickens
In short, an environment it being created in which is will be difficult to obtain a welfare check of any sort, but it will be easy to evade all kinds of taxation. This is well within the Neo-Con vision of future government. Any fool can see it. And there's your civil war
I moved back to my hometown of Toledo OH in 1997 from Boston MA. It is THE WORST MISTAKE I ever made in my life. Learn from it.
... the owners are getting the hell out since the economy's so shitty, but -- what a shock -- they can't sell their homes in the same economy. Rather than take the loss from such a housing bubble, they elected to convert their homes to rentals and then take off for better fiscal climes.
... primarily revolving around years of un- and under-employment.)
Places like Toledo (which includes anything within a 1hr radius from it) are economic dead zones, stuck inside America like little Third World countries. I never in my life had (and have) seen such an old population of tech workers (what few there are, BTW). There's a reason for that. The reason is that a place like Toledo has permanently underemployed population sectors. Those old folks in "young men's jobs" are clinging to their jobs for dear life. They are clinging so desperately since outside that job, there's almost nothing available for years at a time but manual labor paying $6-$10/hr.
There's a reason housing was (note the past tense) so cheap in places like Toledo. It was cheap since there were no fucking jobs. It was cheap since the people who wanted to sell, really couldn't find qualified buyers.
This housing situation changed in some perverted mirror of the dotcom boom's effects on the coasts (as well as the credit boom that had apparently struck every bank in America as some sort of good idea -- bleah!). Housing has risen appallingly, even while thousands were and are being tossed out of work. It was only this year 2004 that Toledo's average metro housing finally reflected economic reality and fell 5%. But after years of steep rising, 5% is a nothing decrease. Homes in Toledo are still at least 50% overpriced when compared to the economic strength that can be marshalled here to buy them.
What I'm seeing here and now is a "renting adjustment". Houses are sitting on the market so long that many "owners" are making the adjustment of renting out their unsalable homes. Just to go by the small sample of what 2 neighbors have done, I'd wager that many of these are due to relocations
You may be offered a job in one of these areas. You should strongly consider your future if you do so. That job may collapse under you in only a couple of years, and then where will you be? Yes, that's right: stuck in Loserville USA with a whole bunch of losers who will work for far less money than you will. And it will never get better. Not in a place like Toledo. (Case in point: The only McDonald's in downtown Toledo closed about 4 months ago.)
To rant a bit to support my thesis: I lost my home and have otherwise contracted my expenses down in size to what I never considered possible before (and I was a spendthrift before, to give you some idea). All the clothes I wear come from Goodwill or the Salvation Army stores. My shoes are bought used for about $4 each. I do my own maintenance on my vehicle (1988 Dodge Dakota), and bring in a mechanic friend who works cheap (he's essentially homeless himself). I eat out probably 12 times a year and never, ever rent movies (I waited until all 3 Matrix movies hit the library -- now, THERE'S willpower). I buy toilet paper in year lots. Etc.
I'm living such a hand-to-mouth existence (writing this now on a Pentium I, 100MHz, that I obtained in 1995) because I've been saving money. I'm at $18K and still climbing (no mean feat at $14/hr as a field service tech for a bank). (It would be $22K savings, but I've got loans out to friends who have had their own fiscal troubles
The savings are necessary since I'm getting the fuck out of this place and will strike out on my own like I did in my 20s. Moving to Boston in 1990 was the best thing I ever did, and I may return there. I had found that I was undercutting tech workers
Why do people still act mystified about the AOL-TW stock scam? That's all it was. It was done to pump up stocks for the executives and assorted insider stockholders. Once they dumped their stock to take advantage of market stupidity, reality asserted itself and the whole thing collapsed. Even more accurately, it was always just a race between stock gambling and fiscal reality.
All the plans during the so-called merger were just fluff. The entire dotcom boom went in a similar direction. The arrangers were far more concerned about making a killing off of stock selloffs than they were for providing for a productive business environment after the event.
There was just no way in hell AOL could have had the market value to compare to TW. That fact alone dictated the entire thing was a stock scam. But people who are planning on continuing the stock-scam environment cannot admit to this. Even now, people refuse to admit it.
Look: Time Warner is a media conglomerate with a strong connection to real value, and there aren't many of its power. AOL is just a large ISP, and there are many ISPs. That's it. There's nothing more to see here. Merging AOL to TW, as opposed to offering TW media services through ALL ISPs, is just moronic.
No matter how bad the working conditions are, "at will" employment isn't slavery.
The phrase "wage slavery" must have never hit your ears before. You have essentially admitted the extent of your own ignorance. Go read some books and come back when you're educated on the topics you are speaking out on.
You only illustrate that it is becoming vitally important to save money. Many people are in a position to save money; if they aren't saving, then they just need to dismiss some number of their luxury purchases. For example, 98% of the cellphones in America are luxuries. A $24K car, when a $12K one will do, is a luxury. Keeping the thermostat at 72deg in winter and 65deg in summer, is a luxury. Once these things are totalled up, you can reach a big figure. I reason that the average yuppie makes over 1000 excessive decisions each year, ranging from a couple of dollars to hundreds of dollars per decision. At an average of $7 per decision, said yuppie is probably spending $7000 more than he really needs to each year ... and after 8 productive work years, he's missing a $56000 savings account, hence is much more vulnerable to abusive employers.
I can cast blame upon abusive employers all I want, but until the worker owns up to being a conspicuous consumer, we really can't solve the problem.
It is imperative in a free society that two parties may engage consensually in a contract and be able to expect no retaliation so long as the contract is upheld.
The law in our "free society" covers the legal extents of contracts, hence places restrictions upon them, no matter how private or consensual they are.
If it's not worth it then leave, don't hold EA at the tip of a gun and make demands.
That "gun" is called the law, and it's just another market that EA will have to compete in with its employees. One would think that you -- being a free-market whore -- would respect that.
Question: How is that extra 1500-sq-ft of house qualify as "spending money to make money"? I mean, other than trying to flip that McMansion onto a bigger fool in 4 years?
These people don't have to work for companies that do this. [...] That is the beauty of the free market.
You are so correct! Another beauty of the free market is that when said worker gets into financial trouble, like all the corporations in his area he can just threaten to leave, hence his city council will give him tax breaks. He can also repatriate as a Bermudan citizen, while still living here in America, thus avoiding even more tax. Yes, the "free market" is truly wonderful and oh-so-applicable to the working man!
You know, all of you people who think that this is a bad idea are going to feel really dumb if it turns out to be the greatest invention in the 21st century.
... I will not grow it, handle it, buy it or sell it. Similarly, if celltv becomes popular, I will have nothing to do with it. People's dumbassed addictions are morally repugnant to me.
Many would say TV was one of the greatest inventions of the 20th Century, but I still think TV is a terrible idea. The social costs we pay for TV far outweigh the benefits. It is a useful tool (imaging, and the potential to put a theatre in any home), but like many such things it has been severely abused.
Look at it this way: marijuana is popular, and if legalized will become even more prevalent. However, I want nothing to do with it
Insanely stupid? Perhaps. But is does feed the attention deficit of people who are prone to buy into such things. We should worry more about assjerks who will be actually watching TV while they're driving or operating heavy machinery. I may be exaggerating, since small TVs have been available for some time, and I've never heard about a driver getting an accident due to one of them. However, with all the problems with CWD (Cellphoning While Driving), I can freely speculate that adding TV to these already-troublesome devices could well be a further problem.
Sooo ... have you actually written an article comparing similar versions of MSIE and Firefox? And if you did, was that article actually published? I think I already know the answers, but let's see what you say.
- Lumping "workers" in with unionized labor. Unions represent a small fraction of labor in America.
- Saying the "workers all voted Democrat". At least half voted Republican.
I stand by my assertions. The Democrats are supposed to be the party of REAL laborUntil the Democrats actually move to support universal health care, decreased income taxes for the middle class, better tax credits for the working man, and put a stop to abusive capital flight
Wake up, guy. You have your head in the sand about as far as the average Congressional Democrat, and that makes you an endangered species
In all fairness, your assertion about embracing constituencies is strangely on target, however. A redneck in some pickup truck is still in need of better health care and protections of his rights as a worker. But the Democrats hate him as much as they hate all low- to medium-skilled workers; they have sold out to elitist elements and will continue to pay the price for such a betrayal of the common man.
I don't know. I can see Toledo's problem party stems from being a blue-collar town that sank into a religious-fired cowardice when much of the factories fled. I can also see that Toledo too often served as a stopover for criminal gangs traveling from Chicago to Detroit. Both these things lead to a very weak society, prone to fear, sociopathy and religion. If you see signs of these kinds of things in the areas you mention, then I'd avoid them.
That's basically correct. Starting with the Carter administration, the SS "fund" was dipped into, by replacing real money with T-bills. The influx into the Treasury was naturally used to reduce the yearly deficit. Americans simply got used to this, but any moron could tell you that that sort of thing could only end badly.
But it got worse. Congress has been dipping into the SS T-bills, and is replacing them with glorified IOUs. They turn around, resell the T-bills, and use that money to pay down deficits too. It's kind of like having your cake, and eating it too, but again -- THIS CAN ONLY END MORE BADLY.
It is going to get EVEN worse. If benefits and retirement ages stay the same, and the FICA tax stays the same, then with the surge of baby-boomer retirements, the heavily overextended T-bill/IOU system will simply collapse. Americans simply don't understand the collapse (or reduction in benefits, or increase in retirement ages, or increase in FICA) is coming, since by the usual short-term mentality, it hasn't happened yet.
The very least we can say for sure is that the SS system must undergo significant change. But all such changes are likely to be painful.
Not really. It's pretty much saying that once the Democrats starve due to their own ineptitude, they may come to recall that they are supposed to be the party of labor, and there are still quite a few workers in America ... hence they might go back to grassroots and align their politics to that of common labor ... and that means economic alignment.
However, when you take someone who has earned X dollars for ten+ years, let them go and instantly make it impossible for them to get a job except by moving around, and that job only pay 1/10th of what X did, then something is seriously wrong. Now if this happened over say 10+ years that would be bad enough (like the manufacturing jobs) but this happened over two years. That is horrible.
When I was testing software in Mass. in the 90s, the most the company paid for me was about $70/hr. When I moved to Toledo (don't ask) in 1997, I eventually found a job for $7/hr doing tech work.
You're not exaggerating at all. This x/10x thing is pretty horrible. It has completely reset my expectations for America, and my place in it. Translation: You may as well consider me a native enemy (worthy of inclusion in some DHS database), since I'm so pissed off and willing to secure my future over others. Blame the Capitalists for playing the wage game to the extremes. I have changed into an extremely frugal man who is carrying the torch for bankrupting the common American corporation -- which has long since restructured itself into supporting a consumer environment of obscene irresponsibility.
America's Hypercapitalism needs to die (-- and violently, since people in the future need to cringe in horror instead of taking America down the same ruinous road). We're out here, working to that end. And when the more of us run into the extremities of x/10x, the more of us can "vote with our dollars" and lay utter waste to the Microsofts of the world. (Linux is a great example of how pissed-off programmers are actively killing Microsoft. Boo hoo.)
What was your last job in Chicago, such that you could not find another?