Capitalism is all about people constnatly trying to do more and more, and make more and more money, and get higher and higher positions, and get better and better grades and a million other things
Capitalism is an economic system, not a system of philosophical priorities.
Why does everyone try to ride on the coattails of the "capitalism" word? It's not a security blanket.
If people would just sit back and realize that they are ok right where they are they would be alot less stressed.
We could do this in a capitalist system if our government wasn't trying to pass us the debt that was incurred by the thieving schemes of a few (1929, 1980-Black Monday,.com boom-bust).
At my workplace, it is widely accepted to use a day of sick leave and call it a "mental health" day.
I've worked for companies like that. Employees who made use of a mental health day more than once in their career were labelled as psychological liabilities and systematically eliminated from the company.
My apologies. I read that you were suggesting that, if people feel they're being harassed, they should use the court system to bring their harassers to justice. Which of course makes no sense since, being debtors, they don't have any money to retain the services of an attorney.
True. In Ireland, from the 1600s on, the Irish Catholics were treated like cattle who could farm their own grass. Predatory lending was a way of life even though the British had laws which prohibited "a stronger power from using its position to force an unfair contract on a weaker power".
I guess our system isn't worse. It's the exact same.
What is "slavery"? Do you mean slavery as in beatings or floggings? Spare me the sap. There's no economic advantage to outright killing the workers unless that particular "slave" was becoming a political resistor. "Slavery" is providing unfair compensation. Since the US is, essentially, a debtor society ($6 trillion in national debt?) I would say that, somewhere along the line, there's a good chunk of unfair compensation going on.
I can't say exactly where the fire in this society is but I smell the smoke of collusion reeking from the walls of the State houses, banks, and Wall Street.
Well, technically you're responsible for this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and that, and those, and these, and this, and those, and these, and this, and this, and those, and these, and that, and these, and those, and this...
And did you notice the fine print at the bottom that says that, should you forget to water the plant on your neighbor's back porch (which you're also responsible for), you will be penalized at a rate of $3000/minute for every minute that plant goes without water, and the professional watering service which is hired (at $10000/call) is also your responsibility?
I see bankruptcy laws as a further propagation of the scam within the scam.
If you can't pay then guess what? You can't!
That's exactly my point. It's a violation of logic to pay money to a bankruptcy lawyer to handle bills that you can't pay. It's the financial system milking every last drop out of you. I guess they hope that if they threaten and harass you enough, eventually you'll be so broken down that you will submit to bankruptcy. Once in bankruptcy they take the last little bit that they can get and THEN trash your credit.
No thanks. I've already got the trashed credit. I'm holding on to this last little bit.
That's a terribly small minded view. Not everyone can spend their days crunching numbers on spreadsheets and, to be perfectly honest, you don't have the same access to the same investment databases and tracking systems that I do. I own your butt when it comes to investing. Additionally, I get a default subsidization from your 401k funds. What are you paying FICA for? When the market tanked, your politicians were looking at giving me even more access to your money by directly investing FICA funds on the open market--not like I don't already manage to handle pieces of the coffers that make up FICA anyways.
My point is: everyone has their place in life. Woe to you should the farmer ever decide to pull his strings on you the way I pull my strings on you.
How logical. We'll require that the people, who can't afford to pay their bills, must retain the services of an attorney in order to prosecute us for fraud.
It's not technically lying because technically you never asked a question. In a system of caller ID it's assumed that the caller would like to ask who's calling before answering the phone. But that doesn't meet normal communication protocol because you MUST establish a connection in order to pose a query. In this case, caller ID is a cheap mechanical roundabout to evade proper human communication protocol. There is no violation of ethics in using one mechanical technology to defeat another in order to preserve natural human communication protocol.
If you come up to me in the street and wave money in my face, I don't have to take it
I do agree with you in principle. I really do. But are you some communist?
It kinda defeats the whole purpose of having a system based on a government backed, taxpayer subsidized capital if anyone can refuse it.
What if your credit card company one day said,"Sorry, we can't accept that particular bank note as legal tender. We require you to make equivalent payment in the form of Martian Widgets."
they're up against people who are probably often quite willing to go to even greater lengths, probably into outright criminal behavior, to avoid paying their debts
Let me guess this straight...
Two guys are running down the street. One guy is running away and another guy is chasing him with a club yelling obscenities and threatening to spend the rest of his life ruining the life of the fellow that he's chasing.
And the guy running away is exhibiting outright criminal behavior? I mean, maybe it's trespassing when he hops the fence but how about NOT CHASING HIM?
Fraud's a nice concept philosophically but it's nearly impossible to prove. It's commonly dismissed as a "paranoid conspiracy theory". If we could prove fraud we'd be in heaven. The stock brokers would be in prison, the politicians would be in prison, and most of the legal "authorities" would be in prison, Alan Greenspan would be in prison.
We don't want to get nasty about it but the system of annoying bill collectors calling you is far better than the one it replaced
How about you choose an honest business model and not think that you're going to make money by lending money to strangers?
I understand, you feel you're providing a valuable community service to people in need. Care to explain how people with honest jobs in the world's most affluent nation can't afford basic living expenses and so turn to creditors?
I'll say it again: I don't know where the smoke is but I smell the fire of collusion coming from somewhere.
(which sadly, in many cases, are scams wholly unto themselves)
Finally, someone admitting that the credit/debt industry is a predatory scam.
to pay money that they were all too happy to borrow in the first place
They didn't borrow it. You were repaying them for their taxpayer dollars which your industry borrowed from the government. Well, technically speaking, the government just offered your industry "subsidies" but I have no problem seeing through the legal chicanery. I can't remember the last time my politicians actually asked me if I thought your industry deserved my tax dollars.
I ask you this:
I ask you this: What kind of dumbshit business model do you think it takes to convince yourself that you're going to make money off of lending money to strangers?
Oh wait... those people _NEED_ that money to live because they're so destitute? Well, how is it that people with honest jobs living in the most affluent nation in the world can't afford basic living expenses? I don't know exactly where the fire is in this building, but I smell the smoke of collusion coming from somewhere.
I completely agree. If the corporate world really wanted us to pay our debts back, they'd offer jobs and raise our wages.
Funny... the IRS reports that the average American wage _DECREASED_ 10% from '00-'02. That's making it pretty darn difficult to pay back those debts.
Oh, and it's not a conspiracy, because we all know that politicians and CEOs have taken similar pay cuts and have decided to forego their yearly million dollar bonuses. HAR HAR.
Is that the same strawman that frightens us that file sharing is going to shut down the music and movie industry? Perhaps it's the same strawman that tells you that unless Big Brother watches your neighbors they're all going to turn into terrorists and kill your family? Maybe it's the same strawman that warns you that every hippie with a doobie is going to morph into a rabid cannibalistic criminal just waiting to steal your car, boink your wife, and move into your house?
Straw men are used by both sides. In times when people actually thought for themselves it was called "fascist propaganda" but _OUR_ holy democratic government _OBVIOUSLY_ wouldn't ever get involved in that sort of thing.
And you did not figure out a plan to adequately cover those expenses?
Sure, I figured that I would be eligible for the same amount of financial aid as other people in my families' income strata. Even considering that I had a college fund, what's $1800/yr compared to an overall $100k expense? The propaganda department more than assured us that, after graduation, the debt amount would be trivial.
that you knew beforehand what you were getting into, and did not act to keep yourself out of debt
Another hallmark of a pyramid scheme. The advertising always runs,"Sure. You may go into debt to sign up, but the potential profits after completing the program will more than offset the balance." When this kind of scheme is played on college education, which even Bush agrees that every American should have access to, it is nothing short of predatory.
Millions of students are faced with these decisions every day - and they pick a school they can afford. You made a bad call. It's that simple.
Bullshit. Millions of students every day are eligible for the types of tuition subsidies which leave them with enough money to live.
You'll get no sympathy from me.
This isn't about sympathy. This is about you finally admitting that the system which subsidized your arguments is working to keep a significant portion of the nation in debt so as to continue subsidizing good little lemmings like yourself.
Millions of people (like myself) couldn't afford college at all, and didn't go, rather than get into debt
Of course not. You chose to go into a military system which has worked out, on paper, for hundreds of years, the amount of subsidy that it takes to keep its soldiers above the debt line.
You had a college fund, you could have gone to a school where the cost was $80 or even $90k and come out without $7k in debt
If you could've (*snicker* but you're an average dumbshit, aren't you?) qualified for and afforded to attend a premier university, even given a $2k/yr debt, you would've jumped at the chance thinking,"When I graduate the benefits of a premier institution will more than be able to pay back the trivial debt."
If you didn't qualify for them, you could have waited a couple of years to go to college
I've avoided being blunt. I'm no longer going to avoid it.
BULLSHIT. The fact that we made responsible decisions to fund my college would have always worked against me. The majority contributing factor was assessed need. Since I had a college fund, I had no assessed need. Since I had no assessed need, we were paying taxes to subsidize tuition assistance that everyone, including much more affluent families were eligible for, that I was not eligible for.
As usual, smart decisions made by a frugal family was used against them by the financial institution.
It's a scam, and you can kiss my ass if you think you're going to browbeat me about debt that I incurred for living expenses while more affluent families had those living expenses subsidized by every poor mother paying taxes to swab toilets.
If you didn't calculate out how much money you needed beforehand, you can't blame that on anyone but yourself
BULLSHIT. My admissions office told us straight up that they figured an average of $200/mo for students for "basic living expenses", even if they lived on campus and ate at the campus cafeteria. While everyone, including more affluent families, were eligible for TAXPAYER SUBSIDIZED tuition assistance that would help offset this amount, I was not. Why? Because my parents made an INTELLIGENT decision to try andprovide for my college education 16 years in advance. It stinks like last year's shit of a pyramid scheme.
I spit on your defense of such a biased system.
You could have chosen a school where the academic load was lighter, so you could have made the grades easier with a part time job
Why would you choose to go to a community college with a half-assed educational record if you could qualify for a premier national institution? Answer: You wouldn't.
You could have, as you say, put a down on a house and thrown the remainder in the bank
BULLSHIT. At 18 years old I actually had some faith in the system. I didn't think that the financial industry was out to rape everyone who had worked their lives to save to get ahead.
Bring the figures I asked for to the table.
I already did. College education: $100k. Consider a purchase of $100k. If a person makes $100k, and has saved $10k, then they qualify for a 30% subsidy and a low interest rate because, while the loan amount is 60% of their income, banks recognize that a person making $100k has more expendable resources. If a person makes $30k, but has managed to save $80k, then they qualify for no subsidy and a high interest rate because the loan amount is 66% (6% is a lot in the banking industry) of their income and a person at $30k needs almost all of that just to live. Now the guy making $30k is not only paying the taxes (which provide for the 30% subsidy for the affluent neighbor, who is also paying taxes but is getting his taxes returned to him through a roundabout) but is being stripped bare by the high interest rates on a $20k loan. For the same purchase.
Omega President and CEO Patricia Williams has donated $6,600 in this election cycle to the National Republican Congressional Committee and is a member of its Business Advisory Council.
A $6600 donation is a drop in the bucket. A CEO membership on the BAC isn't out of line.
Look, I don't disagree that graft is out of control in our nation, but can the news sources please start providing us with a little bit better social network or money trail maps? It's nothing short of dairy farm stinking suspicious that network and finance maps are given only the weakest cursory mentions.
Slashdot Mirror
but the absence of stress would eliminate at least half of the remaining $11,000 billion in U.S. GDP.
No wonder we're living in a welfare state. Looking at some of these links tells me exactly what I've always wanted to know.
In one form or another, the federal government alone will manage to tax your entire paycheck away from you.
Capitalism is all about people constnatly trying to do more and more, and make more and more money, and get higher and higher positions, and get better and better grades and a million other things
.com boom-bust).
Capitalism is an economic system, not a system of philosophical priorities.
Why does everyone try to ride on the coattails of the "capitalism" word? It's not a security blanket.
If people would just sit back and realize that they are ok right where they are they would be alot less stressed.
We could do this in a capitalist system if our government wasn't trying to pass us the debt that was incurred by the thieving schemes of a few (1929, 1980-Black Monday,
At my workplace, it is widely accepted to use a day of sick leave and call it a "mental health" day.
I've worked for companies like that. Employees who made use of a mental health day more than once in their career were labelled as psychological liabilities and systematically eliminated from the company.
My apologies. I read that you were suggesting that, if people feel they're being harassed, they should use the court system to bring their harassers to justice. Which of course makes no sense since, being debtors, they don't have any money to retain the services of an attorney.
Yeah our system is so much worse.
True. In Ireland, from the 1600s on, the Irish Catholics were treated like cattle who could farm their own grass. Predatory lending was a way of life even though the British had laws which prohibited "a stronger power from using its position to force an unfair contract on a weaker power".
I guess our system isn't worse. It's the exact same.
What is "slavery"? Do you mean slavery as in beatings or floggings? Spare me the sap. There's no economic advantage to outright killing the workers unless that particular "slave" was becoming a political resistor. "Slavery" is providing unfair compensation. Since the US is, essentially, a debtor society ($6 trillion in national debt?) I would say that, somewhere along the line, there's a good chunk of unfair compensation going on.
I can't say exactly where the fire in this society is but I smell the smoke of collusion reeking from the walls of the State houses, banks, and Wall Street.
hence you were responsible for it
Well, technically you're responsible for this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and that, and those, and these, and this, and those, and these, and this, and this, and those, and these, and that, and these, and those, and this...
And did you notice the fine print at the bottom that says that, should you forget to water the plant on your neighbor's back porch (which you're also responsible for), you will be penalized at a rate of $3000/minute for every minute that plant goes without water, and the professional watering service which is hired (at $10000/call) is also your responsibility?
That's what bankruptcy laws are there for
I see bankruptcy laws as a further propagation of the scam within the scam.
If you can't pay then guess what? You can't!
That's exactly my point. It's a violation of logic to pay money to a bankruptcy lawyer to handle bills that you can't pay. It's the financial system milking every last drop out of you. I guess they hope that if they threaten and harass you enough, eventually you'll be so broken down that you will submit to bankruptcy. Once in bankruptcy they take the last little bit that they can get and THEN trash your credit.
No thanks. I've already got the trashed credit. I'm holding on to this last little bit.
Take advantage of stupid people.
That's a terribly small minded view. Not everyone can spend their days crunching numbers on spreadsheets and, to be perfectly honest, you don't have the same access to the same investment databases and tracking systems that I do. I own your butt when it comes to investing. Additionally, I get a default subsidization from your 401k funds. What are you paying FICA for? When the market tanked, your politicians were looking at giving me even more access to your money by directly investing FICA funds on the open market--not like I don't already manage to handle pieces of the coffers that make up FICA anyways.
My point is: everyone has their place in life. Woe to you should the farmer ever decide to pull his strings on you the way I pull my strings on you.
IPO tactics at work here
That's perfectly true. It is all about the hype.
That's what the court system is for
How logical. We'll require that the people, who can't afford to pay their bills, must retain the services of an attorney in order to prosecute us for fraud.
How is lying "ethical"?
It's not technically lying because technically you never asked a question. In a system of caller ID it's assumed that the caller would like to ask who's calling before answering the phone. But that doesn't meet normal communication protocol because you MUST establish a connection in order to pose a query. In this case, caller ID is a cheap mechanical roundabout to evade proper human communication protocol. There is no violation of ethics in using one mechanical technology to defeat another in order to preserve natural human communication protocol.
If you come up to me in the street and wave money in my face, I don't have to take it
I do agree with you in principle. I really do. But are you some communist?
It kinda defeats the whole purpose of having a system based on a government backed, taxpayer subsidized capital if anyone can refuse it.
What if your credit card company one day said,"Sorry, we can't accept that particular bank note as legal tender. We require you to make equivalent payment in the form of Martian Widgets."
they're up against people who are probably often quite willing to go to even greater lengths, probably into outright criminal behavior, to avoid paying their debts
Let me guess this straight...
Two guys are running down the street. One guy is running away and another guy is chasing him with a club yelling obscenities and threatening to spend the rest of his life ruining the life of the fellow that he's chasing.
And the guy running away is exhibiting outright criminal behavior? I mean, maybe it's trespassing when he hops the fence but how about NOT CHASING HIM?
If there is no fraud, there is no crime
:)
Fraud's a nice concept philosophically but it's nearly impossible to prove. It's commonly dismissed as a "paranoid conspiracy theory". If we could prove fraud we'd be in heaven. The stock brokers would be in prison, the politicians would be in prison, and most of the legal "authorities" would be in prison, Alan Greenspan would be in prison.
I agree with everything else you've said.
We don't want to get nasty about it but the system of annoying bill collectors calling you is far better than the one it replaced
How about you choose an honest business model and not think that you're going to make money by lending money to strangers?
I understand, you feel you're providing a valuable community service to people in need. Care to explain how people with honest jobs in the world's most affluent nation can't afford basic living expenses and so turn to creditors?
I'll say it again: I don't know where the smoke is but I smell the fire of collusion coming from somewhere.
I like Soviet Russia jokes.
These stupid <censored> service specifically devalues the caller id product provided by many telcos
Please, let's not start the old tired radar gun vs. radar detector argument again.
(which sadly, in many cases, are scams wholly unto themselves)
Finally, someone admitting that the credit/debt industry is a predatory scam.
to pay money that they were all too happy to borrow in the first place
They didn't borrow it. You were repaying them for their taxpayer dollars which your industry borrowed from the government. Well, technically speaking, the government just offered your industry "subsidies" but I have no problem seeing through the legal chicanery. I can't remember the last time my politicians actually asked me if I thought your industry deserved my tax dollars.
I ask you this:
I ask you this: What kind of dumbshit business model do you think it takes to convince yourself that you're going to make money off of lending money to strangers?
Oh wait... those people _NEED_ that money to live because they're so destitute? Well, how is it that people with honest jobs living in the most affluent nation in the world can't afford basic living expenses? I don't know exactly where the fire is in this building, but I smell the smoke of collusion coming from somewhere.
I'd love to pay them
I completely agree. If the corporate world really wanted us to pay our debts back, they'd offer jobs and raise our wages.
Funny... the IRS reports that the average American wage _DECREASED_ 10% from '00-'02. That's making it pretty darn difficult to pay back those debts.
Oh, and it's not a conspiracy, because we all know that politicians and CEOs have taken similar pay cuts and have decided to forego their yearly million dollar bonuses. HAR HAR.
nice strawman
Is that the same strawman that frightens us that file sharing is going to shut down the music and movie industry? Perhaps it's the same strawman that tells you that unless Big Brother watches your neighbors they're all going to turn into terrorists and kill your family? Maybe it's the same strawman that warns you that every hippie with a doobie is going to morph into a rabid cannibalistic criminal just waiting to steal your car, boink your wife, and move into your house?
Straw men are used by both sides. In times when people actually thought for themselves it was called "fascist propaganda" but _OUR_ holy democratic government _OBVIOUSLY_ wouldn't ever get involved in that sort of thing.
People who spend money on porn could easily just go out and find somebody to enage in real sexual acts with them
You haven't met with the Office of Chastity Development, have you?
Doesn't the default definition of lending include a measure of risk of non-repayment for the lender?
Oh wait. That's not in today's world of politically legalized corporate welfare and predatory lending.
Short and simple:
While ou were in the military, my taxpayer dollars subsidized your punk-butt.
Name one point in my life when your money has _ever_ subsidized me.
The financial system is biased.
And you did not figure out a plan to adequately cover those expenses?
Sure, I figured that I would be eligible for the same amount of financial aid as other people in my families' income strata. Even considering that I had a college fund, what's $1800/yr compared to an overall $100k expense? The propaganda department more than assured us that, after graduation, the debt amount would be trivial.
that you knew beforehand what you were getting into, and did not act to keep yourself out of debt
Another hallmark of a pyramid scheme. The advertising always runs,"Sure. You may go into debt to sign up, but the potential profits after completing the program will more than offset the balance." When this kind of scheme is played on college education, which even Bush agrees that every American should have access to, it is nothing short of predatory.
Millions of students are faced with these decisions every day - and they pick a school they can afford. You made a bad call. It's that simple.
Bullshit. Millions of students every day are eligible for the types of tuition subsidies which leave them with enough money to live.
You'll get no sympathy from me.
This isn't about sympathy. This is about you finally admitting that the system which subsidized your arguments is working to keep a significant portion of the nation in debt so as to continue subsidizing good little lemmings like yourself.
Millions of people (like myself) couldn't afford college at all, and didn't go, rather than get into debt
Of course not. You chose to go into a military system which has worked out, on paper, for hundreds of years, the amount of subsidy that it takes to keep its soldiers above the debt line.
You had a college fund, you could have gone to a school where the cost was $80 or even $90k and come out without $7k in debt
If you could've (*snicker* but you're an average dumbshit, aren't you?) qualified for and afforded to attend a premier university, even given a $2k/yr debt, you would've jumped at the chance thinking,"When I graduate the benefits of a premier institution will more than be able to pay back the trivial debt."
If you didn't qualify for them, you could have waited a couple of years to go to college
I've avoided being blunt. I'm no longer going to avoid it.
BULLSHIT. The fact that we made responsible decisions to fund my college would have always worked against me. The majority contributing factor was assessed need. Since I had a college fund, I had no assessed need. Since I had no assessed need, we were paying taxes to subsidize tuition assistance that everyone, including much more affluent families were eligible for, that I was not eligible for.
As usual, smart decisions made by a frugal family was used against them by the financial institution.
It's a scam, and you can kiss my ass if you think you're going to browbeat me about debt that I incurred for living expenses while more affluent families had those living expenses subsidized by every poor mother paying taxes to swab toilets.
If you didn't calculate out how much money you needed beforehand, you can't blame that on anyone but yourself
BULLSHIT. My admissions office told us straight up that they figured an average of $200/mo for students for "basic living expenses", even if they lived on campus and ate at the campus cafeteria. While everyone, including more affluent families, were eligible for TAXPAYER SUBSIDIZED tuition assistance that would help offset this amount, I was not. Why? Because my parents made an INTELLIGENT decision to try andprovide for my college education 16 years in advance. It stinks like last year's shit of a pyramid scheme.
I spit on your defense of such a biased system.
You could have chosen a school where the academic load was lighter, so you could have made the grades easier with a part time job
Why would you choose to go to a community college with a half-assed educational record if you could qualify for a premier national institution? Answer: You wouldn't.
You could have, as you say, put a down on a house and thrown the remainder in the bank
BULLSHIT. At 18 years old I actually had some faith in the system. I didn't think that the financial industry was out to rape everyone who had worked their lives to save to get ahead.
Bring the figures I asked for to the table.
I already did. College education: $100k. Consider a purchase of $100k. If a person makes $100k, and has saved $10k, then they qualify for a 30% subsidy and a low interest rate because, while the loan amount is 60% of their income, banks recognize that a person making $100k has more expendable resources. If a person makes $30k, but has managed to save $80k, then they qualify for no subsidy and a high interest rate because the loan amount is 66% (6% is a lot in the banking industry) of their income and a person at $30k needs almost all of that just to live. Now the guy making $30k is not only paying the taxes (which provide for the 30% subsidy for the affluent neighbor, who is also paying taxes but is getting his taxes returned to him through a roundabout) but is being stripped bare by the high interest rates on a $20k loan. For the same purchase.
This is such weak data:
Omega President and CEO Patricia Williams has donated $6,600 in this election cycle to the National Republican Congressional Committee and is a member of its Business Advisory Council.
A $6600 donation is a drop in the bucket. A CEO membership on the BAC isn't out of line.
Look, I don't disagree that graft is out of control in our nation, but can the news sources please start providing us with a little bit better social network or money trail maps? It's nothing short of dairy farm stinking suspicious that network and finance maps are given only the weakest cursory mentions.