Branding something "internet access" gives you the rights to get on the internet. The internet is free and open, therefore "internet access" must be free and open. Get it?
Do you even understand what the word "rights" means? Providing internet access means just that: connecting you to a network which is in turn connected to other networks in ways worked out between all of the people that run those networks. Your ISP has to obey the laws of physics, and has to negotiate peering connections to other networks, as well as bear the cost of traffic that comes wandering through. Are you saying that they should have no ability to influence those arrangements in a manner that serves their customers, at the price point they're trying to provide? Should you be able to tell Verizon that you demand equal treatment and unlimited bandwidth on their network for packets going to a torrent operation in Latvia, while they do the same for the five-nines worth of the rest of their traffic that is trying to check their gmail account on a nearby network? Do you imagine all networks to have infinite capacity, and administrative costs that never change?
One could argue that in the case of the monopoly or near-monopoly that is broadband for most of the US, the government *is* limiting free expression unless they advocate net neutrality.
Well, sure, one could argue that. But it would be a bad argument. The state of broadband provisioning is in constant flux, and is still in its relative infancy. It would be insane to upend the entire meaning of the most important amendment to the constitution just because it's temporarily expensive to string up a new network in some small towns. I don't think that most people grasp the enormity of Law Of Unintended Consequences when it comes to this topic.
Why do people confuse the first amendment's prohibition against the government limiting free expression with somehow mandating that private people and/or the companies they form being obliged to provide a platform for everything that everyone wants to say? The first amendment isn't about forcing a guy with a printing press to do what you say, it's about preventing the government from stopping you and the guy who owns the printing press from doing what you like on whatever terms you arrange between the two of you. Same thing goes with the guy who owns the DSL line you're using, or the WiFi hotspot and the network it's wired up to. And just like the printing press, if you don't like the terms of use, build your own or shop around.
No. Teaching school kids to sing Obama songs ("mmm mmm mmm, Barack Hussen Obama... we're all equal in his sight... mmm mmmm mmm"), and trotting out gems about how his election will mark the healing of the earth and the receding of the oceans... that is loopy messianic crazy stuff. Not at all the same as being proud of one's country (and quite the opposite of actively, rhetorically trashing on a regular basis, or having your proxies do so). If being reflexively patriotic is a bad thing, isn't being reflexively un-patriotic just the same?
The only people I ever hear calling him "messiah" are right-wingers. They sound pretty ridiculous and juvenile when they do it. Just FYI.
Then you probably missed Oprah, while weeping, proclaiming him to be "The One" (her words, repeated many times). You have missed Obama himself describing his election as being the point at which the earth would heal and the oceans would recede (his words!). There's a reason that one of Jon Stewart's best satire videos involved a mythic/messianic send-up of Obama with the opening from The Lion King, and going even more over-the-top from there. Perhaps you missed the Greek Temple that was built for his coronation at the DNC convention?
The reason you hear his political opponents making fun of the messianic hoopla is because it exists, right down to mainstream media types talking about how they get shivers down their legs when he makes an appearance. Of course it was all a lot noisier before he was elected. Even some of his most breathless fanboys/girls are realizing that they were being completely irrational.
The people making fun of that BS aren't the ones who look ridiculous - it's the people who still cry and faint when he gives campaign speeches. Just FYI (your words).
You were practically family. You don't know how these men acted on the job. You don't know what little things they let slide. You don't know what went into their pockets. You don't know who they beat up. And we don't know either.
Right. You don't know. But you're sure they did. So who's doing the stereotyping, here, out of ignorance?
My point exactly. When politicians seek power to take away our freedom, people like you would willfully vote that right away. Just like you freely voted your right away to purchase apps from other appstores on your phone from any *vendor* other than Apple. Willful submission.
I've been thinking about it. Yup, you're blowhard who doesn't understand the nature of liberty. You want the tyranny of telling other people how they must exercise their own. Hypocrite.
That's why I cited his campaign, not his administration.
Well, ironically perhaps, you're just making the author's point. It got him elected, but his election hasn't brought about the prospect of any constructive social change (quite the opposite, in many cases), and the large group of people who voted for him because he was new, shiny, and used social media have fizzled out because they saw that much of what they were voting for was The Guy That Uses Social Media, and not for any identifiable, concrete, internally consistent idealogy and policy package. His election was essentially a flash mob, with just as much staying power. The young people who enjoyed that flash mob for its own sake, for the adventure of participating in it have been replaced by chirping crickets, comparatively. Why? Because the author of the article is exactly right.
Anything that involves genetics sends them into a tizzy
Actually, my observation is that it's the lefty wingnuts that have the biggest fits about genetic engineering. Which is ironic, of course, since the founders of the Progressive movement were also big fans of eugenics.
It took me weeks to forgive him for convincing me that I truly am a classical liberal
It really doesn't matter what the terms used to mean, it's how they're being used now. Most progressives might be surprised to know that the people who started out with that label were in favor of things like eugenics.
Communism won't fail every time you try it because it failed previously, it will fail because of the very nature of the idealogy and what it requires in order function (such as it does, which it obviously does not). It requires compulsion, confiscation, and subjugation. It rewards mediocrity and makes slaves of those who are willing to work the hardest. This is the nature, the very essence of communism. By definition. So of course it's going to be like China, or worse (where it's more purely in place, as in North Korea). Hey, even Fidel Castro admitted, the other day, that it turns out not to be what he was hoping it would be. Because, of course, it's fundamentally flawed as a form of human society, if you consider freedom to be an important aspect of life.
I'm just saying that if someone identifies themselves as a communist, it shouldn't be instantly assumed that they wish for a government similar to China's, for example
Well, that's true. It's likely that they're not good enough students of history and of human nature to realize that that's what they're wishing for. But that is what they're wishing for, because communism can only lurchingly work ("work," as in "last a while" - not to be confused with actually serving its victims in any useful way) in the presence of the kind of oppression that has always, without fail, accompanied it. Someone who longs for a society in which one person has the right, backed up by goverenment force, to the labors of another person... and who holds the position that the more productive a person is, the more that should be taken away from them... that person is wishing for exactly what we see in every miserable, oppressive place that has given it a try. Which makes sense, because that's exactly what such a system must be like, or it will give way immediately to localized market economies, or (lacking the rule of law) fuedalism.
People assume that all communisms must be exactly like China/Russia, and that's simply not true in the slightest
Right, it's not true in the slightest that they must be, only that in every case, everywhere, they always have turned out that way, and in every case still observable, continue to loudly proclaim that they want to be, and take actions specifically to be. The only thing of note are the number of glassy-eyed college students who swear that the only reason communism keeps turning out so rottenly is that they, personally, the smartest people in the world, haven't yet had a chance to run the show and centrally manage communism the way that they, personally know it must be run. And of course, they also blame all of those pesky people who don't want to be slaves to a totalitarian regime for spoiling the idyllic image of communinism in the media. Why, if it weren't for those evil people who think that maybe if they're willing to work more hours in a day or risk something to better their own circumstances or provide something more for their families, that the basic appeal of "from each according to their ability" wouldn't keep having, decade after decade, such a sinister ring to it.
No. My point is that if Saddam having WMDs was such a big, scary deal, big enough to start a war over, then maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't have handed them over to him in the first place.
Are you familiar with the way that time works? You know, in chronological fashion?
Only if you consider consumption to be equal. If you don't make as much money, you shouldn't spend as much money. The guy making $60k is more likely to buy a $18k new car, while the guy making $30k is more likely to buy a $7k used car. Less than half the purchase, less than half the taxes to right along with half the income.
$60k gets you a lot more in terms of basic necessities than $30k does
No. Unless you're saying that the guy making $30k is not buying his basic necessities. If not, he's either dying of starvation, living on the street, etc., or being subsidized by someone else. Or, he is buying his basic necessities. The guy making $60k has the same baseline basic necessities. If he's spending more on the same things, it's because he wants more than the basic necessities, and he'll pay more sales tax as a result.
Very few people who start making more money continue to live just as they were before, and sock everything else away as investments that won't be taxed. They tend to actually spend more, and do so on things that are then taxed (not only as sales tax, but also as income taxes levied against the people from whom he's buying).
Calling something a "regressive" tax implies that there is no baseline. There is a baseline (which varies regionally, of course, since cost of living isn't the same everywhere, for all sorts of reasons - nor should it be). People spending above that baseline pay more in sales taxes, but do so at the same flat rate. Sales taxes aren't supposed to be a social tool by which to punish people who earn more. It's supposed to fund the societal costs of allowing commerce to take place (like police to provide a rule-of-law atmosphere in which to safely conduct commerce). Do more commerce? Pay more sales taxes. Do less? Pay less. There's nothing regressive or progressive about any of that, because it's not about income, it's about consumption. Further, the "basic necessities" are rarely subject to sales tax in the first place. Even states that have a sales tax have tax holidays to allow people with lower incomes to handle stuff like sending their kids to school with actual shoes on their feet, tax free.
A regressive tax would be one where the tax on one's income would be higher as you earn less. As it is, low income people pay no such tax at all. You can't have the regressive/progressive ying and yang, but call income tax the progressive one, and sales tax the regressive one. Those are apples and oranges. Sales taxes are simple cost-of-life stuff. Is the price of a bunch of broccoli regressive? It is by your definition.
To a disproportionate amount, considering that when you're poor you generally don't have any savings or investment
How does the amount you pay in sales taxes on a purchased item, like a TV, become disproportionate? It's a flat rate. It's a consumption tax (as opposed to incomes taxes, which tax productivity). How does the fact that a person with more money makes more investments (which they can't touch unless they also pay taxes on that) have any bearing on sales tax?
You're doing good in this economy, pay your fair share
Ah, so what's fair, exactly? Please be specific. For example, if you're making X dollars and pay, say, 20% of your income in taxes... and then you bust your ass and work twice as hard by taking on another job, or launching a business which hires people, and you make 2X... should you pay twice the taxes (20% of twice the income is twice the taxes), or should you pay more than twice the taxes, as punishment for working that much harder? And if you decide you've had enough, and want to put your feet up for a year and make X/2, should you pay half the taxes (20% of half the income is half the taxes), or should you be rewarded for working less hard, and pay no taxes at all - which is how the US currently does things?
Isn't that what he said? The rich have voted for themselves to acquire and keep more and more of the poor's money.
No, that's not what he said. Besides: the poor don't pay income taxes. The rich and the upper middle class pay almost all of it. Of course, you know that, and you're just trolling.
Just because a state doesn't have income taxes doesn't mean that they don't have a way of collecting revenue to support their residents' use of infrastructure, you know? For example: there are states with no income tax, but quite substantial property taxes. Or substantial sales and use taxes. Rich people spend money, and own property. They are taxed far more, in that area, than people who rent (or own modest properties) and people who spend only a tiny fraction of their spending in daily life.
Ah, I see. But your point is that they didn't exist, right? Likewise with the SCUDs he bought at volumme discounts from North Korea? And the long-range missiles they were working on, right up through the invasion? Just making sure that your point is that they were all mere illusions.
So you are saying that Saddam never had the WMDs that he used to kill thousands of people, or the ones that UN inspectors found in giant stacks in bunkers over the years they were allowed to actually see them? I see.
I try to have some fun on the way, because I could get hit by a truck tomorrow
Well, that's great. Truly. But if you are also flat broke at the end of every month, at least don't complain that you're living paycheck to paycheck. That's all. I don't care how you live (unless your complaint about lack of cash means that you've talked someone into taking more cash from me through taxes, and giving it to you, instead).
Really, what kind of point are you trying to make? That people such as myself in this kind of situation don't deserve Any type of happiness or fun until we hit rock bottom?
I guess the point of my post is that you really do come off as an elitist asshole, and just because you might be better off than many others out there, does not at all make you a better person.
The point I am making is that most people who say they live paycheck to paycheck are in that condition because they spend everything they get, as they get it. And freqguently do so on things that they don't need. And then they complain that they don't have any money. I've had this exact converstion with people who run their air conditioning hard all summer, and heat their home to sauna temperatures all winter. Or who can't be bothered to go get a gig mowing lawns on Saturday for a year to establish a slush fund for emergencies. Or people who complain about living paycheck to paycheck, but mysteriously still manage to smoke cigarettes, or buy a latte, or get overpriced mixed green salads from Whole Foods. If you really hate not having so much as one single extra dollar in your wallet at the end of each pay period, do some extra work, or make yourself more valuable and get different work... and once you start making $50 more a week, put it in the bank instead of spending it.
I work 60-70 hours a week in IT, and work Saturdays and Sundays in other areas. I haven't taken anything resembling a vacation in over 10 years. But I'm putting some money away for later, when it really matters. What mystifies me is that you equate "happiness" with spending money. Are you unable to find any pleasure in someone else's company, or while reading a great book, or going out for a walk in the real actual outdoors, or in building something with your hands out of found materials, or teaching some kid how to write a WHILE/WEND loop, or anything else? You sound more like someone who is lacking motivation and/or imagination, or who expects that the rest of us are supposed to somehow make your life better by inflating the value of what you do (at whose expense?).
Don't give me that "elitist" crap. I work my ass off seven days a week, and give up all sorts of modest pleasures because of that. I'll suspend lumping you in with them, but you know exactly who I'm talking about: the "vast majority" (to use your words) of people who live paycheck to paycheck do so because of a lazy habit of instant gratification and total lack of discipline and drive. And even in paycheck-to-paycheck mode, they live like kings compared to people 50 years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
Branding something "internet access" gives you the rights to get on the internet. The internet is free and open, therefore "internet access" must be free and open. Get it?
Do you even understand what the word "rights" means? Providing internet access means just that: connecting you to a network which is in turn connected to other networks in ways worked out between all of the people that run those networks. Your ISP has to obey the laws of physics, and has to negotiate peering connections to other networks, as well as bear the cost of traffic that comes wandering through. Are you saying that they should have no ability to influence those arrangements in a manner that serves their customers, at the price point they're trying to provide? Should you be able to tell Verizon that you demand equal treatment and unlimited bandwidth on their network for packets going to a torrent operation in Latvia, while they do the same for the five-nines worth of the rest of their traffic that is trying to check their gmail account on a nearby network? Do you imagine all networks to have infinite capacity, and administrative costs that never change?
One could argue that in the case of the monopoly or near-monopoly that is broadband for most of the US, the government *is* limiting free expression unless they advocate net neutrality.
Well, sure, one could argue that. But it would be a bad argument. The state of broadband provisioning is in constant flux, and is still in its relative infancy. It would be insane to upend the entire meaning of the most important amendment to the constitution just because it's temporarily expensive to string up a new network in some small towns. I don't think that most people grasp the enormity of Law Of Unintended Consequences when it comes to this topic.
Why do people confuse the first amendment's prohibition against the government limiting free expression with somehow mandating that private people and/or the companies they form being obliged to provide a platform for everything that everyone wants to say? The first amendment isn't about forcing a guy with a printing press to do what you say, it's about preventing the government from stopping you and the guy who owns the printing press from doing what you like on whatever terms you arrange between the two of you. Same thing goes with the guy who owns the DSL line you're using, or the WiFi hotspot and the network it's wired up to. And just like the printing press, if you don't like the terms of use, build your own or shop around.
No. Teaching school kids to sing Obama songs ("mmm mmm mmm, Barack Hussen Obama ... we're all equal in his sight ... mmm mmmm mmm"), and trotting out gems about how his election will mark the healing of the earth and the receding of the oceans ... that is loopy messianic crazy stuff. Not at all the same as being proud of one's country (and quite the opposite of actively, rhetorically trashing on a regular basis, or having your proxies do so). If being reflexively patriotic is a bad thing, isn't being reflexively un-patriotic just the same?
The only people I ever hear calling him "messiah" are right-wingers. They sound pretty ridiculous and juvenile when they do it. Just FYI.
Then you probably missed Oprah, while weeping, proclaiming him to be "The One" (her words, repeated many times). You have missed Obama himself describing his election as being the point at which the earth would heal and the oceans would recede (his words!). There's a reason that one of Jon Stewart's best satire videos involved a mythic/messianic send-up of Obama with the opening from The Lion King, and going even more over-the-top from there. Perhaps you missed the Greek Temple that was built for his coronation at the DNC convention?
The reason you hear his political opponents making fun of the messianic hoopla is because it exists, right down to mainstream media types talking about how they get shivers down their legs when he makes an appearance. Of course it was all a lot noisier before he was elected. Even some of his most breathless fanboys/girls are realizing that they were being completely irrational.
The people making fun of that BS aren't the ones who look ridiculous - it's the people who still cry and faint when he gives campaign speeches. Just FYI (your words).
You were practically family. You don't know how these men acted on the job. You don't know what little things they let slide. You don't know what went into their pockets. You don't know who they beat up. And we don't know either.
Right. You don't know. But you're sure they did. So who's doing the stereotyping, here, out of ignorance?
My point exactly. When politicians seek power to take away our freedom, people like you would willfully vote that right away. Just like you freely voted your right away to purchase apps from other appstores on your phone from any *vendor* other than Apple. Willful submission.
I've been thinking about it. Yup, you're blowhard who doesn't understand the nature of liberty. You want the tyranny of telling other people how they must exercise their own. Hypocrite.
It got him elected.
That's why I cited his campaign, not his administration.
Well, ironically perhaps, you're just making the author's point. It got him elected, but his election hasn't brought about the prospect of any constructive social change (quite the opposite, in many cases), and the large group of people who voted for him because he was new, shiny, and used social media have fizzled out because they saw that much of what they were voting for was The Guy That Uses Social Media, and not for any identifiable, concrete, internally consistent idealogy and policy package. His election was essentially a flash mob, with just as much staying power. The young people who enjoyed that flash mob for its own sake, for the adventure of participating in it have been replaced by chirping crickets, comparatively. Why? Because the author of the article is exactly right.
Anything that involves genetics sends them into a tizzy
Actually, my observation is that it's the lefty wingnuts that have the biggest fits about genetic engineering. Which is ironic, of course, since the founders of the Progressive movement were also big fans of eugenics.
It took me weeks to forgive him for convincing me that I truly am a classical liberal
It really doesn't matter what the terms used to mean, it's how they're being used now. Most progressives might be surprised to know that the people who started out with that label were in favor of things like eugenics.
Communism won't fail every time you try it because it failed previously, it will fail because of the very nature of the idealogy and what it requires in order function (such as it does, which it obviously does not). It requires compulsion, confiscation, and subjugation. It rewards mediocrity and makes slaves of those who are willing to work the hardest. This is the nature, the very essence of communism. By definition. So of course it's going to be like China, or worse (where it's more purely in place, as in North Korea). Hey, even Fidel Castro admitted, the other day, that it turns out not to be what he was hoping it would be. Because, of course, it's fundamentally flawed as a form of human society, if you consider freedom to be an important aspect of life.
I'm just saying that if someone identifies themselves as a communist, it shouldn't be instantly assumed that they wish for a government similar to China's, for example
... and who holds the position that the more productive a person is, the more that should be taken away from them ... that person is wishing for exactly what we see in every miserable, oppressive place that has given it a try. Which makes sense, because that's exactly what such a system must be like, or it will give way immediately to localized market economies, or (lacking the rule of law) fuedalism.
Well, that's true. It's likely that they're not good enough students of history and of human nature to realize that that's what they're wishing for. But that is what they're wishing for, because communism can only lurchingly work ("work," as in "last a while" - not to be confused with actually serving its victims in any useful way) in the presence of the kind of oppression that has always, without fail, accompanied it. Someone who longs for a society in which one person has the right, backed up by goverenment force, to the labors of another person
People assume that all communisms must be exactly like China/Russia, and that's simply not true in the slightest
Right, it's not true in the slightest that they must be, only that in every case, everywhere, they always have turned out that way, and in every case still observable, continue to loudly proclaim that they want to be, and take actions specifically to be. The only thing of note are the number of glassy-eyed college students who swear that the only reason communism keeps turning out so rottenly is that they, personally, the smartest people in the world, haven't yet had a chance to run the show and centrally manage communism the way that they, personally know it must be run. And of course, they also blame all of those pesky people who don't want to be slaves to a totalitarian regime for spoiling the idyllic image of communinism in the media. Why, if it weren't for those evil people who think that maybe if they're willing to work more hours in a day or risk something to better their own circumstances or provide something more for their families, that the basic appeal of "from each according to their ability" wouldn't keep having, decade after decade, such a sinister ring to it.
We now know that almost 40 years ago, UFO Space Aliens were shining beams of light into nuclear weapons storage areas to make them inoperable . Former USAF officers will be having a press conference on Friday, to prove it. So, big deal on the whole lasers-cooling-molecules thing.
No. My point is that if Saddam having WMDs was such a big, scary deal, big enough to start a war over, then maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't have handed them over to him in the first place.
Are you familiar with the way that time works? You know, in chronological fashion?
Sales taxes are regressive taxes.
Only if you consider consumption to be equal. If you don't make as much money, you shouldn't spend as much money. The guy making $60k is more likely to buy a $18k new car, while the guy making $30k is more likely to buy a $7k used car. Less than half the purchase, less than half the taxes to right along with half the income.
$60k gets you a lot more in terms of basic necessities than $30k does
No. Unless you're saying that the guy making $30k is not buying his basic necessities. If not, he's either dying of starvation, living on the street, etc., or being subsidized by someone else. Or, he is buying his basic necessities. The guy making $60k has the same baseline basic necessities. If he's spending more on the same things, it's because he wants more than the basic necessities, and he'll pay more sales tax as a result.
Very few people who start making more money continue to live just as they were before, and sock everything else away as investments that won't be taxed. They tend to actually spend more, and do so on things that are then taxed (not only as sales tax, but also as income taxes levied against the people from whom he's buying).
Calling something a "regressive" tax implies that there is no baseline. There is a baseline (which varies regionally, of course, since cost of living isn't the same everywhere, for all sorts of reasons - nor should it be). People spending above that baseline pay more in sales taxes, but do so at the same flat rate. Sales taxes aren't supposed to be a social tool by which to punish people who earn more. It's supposed to fund the societal costs of allowing commerce to take place (like police to provide a rule-of-law atmosphere in which to safely conduct commerce). Do more commerce? Pay more sales taxes. Do less? Pay less. There's nothing regressive or progressive about any of that, because it's not about income, it's about consumption. Further, the "basic necessities" are rarely subject to sales tax in the first place. Even states that have a sales tax have tax holidays to allow people with lower incomes to handle stuff like sending their kids to school with actual shoes on their feet, tax free.
A regressive tax would be one where the tax on one's income would be higher as you earn less. As it is, low income people pay no such tax at all. You can't have the regressive/progressive ying and yang, but call income tax the progressive one, and sales tax the regressive one. Those are apples and oranges. Sales taxes are simple cost-of-life stuff. Is the price of a bunch of broccoli regressive? It is by your definition.
To a disproportionate amount, considering that when you're poor you generally don't have any savings or investment
How does the amount you pay in sales taxes on a purchased item, like a TV, become disproportionate? It's a flat rate. It's a consumption tax (as opposed to incomes taxes, which tax productivity). How does the fact that a person with more money makes more investments (which they can't touch unless they also pay taxes on that) have any bearing on sales tax?
You're doing good in this economy, pay your fair share
... and then you bust your ass and work twice as hard by taking on another job, or launching a business which hires people, and you make 2X ... should you pay twice the taxes (20% of twice the income is twice the taxes), or should you pay more than twice the taxes, as punishment for working that much harder? And if you decide you've had enough, and want to put your feet up for a year and make X/2, should you pay half the taxes (20% of half the income is half the taxes), or should you be rewarded for working less hard, and pay no taxes at all - which is how the US currently does things?
Ah, so what's fair, exactly? Please be specific. For example, if you're making X dollars and pay, say, 20% of your income in taxes
Isn't that what he said? The rich have voted for themselves to acquire and keep more and more of the poor's money.
No, that's not what he said. Besides: the poor don't pay income taxes. The rich and the upper middle class pay almost all of it. Of course, you know that, and you're just trolling.
His car? Company property, he pays no personal tax on it it - ditto for the insurance on that vehicle
Unless he or his family use the car for personal, non-work reasons. In which case what you said is simply wrong.
Just because a state doesn't have income taxes doesn't mean that they don't have a way of collecting revenue to support their residents' use of infrastructure, you know? For example: there are states with no income tax, but quite substantial property taxes. Or substantial sales and use taxes. Rich people spend money, and own property. They are taxed far more, in that area, than people who rent (or own modest properties) and people who spend only a tiny fraction of their spending in daily life.
Just the ones we sold to him.
Ah, I see. But your point is that they didn't exist, right? Likewise with the SCUDs he bought at volumme discounts from North Korea? And the long-range missiles they were working on, right up through the invasion? Just making sure that your point is that they were all mere illusions.
So you are saying that you do not have guns then?
So you are saying that Saddam never had the WMDs that he used to kill thousands of people, or the ones that UN inspectors found in giant stacks in bunkers over the years they were allowed to actually see them? I see.
I try to have some fun on the way, because I could get hit by a truck tomorrow
Well, that's great. Truly. But if you are also flat broke at the end of every month, at least don't complain that you're living paycheck to paycheck. That's all. I don't care how you live (unless your complaint about lack of cash means that you've talked someone into taking more cash from me through taxes, and giving it to you, instead).
Really, what kind of point are you trying to make? That people such as myself in this kind of situation don't deserve Any type of happiness or fun until we hit rock bottom?
... and once you start making $50 more a week, put it in the bank instead of spending it.
I guess the point of my post is that you really do come off as an elitist asshole, and just because you might be better off than many others out there, does not at all make you a better person.
The point I am making is that most people who say they live paycheck to paycheck are in that condition because they spend everything they get, as they get it. And freqguently do so on things that they don't need. And then they complain that they don't have any money. I've had this exact converstion with people who run their air conditioning hard all summer, and heat their home to sauna temperatures all winter. Or who can't be bothered to go get a gig mowing lawns on Saturday for a year to establish a slush fund for emergencies. Or people who complain about living paycheck to paycheck, but mysteriously still manage to smoke cigarettes, or buy a latte, or get overpriced mixed green salads from Whole Foods. If you really hate not having so much as one single extra dollar in your wallet at the end of each pay period, do some extra work, or make yourself more valuable and get different work
I work 60-70 hours a week in IT, and work Saturdays and Sundays in other areas. I haven't taken anything resembling a vacation in over 10 years. But I'm putting some money away for later, when it really matters. What mystifies me is that you equate "happiness" with spending money. Are you unable to find any pleasure in someone else's company, or while reading a great book, or going out for a walk in the real actual outdoors, or in building something with your hands out of found materials, or teaching some kid how to write a WHILE/WEND loop, or anything else? You sound more like someone who is lacking motivation and/or imagination, or who expects that the rest of us are supposed to somehow make your life better by inflating the value of what you do (at whose expense?).
Don't give me that "elitist" crap. I work my ass off seven days a week, and give up all sorts of modest pleasures because of that. I'll suspend lumping you in with them, but you know exactly who I'm talking about: the "vast majority" (to use your words) of people who live paycheck to paycheck do so because of a lazy habit of instant gratification and total lack of discipline and drive. And even in paycheck-to-paycheck mode, they live like kings compared to people 50 years ago.