Topic: It's the economy, stupid! (Read 73156 times)

Saturn · « **Reply #380 on:** May 09, 2009, 02:38:09 PM »

and the government cant do anything to shrink that ratio because it would be SOCIALISM

Brentai · « **Reply #381 on:** May 09, 2009, 02:55:54 PM »

And socialism is bad because it's linked to all those other bad places like Communist Russia, Communist China, Communist North Korea, Communist Cuba...

Fuckers can't even attack an established strawman without setting up a strawman for it.

Royal☭ · « **Reply #382 on:** May 09, 2009, 03:44:41 PM »

It's worth noting that socialism != communism. Socialism is closer to what we had during the 1930s-1970s, where government ran stuff hand in hand with the free markets. While not a purely socialist system, projects such as social security, the minimum wage, our highway system and such ring quite truly of socialism. And nobody complains about those. Then in the 80s supply-side became popular and the middle class began its steady decline.

Mongrel · « **Reply #383 on:** May 09, 2009, 04:30:13 PM »

For the record, the American version of 'socialism' was and is pretty right-wing, compared to most of the worlds other liberal democracies.

For instance, you guys were probably the ONLY major liberal democracy in the world to not introduce socialized medicine at some point after WWII.

Brentai · « **Reply #384 on:** May 09, 2009, 04:32:37 PM »

Spoiler: [spoiler]It's because doctors use the metric system.[/spoiler]

Quote from: Constantine on May 09, 2009, 03:44:41 PM

While not a purely socialist system, projects such as social security, the minimum wage, our highway system and such ring quite truly of socialism.

Right-wingers complain about those all the time.

...well, except asphalt-paven highways of course.

Romosome · « **Reply #385 on:** May 09, 2009, 08:28:53 PM »

I'm no economics major but the more I hear about it, the move to supply-side just seems like people started focusing on what would make them, personally, the richest person ever, as opposed to other economic models that actually tried to help the whole economy.

This is pretty goddamn obvious in hindsight but no less sick.

Brentai · « **Reply #386 on:** May 11, 2009, 01:51:05 PM »

Hey, I'm getting pre-approved credit card offers again. Yay thawing credit market.

Brentai · « **Reply #387 on:** May 12, 2009, 12:25:41 PM »

Quote from: Brentai on May 11, 2009, 01:51:05 PM

Hey, I'm getting 10 spillion pre-approved credit card offers again.

Did they just hold all of their bulk mail until the end of the credit freeze or what?

Royal☭ · « **Reply #388 on:** May 12, 2009, 03:27:06 PM »

You realize that the credit card market is different from the bank credit market, right?

Brentai · « **Reply #389 on:** May 12, 2009, 03:44:39 PM »

Nope!

Classic · « **Reply #390 on:** May 13, 2009, 01:26:55 AM »

They're not linked?

Brentai · « **Reply #391 on:** July 06, 2009, 05:08:46 PM »

Banks start losing patience, threaten to break California's kneecaps if it doesn't pay up.

Gotta wonder what's going to happen when Schwarzenegger finally raises up his hands and says, "Look, ve doo not haff eet, guys. Stop vhining."

Mongrel · « **Reply #392 on:** July 06, 2009, 05:18:21 PM »

Small victories from the bottom of the heap.

Food stamp increase has been more directly beneficial than many other forms of stimulus.

Brentai · « **Reply #393 on:** July 06, 2009, 05:40:37 PM »

Someone reversed the polarity on the Reagonomizer. And it's working.

Saturn · « **Reply #394 on:** July 06, 2009, 06:14:50 PM »

Quote from: Brentai on July 06, 2009, 05:08:46 PM

Banks start losing patience, threaten to break California's kneecaps if it doesn't pay up.

Gotta wonder what's going to happen when Schwarzenegger finally raises up his hands and says, "Look, ve doo not haff eet, guys. Stop vhining."

maybe he wont threaten to veto any bill with even the smallest tax increase included.

Catloaf · « **Reply #395 on:** July 06, 2009, 07:32:48 PM »

Quote from: Brentai on July 06, 2009, 05:40:37 PM

Someone reversed the polarity on the Reagonomizer. And it's working.

That's the only way it does work. And it works well.

Royal☭ · « **Reply #396 on:** July 23, 2009, 10:02:17 AM »

Okay, this is the tipping point. This is where we should throw our fists in the air and demand to have our basic human rights back.

Pay of Top Earners Eroding Social Security

Quote

The pay of employees who receive more than the Social Security wage base -- now $106,800 -- increased by 78%, or nearly $1 trillion, over the past decade, exceeding the 61% increase for other workers, according to the analysis. In the five years ending in 2007, earnings for American workers rose 24%, half the 48% gain for the top-paid. The result: The top-paid represent 33% of the total, up from 28% in 2002.

Basically, the rich are getting so fucking rich that the middle class an the poor are actually suffering as a direct result of their largess. This leads me to one conclusion about economics that is never stated and would be laughed at the face, but which I find to be fundamentally true: Rich people are bad for the economy. Hell, rich people are bad for society. They soak up the wealth, hoard it for themselves, then use it to rig the system in their favor. This is not a free market, this is not democracy. This is an oligarchy, plain and simple.

And the main elucidation from this article is that it wasn't our economy that collapsed in September, it was our middle class. Our economy hummed along fine, with wall-street traders and the rich still generating the money they always had without having to lift a finger. What they had done is sucked the money out of all the people at the bottom who believed that Wall-Street's "Best and Brightest" were helping them make money.

We can argue about health care and EFCA and other things all we want. But we're quickly losing our ability to fight back. At this point, if the ordinary person is to survive, we can either tax the hell out of the rich or we can cut off their heads. These are the only options.

Note: If you can't read the article because it asks for a subscription, put the title of it into google.

Mongrel · « **Reply #397 on:** July 23, 2009, 10:56:39 AM »

Heh, in a small way, that's similar to the worst kind of excesses found in pre-revolutionary France.

For centuries, France had an economic base that - on paper - beat the hell out of anyone else in Europe. But due to all the exceptions the nobility granted themselves, most of the nation's wealth remained inacessible to the government, resulting on a tax burden that became steadily more onerous to those who could not buy their way out of taxation.

In the end, smaller nations with a better grasp of healthy Finance, such as Britain and Holland outperformed France - in some cases drastically.

That's the crux of the problem right there. Any government, democratic or not, needs tax revenue to survive and function. When wealth disparities are so great that the wealthy can simply buy a wholesale - and fully legal - exemption from taxation, your society will quite literally break down. It doesn't matter if it's a landed title or a small army of lawyers and accountants that you bought, the net effect is the same.

I would certainly worry because historically, the relative size of a nation's middle class is almost directly proportional to its relative prosperity, and the American middle class has been under seige for several decades now.

Catloaf · « **Reply #398 on:** July 23, 2009, 02:46:05 PM »

Quote from: Constantine on July 23, 2009, 10:02:17 AM

Fuck the rich.

To be more specific, it's being super rich that is detrimental. Being upper middle class is fine, actually it's great for the economy. But anyone who has enough money that they can live for 10 or more years, with a ridiculously high standard of living might I add, without doing a single day's work has become an evil mother-fucker. It can't be helped at that point, that amount of wealth actually physically does something similar to the human brain to the effects of crack cocaine.

There are very few exceptions to this rule. And it seems that the only way to solve this problem is to relieve them of their money by force and make them slowly suffer through withdrawal in poverty to once again become a respectable human being. Although that's hard to prove as that never happens without them being killed or killing themselves immediately afterward.

The problem we face now is, how the fuck do we, as citizens go about fixing this problem when one of the rich fuckers has the voice of 1000 or more of us?

Brentai · « **Reply #399 on:** July 23, 2009, 02:53:04 PM »

Two words:

BEAR ARMS!!!

...fuck, here it comes.

News:

Author Topic: It's the economy, stupid! (Read 73156 times)