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Author Topic:   Occupy Wall Street, London and Evereywhere Else
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


(1)
Message 121 of 208 (643602)
12-09-2011 12:42 PM
Reply to: Message 114 by Artemis Entreri
12-09-2011 11:33 AM


Re: hear from a conservatively inclined but not entirely lunatic person
No. It’s your life, and your problems. You can’t blame everything on others, sometimes you get bad advice, deal with it.
Often it's not even bad advice, AE. A person graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree any time in the past 3 years or so would have had a lot of trouble finding employment - millions of people, many of them with the same degrees and experience were being laid off from their existing positions and even they haven't all been able to find work yet.
Those who have found work have often found it working minimum-wage jobs where their degrees are irrelevant in food service, retail, etc.
Sometimes you really can do everything right and still get screwed over.
And what happens? More and more people without jobs. Without jobs, those people apply for unemployment insurance, food stamps, and other government assistance, draining public coffers. Without jobs, they pay less taxes as they buy less (local and state governments often rely heavily on sales tax) and make less money (meaning they often won;t pay any income tax because they literally can't afford to pay any more tax and still eat). Lower tax revenue means less money for the unemployment insurance and food stamp programs that are keeping those people fed and housed (even if barely). The state and local governments then need to lay off their own workers because they don;t have the tax revenue to pay them. With even more unemployed people out hunting for very, very few jobs, competition becomes even worse. Local businesses see revenue drop because a significant portion of their customers lost their jobs. Many of them close. More unemployed, less tax revenue, more unemployed... Now the state can't afford to pay all the teachers, so many of them get laid off and children get pushed into more and more overloaded classrooms. The schools can't afford to pay for supplies, either. More unemployed, less tax revenue, kids set up for less success in the future. Now the state can;t afford to fix roads or pay all the firefighters...
It's a vicious cycle. When your neighbor gets screwed, eventually his problems become your problems.
I live in Sacramento, CA. The above (and more) is happening right now, and has been for years. As the capitol of the state, Sacramento employs (or did) many state workers to run all of the programs necessary for state government (CALPRS, CALTRANS, and other state agencies have large buildings just a few blocks from where I sit). In 2008, the state started getting hit with the housing crash. I was working for an employer who was directly tied to new home construction at the time, and they shrunk from 1200 to 600 employees in about 6 months. I was about to be laid off when I found my current job. The state didn't manage very well either - huge layoffs, and state employees endured multiple furlough days and pay cuts. Local businesses relied on all those state workers for their business...they closed down, and haven't reopened. Downtown Sacramento has never been as prosperous as San Francisco or other large cities...but now driving down the streets you see vacant space after vacant space.
That's the nature of a society. We can make our own decisions and suffer or prosper for them...but when enough of your neighbors are suffering, you'll start to suffer too, regardless of how much better your choices may or may not have been. How long could you live in a your home if you were laid off because your employer suffered in the down economy? A year? Six months? Six weeks? How long do you think it would take you to find a new job if that happened?
Many of the people defaulting on their mortgages could afford them just fine...until their pay was cut or they were just outright laid off. You don't need to have purchased a bad mortgage to suffer.
This is runaway capitalism, they type we had to stamp down 100 years ago because the "robber barons" were hoarding all the wealth and making it impossible for their employees to improve their lives.
Capitalism works great as long as it's controlled with reasonable rules. Rules like a minimum wage - your society won't do well if you don't pay your employees enough to buy anything. Rules like separating investment banking from savings - investment carries risk, and combining the two puts everyday peoples' savings (and the taxpayer, through the FDIC) on the hook for the risk.
We've dismantled many of those rules over the past few decades, and now we're paying the price. These are lessons we learned a century ago - the exact same mistakes that have led to other financial crises, including the Great Depression. We know exactly how to fix the problem, because these problems were fixed before!
But for some reason our society as a whole seems to want to ignore the lessons of the past. People claim that "government is bad" and use that axiom as reasoning to limit or even dismantle regulations that have protected us for years, regulations that gave us the most prosperous economy in the world for two generations.
How is it "good" that Bank of America can take my savings and use that money to make risky investments, where I and others can lose everything if those investments go south, and where I and others don;t see a dime if the investments do well?
How is it "good" that a top-level executive can get a bonus at the end of the year that's more than ten times the yearly salary of their lowest paid employee, in addition to their own salary?
How is it good that our elected officials on both sides of the aisle nearly to a man are owned in fee simple by the financial industry and other special interest groups? Why do the people who are supposed to represent us work against our interest at every turn? Why do banks get bailouts and we get pink slips and evictions? Why do the executives who caused the entire mess walk free and get multimillion dollar bonuses while the rest of us see our wages stagnate (or worse) while the cost of living continues to rise? If we know that there are banks that are "too big to fail," why on Earth haven't we broken them up and set limits on their size so that we don;t need to play the bailout game again?
Hard work used to pay off. Now, exploiting your neighbors pays off, and hard work gets you a wage that stagnates while your cost of living rises, slowly drowning you in expenses.
When did that ever become s good thing?

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
- Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers

This message is a reply to:
 Message 114 by Artemis Entreri, posted 12-09-2011 11:33 AM Artemis Entreri has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 129 by hooah212002, posted 12-09-2011 3:15 PM Rahvin has not replied
 Message 133 by Artemis Entreri, posted 12-09-2011 3:30 PM Rahvin has replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 122 of 208 (643603)
12-09-2011 12:47 PM
Reply to: Message 119 by New Cat's Eye
12-09-2011 12:27 PM


Re: hear from a conservatively inclined but not entirely lunatic person
I think it can be. Sure, the floors need to be cleaned, but a CEO who brings in 10 million dollars in new revenue is worth the million he got to do that.
That's the thing - he didn't.
His employees did.
How much of that 10 million would he have brought in alone? With no employees? With a dirty office because there was no janitor?
There's this myth that top executives are solely responsible for the success of their companies, as if the captain of a ship actually does all the work and therefore deserves all the credit. You won't sail very far with only a captain.
It used to be that, when a company did well, the employees who contributed to cause that success were rewarded for their efforts with bonuses and raises.
Now...now you get notice that your healthcare costs are rising by another $1000 a year, and if you even get a raise, it'll only be $500.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
- Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers

This message is a reply to:
 Message 119 by New Cat's Eye, posted 12-09-2011 12:27 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 126 by New Cat's Eye, posted 12-09-2011 2:01 PM Rahvin has replied

  
Artemis Entreri 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4228 days)
Posts: 1194
From: Northern Virginia
Joined: 07-08-2008


(1)
Message 123 of 208 (643604)
12-09-2011 12:51 PM
Reply to: Message 120 by RAZD
12-09-2011 12:29 PM


Re: really?
Unfortunately, for you, your ignorance of the examples does not mean they don't exist.
Never claimed it didn’t exist if you notice at the end of my sentence there was this symbol ? that means I was asking a question, and not making a statement. I know you are just being snarky and wanted to call me ignorant, but I could careless.
versus Wallmart employees:
Wow 2001 and 2002. I am not sure which industry you are employed in, but data from 10 years ago is hardly relevant today. Somehow I am ignorant, yet your outdated example still holds true. You are hilarious.
Do you think it is just for a CEO to "earn" over a million dollars a year, while their lowest paid employee's annual salary is below the poverty line?
I am not really sure, I am still searching for a relevant example with update non biased information, I’ll let you know when I see it.
If a person wants to buy a home, and they go around to all the mortgage companies and NOT ONE turns them down, are they not being responsible in their approach to buying a home?
That is why they are retarded. I know what is in my means and what is not. If you have no idea, because a mortage company doesn’t say no, they you are either retarded, or a crook trying to take advantage of the system. Either way I don’t feel sorry for you for being an idiot, or for your scam not working.
Just because it isn't level doesn't make it right does it?
It’s just the way it is. Get it where you fit it.
So should we work to make it more level or less level?
Take care of yourself and to hell with everyone else. I don’t care about level, because level doesn’t exist and never will.
Curiously, the goals of the Occupy Movement are in line with the constitution ... " ... to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity ... " ... don't you agree?
What flavor are you drinking?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 120 by RAZD, posted 12-09-2011 12:29 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 125 by RAZD, posted 12-09-2011 1:54 PM Artemis Entreri has replied
 Message 130 by hooah212002, posted 12-09-2011 3:19 PM Artemis Entreri has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


(3)
Message 124 of 208 (643606)
12-09-2011 1:17 PM
Reply to: Message 117 by Artemis Entreri
12-09-2011 12:09 PM


Re: Is this the America you want to live in? that you want for your children?
Hi Artemis Entreri,
Never said they did, I just found it amusing.
So you find it amusing when law abiding US citizens are beaten up by police and arrested for VERY minor (trumped up?) charges? Charges that were not used for the first several days -- does this mean they were okay until they were arrested? Is this the kind of police treatment you expect for a speeding violation?
Obviously you are on that OWS kool-aid. I just took those from a google image search (I had no crazy motive other than making a joke). I am not in the tea party or the flea party. The media double standard on both groups is funny, and prompted me to post them, I find the OWS thing silly, and was shocked that so many intelligent people on here support it. In my first couple posts I was just being an ass, im done with that now.
Really? looks to me like you are now saying the same things, behaving the same way as before.
Y’all should totally be armed at your protests, the police aint stupid, well they aint that stupid. Basically act like a peasant, get treated like one.
Sorry to vehemently disagree. The Civil Rights movement was not won by armed conflict with police, but by non-violent protests.
By being peaceful, and assembling in peaceful protests, these protests are not breaking the law. The US Constitution specifically allows peaceful assembly to address grievances.
Page Not Found
quote:
Article I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
color for emphasis.
You are advocating breaking the law and revolution.
Occupy is advocating working within the laws and the evolution of a more just government.
Don’t get it twisted, I dislike the police very much. But sitting in on city hall, after you are asked to leave, sounds like a crime. Resisting arrest, sounds like a crime. I also noticed some errors in the large quote, but it is not important.
City Hall Park -- not city hall. The park is public land.
So the "crime" is not leaving when requested? and "resisting arrest" means not leaving when requested?
Really? How many protesters were shot? How many died? How many were locked up and NEVER seen again?
Oh yeah, NONE. Only the truly ignorant would compare getting arrested in the US to getting arrested in an Arab dictatorship.
Or the well informed would.
Scott Olsen:
quote:
Scott Olsen, the Iraq war veteran who had his skull fractured in late October at the Occupy Oakland protests, made his first two media appearances since being injured on Tuesday. First, IndyBay.org posted an interview to their site that they had conducted on Sunday, where Olsen talks about the injury and his recovery. Later, Olsen appeared on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, and fielded questions from Ed Schultz about his symbolism among the Occupy protesters.
IndyBay.org asked Olsen if he could remember anything from the night he was knocked out. Olsen said he had his phone out and was texting a friend when he was hit in the head with a projectile. Next thing I know, I’m down and on the ground, and there are people above me trying to help me, and they ended up carrying me away.
... Schultz then asked him why he was in the protests, and why he says he will return to them.
I’m there protecting the rights that we have, he said. When I took the enlistment oath, when I joined the Marines, I swore to uphold and defend the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic. And I’m continuing to do that.
The IndyBay video can be found here, ...
Rather ironic that a vet from the Iraq war, dedicated to protecting the US Constitution, is injured by projectiles fired from police rifles in the US, yes?
Arresting people who openly and defiantly break the law in front of the police. I think I probably do support police who do their job.
What law? Refusing to obey a request?
Enjoy.

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 117 by Artemis Entreri, posted 12-09-2011 12:09 PM Artemis Entreri has not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


(3)
Message 125 of 208 (643608)
12-09-2011 1:54 PM
Reply to: Message 123 by Artemis Entreri
12-09-2011 12:51 PM


Re: really?
Hi Artemis Entreri,
Never claimed it didn’t exist if you notice at the end of my sentence there was this symbol ? that means I was asking a question, and not making a statement. I know you are just being snarky and wanted to call me ignorant, but I could careless.
Wow 2001 and 2002. I am not sure which industry you are employed in, but data from 10 years ago is hardly relevant today. Somehow I am ignorant, yet your outdated example still holds true. You are hilarious.
I am not really sure, I am still searching for a relevant example with update non biased information, I’ll let you know when I see it.
And since 2001/2002 CEO salaries have risen while base worker pay has stagnated or declined. There are more people in the US below the poverty line than ever before.
Amusingly, I note that you still have not answered the question, all you are doing is dancing around it and finding excuses.
Do you think it is just for a CEO to "earn" over a million dollars a year, while their lowest paid employee's annual salary is below the poverty line?
Yes or no.
That is why they are retarded.
No, that is why you call them retarded -- it is your personal justification: if they are retarded then they will get hurt, so if they got hurt, then it is because they were retarded. Therefore everyone that got hurt must be retarded. That's retarded reasoning.
I know what is in my means and what is not. If you have no idea, because a mortage company doesn’t say no, they you are either retarded, or a crook trying to take advantage of the system.
How convenient. Of course what is in your means never changes for the worse ...
Take care of yourself and to hell with everyone else.
To hell with your wife and kids, eh? parents? uncles? aunts? grandparents? grandchildren?
Does conservative ≡ selfish? or is it just that being selfish makes you think you are conservative?
Amusingly, there are rats that behave better:
quote:
... rats can be compassionate. They freed another trapped rat in their cage, even when yummy chocolate served as a tempting distraction. Twenty-three of the 30 rats in the study opened the cage. The rats could have hogged all the chocolate before freeing their partners, but often didn't, choosing to first help, then share.
Read more here.
What flavor are you drinking?
Pragmatic reality. What's yours? Essence of denial?
Enjoy.

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 123 by Artemis Entreri, posted 12-09-2011 12:51 PM Artemis Entreri has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 131 by Artemis Entreri, posted 12-09-2011 3:25 PM RAZD has replied

  
New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 126 of 208 (643609)
12-09-2011 2:01 PM
Reply to: Message 122 by Rahvin
12-09-2011 12:47 PM


Re: hear from a conservatively inclined but not entirely lunatic person
That's the thing - he didn't.
His employees did.
No, not necessarily. Here's a real-world example from the company I work for (a small privately owned manufacturer of consumable products):
We had a customer's executive VP of sales broker a humongous contract with a big company for us to provide them with their products. It was so big that we had to bring on a second shift in the plant. He made a shitpile of money of the commission for the deal. He certainly wouldn't have been able to do it if the lowely hourly employees weren't here to run the plant. But they, as a group, were not capable of getting this deal. He was the single key component to us getting this business. We hired a bunch of new people and some of the line workers from the first shift were promotd to line operators for the second shift and got a wage increase. Everbody won, but he won more and he was the reason it happened. Nobody would have won more without him.
(We took the business from a gigantic publically traded national coporation so its not like a bunch of people had to be laid off at this other plant and then came down the street to ours.)
How much of that 10 million would he have brought in alone? With no employees? With a dirty office because there was no janitor?
There's this myth that top executives are solely responsible for the success of their companies, as if the captain of a ship actually does all the work and therefore deserves all the credit. You won't sail very far with only a captain.
There's thousands of people to pull from to fill those plant jobs and, from what I can tell, this guy was in a unique position to be the one to get this deal done. He was pretty much the whole reason that it happened, even tho he couldn't have done it without a running plant. But the people who run the plant didn't have anything to do with this new deal other than being there to work when it was needed.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 122 by Rahvin, posted 12-09-2011 12:47 PM Rahvin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 127 by Rahvin, posted 12-09-2011 2:51 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


(1)
Message 127 of 208 (643611)
12-09-2011 2:51 PM
Reply to: Message 126 by New Cat's Eye
12-09-2011 2:01 PM


Re: hear from a conservatively inclined but not entirely lunatic person
He was the single key component to us getting this business.
Which means it's fine for him to get more, but not for him to get everything.
Part of what he had to build on wasn't just a bunch of bodies occupying jobs, but people who do their jobs well enough to produce a product that's good and cheap enough for him to be able to broker that deal.
It sounds like your company did give some raises and promotions to others, and hired a bunch more people. That's great, I applaud them.
But my anger is directed more to other companies. Ones who ignore the efforts of their employees and only pay attention to the executives.
I've never gotten a bonus. Ever. At any job. At my current employer, I;ve gotten exactly one raise. I have personally saved my current company (and previous employers) at minimum hundreds of thousands of dollars (one recent project we projected to save over $200,000 per year, and I was one of two people who worked on that project, and I did all of the planning and documentation and half of the implementation). I was the "single key" person in many of those cases, largely because I work in IT and I'm often the only person working on a given project. I consistently get stellar performance reviews from my management.
We estimate that every dollar saved on our end is the equivalent of $10 won in a project. But when some project manager or executive wins a job worth a few hundred grand or a few million in fees for the company, they get bonuses and raises. Including the very, very large win we recently got where I provided all of the IT support for all of our employees and subcontractors and basically made it possible for them to make their proposal.
I get notified that my yearly healthcare costs are going up by $1000 out of my pocket, and that I'll be lucky to see a $500 raise. I work hard and get results, but the only people getting rewarded are the people who are already making six figures or more.
I don't think my experience is particularly unique.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
- Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers

This message is a reply to:
 Message 126 by New Cat's Eye, posted 12-09-2011 2:01 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 136 by New Cat's Eye, posted 12-09-2011 4:29 PM Rahvin has not replied

  
hooah212002
Member (Idle past 801 days)
Posts: 3193
Joined: 08-12-2009


Message 128 of 208 (643612)
12-09-2011 3:09 PM
Reply to: Message 117 by Artemis Entreri
12-09-2011 12:09 PM


Re: Is this the America you want to live in? that you want for your children?
Y’all should totally be armed at your protests,
Perhaps. However, that would most definitely escalate and the police brutality would be justified. Right now it is completely UNjustified and wrong.
the police aint stupid,
No, just violent thugs weho beat peaceful protestores who are excocizing their constitutional freedoms.
Basically act like a peasant, get treated like one.
"Act like a US citizen, get treated like a chinese dissident" is more like it. What right to peacably assemble???? Pfft what constitution?

"Why don't you call upon your God to strike me? Oh, I forgot it's because he's fake like Thor, so bite me" -Greydon Square

This message is a reply to:
 Message 117 by Artemis Entreri, posted 12-09-2011 12:09 PM Artemis Entreri has not replied

  
hooah212002
Member (Idle past 801 days)
Posts: 3193
Joined: 08-12-2009


(1)
Message 129 of 208 (643613)
12-09-2011 3:15 PM
Reply to: Message 121 by Rahvin
12-09-2011 12:42 PM


Re: hear from a conservatively inclined but not entirely lunatic person
How is it "good" that a top-level executive can get a bonus at the end of the year that's more than ten times the yearly salary of their lowest paid employee, in addition to their own salary?
Not to mention CEO's taking in b/million dollar bonus's while laying off record amounts of employees. "My company tanked, I shitcanned a bunch of people, but I deserve a $2 million bonus"...

"Why don't you call upon your God to strike me? Oh, I forgot it's because he's fake like Thor, so bite me" -Greydon Square

This message is a reply to:
 Message 121 by Rahvin, posted 12-09-2011 12:42 PM Rahvin has not replied

  
hooah212002
Member (Idle past 801 days)
Posts: 3193
Joined: 08-12-2009


Message 130 of 208 (643614)
12-09-2011 3:19 PM
Reply to: Message 123 by Artemis Entreri
12-09-2011 12:51 PM


Re: really?
Take care of yourself and to hell with everyone else.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, YOU are a member of a society. YOU wouldn't last very long without being a member of a community (since homo-sapiens are social creatures, and all).

"Why don't you call upon your God to strike me? Oh, I forgot it's because he's fake like Thor, so bite me" -Greydon Square

This message is a reply to:
 Message 123 by Artemis Entreri, posted 12-09-2011 12:51 PM Artemis Entreri has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 132 by Artemis Entreri, posted 12-09-2011 3:26 PM hooah212002 has replied

  
Artemis Entreri 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4228 days)
Posts: 1194
From: Northern Virginia
Joined: 07-08-2008


(1)
Message 131 of 208 (643615)
12-09-2011 3:25 PM
Reply to: Message 125 by RAZD
12-09-2011 1:54 PM


Re: really?
So you find it amusing when law abiding US citizens are beaten up by police and arrested for VERY minor (trumped up?) charges?
Usually when you resist arrest you get beat up. While that may be a minor charge for you, I do not consider it minor.
Charges that were not used for the first several days -- does this mean they were okay until they were arrested?
They were probably tolerating the trespassers in an attempt to find another solution to the problem rather than out right arrest.
Is this the kind of police treatment you expect for a speeding violation?
I don’t know, I do not speed.
You are advocating breaking the law and revolution.
No I am not, I was wondering how many posts it would take before you started building one of your famous RAZD strawmen? What was it 2 responses?
Occupy is advocating working within the laws and the evolution of a more just government.
Riiiight. That is why so many people get arrested at OWS events, while the terrorist racist tea party people don’t get arrested at their events. Do you live in the twilight zone?
City Hall Park -- not city hall. The park is public land.
It’s not for bums and squatters, to camp out on. You visit a park enjoy it, and leave it, you don’t stay for weeks, and litter all over the place, and then refuse to leave when asked by city authorities.
Rather ironic that a vet from the Iraq war, dedicated to protecting the US Constitution, is injured by projectiles fired from police rifles in the US, yes?
Not ironic at all, that our police use non-lethal, and less-than-lethal means of crowd control and dispersal. What is ironic is that hippies think our methods are the same as the methods used in Bahrain, Syria, and Libya, and try to actually act like they know what they are talking about.
Do you think it is just for a CEO to "earn" over a million dollars a year, while their lowest paid employee's annual salary is below the poverty line?
I thought that was just a rhetorical question.
To hell with your wife and kids, eh? parents? uncles? aunts? grandparents? grandchildren?
No family is protected because blood is thicker than water, but those outside of the family? whatever.
Amusingly, there are rats that behave better
Nah we are either a higher evolved species, or God created us to rule this planet.
Amusing that you think rats behave better you silly hippy. Once again don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 125 by RAZD, posted 12-09-2011 1:54 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 189 by RAZD, posted 12-24-2011 12:44 AM Artemis Entreri has not replied

  
Artemis Entreri 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4228 days)
Posts: 1194
From: Northern Virginia
Joined: 07-08-2008


Message 132 of 208 (643616)
12-09-2011 3:26 PM
Reply to: Message 130 by hooah212002
12-09-2011 3:19 PM


Re: really?
i have lasted this long.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 130 by hooah212002, posted 12-09-2011 3:19 PM hooah212002 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 135 by hooah212002, posted 12-09-2011 3:54 PM Artemis Entreri has replied

  
Artemis Entreri 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4228 days)
Posts: 1194
From: Northern Virginia
Joined: 07-08-2008


(1)
Message 133 of 208 (643617)
12-09-2011 3:30 PM
Reply to: Message 121 by Rahvin
12-09-2011 12:42 PM


Re: hear from a conservatively inclined but not entirely lunatic person
Rahvin writes:
Often it's not even bad advice, AE. A person graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree any time in the past 3 years or so would have had a lot of trouble finding employment - millions of people, many of them with the same degrees and experience were being laid off from their existing positions and even they haven't all been able to find work yet.
Interesting, that my friends younger brother graduated from college in late 2008, with a liberal arts degree from a smaller state school (James Madison University). He ran into the same problem. But with Iraq and Afghanistan employing out military industrial machine, he looked in to the military. As a college graduate he went to OCS, and is now getting ready to make Captain. He works in for the Navy in their HR department, it is a total poag job, almost the same as the corporate office job that he thought he would get anyway, and making good money. We are always fighting wars with someone over their resources (I mean to liberate them), an people always overlook the military.
Those who have found work have often found it working minimum-wage jobs where their degrees are irrelevant in food service, retail, etc.
Sometimes you really can do everything right and still get screwed over.
Yeah. I graduated in 2002 with a BS in history and geography, it was 2006 till I got a job in the field I wanted. I worked as a pizza delivery guy, and a bouncer; I was doing whatever it took to get by. And yeah it sucked, but I wasn’t going to whine and cry about it, because that doesn’t pay the bills either.
And what happens? More and more people without jobs. Without jobs, those people apply for unemployment insurance, food stamps, and other government assistance, draining public coffers. Without jobs, they pay less taxes as they buy less (local and state governments often rely heavily on sales tax) and make less money (meaning they often won;t pay any income tax because they literally can't afford to pay any more tax and still eat). Lower tax revenue means less money for the unemployment insurance and food stamp programs that are keeping those people fed and housed (even if barely). The state and local governments then need to lay off their own workers because they don;t have the tax revenue to pay them. With even more unemployed people out hunting for very, very few jobs, competition becomes even worse. Local businesses see revenue drop because a significant portion of their customers lost their jobs. Many of them close. More unemployed, less tax revenue, more unemployed... Now the state can't afford to pay all the teachers, so many of them get laid off and children get pushed into more and more overloaded classrooms. The schools can't afford to pay for supplies, either. More unemployed, less tax revenue, kids set up for less success in the future. Now the state can;t afford to fix roads or pay all the firefighters...
Yeah but are we entitled to all that stuff? All that stuff is a relatively recent thing. My grandparents didn’t have all of that. Its pretty much just been my parents and me. Maybe the system we thought was Ideal was not sustainable.
How long could you live in a your home if you were laid off because your employer suffered in the down economy? A year? Six months? Six weeks? How long do you think it would take you to find a new job if that happened?
I work for uncle sam. If the economy kills him and his business, I think we have some real problems to deal with. I have set myself up to be pretty employable, I do not think it would take any longer than a month or two to find another job.
But for some reason our society as a whole seems to want to ignore the lessons of the past. People claim that "government is bad" and use that axiom as reasoning to limit or even dismantle regulations that have protected us for years, regulations that gave us the most prosperous economy in the world for two generations.
Well they are very bad at running things.
How is it "good" that Bank of America can take my savings and use that money to make risky investments, where I and others can lose everything if those investments go south, and where I and others don;t see a dime if the investments do well?
Well it is a place to store your money. I guess you could just keep it at home in safe, or something. As far as you loosing money from bad bank investments, I would guess you have to be observant on which bank you choose to bank with.
Hard work used to pay off. Now, exploiting your neighbors pays off, and hard work gets you a wage that stagnates while your cost of living rises, slowly drowning you in expenses.
I don’t see things having changed that much, that seems to have always been the game.
Glad you stopped lurking and started posting.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 121 by Rahvin, posted 12-09-2011 12:42 PM Rahvin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 134 by Rahvin, posted 12-09-2011 3:44 PM Artemis Entreri has replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


(2)
Message 134 of 208 (643618)
12-09-2011 3:44 PM
Reply to: Message 133 by Artemis Entreri
12-09-2011 3:30 PM


Re: hear from a conservatively inclined but not entirely lunatic person
Well they are very bad at running things.
That's an amusing little myth.
Is the government "very bad" at running the military?
Is the government "very bad" at running Medicare/Medicaid?
Is the government "very bad" at building roads and highways?
Is the government "very bad" at running the fire department?
Was the government "very bad" when it solved the problems that caused the Great Depression?
Hell, just answer the first one.
Congress is pretty terrible because they politicize everything and respond more to bribes and lobbyists than they do to the people who elect them. They appropriate funds to build bridges to nowhere, after all.
But when they set up real programs like the FDIC or the FDA or Medicare/Medicaid or the military, for some reason publicly run institutions do pretty damned well.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
- Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers

This message is a reply to:
 Message 133 by Artemis Entreri, posted 12-09-2011 3:30 PM Artemis Entreri has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 138 by Artemis Entreri, posted 12-09-2011 4:52 PM Rahvin has not replied

  
hooah212002
Member (Idle past 801 days)
Posts: 3193
Joined: 08-12-2009


(1)
Message 135 of 208 (643619)
12-09-2011 3:54 PM
Reply to: Message 132 by Artemis Entreri
12-09-2011 3:26 PM


Re: really?
Orly? So you are telling me that you make use of NO public amenities? You don't drive on public roads? You do all of your business directly with the maker of all your products? You have your own septic system? Your own fresh water system? You obviously aren't completely off the grid since you are on the interwebs (which wouldn't exist without ....wait for it......a society!).

"Why don't you call upon your God to strike me? Oh, I forgot it's because he's fake like Thor, so bite me" -Greydon Square

This message is a reply to:
 Message 132 by Artemis Entreri, posted 12-09-2011 3:26 PM Artemis Entreri has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 137 by Artemis Entreri, posted 12-09-2011 4:51 PM hooah212002 has replied

  
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