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Our rulers say there is no problem with that. Surely cream rises to the top?
When I consider the general standard of living and quality of life in northern European nations, it does get my attention.
I have no problem with accumulating half a billion dollars or so. Half a billion dollars is the subject of scorn in todays world of the 10 billion plus in assets.
Sometimes I think we got carried away with catering to the rich. The wealth has failed to trickle down, it has been trickling up for at least 40 years.
The wealth has failed to trickle down, it has been trickling up for at least 40 years.
You know what else has been going up for forty years?
People with no business making babies at all... having too many of them and especially too early.
Result? Competition with their figurative (and often literal) siblings for too few jobs...
making the market value of an hours labor worth less and the cost of bedroom worth more.
It's not real complicated... but whatcha gonna do about it?
You know what else has been going on for forty years?
People with no business making babies at all... having too many of them.
Result? Competition with your figurative (and often literal) siblings for too few jobs.
Too many forks poised over that slice of pie ... and no one gets any.
Just look at the border states where many use babies for financial gain by their own parents, or those who have been on the tax payers backs for generations. If you don't want to work, then don't expect to live like those who do work.
No, I didn't miss the point, just a different point of view.
Last edited by Heidi60; 06-29-2018 at 10:50 AM..
Reason: Rep remark
Sometimes I think we got carried away with catering to the rich. The wealth has failed to trickle down, it has been trickling up for at least 40 years.
"We" have no choice in the matter. Government is responsive to the wants of corporations and the wealthy, not commoners. It's a researched and established fact.
Given the state of wage stagnation, skyrocketing healthcare costs, property taxes, tuition for public university coupled with an increasingly 'business-friendly' climate in Washington, quality of life for the American middle class is rapidly declining. You can attempt to claw yourself into the upper-middle class, an increasingly difficult task these days given that education is also being held hostage by corporate interests. We dump six figures of debt on American public college graduates and then ask them to compete for the same wages as graduates from other developed countries who have a much more robust public education system and no debt burden, then deride them as 'snoflakes' for speaking up about it. 'Pull yourself up by your bootstraps' has become the tone-deaf rallying cry of an increasingly out-of-touch Washington, more interested in preserving corporate interests and campaign donations than the education or well being of the citizens.
Most Americans are a single chronic illness away from bankruptcy. Conversely, treatment for that same illness in every other developed country carries no such risk. Millennials are derided for having fewer or no children, but no one wants to talk about how it costs 10s of thousands of dollars out of pocket in hospital fees for an uncomplicated childbirth, a problem no other Western nation faces. Our failure is that most people waste time blaming the individual, while turning a blind eye to the system that propagates these injustices.
At the end of the day, what defines developed country? A large military, abundance of corporate headquarters? Presence of wealthy private landowners? Then congratulations, America is developed. If, however, the measure of development is the rate of economic mobility, access to affordable education, healthcare, social services, ability to 'survive' in the middle class, then not only do we fail, we fall below the level of even many third-world nations. Unfortunately, the past few decades have shown that our own Nationalistic arrogance will continually prevent us from advancing, until it becomes our undoing.
"We" have no choice in the matter. Government is responsive to the wants of corporations and the wealthy, not commoners. It's a researched and established fact.
This. Everyone's known, since the Reagan administration, that "trickle-down" doesn't work. There's a reason why vote suppression has intensified since Bush II got into office, and beyond. A certain segment of the population wants not only to hold onto the giveaways they've already got, but to get more. And they're willing to gut not only the modest little safety net the US had, and to put Social Security at risk, but to gut the foreign aid budget (already accomplished in the mid-90's), the State Department and diplomatic corps, education and higher education grants to those in financial need, and much more. What's next? The infrastructure budget? Health and science research? The Vet Admin & its hospitals? There are lots of sitting ducks in the federal budget, which I don't even dare mention, that will fall sooner or later, if this destructive trend continues.
Ask not, for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.
You know what else has been going up for forty years?
People with no business making babies at all... having too many of them and especially too early.
Result? Competition with their figurative (and often literal) siblings for too few jobs...
making the market value of an hours labor worth less and the cost of bedroom worth more.
It's not real complicated... but whatcha gonna do about it?
I think you are making some significant errors here. A larger population also increases demand for goods and services, thus creating a need for more jobs. It isn't as though there is a fixed number of jobs in the world, and if we make too many babies, we will have a lot of unemployment.
Poverty & Money
. . .
Though most people believe that poverty is a lack of money, that’s not true. Poverty is caused by money madness. If money cured poverty, simply deposit 22 billion billion quatloos to everyone’s account. Everyone is now equally wealthy, and never “needs” money again. But if no one “needs” money, why bother to trade one’s labor and property? If no one bothers to work, transport and sell, all that wealth is useless and worthless. Even starving children are phenomenally wealthy!
. . .
Redistribution of Wealth does not redistribute prosperity that is based on prodigious production of surplus usable goods and services.
Ask the leaders WHY we need to use THEIR money tokens, and WHO has the power to make new ones?
"We" have no choice in the matter. Government is responsive to the wants of corporations and the wealthy, not commoners. It's a researched and established fact.
This government is. I don't see the governments of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Belgium, Netherlands, Canada, or even Germany in that way.
There is a backlash coming I think. The Millenials are quite fond of socialism, a very large percentage harbor a venomous hatred for capitalism. They will be voting for awhile. They almost elected one of the more unelectable candidates we have ran in some time. Actually Sanders would likely be our president if the DNC didn't corrupt the process.
Last edited by toosie; 06-30-2018 at 12:29 PM..
Reason: Deleted politics for move to Economics
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