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First off, you give no room for lifestyle - as an example, can your '93 Toyota haul 9,000 pounds. Or, how about packing up a Boy Scout troop for their campouts.
Nor do you give any creedance to wanting comfort when you travel. I can guarantee you that my Volvos are far superior in comfort than your Toyota.
And I can also guarantee that they steer better and brake much better than your Toyota.
Nor, do you give any creedance to safety - my vehicles have air bags all around. Yours does not.
Nor do you allow for wanting a nice car to travel in - You know personal choices.
So, would you like to reconsider your "extravagant" definition?
Carrying 9.000 pounds, if I ever have to, can be done more economically in a $100 rental for the day, than buying a 40K truck just in case I need it.. I have a van, and I have no idea how many kids can fit in it.
I drive safely, because I'm not sure if I have airbags or not.
I drive 12-14 hours a day in perfect comfort on long trips. The ride is quiet. I turn the radio on so rarely, I'm not even sure it still works, so your sound system wouldn't impress me either.
This thread is about personal choices to spend money, and you just said that's your personal choice. OK. Whatever you paid for your cars and trucks, Ive got that in the bank, drawing interest. I like it that way---just my personal choice.
How would one define "wise"? I suppose based on ones income might fall into this
If someone is earning $8.00 an hour, spending $30,000 on a car might not be wise - yeah, I can go along with this.
But, if someone has income of say, $750,000 a year, spending $60,000 for a car is not "unwise" either in my mind.
What do you think?
You shouldn't have asked that last question because I dont think you want to know what I think. I think you have a huge ego and want to brag about your income and your cars, being perceived as rich is more important to you than being rich. Second, the definition said "necessary or wise". A person using the word can pick whichever he wants to mean. Your vehicles are not "necessary", becasue everybody I know gets along perfectly fine without them, and I bet you could too. If your prestige and a slight increment of comfort are worth 60K to you, then knock yourself out.
You have not created any wealth in your lifetime. You have just learned how to divert other people's money to yourself, so you could show off with fancy cars. Wise enough, I guess.
It's been my experience that when debating about this issue ego is involved no matter how simple or complex the lifestyle. Those of you who choose to live with less may be just as ego-driven as those who live with more. (The tip off was the comment about the amount of money in your bank account, jtur88.)
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You have not created any wealth in your lifetime. You have just learned how to divert other people's money to yourself, so you could show off with fancy cars.
This is a completely unsupported assertion. Why would you write such a thing?
Last edited by formercalifornian; 05-14-2009 at 12:57 PM..
It's been my experience that when debating about this issue ego is involved no matter how simple or complex the lifestyle. Those of you who choose to live with less may be just as ego-driven as those who live with more. (The tip off was the comment about the amount of money in your bank account, jtur88.)
This is a completely unsupported assertion. Why would you write such a thing?
I leave it to the owner of a law firm who also buys and sells pre-existing property to explain how he has "created wealth". If I buy a toaster at a yard sale for $5 and sell it to you for $10 and charge you $5 more for delivery, how much wealth have I created? I created nothing---I moved ten bucks from your wallet to mine, but the aggregate wealth of our national economy remains exactly the same.
Here's another even more complicated one. I have Honus Wagner baseball card, of which there is only one known to exist. It is currently valued at 250K, and as such, is a part of our national wealth. I look in my mother's attic, and I find another one. Has the national "wealth" suddenly increased to 500K? No because now there are two of them, it is no longer unique, so the price plummets to 50K each, and the national economy has decreased by 150K. But, being very smart, I throw the second one in the fire, restoring the value of the original one to what it previously was, and had no effect at all on the national wealth.
It's not all still in my bank account. I used it to buy things I needed, instead of things I wanted. Or a Honus Wagner card, I forgot.
Almost everything we have is a want, anything more than a economy car is a luxury, why, because for the mass majority, for the mass amount of people, they go from a to b, with just themselves. So having a four door 4 thousand pound vehicle to go from a to b with just yourself is not frugal by any means. I had an 88 toyota pickup, with airbags, and it was one of the most comfortable vehicles i have ever driven, and anyone who got in it agreed, yet it cost me over its life time 3k, yet lasted 160k before i sold it, in which its still running.
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Carrying 9.000 pounds, if I ever have to, can be done more economically in a $100 rental for the day, than buying a 40K truck just in case I need it
There honestly isn't any way to rebuttal that, seriously, ok, fine, have your lifestyle, whatever, but it doesn't detract from the fact that its wasteful to have a vehicle you actually USE twice a year. Hence the reason why i sold my pickup, it was great, have a bed was really nice, and 20mpg average was good to, but i could do much better, and i did.
Ok, enough of that battle BS, onto the economy, we have a system based on growth, which is simply unsustainable, we need to have a system based on sustainability.
Watch this, "Capitalism Hits the Fan" Capitalism Hits the Fan A Marxian View
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Originally Posted by jertheber
The brutal truth regarding our economic future has a lot to do with how we think we got to where we are in the first place. First things first, there really is no such thing as, 'the economy". that's right, the whole construct is the creation of media and corporate hooplah, it's formed up by certain measurements and then glued together by economist's. To suppose that there is a real cohesive dynamic to all the worlds currency and markets is nonsense, our fortunes and fates are tied to one another as humans but that doesn't mean our human creations are as resilient as we are, nor does it connote any particular sense of caring about the guy next door, let alone halfway around the world. We will survive, but our systems of finance are surely shot through and through. This fact, that we don't know, or care to know, the fate of our neighbors, is part of how we got into the greatest downfall of capital empires. Everybody I knew was crowing about the "value" of their abode rising like the fortunes of Solomon, oh yeah, I got mine , sorry about yours. At work it was the company yelling about "share value", keeping it real for the investor class and all that. Cities were shouting the praises of junk architecture, turning our landscape into a Disneyscape, all while we foot the bill for these monstrosities even when the price of gas made it impossible to go anywhere. Where do we find some sanity in all this? Simple, start down the road to our past, get small, stick together, get real about the stuff we need, and be honest about that which we can do without. The pain will be spread around, some will be worse off than others, those who are orgaizing now will be far better prepared. The bright side? maybe we'll all find out what it is that we're supposed be, a decent and caring human being....
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Originally Posted by jtur88
The typical middle class American household spends about a quarter of its income on what it needs and 3/4 n what it wants. As a result, the aggregate earning power of the household is about 4 times what it needs to be. The husband and wife both have a full-time job and one of them has a part time job.
This is voluntary. The people choose to waste away their entire lives and neglect their children, becausse they have committed themselves to fulfilling their wants instead of their needs.
Every family in American could have everything it needs for a reasonably secure and healthy and comfortable lifestyle, with about a quarter of our present productivity, and with about a quarter of the man-hours of labor. We weould, economically, be exactly where we are now, except that the toys would be in much lesser abundance. Our labor force would still produce the food, shelter, and simple comforts of life.
A Hummer costs about 4,000 hours of work, not to mention maybe 500 more hours of commuting time getting to and from that work. The Hummer is not a useful tool that yields any needed benefit---it is a conspicuous toy for which Americans are willing to get up in the morning and spend a day at a workplace 500 times in order to pay for it. How much benefit could your dhildren get from that 4,000 hours of quality time with you and your family?
Instead of buying a Hummer, for the same cost you could take off the entire summer and take your whole family on a 3-month backpacking trip around-the world, giving your children an education that they would not get in years of school. The only downside is that your kids would have to be seen being dropped off at school in a '95 Camry, instead of a yellow Hummer.
But these are our priorities, and we have not yet begun to see how dearly we will pay for them.
I think you have a huge ego and want to brag about your income and your cars, being perceived as rich is more important to you than being rich. Second, the definition said "necessary or wise". A person using the word can pick whichever he wants to mean. Your vehicles are not "necessary", becasue everybody I know gets along perfectly fine without them, and I bet you could too. If your prestige and a slight increment of comfort are worth 60K to you, then knock yourself out.
You have no idea how economics works, do you?
LOL, you act like a 60k. car is something to brag about... Perhaps you're insecure with your own economic standing? I will drive my "expensive" car AND take backpacking trips just like a lot of Americans..
Sure I do. I am frugal, I save my money, I have no debts, I have savings. If I need something I can buy it without borrowing. I pay no interest. The bank pays me interest. I have always had a grat deal of leisure time, and I will die with no regrets about how I used it. I knew enough about economics to predict accurately the outcome of that economic theory. (Except for the dying part, but Im optimistic.)
Sure I do. I am frugal, I save my money, I have no debts, I have savings. If I need something I can buy it without borrowing. I pay no interest. The bank pays me interest. I have always had a grat deal of leisure time, and I will die with no regrets about how I used it. I knew enough about economics to predict accurately the outcome of that economic theory. (Except for the dying part, but Im optimistic.)
How is your economic theory going?
Fine. I can buy things without borrowing too. I don't get what you're trying to say?
I only pay mortgage and the things that go with that.
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