Las Vegas' Middle Class Is Shrinking (2015, house, theater)
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So my view is this.
If a child is sick and needs lifelong care, the parents are responsible. If my kids were sick all my money would be going to set them up for after I die.
That's what people need to do.
I want to grow my businesses to the point that each kid can take one over and live a good life if they so choose.
People shouldn't have kids that they can't take care of. I am pro abortion. Not pro choice. Pro abortion. Get rid of all these future leeches. We need less people not more.
That out of the way. Parents should also put aside a fund for their kids if something happens later in life.
No one asks for any debilitating disease. I do have sympathy for people with things beyond their control. But the vast majority of people on safety net programs are able bodied and perfectly capable of supporting themselves. That is what I'm against.
If I were in charge medicare, medicaid, welfare, food stamps, section 8, and SS would all be gone.
SS and Medicare would be paid out to those who paid in. Food stamps would be dwindled down as would welfare and section 8. Can't just rip people off those suddenly. Not sure how long would be reasonable. 6 months maybe.
Money saved from that can go to help people who actually need it.
Back on topic. Even people with maladies can be and are productive. 9,999,999 people out of 10,000,000 can be productive and live a decent life. We're not all going to be driving lambos to our beach mansions. But a lot of people don't even want that anyway. There are so many things to do to make 50k plus. A lot of those jobs you can sit on your butt and do.
I am sick of catering to the least useful people. We do it in schools and with government spending.
Stop. Let the productive be productive. Let the unproductive rot. Taking care of the weak only exacerbates the problem.
These safety nets are supposed to catch people and put them back on their feet. But they don't do that. Whole families are living off others. Generations of people living off the system. It's ridiculous and it's mainly because there's no incentive to get off the programs. Why work when you can get free food and rent?
Get rid of those programs and people either have to swim or they sink.
I got too comfy on those programs. I wish I had been kicked off after a few months. I'd already have my house and fancy car.
But not only do these programs lack incentives, as Katie pointed out, there's actually incentive NOT to get off the programs.
You can't incrementally improve your life because if you do you lose all or most of your help.
Get 160 extra a month on your check before taxes? OHHH we're cutting 300 off your food stamps. So you lose 140 bucks in food.
It's a trap and it's designed to be that way.
Take the damn training wheels off and let people skin their knees. It's good for them.
The top 1% changes all the time. People rise up into it with good ideas and execution. Other people fall out due to bad ideas and poor execution.
Like him or Not Trump has been bankrupt and became a billionaire again.
Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Mark Cuban, Paul Allen all started in their garage as poors.
They worked nonstop and made it happen.
Dude I work with on classes got hurt in the navy and retired. Got bored and started making youtube videos in his garage.
Now he's one of the most popular welder fabricators on the internet. He has 3 shops. Companies ship him products to use.
They pay him to review them. I think he has 39 or 40 welders now. Average price is 2500 dollars. Fast cut sent him a $40,000 cnc plasma table. All class supplies are sponsored. He's got online stores selling things (can't say). Youtube income. He's making so much money his accountant is telling him to spend it.
Our most recent student started making vape juice in his garage. Now he has a worldwide distribution company, massive juice company, and a Jay Leno style shop just for his toys. He's dumb as a rock. he took the welding class because he was bored.
Another guy invented a new way to cast metal making it stronger than forged metal. Took the class because the molds had to be perfect.
There's so many things to do there's really no excuse to remain poor.
Another example I keep using here. The unions. When I was driving I gave so many young people a direct contact with the union president. They'd start at 18+ an hour and go up to over 40 an hour plus benefits out the butt.
1 person called. 1. out of hundreds. The fact is people don't actually want to do what it takes to make it. I was one of them for a long time. I wanted someone to hand me everything. But it doesn't work like that. Doesn't matter who you are. If you want something, earn it.
I wouldn't categorize you so casually and carelessly. I think you're a nice person who doesn't look at things the same way I do. I think it would take more than three minutes of searching to know what the chans are about. To mention Sargon (who's pretty much irrelevant) indicates you know nothing about it.
So to be "de-platformed" by YouTube means you're wrong? I think it means you're far more likely to be right.
Ha. My friends in college introduced me to 4chan in 2004 and I lurked for years during that period as they all played on it with memes and pictures mostly on /b/. It was all new and shocking and sometimes funny. I went through the whole thing with anonymous happening and the white hat hackers and my computer science friends, but I saw enough of the sewer portion of it to stay away for the most part after college. Some of it is just sicking. Plus I'd heard it got taken over around 2013-2014 by the alt-right white nationalist agenda.
I've become more familiar with Carl Benjamin and that whole online movement in the last two years because I wanted to understand what the hell happened and how we got to this point. I knew about the weaponization of Cambridge Analytica data targeting those individuals that could be persuaded to change their minds and about the disinformation and propaganda campaign playing both sides, which is still happening. Catching up to all the internet lingo of this new generation has been a process. It took me a couple months to get Sargon is a charming charismatic misinformation misogynist who deserved to be de-platformed like Alex Jones. Though he's not as deranged and dangerous as Alex Jones but he is nefarious. Still he supported neo-fascist and white nationalist Tommy Robinson and ran for UKip which is known for being ignorant and racists. I learned about gamer gate and I've watched enough of his videos to have his number.
The group you cited is attached to the alt-right white nationalism as well. It's new to me but pepe isn't and it's been adopted by several groups. Their symbolism is on the flag along with fascists. My oldest brother was a Neo-Nazi for years in the 80's and 90's and so I was exposed to much of that. He's out of it now. The symbolism is everything to them and I can recognize and identify it when most people can't and don't know what it really means. The alt-right, white nationalist, neo nazis believe in racial superiority, eugenics and a white ethno state and they're trying to normalize this, quite successfully, by appearing normal and with Trump in office. However, we've been there with Hitler and the extermination of the Jews and this does not end well.
I don't know everything but I do know some things and I certainly don't agree with aligning with the racism of the white nationalist, alt-reich, neo nazis, or the misogyny of pepe, MGTOW, incels, proud boys, or the deluded deep state conspiracy theory ideology of Q Anon. Nor do I encourage 4chan or 8chan to anyone because it's occupied mostly by all of this and a bunch of incestuous, pedophiles, perverts, sociopaths and psychopaths.
I know some parts like the music forum are creative and collaborative and beautiful things come out of it, but the parts that these guys frequent such as pol and others are toxic and desensitizing. I think you're nice too, though maybe being a bit naive, or it could be darker like one of those fascists playing cute. Their favorite game is playing the ignorant because it reinforces their belief that they're smarter since they know something you don't and they can manipulate and control you. I don't know you well enough to tell yet but there are several indicators that will out. So far three indicators say you're okay but perhaps misguided and influenced.
So my view is this.
If a child is sick and needs lifelong care, the parents are responsible. If my kids were sick all my money would be going to set them up for after I die.
That's what people need to do.
I want to grow my businesses to the point that each kid can take one over and live a good life if they so choose.
People shouldn't have kids that they can't take care of. I am pro abortion. Not pro choice. Pro abortion. Get rid of all these future leeches. We need less people not more.
That out of the way. Parents should also put aside a fund for their kids if something happens later in life.
No one asks for any debilitating disease. I do have sympathy for people with things beyond their control. But the vast majority of people on safety net programs are able bodied and perfectly capable of supporting themselves. That is what I'm against.
If I were in charge medicare, medicaid, welfare, food stamps, section 8, and SS would all be gone.
SS and Medicare would be paid out to those who paid in. Food stamps would be dwindled down as would welfare and section 8. Can't just rip people off those suddenly. Not sure how long would be reasonable. 6 months maybe.
Money saved from that can go to help people who actually need it.
Back on topic. Even people with maladies can be and are productive. 9,999,999 people out of 10,000,000 can be productive and live a decent life. We're not all going to be driving lambos to our beach mansions. But a lot of people don't even want that anyway. There are so many things to do to make 50k plus. A lot of those jobs you can sit on your butt and do.
I am sick of catering to the least useful people. We do it in schools and with government spending.
Stop. Let the productive be productive. Let the unproductive rot. Taking care of the weak only exacerbates the problem.
These safety nets are supposed to catch people and put them back on their feet. But they don't do that. Whole families are living off others. Generations of people living off the system. It's ridiculous and it's mainly because there's no incentive to get off the programs. Why work when you can get free food and rent?
Get rid of those programs and people either have to swim or they sink.
I got too comfy on those programs. I wish I had been kicked off after a few months. I'd already have my house and fancy car.
But not only do these programs lack incentives, as Katie pointed out, there's actually incentive NOT to get off the programs.
You can't incrementally improve your life because if you do you lose all or most of your help.
Get 160 extra a month on your check before taxes? OHHH we're cutting 300 off your food stamps. So you lose 140 bucks in food.
It's a trap and it's designed to be that way.
Take the damn training wheels off and let people skin their knees. It's good for them.
The top 1% changes all the time. People rise up into it with good ideas and execution. Other people fall out due to bad ideas and poor execution.
Like him or Not Trump has been bankrupt and became a billionaire again.
Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Mark Cuban, Paul Allen all started in their garage as poors.
They worked nonstop and made it happen.
Dude I work with on classes got hurt in the navy and retired. Got bored and started making youtube videos in his garage.
Now he's one of the most popular welder fabricators on the internet. He has 3 shops. Companies ship him products to use.
They pay him to review them. I think he has 39 or 40 welders now. Average price is 2500 dollars. Fast cut sent him a $40,000 cnc plasma table. All class supplies are sponsored. He's got online stores selling things (can't say). Youtube income. He's making so much money his accountant is telling him to spend it.
Our most recent student started making vape juice in his garage. Now he has a worldwide distribution company, massive juice company, and a Jay Leno style shop just for his toys. He's dumb as a rock. he took the welding class because he was bored.
Another guy invented a new way to cast metal making it stronger than forged metal. Took the class because the molds had to be perfect.
There's so many things to do there's really no excuse to remain poor.
Another example I keep using here. The unions. When I was driving I gave so many young people a direct contact with the union president. They'd start at 18+ an hour and go up to over 40 an hour plus benefits out the butt.
1 person called. 1. out of hundreds. The fact is people don't actually want to do what it takes to make it. I was one of them for a long time. I wanted someone to hand me everything. But it doesn't work like that. Doesn't matter who you are. If you want something, earn it.
That's what I thought. You fall into the Independent/Libertarian category. You agree with Democrats on some social issue and with Republicans on economics, taxes and government regulations. Social Security and Medicare are two of the most popular social policies though. What's your take on foreign policy beyond open borders?
Quote:
Originally Posted by EA
I never could stand 4chan. I don't like reddit either.
I don't go on reddit either but it's much more benign than the chans.
Las Vegas had a strong influx of middle-class and upper middle-class money from California in the 1990s (Orange County, LA County, San Diego County, etc). That was almost a "Golden Era" for the city.
That's when developments like Green Valley Ranch, Summerlin and Lake Las Vegas were taking off. That was the Greatest Generation entering their "golden years" and the first wave or early-retiree Baby Boomers. Additionally, many people followed their parents and grandparents to Las Vegas to find jobs, which also boosted the economy and sent it on a growing bonanza of sorts. People were pulling equity out of their homes to buy toys, get upgrades, get new boobs and tattoos, and buy "investment" properties, etc.
Then came 2007-2008 and the rude awakening we all got.
The Greatest Generation are, sadly, starting to die off. As are the oldest of the Boomers who partied a little too hard. A lot of them die and take their money with them, or it ends up somewhere in the "black hole" of Wall Street. The younger Boomers got the last of the good jobs with good benefits. The Gen Xr's don't have the amount of capital that the Boomers and Greatest Genr's had. The Millennials have even less.
Those with money, a lot of which is foreign, are moving to coastal California while those with less money are getting pushed inland. There was a recent article in the Washington Post about how Millennial Californians from the Bay Area are starting to move out to the Central Valley cities of Bakersfield and Fresno in droves, making those areas more cosmopolitan and liberal, and also more expensive and less-friendly to the lower class.
As foreign money keeps pouring in and prices keep going up in Southern California along the coast, working millennials are getting pushed out to the Inland Empire, the Antelope Valley, the Coachella Valley (Indio) and places that were once lower-middle class. This "push" away from the coast toward the inland suburbs and exurbs is, in turn, pushing the poorer residents of the Inland Empire, the Antelope Valley and the Coachella Valley over into Nevada and Arizona where there are more homes and apartments being built.
Here is an interesting article about how the Southern Nevada Housing Authority was giving out Section 8 vouchers to people outside of Las Vegas for the past 10 years:
And, why wouldn't they? It's job security for them!
You're seeing wealth increases in places like San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Santa Monica, Palo Alto, Laguna Beach because foreign money is coming in and buying small homes that once sold for $50-70k in 1975, and rehabbing them, and re-selling them, to the tune of $5 mil on today's market. That, in turn, drives up the taxes on neighboring properties and Millennials just can't afford that. Watch the movie, "House of Sand and Fog" starring Jennifer Connely if you want a clear idea of what's been going on the past 15 years in coastal California. The novel is even better but most people don't want to be bothered with reading a novel these days.
The group you cited is attached to the alt-right white nationalism as well.
I never specified a particular group. I like the chans, distasteful as some of the content is, because people feel free to say what they want (a rarity these days). I think that's important.
I'm dismayed by your enthusiasm for silencing people via de-platforming. I'll refrain from scoring you, because that's not something I'm into.
Las Vegas had a strong influx of middle-class and upper middle-class money from California in the 1990s (Orange County, LA County, San Diego County, etc). That was almost a "Golden Era" for the city.
That's when developments like Green Valley Ranch, Summerlin and Lake Las Vegas were taking off. That was the Greatest Generation entering their "golden years" and the first wave or early-retiree Baby Boomers. Additionally, many people followed their parents and grandparents to Las Vegas to find jobs, which also boosted the economy and sent it on a growing bonanza of sorts. People were pulling equity out of their homes to buy toys, get upgrades, get new boobs and tattoos, and buy "investment" properties, etc.
Then came 2007-2008 and the rude awakening we all got.
The Greatest Generation are, sadly, starting to die off. As are the oldest of the Boomers who partied a little too hard. A lot of them die and take their money with them, or it ends up somewhere in the "black hole" of Wall Street. The younger Boomers got the last of the good jobs with good benefits. The Gen Xr's don't have the amount of capital that the Boomers and Greatest Genr's had. The Millennials have even less.
Those with money, a lot of which is foreign, are moving to coastal California while those with less money are getting pushed inland. There was a recent article in the Washington Post about how Millennial Californians from the Bay Area are starting to move out to the Central Valley cities of Bakersfield and Fresno in droves, making those areas more cosmopolitan and liberal, and also more expensive and less-friendly to the lower class.
As foreign money keeps pouring in and prices keep going up in Southern California along the coast, working millennials are getting pushed out to the Inland Empire, the Antelope Valley, the Coachella Valley (Indio) and places that were once lower-middle class. This "push" away from the coast toward the inland suburbs and exurbs is, in turn, pushing the poorer residents of the Inland Empire, the Antelope Valley and the Coachella Valley over into Nevada and Arizona where there are more homes and apartments being built.
Here is an interesting article about how the Southern Nevada Housing Authority was giving out Section 8 vouchers to people outside of Las Vegas for the past 10 years:
And, why wouldn't they? It's job security for them!
You're seeing wealth increases in places like San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Santa Monica, Palo Alto, Laguna Beach because foreign money is coming in and buying small homes that once sold for $50-70k in 1975, and rehabbing them, and re-selling them, to the tune of $5 mil on today's market. That, in turn, drives up the taxes on neighboring properties and Millennials just can't afford that. Watch the movie, "House of Sand and Fog" starring Jennifer Connely if you want a clear idea of what's been going on the past 15 years in coastal California.
Repped you for your great post. The link can't be reached. I can see it's housing-authority-director-leadership-exacerbated from the Las Vegas Sun. I'll have to search it later as I better go to bed soon. Trying to flip being up all night back into up all day. Night owl here.
I remember that movie House of Sand and Fog when it came out. I'll have to rewatch it through the lens you provided. I recall she was living in a house on the water and was wrongly evicted and the older foreign family that bought got it at a bargain. They worked hard and saved their money for it but in the end because of the dispute they killed themselves over it since they lost everything.
The group you cited is attached to the alt-right white nationalism as well.
I never specified a particular group. I like the chans, distasteful as some of the content is, because people feel free to say what they want (a rarity these days). I think that's important.
I'm dismayed by your enthusiasm for silencing people via de-platforming. I'll refrain from scoring you, because that's not something I'm into.
Fair enough.
You did though. I believe in free speech but I'm not a free speech absolutist. That's a folly many fall into and another one of their tricks. There are limits. Thumbs down on hate speech and I don't work for likes.
That's what I thought. You fall into the Independent/Libertarian category. You agree with Democrats on some social issue and with Republicans on economics, taxes and government regulations. Social Security and Medicare are two of the most popular social policies though. What's your take on foreign policy beyond open borders?
I'm more of an ancap. I don't want any government at all. I want business to be open and free.
What foreign policy could I possibly like or dislike? I have no business in the affairs of people in other countries.
I'm for open borders because there need not be a government to regulate the border. There need not be a social safety net to attract foreigners. If they want to come here they'd have to earn it like everyone else.
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