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Perhaps if they paid less attention to the camera they’d know wtf was going on.
(Richard Wagoner, Robert Nardelli, Alan Mulally)
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They still wouldn’t know wtf is going on, anyway.
btw, first
Good god but they would still be fugly. So f***ing ugly!!
he looks like a critter that’s about to take a chunk out of the camera.
They look like they are about to lunge at the cameraman and steal his wallet…alternatively lunge at the camera and beg people to buy their inferior cars.
the guy on the end is thinking bad thoughts about renewable energy
Would you buy a used car from any of these guys, let alone a new one?
They look like the cameraman just made a comment about how he always buys Honda.
Ha! Yep, they do. And they better get used to it.
Grumpy looking bunch of SOBs, aren’t they?
If I were begging for billions, I think I would try a sweeter expression.
Begees can’t be choosers, rho. You dont’ get to pick how pretty your beggars are
)
You mean that’s as pretty as those guys can get? Yucque!
THE BEGEES??!!! WHERE????<__>
lol you made a typo
They look like they are mad the cameraman is not on their “good” side.
Well, Nardelli presided over the demise of Home Depot’s original culture of talented, well-paid professionals, replacing it with today’s warm-body-off-the-street-minimum-wage-know-nothing, so I guess it’s no surprise to see his ugly mug up there on Capitol Hill, saying, “Please sir, may I have some more?”
And Mexicans! Don’t forget them!
In a capitalist free market system, failure of unprofitable enterprises is a feature, not a bug. Even through the twenties, there were hundreds of car companies in America. They all went bankrupt because they couldn’t compete, and nobody gave them a bailout.
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This is why we need a social safety net. Companies should be allowed to fail, but people shouldn’t have to go hungry because of that. In the twenty first century, countries need to be nimble. Who knows what the tech of tomorrow will be? Nanotech, genetic engineering, AI, harvesting asteroids, who knows? We need to be able to tear down outdated industries and build new ones quickly to compete in this new century. We can’t do that as long as people desperately hold on to their jobs for fear of losing their house, their medical coverage, and going hungry. Socialize the basic necessities of life, and you make your free market that much more competitive in the sectors that matter.
People also need to take responsibility for their own welfare. No one should assume (especially these days) that a job will be there forever for them. Savings, people! Savings, savings, savings! (I’m saying that to myself as well).
That said, isn’t Unemployment a social safety net? It sure helped me when I was stuck between jobs.
Just what I was thinking! Unemployment saved my butt a few times… Of course there have to be jobs out there cause you sure can’t live on it for long. I think at least 3 months of salary is recommended as a safety net just in case.
6 months, now!
You can’t save when you are living hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck. Sometimes the check covers all your expenses, and sometimes it doesn’t even do that. I’m not talking about extravagant expenditures either. Rent on a modest apartment, heat, electricity, phone, groceries. We’re not even talking cable tv or going out to the occasional movie or ANY sort of entertainment for sanity’s sake here. When you’re only making $20k per year, saving when the cost of living is so high just isn’t an option for many people. It’s not just teens and retirees having to hold on to minimum wage and $10 per hour jobs anymore. FAMILIES have to try to live on that. We haven’t even gotten to the cost of health care!! COBRA isn’t an option to many on unemployment either. Savings is just not the quick and painless answer for many, I’m afraid. it’s well nigh impossible for a lot of people these days just to stay afloat, let alone save.
I agree with everything you write, and want to add that: it’s very expensive to be poor. You end up having to buy crappy cheap stuff that breaks and soon needs to be replaced, or is unhealthy for you(/your kids) and so on. Really. It’s way easier to save when you can buy good quality sh*t to begin with. :/
That’s true. I forgot that part. I know EXACTLY what you mean. Then there’s the thing about Americans not eating healthy. But you can get to a point when all you can afford is boxed Mac & Cheese, Ramen, grilled cheese sandwiches or bologna, etc. Eating fresh veggies and meats, proteins, etc. is expensive too. not everybody can afford to eat how they should, even if they WANT to.
So work harder and get a real job that pays well- go to school at night and quit whining!
Oh puh-leze. Obviously ‘socksthecat’ hasn’t ever lived hand-to-mouth, or known someone who does.
I’ve a friend who did night school to upgrade from travel agent to teacher. But in the Northeast, it’s hard to find a public teaching job. And the private ones pay so badly that after rent, she’s only got 40% of her pay left.
And before you tell my friend to move and find a job elsewhere, do YOU want to loan her the $1K it will cost for moving costs? Or that ‘first & last month plus security’ that you have to fork over rent a new apartment?
Oooh, your post reminded me of that show (“30 Days”) where Morgan Spurlock (the guy who did “Super Size Me”) goes to live “the poor life” with his girlfriend, for a month. There are some excellent examples in there on why being poor is expensive.
I’m willing to be that socksthecat probably lives off of someone else’s money. It’s also tough to pay for a good school when you can barely pay rent. In a lot of cases, people work two jobs to pay for school, and if you’re raising a family it’s damn near impossible to work two jobs, go to school and, you know, raise your family.
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And think about this, I went to school and it still took me several years to find a “real job”. In that time, I had bartending jobs and temp jobs and no real medical insurance. I say that because while I had *some* coverage, it didn’t come anywhere close to covering a surgery I needed to have. And between medical costs and student loans, it’ll take me another 5-10 years to get out of debt now that I’m able to pay some of it off. And I still had help from family. Some people don’t have that benefit.
Yeah, because there’s tons of high paying jobs for the taking in this economy.
*poof* Darn. Still trying to “create my own fortune.” DWN?
you are a DICKWEED
nuff said
Exactly how do you save when you make minimum wage?
Precisely the question our dear Minerva posted. I am still waiting for that answer. I make 11 an hour and get screwed like prison rape whenever I have to stay home for anything. Since I am contracted as a temp instead of actually hired at my job, I don’t get any kind of holiday pay. So the four day weekend was nice but extremely stressful overall since I have to pay rent this week.
I think it’s mainly that people have NO concept of what it’s like actually living paycheck to paycheck on extremely modest earnings. Which is also very often not what people are worth. An acquaintance of mine says she’s having a hard time and can’t afford things, but actually has a nice house, two cars, kids that have cell phones, ipods, video games, and more or less everything else that a typical teen thinks they need. She also buys health food and a number of supplements and other herbal lotions, etc. I keep looking at my mac & cheese, going, “ok, where’s the hardship then?” It’s all about perspective and people really not being able to have empathy because it’s unimaginable for them.
Everyone should live on a service job salary, for a while…or be a graduate student for a few years.
I lived on grocery wages for 5 years before I got a job as a supervisor. I was going to school at the time, and was paying a lot of my bills with credits cards. I’m paying for that now, literally. I’d have a much better life if I could just expunge my debts *sigh* Right now we’re living paycheck to paycheck in order to get stuff paid off.
Good for you froo! It will be over in no time, I got all mine paid off
and now I’m working on my mortgages… I don’t want any debt.
Froo, I’m in basically the same boat as you. My boyfriend just got a real nice job a few months ago and to pay off a lot of his debts plus all of our expenses, we’re still living paycheck to paycheck. Luckily he’s not overdrawing his account anymore.
I haven’t used a credit card in over three years. I figure if I can get by now without using them, when I get them paid off I’ll be sitting pretty. Now for my student loan *sigh*
I just got to that point and to be honest, I still use one occasionally and when I do, I try to be smart about it. I keep a close eye on my finance charges (the bastards do screw you in sneaky ways sometimes) and If I can get a no interest plan I do it. It’s not great, but it’s better. And I’ve actually gotten to the point where I plan to be completely out of credit card debt in about a year. If I continue along the same rate, it might actually happen. Then there are the student loans and the car payment. Debt sucks.
Yet, with interest rates for savings, you are better off just putting a wad of cash under your mattress. *rolls eyes*
Didn’t the Big Three go begging Reagan for a bailout? IIRC, he told them no, they revamped, and they still exist today.
If it’s a loan and not a bailout this time, it’s somewhat different. They totally need to have strings attached if they get it, but we can’t allow 3 million jobs to be affected or we really will have a depression and not just a recession on our hands. After the inauguration I’d like to see them revisit the “no strings” bank bailout too. Hopefully send some of those banking guys with their golden parachutes to jail!!
Didn’t Reagan bail out Chrysler?
No, Congress did..
I agree with your assessment about making the basic necessities covered, so that people can make themselves more competitive on the job market without fear of being homeless, etc. I also agree that companies should be allowed to fail, but that we can’t do it when so many jobs are at stake. I think you said one other time, that certain things, like utilities , highways, etc. are natural monopolies, but besides these, we ought to enforce Anti-trust laws to keep competition in the market. Con-Agra doesn’t need to own everything in the heartland, for example.
Jobs are always at stake. Where do we draw the line?
3 million?? This could really cause the economy to collapse. Surely you must realize this. It’s not just the auto workers affected. it’s the coffee shop where the workers pick up their morning coffee, and the franchised fast-food joint where employees get heir lunch, or the grocery store, whose volume suddenly decreases when displaced workers leave the area, etc. It’s a total ripple effect.
Besides, the Auto industry is pretty much our last bastion of manufacturing. What will ewe have left if it goes? We already lost electronics, appliances, health and beauty(shampoo, etc), plastics… What’s left. During WWII it was the auto industry that shifted prediction to war machines, support vehicles, supplies, etc. What happens if they are gone. They are important to defense. Do you really want China, Mexico, India, japan, etc, manufacturing our armored vehicles, etc, when we may not always even be on the same side?? This is an extreme example, but the auto industry is an extremely important one to this country.
They need oversight if they get the money. They need to revamp and as Seth said, become more nimble to keep up with changing technology. They need to begin competing on the world market, but this can only be done if they start producing comparable vehicles AND get favorable trade agreements so they CAN compete. But at this point in history, when it’s so critical, I don’t think they can be allowed to fail.
So you mean that if the Big Three go out of business, the problems with ripple out? Or trickle, as it were?
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I understand the problems, and I agree with the solutions. But the arguments I’m seeing used FOR thisloan are the same ones I see used AGAINST trickle down economics.
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I’m sorry, I’ll stop trolling now. I’m just in a bad mood again from lack of sleep.
Trickle down assumes that giving more money to rich people will cause them to spend such money on creating jobs. This doesn’t happen. This is not the same because we are talking about saving EXISTING jobs. This is actually more closely related to trickle UP.
That’s right the rich don’t support things like the service, entertainment, fashion industry, etc. Who is it that give people jobs? Rich People.
Nope. The engine of job creation in America is the small business. Scrapping by on loans from family, friends and credit cards, working crazy hours and never knowing if it will pay off. These are the people that create value and jobs in America. The rich do squat.
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If money were more evenly spread throughout society, then it wouldn’t be the rich with all the control over job creation. Why is it that success in the ruthless game of big business gives a person more real control over other people’s lives than being president of the US does? Why do we let proven liars, thieves, cheats, and sociopathic con men run the world?
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When we give the rich more money, they do not create more jobs unless that would make them the most profit. With all the global competition from countres with poor labor and environmental regulations, starting an American big business is a bad investment. The rich would rather create crazy pump and dump schemes like the housing bubble and use their money to fleece the rest of us.
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Tell me, does rich behind just taste better, or is their some other reason you are kissing their butts? Maybe you think if you kiss enough, they will let you into their club? It’s not happening. They laugh at you and everyone like youy who protect and defend the interests of the rich because you think you’ll be rich some day. Chances are, you won’t, and you will have spent your whole life defending people who think they are better than you. Chump.
Not to mention, who gives a rat’s a$$ about the fashion industry? Only a few skeletoid wealthy people. Not as though the fashion industry provides jobs in this country. Those “fashionable” knock offs at Target or wherever are manufactured in Guatemala, Mexico, or the far east.
Thanks Seth for the better explanation than I gave. These people seem to keep confusing trickle up and trickle sown and equating them when they really aren’t the same at all. Next they’ll be taking credit for trickle up.
Yeah, I thought all those people working in the Coach store looked pretty darn Guatemalan. Give me a break.
Don’t be obtuse. You know perfectly well the retail employees don’t have any bearing on where and how goods are manufactured.
Right. Plus there’s how many Coach store jobs nationwide? Not that many because it’s a luxury item. Not just every joe shops there. You proved my point that the fashion industry is a stupid example to use when talking about job creation. Go back through the archives. We have tons of writing about how trickle down in modern society is a joke. Seth has tons of info on it.
And then along comes stuff like this from the mainstream media. Click the name.
I’m sure the average McDonald’s worker in NY see’s a huge pay increase because some douche decided to buy a 15,000 bottle of champagne. The guys profiting here are the restaurant owner and the company that makes/distributes the champagne. Chances are, the best that’ll happen to “normal folk” is that they’ll hire more people at the same pay.
Did you read the entire thing? Or just the part about the bottle of champaigne?
The fact remains that there are still only so many wall street brokers. They can’t have as much impact as this business writer (not necessarily journalist) thinks. Also, the article is old, so it may not be particularly relevant in the current economic situation. He assumes that they spend all the bonus money as well, which Seth and others have shown they simply don’t do.
I did read the entire thing but I was making a point. I realize it will have helped somewhat, but not entirely. There will still be people who don’t see any effects. Also, the date on it was from 2006.
You guys are missing the poit *sigh* It may not work in all cases, but when it’s convenient as source material and to make a point, trickle down economics suddenly works.
HEY I still said it doesn’t really work; that they DON’T spend it all. Don’t I get to keep my cred!!!!?!?!?
Only because I like you
)
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You know as well as I do that it works, just not in the perfect way Reagan wanted it to. A certain amount of ‘trickle down’ happens, otherwise there wouldn’t be little kids in Cambodia making Coach purses for 5 cents a day. Nothing works exactly like it’s supposed to, even Seth’s socialism. It takes perfect people to make a perfect world where everyone is healthy, happy, and making enough to be comfortable, and we certainly have a lack of healthy people!
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And I’m not completely convinced that the research Seth cites about how people are basically hard-working is completely accurate for the same reason that I thnk a racism poll is skewed. If people were honest they would look bad.
Ok, that’s pretty much what I was getting at. Sure it sorta works, but it’s never going to work the way we are told it does. All in all, I agree with everything you just said.
I think PK eated my post. I’ll concede that it sort of works, but it nowhere near as well as we’re told it does. That said, I basically agree with everything you just said.
Arg, perhaps it’s the emoticons, but my posts keep getting eated. lemme sum up: Ok, I agree with basically everything you just said. [insert smiley]
Ack! Lack of PERFECT people, not lack of healthy people. Although we have that too.
)
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And it is the emoticons that eat posts. I think they became restless and hungry. Try this
Wow, I like the way that you said “The rich do squat” and then say in your very next paragraph, “If money were more evenly spread throughout society, then it wouldn’t be the rich with all the control over job creation.” Which is it?
Also, I’ve eaten my share of wish sandwiches, so I know what it’s like to be poor. I also know what it’s like to work two jobs and put myself through school. Plus I joined the Air Force to get some awesome skills as well as money to go to grad school. Right now I make more than my Dad did when I was a kid, so Ithink that if I can stop whining, get off my butt, and get some marketable skills, so can everyone else. like my dad always said, “If you’re not afraid of hard work, you’ll always have money.
I’m going to have to jump in here and tell you that while well meaning, you’re wrong about this. Hard work doesn’t always pay well. Just ask Minerva or DWN about working hard and getting paid what you’re worth. Sometimes it works taht way, other times you’re screwed no matter how hard you work. I’m not advocating spreading the wealth. I think that’s a horrible idea. But you can’t just ‘work hard’ and expect to have money. You also have to be where the jobs are, which is why I moved three hours from my hometown in order to take the job I have now. If my husband didn’t have small children from another marriage that we need to see grow up, we would be living in Iowa right now because that’s where the money was at the time. The option to move for a job isn’t available for everyone, though. We just got lucky.
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I guess what I’m saying is that I agree with you, but I don’t. You have to work hard, but you can’t get anywhere without some luck and a good job market in your area.
I don’t think hard work necessarily produces more money. Otherwise, all of those two-earner familys where the parents take on second jobs would be sitting pretty, and Donald Trump would only have one house.
And what is it about our society that we have stock brokers making more money than home health care workers?
Why is it that registered nurses (can’t get more skilled than that!) in the 1990′s made such lousy money that many of them quit…producing the nursing shortage that we see today? (NOW nurses make good money, because the hospitals can’t find enough of them!)
Representative Bachmann had this to say about her state:
“I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We’re the workingest state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people that are working longer hours, we have people that are working two jobs.”
Wow, how AWESOME is it that people can’t get by with one job and have to take on another. BRAVO!!!
We’ve been over what a wing nit that woman is. She’s a loon.
I understand what you’re saying Froo, believe me I respect your opinion
But what I mean by working hard is not:”Keep working at this one job and some day you’ll be rich.”
What I mean is that if the job you’re working at is unsatisfactory, you need to expand your skill set and get into another job fast. That way, no matter what the job market is like, you’ll always be able to have a good job, or at least one that can pay the bills while you look for another one.
Exactly how do you propose that happen? I don’t know about you, but I can’t take off work to get new marketable skills. I also don’t have the experience needed to get into a new job to make money while I’m getting new skills. I can’t afford to go to school, and I’m working two jobs right now just to make ends meet. When am I going to get new skills?
Whenever you can, I learned how to weld by sweeping floors part ime (10 hrs a week) at a steel fabrication plant. All I did was watch the guys, ask a bunch of questions, and practice when they would let me. Three months later I took the test to get certified and passed. This was a non-union shop by hte way. After I was certified I got a job there as a welder and was able to quit my other jobs
Military service is always a good option as well, great benefits, steady pay and awesome training. Hell, that’s what I’m doing now. Sure, there are sacrifices that you’ll have to make, but it’s worth it.
(TBC, that is not my personal situation. What are you going to tell the woman working at a grocery store who can’t get away from the register to learn how to work behind the desk, or the man working on the line at a processing plant who can’t be moved to learn something new because the company is short of people? THere are many different situations out there, and you had the luck to be able to learn your way out of yours. A lot of people aren’t that lucky)
@Pirate King: I disagree with most of what you said, but I’ll confine myself to this one: I tried several times to get into the Army, Marines, and even the National Guard when I was a kid, and they all told me my knee surgery or mmy flat feet made me ineligible for service. Not everyone has that option.
I’ll confine myself to PKing’s habit of moving the goalposts. Every time someone comes up with a relevant fact that undermines his thesis, he adds qualifiers to the thesis, making his case narrower and narrower until it amounts to “see kids, you can succeed if you’re me!” But he’ll never admit to the fact that he had a fairly fortunate confluence of opportunities presented to him, or that anything but his own personal effort made it possible.
The short form of which is: I call bullshit.
I lost patience and typed a naughty word, my post is in moderator hell. Nevertheless, I call bullsh8.
I’ll confine myself to P.King’s habit of moving the goalposts. Every time someone brings up a counterexample that undermines his thesis, he comes up with a reason to narrow the case. Eventually you’ll be left with “see kids, you can succeed if you’re me!” But will he ever admit that there was anything behond his personal drive and merit in play, that he was helped along by a particularly fortunate set of circumstances and opportunities along the way? No, sir and ma’am, he will not.
I’ll confine myself to not making personal attacks.
And I don’t think that clarifying my position counts as moving the goal posts either. All I’m trying to do is prevent misunderstandings and
communicate in the simplest of terms to avoid angering anyone. See thread directly below and you’ll find that I admit
that I have avoided trapping myself in a bad place. That is about as close as I’ve come to “a particularly fortunate set of circumstances”. What do you want me to say? That I’m some sort of genius? Only I can do what I have done because I’m sooo awesome? Please, I don’t think that I’m anything special. I just think that most people under-utilize their potential and fail to capitalize on opportunities through an unwillingness to take risk.
Why does it have to be luck?
Oh, it seems fairly clear that you are. Really. I used to believe that all those idiots around me were pulling my leg until I realised the poor sods actually just are that stupid. It’s actually kind of hard to accept that you are born with something that many do not have. You seem to be one. (And see – I learned this and also found that getting a job wasn’t as simple as it “should” have been.
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PS: I missed on commenting on this too, earlier:
The specialisation quote is funny, but some people really have to specialise as well. I am glad some people do the “insect” bit. ;oP
*sigh* Maybe one day I will be able to make ONE post where I manage to respond to all points I want to respond too. Damn my eager “click Add Comment”-fingers.
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You wrote: “Why does it have to be luck?”
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No, it doesn’t. It’s rather the absence of really bad luck. I for one, have never in this conversation tried to say that you are just lucky to be where and what you are, and I apologise if it has appeared so. What I have been trying to say is that someone else does not have to be a failure to fail at what you’ve done, they can also just have had some bad luck along the way.
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Bah. It doesn’t really feel like I am making myself clearer.
C’mon Danbala stop being so darn cordial. Flame the heck out of me for disagreeing.
P
Just kidding.
I too have reason to be thankful for specialized people as well. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, and the such. None of them are insects, except maybe the lawyers. O_o I’ll concede the point, I just really like Robert Heinlein though.
I want to be like him when I grow up. TANSTAAFL!
I sincerely apologize to ANYONE (even Seth) if it sounded like I was condemning people for being poor, bad luck can happen. hit by a car, contracted ebola, struck by lightning, what have you. Poor judgment, foolishness, bad money management, don’t fall under that category. It’s when people blame others, society, guidance counselors, rich people, that I get my dander up.
It’s okay to be poor, just either accept it or fight tooth and nail to get out of it.
Oh! I’m sorry.
( You should’ve said you were feeling frozen, I could’ve pulled out a flame thrower! Nah, seriously, discussions are much more fun when one manages to abstain from that. 
) And see, by now I have the feeling that our views on this matter is not really that far apart, and I have certainly had cause to consider and reconsider my stance, which to me is a win. 
)
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And yes, Heinlein is TEH GRATE.
For the record, attacking a style of argument I find intellectually dishonest is not the same as an ad hominem attack. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with you as a person – I do, however, maintain that the way you have backpedaled without admitting you’re backpedaling in this thread does you no credit. I was calling BS on your argument, not on you.
I’ve found you to be quite decent and fun to have around in other contexts. But I do think you’re off base this time.
Yes, in the best of worlds, that’s how it should work. From personal experience I can say that it, unfortunately, is not quite that simple. You can end up in Unemployment Marsh (population: too many) from sheer bad luck and bad timing as well.
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To make it as brief as I can: I got my diploma, an MSc in Comp Sci just as the “IT-bubble” burst. I was competing for computer jobs with thousands of recently laid-off people who had my qualifications PLUS work experience. Most of my class remained unemployed for years after graduation. I applied for “low-brow”-jobs, but they didn’t want me since they knew I’d leave as soon as I got something better. Eventually I managed to get a “menial” office job thanks to basically lying about my situation (to make me look not-as-good as I was), but things have been uphill since then – I’ve spent about 30% of the time since my graduation being unemployed. Once the IT market started looking up again, my education was suddenly somewhat outdated, and people are very hesitant to hire someone who’s been out of work for as much as I had. Thankfully, I have a good job (with a bad salary, but I can’t be picky) today, and the way I managed to get that job can most accurately be described as a fluke.
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So yeah. Edumacation, willingness to work: grate stuff, but alas not always enough.
Notice how I said “marketable skills”. As in skills that are in demand.
I can weld, drive trucks, operate forklifts, fix avionics, operate a CNC lathe and mill, be a salesman, wire a building, fix a roof, plus I have a Bachelors in English and an Associates in Aeronautical Technologies. I’m 25 and I’ve never been on unemployment or been jobless for more then 2 weeks since I was 14.
So yes, willingness works. As Robert Heinlein said: “Specialization is for insects.”
Yes, I do see what you mean. I am still objecting to the idea that willingness to work is sufficient, because it implies that those who are unemployed are unwilling to work, which I know is not (always) true. It leads to the effect that someone who has been unemployed and trying becomes undesirable because they obviously are lazy.
) The “marketable skills” point is very good, but it’s also a bit tricky to know what will be marketable, and not all things are for everyone.
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Your skills are impressive, absolutely, and it’s very good for you that you have them.
Oops. With “and trying” I meant to say “and trying to get a job”.
Sorry if I’m coming off as brusque, it’s been a long night. The flightline was covered in 2 inches of snow with ice underneath. Darn global warming.
I really enjoy communicating with all of you and I don’t want to be seen as a douche. I respect that there are many people that are trying to find work and that they may have limitations that I do not have. I don’t have any kids, student loans or the like, so it’s always been easy for me to find a job
I guess that growing up poor has always impressed me with the desire or need to have money. Money is probably the second most important thing in the world to me (my wife is number one) and no sacrifice of time or effort has ever been to great in the pursuit of it. Maybe it’s insensitive, but I truly think that anyone could be successful if they had the same dedication.
Thankfully, I have read enough of the threads here to not think that you were brusque. Looking back on this particular conversation, you could have come across as such, but as far as my perception goes, you’re safe. ;o)
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And thanks for your explanation of your background. To me, that sort of information can really help in understanding the point in a different way. (My goal is always to manage to stick to the arguments and the arguments only, but ALAS, I am only human.)
Oh, I was also going to add: Someday soon, when you are running your own company and need to employ people, please just remember that someone having been “between jobs” doesn’t have to mean they’re useless. It was a horrible vicious circle for people who are in fact “innocent”. Just… Give unemployed people the benefit of a doubt!
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“It was”? Weird. I meant, of course, “it is”. Or at least “it can be”.
No worries, I have my share of typos as well. Is it just me or does everyone have to deal with the text hiding behind the right side of the box when when you’re trying to type. It really degrades my ability to proof-read my posts.
We’re ALL merely human and I would never hold unemployment against somone. My only yardstick is competence.
Nope, that annoyance with the text disappearing on the right side happens to me too, and I’ve seen others complain about it as well. It makes life a bit more exciting – 1) write, 2) post, 3) see what you actually wrote! ;o)
@Pirate I HAVE marketable skills, including a bachelors degree and work experience in several different kinds of companies. I grew up on a farm so I have a work ethic! There just aren’t jobs in my region. I can’t go get trained in those type of manual jobs because I’m physically unable to do them. Like Froo, I can’t move to another region because my husband’s kids are here and we’d refer his ex not utterly destroy them as she seems to be trying to do. So what exactly do you think my options are. I can’t afford to get training, I can’t easily get on the job training because the market here is so stretched they aren’t willing to look at people like me who may be without a particular experience but willing to learn, etc. I’ve taken civil service exams, but I’m not a veteran or in any other categories that gve me extra points. I’m intelligent and think I test well, but when 500 other people also are taking the same test… Not to mention, the tests cost money too. My resources are very limited. Nothing is as simple as you think it is for many people besides me!
*we’d Prefer
I finally figured out a way to deal with the text-running-off-the-side issue — it’s a little wonky but it fulfills my paranoid need to actually proofread what I type.
When it starts to run out of the box, hit “enter”, continue typing. Now, if you just post it like that it formats oddly and looks like some type of poetry. However, if you then go through and remove the return at the end of each line after you
proofread, it looks normal. I just start at the top of the post and work down.
And obviously, sometimes I miss taking out a line break or two.
Yes, however, chapter 11 is designed to give companies breathing space from creditors while they restructure. Once they get their ducks in a row they can come back and flourish once again. United Airlines did it back in the nineties and there is no reason why the Auto industry couldn’t do the same.
What about the banks then. That was helping out the rich, but that was ok, no strings attached. This helps the workers, but it’s fend for yourselves.
Eveyone but Pelosi, Reid, Bush, and a few others think the bailout of the banks was a HUGE mistake. It should never have happened. But in this case, two bailouts don’t make a good economy. We keep bailing people out and soon we’ll have spent ourselves into a (socialist? fascist?) world where the government tells you what to do and how to eat and where to live and how to dress because they own everything. Or at least the big stuff. When people rely on the government for everything, then government becomes God. Productivity ceases, and things begin to collapse.
Precisely. Who wants to work when it’s all given to you? Not me.
I’m sorry for you then. I think most people derive a feeling of pride and satisfaction from holding down a job. I think the problem is the opposite: who wants to work a job when doing so still doesn’t guarantee that you have a roof over your head, food in your belly, access to medical care and the ability to receive education?
I want to work, but I’m not lazy. I’ll defy you to find more than half the population who isn’t lazy and would take a handout if one was offered. Then you get dissatisfaction from the people who want to work, who want to hold down a good job because they are supporting those who don’t want to work and would rather take a hand out.
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I’m not even talking about welfare here. There are plenty of people out there right now who would shudder at the thought of taking welfare, but if you offered them the opportunity to get paid and not have to work because they will have their needs met by God the Government, who would drop everything and get a flower garden to do what they REALLY want to do. If prosperity (or even comfortableness (is that a word?)) is assured, then those who want to work get screwed.
This is the heart of the hierarchical, “strict-daddy” conservative philosophy: people are bad, and must be forced into being good. You have to threaten them with death by exposure and starvation to make them want to contribute to society. Modern economic research has shown it to be completely off base as far as human nature goes. Humans are much better creatures than your philosophy gives us credit for. Your world-view is not only wrong, it is sick. That school of thought actually turns people bad. It is a self fulfilling prophecy: it creates the very conditions it purports to alleviate.
Hey Seth if we’re all so good why is there so much f**ked up S88t in hte world?
Do you know how the Jamestown Colony survived it’s first winter? It’s because they enforced a rule called “You Don’t Work; You Don’t Eat.”
Yes but they weren’t living under the same system as we are no, were they. You sort of proved his point since they were in FACT threatened with starvation. granted, those people volunteered to be colonists, but it’s the same thing. I know a lot of people who work hard but still can’t get ahead,. It certainly is not just about willingness to work or not. Seth is right. Yours is a bad example.
There is so much suffering in the world because the system is warped, and a warped system warps human nature. It’s not that we’re good or bad, we have evolved to do what works. In most situations, what we call ‘good’ behavior works best. In very tight situations, being selfish works best. We all have the ability to be selfish or selfless, depending on the situation. Well, we’ve created a situation where being selfish appears to be the only option, because everyone else is being selfish. If we aren’t selfish too, we’ll be taken advantage of. It isn’t human nature, or society, or genetics: the problem comes from the interaction of the three.
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But thanks for defending oppression and force, you demonstrate my point quite well. People are taught that oppression and force are necessary to make people behave well. But it is the oppression and force that cause people to act badly in the first place. Oppression and force create the very evil they claim to protect against.
I think that we are all glad that people like child molesters and rapistsare oppressed. Rules, boundaries, and laws are necessary to the evolution of society
Of course there is potential for them to be abused, but there’s also alot of potential for good. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath.
Plus aren’t there a lot of people here who want to see things like national health care, and auto industry bailouts? Don’t those things require taxes? Taxes are merely a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.
That’s really classist froo. Most Americans DO want to provide for themselves and their families. It’s a small minority of people who don’t want to do anything for what they get.
Somehow, in good old social-democracy Danmark, with socialized medicine and all, people still want to work.
Me, I want healthcare no matter what job I have. Some of my favorite jobs were ones that offered little or no health insurance. That’s partly why I have a the job that I do, and even here I had to start part time begging for hours.
I *so* want to move to Denmark.
Denmark is great.
And with the beer and pasteries? It’s yummy, too!
The problem with that reasoning is that it should mean we have a huge unemployment rate in Sweden. I can’t really find ane percentage numbers for the US to compare, but I really think the two aren’t too far off. (I think we were between 5 and 6 per cent last time I heard a report on it.)
Somehow in good old socialized Czech Republic my old co-worker Hansa still came to the U.S to work and save money so that he could have a better life than all of his friends who were living on government assistance.
Also, all my my college acquaintances from Denmark told me that it was really difficult to get a good job there because the government mandated benefits were so good that the companies couldn’t afford to have many employees.
Yes, because convenient, undocumented anecdotal evidence is conclusive. That person was at least offhandedly referencing the actual statistics, and was willing to go look them up. If the statistics back up your claim, fine. but these handful of people are likely not representative of the population, or they wouldn’t be here.
Yes, it’s so much better to keep people scared and desperate, and threaten them with starvation and living on the street to get them to do what you
want. If you are the kind of person who wouldn’t do anything productive because your basic needs are met, you are a selfish idiot. Plenty of people volunteer, doing good things for society for no recompense. You obviously aren’t one of those kind of people. If our basic physiological needs were guaranteed to be met, people would not stop working. People would continue to do things forall the reasons they have always done things. Most people actually want to give back. Most of us are genetically preconditioned to desire fairness, reciprocity and justice over self interest. Besides that major motivation, people want status, they want to impress the opposite sex, they want to improve themselves, and many jobs are enjoyable to certain types of people all on their own, without the need for money as a motivator. Does the phrase ‘starving artist’ ring a bell?
A very painful bell to be honest…
I hear ya there! I’m a sculptor and yet my actual job is to help the non-techie people use their computers.
Do “Crop Subsidies” ring a bell? That’s just as much of a handout and doesn’t have the stigma attached.
A lot of this didn’t go to small farmers. It went to big factory farms. You seem to see all government programs as handouts. It’s not that way.
This is from one of those conservative emails that went around that was all spun out of context besides.
What Conservative email? I haven’t gotten any that I’m aware of. I’m speaking from experience.
Say what? It has more of a stigma in my book. Why do agribusiness giants get money to NOT grow crops? Insanity.
Listen Seth, I go to work every day so that I can have enough money to read books, have a place to live. play on the internet, eat food, drink beer on occasion, put my wife through school, and generally enjoy life. If someone offered to give me that for free I would honestly jump for joy. Do you think I like going to work and risking death by electrocution or RF radiation exposure? Hell no.
People want something for nothing. It’s human nature.
Look at lottery stats if you don’t believe me.
Wanting something and realistically expecting to get it are two very different things. People might have a dream to be part of the idle rich, but that doesn’t mean they are going to quit working to only play the lottery. They know that work is the way they are REALLY going to take care of their families and are glad to be able to provide for them.
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I really don’t get this philosophy what demonizes the working class as a pile of lazy layabouts. It’s untrue and demoralizing to America. no wonder the people voted the way they did. They’re tired of being stigmatized this way as they have been for eight years.
Methinks that you are deliberately misunderstanding me in an effort to somehow upset me. Not the most forthright of communication tactics, BTW.
When have I once, in this entire conversation, referred to anyone as lazy? Never. It must just be easier for you to argue with the stereotypical “conservative” that lives in your head. I don’t demonize the working class, I’m too busy being a part of it.
The second part wasn’t aimed directly at you. It was an aside generalization addressed to the room at large. it’s hard to emphasize tone, etc. when speaking in this format. The reason I said it here is that YOUR tone seems to suggest that you subscribe to this philosophy, as you have made several generalized statements as well. There was a separate discussion about this mentality on another part of this thread I think, or possibly on another one.
You wouldn’t work to help others, better the planet, better humanity?
Also, when are we going to start taking care of the workers, instead of just the financiers??? We have to STOP this giving of breaks only to the rich. The automotive loan/bailout is for the American workers much more than the bank debacle EVER was.
The workers were taken pretty darn good care of. I wish I could make $30 per hr. pushing a button like my buddies at the Chrysler plant.
Apparently, if you join a union, that will happen.
Yeah, I joined the military. Less like a union than a frat, but cooler stuff.
“Vote for Pedro, and all your wildest dreams will come true.” Did anyone else have that going through their heads over the last year?
Yeah, because grocery workers have a union, but still make little. you are overgeneralizing and vilifying unions in general again.
I’m vilifying unions that operate like mob bosses. Grocery unions are weak by design. When you have a ‘no strike’ clause you can’t do more than make sure the employees are being treated fairly, you can’t make unreasonable demands on the management for salary and benefits changes and run said company into the ground.
You are still generalizing. What do you really know about the UAW or other big unions. Do you know their managements specifically? Like any large organization, there will be some crooks, but that doesn’t mean all large unions are operated by/like the mafia. Sheesh.
First: They aren’t taken care of if their jobs go overseas.
Second: They don’t ALL make that much.
Third: The cost of living makes wages relative.
Union demands make the prices go up as well, along with excessive taxation on the companies. If we would give tax breaks to domestic companies, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal.
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F’instance….the company I work for refused to build a new plant in the first city of choice because a different city offered better tax breaks. So we moved there.
You are still making the assumption that union = evil. Unions are certainly not the lions share of the impact on prices. You’re assigning too much blame/effect to them. Unions are usually not fighting to get unfair compensation. That’s sort of the point really, is to make sure workers are getting enough to live on, and, hopefully, not have to live paycheck to paycheck. Or do you really think that’s what most hard working families ought to struggle with? You’re missing the point entirely and definitely not seeing the big picture.
Bingo. You just nailed the real reason why US manufacturing industry can’t keep up with the competition – we’re the only industrial power that relies on fully privatized health care. The industrial sector is actually the biggest supporter of single-payor universal health care.
Right. Plus people need to be educated about single-payer vs. socialized medicine.
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Socialized medicine means the government owns and runs everything from the top down, like in the military. You have to go to the dentist on base, and the military supplies him with all his tools, etc. The hygienist is also part of the military. You get only one choice.
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In single payer, there’s still competition, you can still go to the doctor you want. Hospitals still run independently and can choose their own suppliersetc. Nurses, etc are still employed privately. The difference is that everybody has the same insurance coverage and access to all services. Plus, hopefully, since the insurance won’t be in the business of maximizing profit, by paying as little as possible, you should get less red tape with getting approval for the care you need, even if it’s expensive.
I explained it better and more concisely on a different thread a couple weeks ago, but there it is.
Hmm. I wonder what our (Sweden) system would be called. Well, now we have a system where you can choose a private or the government system and still not pay more than trifles. Before that (I honestly don’t remember when it changed, but not too long ago) it was all government medical care (or you paid the full bill to go to private medicine). Still, you could choose which doctor, which hospital, which dentist to use.
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Anyway, I think our system is working pretty well, apart from way too long waiting times for some sort of treatments.
Not to mention that dealing with health insurance companies are about as close to dealing with the mafia as most people get. What an awful feeling it is to have “coverage” then get an incredibly expensive bill because “that’s not covered” or because the cost of such and such doesn’t include the cost of all the specialists and treatments that went into the procedure and suddenly you’re over your maximum.
Apologies for the run-on.
No apologies needed. I remember my aunt getting those bills for ‘not covered’ cancer-related procedures. Which she would then havd to fight while dealing with side-effects from chemo. That will make anyone do a run-on sentence!
I’ve got a house off base and if I can swing it on A1C pay, then I’m pretty sure they can too. Starting pay is over $20 an hr. Not every job goes overseas.
now I need to go to work.
This addresses only one of my points and is referring to your situation only. Oter people may have other expenses, like taking care of an aging relative, child support, alimony, wage garnishments, not to mention KIDS and related things like day care, and extra health insurance, to name only a few major ones. Are you in a position to judge what everybody’s expenses are? Sure a lot of people can live, if not richly, then at least adequately, on the blue collar salary. Doen’t mean everybody’s in the same boat, based on where they specifically live, and other things I mentioned.
Not to mention that 20 an hour is a dollar shy of double my current wage so perhaps I should piss and moan about him being pampered. It usually is the pampered ones fussing. Then again, I am just a filthy commoner, amirite?
Peasants don’t matter. They aren’t people, they are replaceable cogs. But that’s okay because every single person in the world could be a doctor, lawyer or CEO if they wanted to. Nobody really needs cashiers, cooks, and sanitation worers. People only work those menial jobs because they are bad people who made bad choices, when they just as easily could have chosen to be a banker. I am convinced this is how the owning class actually thinks.
There are plenty of people who think that those in the poor/lower middle class are there just because they’re lazy.
There is a reason I am always nice to my garbage man. He helps keep my home from smelling like hell by dealing with the garbage. The bank teller helps me handle my finances. The cashier helps me organize my purchases.
They do the job because they have to. I have met a rare one or two people working a low end job because they felt like it. She was a bored housewife who worked part time, very very part time. She was nice though. Everybody else actually had to be there.
I do wonder how people really think this works.
Yeah, because cleaning hotel room for minimum wage is a cake walk. Having done that when I was in college I’d have to say some people don’t know what lazy is.
My summer college job was 7-eleven clerk. Really made me appreciate how hard it is to work with the public. And how many %$@# hours it takes to earn anything at all on minimum wage! –and in reflection, how my boss ripped me off by re-arranging the hours so that I never got the overtime I should have.
I think you’re right Seth. People don’t even realize they’re being taught to think this way either. You see it every day working retail. You get treated as a store fixture, not as a person. Look at that poor guy who got trampled. In a more everyday sense, you ask somebody “can I help you?” and even if you’re standing right next to them they ignore you as though you hadn’t spoken. Is it too much to ask for a simple “no, thank you.” ?? I know that many of my customers assume that I’m unintelligent and uneducated and that therefore I must have no other options. They talk down to oyu like you’re stupid.
Or, god forbid, if you’re a woman. I can’t tell you how many times people treated me like crap at Best Buy because they assumed that since I’m female, I don’t know anything.
One of my favorite stories relating to this was about a foreign man (possibly Haitian) who asked me for a particular product. I proceeded to tell him not only that we had non in stock, but that it would not work outside of the US (as he was planning on using it in his own country). He was extremely rude to me, then asked for someone else to help him. At this time I was kind of a supervisor so I had one of my guys help him, a younger guy, but definitely male. He asked my the same question of my associate who then, in turn, asked me. I replied with the same response I had given him before (though slightly less involved). Then irate, he asked for a manager. I had a manger come over and he asked for the same thing. My (male) manager then turned to me and asked the same question. I simply smiled and said “No, we’re out of it”.
My store practices sexism in that they don’t really let females work in the electronics dept, as they also assume none of us in the “weaker sex” can know anything there. I am an avid videogamer and know a good bit also about tv’s converter boxes, cameras, computers, etc. Even though I’ve suggested they let me work over there, they seem never to have shifts for me, but do for clueless young boys.
Last time I was in Europe (which was 20 years ago) this was not the case. Treating a worker badly would get you ejected from the premises. “The customer is always right” seems to be an American invention.
And a not necessarily good invention IMO. Stores shouldn’t have to take back a shelf you broke because you were too dumb to read the directions before you tried putting it together. At least they don’t get away with bringing back an opend CD or video game because “I didn’t like it” much. That’s mainly because, due to royalties, etc, the stores can’t get credit for it, moreso than the store’s policy towards consumers. I didn’t even go into the people who change their mind about purchases so they dump a whole armload of clothes or whatever on the FLOOR someplace. Nobody has ANY common courtesy anymore either. Not to their fellow shoppers, and especially not to employees.
Working retail in America makes you despise the public, largely due to this flawed idea about the customer always being right. Since us retail workers are all just peasants though, I guess we should expect to be kicked around. ?????
That was honestly one of the best things about Best Buy, one of the managers would occasionally stand up for you and kick someone out if you were being treated really badly. It goes with having a security (ok “loss prevention”) department. They were also pretty strict about their return policies, someone once tried to return a flood damaged computer and thankfully, no dice. There are times when I’m very glad I know all of their policies. It’s probably one of the main reasons I still shop there after the way the company treated me.
Actually I addressed them all, next time I’ll break them up into paragraphs. And yes the “oter” people may have extra expenses, or they may not. Pure conjecture.
Plus my previous post refers to my FRIENDS situation not my own. I am stationed at Grissom ARB, am a member of the Air Force, and do not work for the Auto industry .
I just happen to live near Kokomo, IN. which has a large Chrysler plant which employs several of my friends. All of whom make more money than I.
I do know how to spell. It was a typo. You seem to make a lot of asumptions.
*assumptions
—stupid formatting won’t let me see the rest of the post. *grrr*
Why is it so many people are upset over an American making a decent wage? BTW, $30/hour is at the extreme high end of the pay scale, but it’s still only $62,000 or so. That’s a decent living, sufficient to raise a family on if you’re frugal, but hardly a fortune.
Where’s your scorn for executives who make more than 250 times that amount? How do you figure that someone making $62,000 a year is a fat tick sucking off the public teat, but 15million per year seems just about right to you?
Oh hell no! 15 million per year is crimminal! You and I agree about that! But I’ve seen union bully tactics first-hand, and they are reprehensible. We have far too many labor laws in place to need that kind of ‘help’.
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I’ve said it before: At my company we were able to give the non-union plants a raise that the union plants would not agree to. How is that helpful?
Maybe sometimes they’ve been underhanded. Your singular experience doesn’t represent all though. Sometimes, unions have HAD to fight tooth and nail to get management to budge on things like providing health care that is desperately needed.
Also, maybe the union was trying to plan for inflation, whereas the other people weren’t. I don’t think froo means to say that American workers shouldn’t get decent pay, but she seems to not understand that “decent pay” is not the same for everybody, and that she doesn’t understand what being on the borderline of poverty is really like for a lot of us, no matter how hard we actually work.
TBH, I’m not classist. I’ve admitted in the past that my worldview is shaped by what I’ve seen around me.
) I’m not as clueless as you guys seem to think about some things, but I have different views on what will fix the current problems based on what I’ve seen.
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Having said that, you guys are villifying the rich as much as you think I’m villifying unions. Just because someone is rich doesn’t make them bad.
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Now, corporations that screw people we can all agree on are evil. I wish all companies operated like mine so that people would have a better chance.
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Here’s the deal: I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m not even trying to force a Conservative worldview in this case, much as Seth would like to accuse me of it. What I’m trying to understand is how one group is made to seem like the end all bad guy when there are bad guys everywhere, rich and poor. There are just as many moochers as there are screwers in upper management. No one is worth 15 million a year, but we pay CEOs and football stars that much. Are you now going to start calling the rich sports star evil because he’s paid what people will pay him to play? How is him taking a lower salary going to employ ONE poor person? How is that CEO giving up his salary this year going to create ONE MORE JOB? It won’t, and I fail to see how calling someone evil for taking what people will give them is right. If someone were to offer you a job making $200,000 a year you’d take it in a heartbeat. Someone offered the CEO a job making $15 million, and he took it. It might not be right, but it’s what happens. (I still think it’s extremely noble of the CEOs to give up their salaries as a sign of empathy. It just doesn’t accomplish anything. It’s an empty gesture, the same as Algore screaming about pollution and global warming while driving a gas hog everywhere)
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I’ve been lucky. I was raised middle class. Not upper, but we weren’t poor by any means. When I moved out I didn’t have my parents’ help because they felt that if I could move out, I could damn well take care of my own bills. I never went hungry, but I ran up a bunch of credit card bills to try to stay afloat. Now I’m paying for it, which takes the nice salary that I’ve scratched and clawed my way to get and spreads it out amongst my bills to the point that I’m eating mac and cheese and Ramen, even though I’m making what you guys would call a nice living. I’ve seen lazy people who get welfare checks (generalized) eating better than me. I’ve seen hard working people get screwed worse than I’ve been. It’s all perspective, and your perspective (Seth and Minerva) is different than mine. Of course ‘decent pay’ isn’t the same for everyone. But why should a union threaten to shut down a plant that is taking care of its people simply because they could be doing more? (seen that happen to)
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I’m not really sure what else to say. I’m posting a wall of text that probably no one will read, but I have to try
Like what Seth said, you base your assumptions based on a few people around you who are probably not typical if they are actually as you perceive them through your conservative, disdainful glasses. I also think (perhaps wronly, as I haven’t met you personally) that you are like my acquaintance who has a lot of things but still thinks she has hardship based on perspective. I think that if you actually had to lie on the kind of money that it seems DWN and myself have to, you’s be in trouble quick. I can’t speak for him, but I don’t have any credit cards to get me out of a jam [and into a worse one] if needed either. You just have to pick and choose which bill to pay this month because if you pay them all, you can’t pay rent or eat. I know there are people worse off than me yet. I’m glad I don’t live in a box on the street, for example, but sometimes I fell like I’m one missed payment from it. What’s hard for me might be a piece of cake for someone who’s homeless altogether. It’s all about perspective, as I said. It’s all about how well you empathized with those with less than you or more.
That said, I think there are a lot more Americans just scraping by than most in Washington seem to think. Since most of them are wealthy, they have no empathy for us, especially (yes I know it’s both sides, jut one is worse) the neo-con corporatists. They are the ones we are mainly calling evil, not just any rich person. What you need to remember is that we HAVE to start with the poor and middle classes because they form the entire foundation of our economy. Furthermore, I don’t think that there’s an even distribution of “bad guys” through all the strata of society. That is because we all know for fact that power (often obtained through wealth) corrupts. The idle rich have a lot more opportunities for corruption and debauchery than do the working class. That doesn’t mean everybody rich is evil; look at Paul Newman. he was a good guy if all the reports can be believed.
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The guy giving up his salary might not be creating new jobs, but putting back $15 million towards the retooling might help in the future?
I read your wall ‘o texts, froo. And I don’t think you are trying to force anything on anyone, you are expressing yourself. I don’t think the rich are all evil. Just most of them. Being a sociopath isn’t a prerequisite to becoming rich, but having no empathy and a ‘killer’ instinct certainly helps.
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Sports stars aren’t generally evil. But giving them millions per year when people are starving certainly is. Actors too. It’s the network effect in action, a simple fact of life that popular things will become more so.
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A CEO giving up his salary could easily create more jobs, or keep more jobs around. Where else would the money go? Maybe to investors, imagine that, investors getting the profits instead of some overpaid CEO. Giving up a $15 million salary could create 300 $50k/year jobs.
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You are correct that it isn’t (usually) evil to take what is freely offered. That isn’t why most rich are evil. They are taught to be evil, it is part of the owning class upbringing. They are shown that you can only be one of two things: the guy holding the stick or the guy getting beat. They are taught never to trust others, and to always be ready to stick it to the other guy first. I have a friend that teaches about oppression to grade school kids. Even as early as first and second grade, the future oppressors have been taught well, and will attempt to defend the necessity of oppression!
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I don’t know about others here, but I don’t think you are clueless, I wouldn’t waste my time with you if you were. I respect the fact that you have a different perspective and I know your heart is in the right place. We both want to fix things, we just have different ideas about how. The major
difference is that my ideas are correct. hehe.
At least you’re humble
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I loves me some Seth, hehe. I’m glad that you’re not just discounting me outright as some have done.
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Give me an example of that salary going toward actually creating or keeping a job as opposed to being a symbolic gesture, and I’ll conceed the point. I just don’t see how something that has already been budgeted for will immediately go to creating or keeping a job (or many) as opposed to paying off other things that the company wants to get rid of. I think shaming someone into giving up a salary that they have been contracted to get is as mean as keeping salaries low on purpose for the lower class. You should give people good reasons for doing things, don’t shame them into it.
I knew better than to take a credit card. I lost forty pounds in college due to starvation. It was a special experience to feel yourself slowly die. Luckily, Lynn had a job in IA that she could transfer in up to MN while I couldn’t get a job to save my ass the years I was there.
Even now, I worry about who is calling me since I have bills I can’t afford not to pay if I want a home and bills that just will hound me to death. I don’t visit the doctor when I am sick unless I absolutely have to because it is bad enough to miss any work. I literally am a missed bill away from being out of a home. I bust my ass to pay the rent because I know they don’t give a damn about us.
I grew up poor and so far not much has changed, despite anything I have done. Add in depression and apathy and it gets even worse since you just lose the desire to try any more.
It gets old. I’m 27 and a damned temp. I don’t drink, smoke, or do drugs. I am not after your damn money. I just want the government to actually work. I am tired of being told we need to pamper people who get parachutes if they get fired. So give a loan to car people, it isn’t for the CEOs, it is for the working stiffs. They make 30 an hour? So? They got bills and they aren’t the one telling you to suck it up. Hell, they are the middle class and they pay taxes too.
The next person I see telling how easy it is to live off 20 an hour gets my unending spite and hatred. Even the people at the car plant aren’t all making that. Grow up.
I think the idea behind CEOs giving up salaries isn’t that it will create jobs, but more that it may help keep the company from failing. Which will save jobs. It’s not as if the company marks off $15 million from the “CEO Salary” column and adds $15 million into the “Employee Pay” column. But that ‘other thing’ the company paid off may
be the very thing that keeps the company afloat. But that’s beside the point. If the CEO was the one at the helm when the company went unprofitable, why should they personally profit? Theoretically, they are getting huge salaries to make the company profitable for investors. That is their job. If they fail, why should they profit?
“To pull a Homer” To succeed through idiocy…
I guess I would have a LOT more respect for people like actors and sports types who hyped Obama and how he was going to help the little guy if they actually walked the talk (Like Newman, I believe Minerva mentioned him) and gave up even 1% of what they make a year. Oprah loves to talk about how she helps people, but I don’t see her cutting checks to anyone. People love to talk about helping, and then they expect ‘the other guy’ to do it. I don’t see the Obamas giving up any money to go toward paying down the national debt, nor do I see the McCains helping to take care of those less fortunate. If you’re going to spout, you need to at least put forth some effort. At least the McCains give a large percentage to charity. That’s a start.
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Now if I could only convince Oprah to send me a check for one half of one percent of her yearly intake, I think I’d be doing pretty good.
The thing that always got me about charity is the tax write off you can do. I understand that it is an incentive so the charities actually get in the money they need but just always bugged me. Charity is its own reward or so I am told.
As for Obama, he is busting his ass before he is even hired. That is pretty much the attitude I want from him or all I really require.
You personally, Froofrou, have stated on how it is your damn money and you want to keep it. Yet you are now talking about how you want something more from the CEO’s giving up 15 million… It goes to the company. The company being those poor schmucks working the lines. Or maybe even the bills.
The CEOs gave up 15 million and are submitting to oversight on the loan. What more, Exactly, are you expecting them to do?
Hmmm, while I give Oprah props for being a poor black woman who pulled herself up from nothing and making MUCH smarter business decisions than most entertainers, she has completely lost touch. Checked out of Reality Hotel. She is famous for giving advice which she herself doesn’t follow.
@DWN: the reason it’s my damn money and I want to keep it is because I’m living paycheck to paycheck, I’m not making an ungodly sum of money that will feed small countries for a month. I also haven’t said anything about wanting to give back. I dont’ have the means to give back yet. One day, but that day is not now. What I want from the CEOs is commitment. If you’re going to SAY you want to help, then BY GOD HELP! Don’t just pay it lip service and then expect someone else to do it. All these spoiled rich celebrities who were hawking Obama’s middle class plans need to remember what it was like to be in the middle class, lower class, or any freaking class at all. They are living in cloud castles, and have no clue what it is to be (as you’ve said) one missed payment from being homeless. Seth, you’re exactly on the money about Oprah. How can I respect the opinion of anyone who does what she and so many others do? If I had that kind of money, I’d like to think I’d do better with it. I probably wouldn’t, but then again, I’ll never have that kind of money so I’ll never know.
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Here’s another example of how it SHOULD be, aside from Newman: Anyone ever hear of LeTourneau? He’s got a college named after him in East Texas (blanked on his first name). He was a very Godly man, and he decided (while still poor, mind you), that if God could live on 10% (a tithe amount) than he could too. He scraped and did what he had to do to survive, while giving up to 90% of his income to the church. When he died he was worth millions, had built a school of technology, and was still only living on 10% of what he took in every year. That’s a man who walked what he preached. If you’re going to say it, at least ATTEMPT to do it.
Ooookay, so you want people to give up 90% of their income before they can say that they understand what it means to help people?
I don’t think anybody here is talking about how we think celebrities are some kind of awesome. I think I lost the point of what you are responding to. I am talking about the CEO’s giving up 15 million. And you are talking about people giving over the majority of their income to church.
Shall we try to tie this in so I can follow what you are going on about now?
No no no, that was an extreme example to prove a point, that’s all. I’m not advocating giving 90% of what you make to church, or charity, or even a single person.
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The tie-in is this: people are praising these CEOs for living off $1 salaries until this thing is fixed. This does nothing but make a symbolic gesture. If you really want to help the middle and lower class, you have to do more than simply make a gesture. We have actors, politicians, sports stars, all making ungodly sums of money all while touting a candidate who’s entire platform during the election was change and hope for the middle and lower class. If they really believed in hope for the middle and lower class, they would DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. If they (people in Hollywood and beyond) think that the greedy CEOs are the problem, then they haven’t taken a look at the last movie deal they signed. It’s just as reprehensible to pay an acto $150 million for a movie as it is to pay a CEO of a failing company that much.
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And if Obama really believes what he’s been preaching this entire campaign, then he needs to do something about it. He needs to ask (not require) that people making vast sums of money in politics and otherwise maybe give something back. Start actually paying down the debt. Don’t just get into power and appoint a committee. DO something. I don’t think it’s too much to ask. (I know, I know, he’s not in power yet, but we’ll see when Jan 20th rolls around exactly what he does)
Ugh, I had a canny response but my brain ated it.
It’s ok, I still love you, even if you think I’m a capitalist pig
)
I think you are comparing actors to CEOs which isn’t accurate. Close but not accurate. I just lack the mental capacity to try for another long and drawn out explanation.
For anyone who is interested, I’ve linked an AP article from 2006 about Trickle Down Economics and how Wall Street works for the middle and lower class.
If one charitable celebrity helps any, Bruce Springsteen tithes off of every concert–10% of the take goes to a local charity in the town of performance. But he doesn’t advertise.
The scary thing is that the truly wealthy get additional rewards just for having lots of dough: no fees for banking, big tax breaks if they do big donations… If you get up into big corporation CEO country, you can AFFORD to take a $1 salary, because you make so much interest on the moulah you already raked in!
Bonzo to the Boss!
FWIW, Christians are *supposed* to tithe. I do and even though it is tight, we always have enough. Not a lot. Enough. Giving back is *supposed* to happen all the time. not just “someday” because that day may never arrive.
My two cents.
So what DID the union agree to, froo? This business of burying half the facts isn’t going to wash.
The union never agreed to anything. THe sticking point was that in order to get everyone a raise, we were making a particular job a bid job instead of one you could just do. The bid job itself was a little over $2 more per hour than the hourly raise would be, but you had to ‘audition’ to get it. The union refused to those terms because even though this job is specialized, it wanted all of the jobs to be paid at that rate. While I do agree with the motivation behind wanting everyone to be paid an extremely high rate of pay, the lack of willingness to allow the main body of people to get a $1 raise and bid jobs to get a $3 raise kept EVERYONE at those plants from getting ANYTHING. How is that a good deal? How did the union help? The plant I work at specifically is now paying everyone in the plant almost $2 more than minimum wage and the bid job that was the subject of contraversy at a little over $4 more than minimum wage. AND, on top of that, the bid job isn’t a bid job anymore in that you don’t have to fill out paperwork and apply to get it. If you can jump onto the line and prove to your supervisor that you can do the job adequately, you get the higher rate of pay. That higher rate of pay is not taken away unless you screw it up REALLY badly.
I would agree, Mark. I earn ~70k a year personally, for my level of experience, that’s really chump change. Sure, the CEO has the business acumen to lead a company to financial success, but without the ‘cogs’ in the machine, it might as well be for naught.
I think it is the phenomenon whereas people will scorn their fellow man for doing well because they can actually see them in person on a daily basis. The rich are almost like mythical figures. They exist in media and live adventures. We tolerate them because we like a story and their lives provide that. Kinda like old Greek Gods I guess. And we don’t really see them in the full amount we see our neighbors. We also seem to try and invoke their favor too.
Hmmm, the more I talk about this, the more cultlike it becomes even in exaggeration.
That makes sense in a twisted sort of way.
Also, don’t tell the conservative christians on here that they’re a member of this cult… ; ) Wasn’t Jesus for helping the poor and less fortunate, not giving to the rich?
I tend to make sense in odd ways at odd times to odd people. And I will do what I can to let them continue to live their dream where we are all freeloading jerks and the rich work tirelessly… On their yacht… In another country… Where they pay pennies for labor…
The store where I worked had on the calendar that they were providing food all weekend. That is, the 28, 29, and 30. It was Black Friday weekend, so it was a nice gesture for them to take care of us like that. Except on Sunday, it turns out there was NO food. They gave no warning or advance notice that they were changing their mind. People didn’t bring lunch because they thought it was being provided. Then, in typical conservative fashion, they kept silent when people people complained and let their groupthink lackeys spew about how management isn’t required to provide food for us and that if we were going to have that kind of attitude about it, than maybe they should stop doing it altogether. Essentially saying that we were all a bunch of whining ingrates for saying anything.
They had no idea that having to purchase an extra meal actually impacts the weekly budget of those that work there making minimum wage, nor did they issue any sort of apology for anyone’s inconvenience.
Required to provide? No
Required to actually keep to their word? Apparently not.
Does this store where you work just coincidentally happen to have an in-house restaurant or prepared food counter of some sort? Captive audience much? Company store maybe? D^:
Yep. They have a snack bar and a frozen food section for convenience lunches… Pathetic, I know.
“Hey boss, we got a lot of snacks and frozen stuff getting close to date code, should I mark it down this weekend?”
“No, we’ll just cancel the free lunch for employees on Sunday.”
Goatfsckers.
*sings* I owe my soul to the company store!
(D@mn my popcorn addiction!)
Oh wow, flashbacks. My mom had a collection of 8-track tapes that got worn out from overplaying, the two of which that I remember most clearly being the soundtrack to “Funny Girl” and The Weavers recorded live.
“Remember the folk music scare of the ’50s? That sh8 nearly caught on.”
If she couldn’t find anything good on the car radio, my mom would sing. One of her favorite tunes was “16 Tons,” but I was more partial to her rendition of “These Boots Were Made for Walkin’.”
You got me on the quote, Smarty Britches!
2nd Post Attempt:
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My mother used to sing in the car if she didn’t like anything on the radio “16 tons” was one of her favorites, but I preferred “These Boots Were Made for Walkin’.”
You got me on the quote, Smarty Britches!
Martin Mull. Obscure ’70s comic. Honestly, I only remember the line because Spider Robinson quoted him.
I love deadpan delivery! Martin Mull was one of the better ones, but Steven Wright is an all-time favorite. I also like comedians who use paraprosdokians, like Emo Phillips. There was a comedienne I really liked during the 80′s-90′s who made great use of this hard-to-spell device, but I can’t remember her name. She had long, brown hair, and trailed her voice off to a whisper at the punch line. She was in the comedienne pack with the likes of Rita Rudner and Judy Tenuta.
Didn’t Jesus say that the poor would always be with us as his justification for having his feet bathed with expensive perfume instead of it being sold to help the poor?
I’ve read that Jesus, being of David’s royal line, may not have actually bbeen as poor as we are led to believe, and that he actually had an, although distant, legitimate claim to a Jewish throne. Hence all the “king of the Jews” business. It may have been more than a symbolic title. It is at least likely that he had an income that took care of at least his basic needs and that he didn’t just live off the land all the time. Different churches paint him in many different ways, depending on how convenient it is to the message of the day’s sermon.
He was descended from David’s king line, but as far as being poor, he was descended through His mother, which keeps Him from having a good claim to the actual throne. He was dirt poor, and it says so several times.
I’m probably going to get struck by lightning for this, but froo’s
comment makes me wonder if there were maybe a few times
when Joseph pointed out to Jesus that he’d make a much better living if he’d concentrate on the carpentry and stop trying to change the world. (“Get your head out of the clouds and grab that hammer!”)
Froo, are you sure? If your mother is Jewish, not your father, you are consider Jewish. However, as always, if I’m wrong please correct me.
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Given that, it would make sense that Jesus did have a claim to the throne based on his bloodline. However, I believe it was the Romans who installed Herod as the King and not the Jews.
I’m pretty sure
) The line may be based through the mother, but the geneologies that are listed go from father to son. In the case of Biblical geneologies, they tend to jump around a lot. If you look at the ‘linear’ geneologies in the OT especially, you might get a line going from father to second cousin and back to nephew depending on male descendants and who gets the inheritance. It’s not as simple sometimes as the oldest male heir getting everything. In the case of Jacob and Esau, Jacob basically stole Esau’s inheritance through a trick. Once given, it can’t be taken back. It can have curses handed down with it, but that’s a different story altogether.
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There are a couple of females listed in Jesus’ geneology, but they are exceptional women and go against the norm. For a woman to even be listed shows she was something special.
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Jesus did have a claim to the throne, but not in the way most people think. His bloodline was simply a fulfillment of prophesy and wasn’t intended to be anything other than that. The reason the contemporary Jews rejected him (for the most part) is that the Pharisees who were in charge of interpreting scripture were misinterpreting it. Of course, we could go on for DAYS about the idiots in the Priesthood at the time of Christ. That entire thing was a racket, and had been greatly corrupted since it was set up back during Moses’ time.
Unlike, say, now?
I’d be happy with $62K. I’m making nowhere near that even with two incomes. I’m college educated, my husband and I both have a decent amount of relevant work experience. He’s in a more or less decent job now, but I still can’t find one. I’m willing to work for it. Why is it such a crime to want to live on this type of salary instead of the one I have now!!
Heh. Yeah. Me and my bf make about $70K a year, together. (And we pay 32% in taxes, straight off, on that. ;oP $62K isn’t “filthy rich”, but damned, it sounds nice.
))
Whats your degree?!
Why, are you assuming it’s a worthless piece of paper? It’s a BA, from a decent school.
I suspect the question was whether it was in a field that’s considered “practical” or not; although I could be wrong. Because, let’s face it, there
is a big marketability difference between bachelor’s degrees depending on major. Example: My oldest daughter has a double major in philosophy and sociology, which is quite honestly pretty much useless job-wise (unless she got an advanced degree) other than just showing employers she made it through college. (And I really don’t think the daycare center where she’s working cares). She enjoyed going to college and she learned a lot, and I guess eventually she’ll decide to do some type of grad school.
But even in fields commonly regarded as “good money” there’s no guarantee that you’ll be making it. I got a law degree, passed the bar, and after a few years I’m hovering right above 50K (which is ok, but not exactly the “big bucks”), in part because of the area of law I’m in, the size of the firm, location, and having a job with a lot of “soft” perks, like having employers
who “get it” when I have to take off to do something for my kids.
I also have a six-figure student loan commitment and I owe more on my house than it’s currently worth, so I have a part-time job, too.
I know, that’s likely what he meant, but he had been attacking trying to (unsuccessfully) invalidate them, so I got a little pi$$y.
My degree could indeed be in a more marketable field. In the current economy it’s worth little more than liberal arts. I blame guidance and career counselors. . They fail to tell you that you won’t find any prospects when you get out. i would have preferred mine to help me find something I was interested in that would have had better prospects.
That said, I was in a somewhat related field for three years and getting near to promotion when the economy dropped out in 2001 after 9/11. Client lost a lot of money so we had laid off a couple hundred people. Since then, my region has never really recovered as it had already taken heavy losses when the manufacturing employers went out of business, or else retooled and sent the jobs to Mexico or somewhere (Kodak, Bauch & Lomb, Xerox. I’ve been laid off several times since then, once when my job was outsourced, another when the job was merged with another department. Now, there aren’t even many clerical/administrative jobs to be had except in phone centers. Even those aren’t as plentiful as they were. So I’m stuck in retail along with several other college grads.
LOL! Programmers are infamous for the “it’s not a bug it’s a feature” comment, I love it! Especially coming from a grizzled Russian programmer.
or it’s a hardware problem, not the code.
Most of the time the error exists between chair and keyboard.
Ah, the human interface will always be an issue!
So honestly. the have no idea whats going on eh?? or maybe they know exactly what is going on. Does anyone want to know what each of their salaries will be if these LOANS get approved. not Bailout LOANS. $1 dollar per year. All three have agreed to $1 dollar salaries in order to get these loans. Also GM has already given up their Fleet of Jets. All three of these CEOs are driving cars to DC this week instead of driving. The only one of these CEOs that it could be argued have no idea what is going on would be Mullay of GM. he has been there for a long time and didn’t adjust business to represent the recession ahead of time as the other two did. Does anyone here actually think that any of these companies failing would be a good thing. The Transplant and Import auto makers are suffering in the US just like these Three and they have common suppliers any one of these companies failing would result in nearly every car manufacturer worldwide being stressed to maximum capacity. This would result in shotty cars that noone would buy. Approving LOANS for the american auto industry is an actual good idea.
I read that today and am glad to see the CEOs sucking it up. Shows character.
GM actually makes more Hybrid vehicles than any other company. Everyone seems to forget this.
Before I pat them on the back too much, $1 a year salary, great, but what about their other compensation? Top CEO’s like this usually make most of their money in bonuses and other types of non-salary compensation. If they’re giving that up for a year as well and living on savings, well, great, but otherwise I’m worried it’s just showmanship.