Democrats and socialism are NOT the problem

originally posted by: ErEhWoN
a reply to: dfnj2015

Sop voting D or R and we will.

At this point, if your a registered Democrat or Republican, YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

The problem is not me. The problems with our country are NOT rocket science. The average Joe making the median worker's wage has absolutely no power in DC. The CEOs and billionaires pay the lobbyists to force the politicians to pass laws creating cartels and monopolies in exchange for campaign financing. Every major consumer market is a pay-to-play market. We have no free-markets of any meaningful size left to wring out the inefficiencies of exorbitant CEO pay and excessive dividends.

The result is the American people are gouged into poverty by the pricing fixing of wages, products, and services. The evidence is right here in this graph:

30 year graph of purchasing power of the consumer dollar

If you want representation in this country you have to pay for it through lobbyists. Organized crime is now running the government. Corporations ARE the government.

This is why I laugh every time someone says we have too much communism or socialism in this country. The worker making the median wage has practically no power and is laced with huge amounts of debt. We are about as far away from communism as you can get and still have a government currency worth any shred of value at all!

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." Benito Mussolini

Boy, how far we've come:

a reply to: dfnj2015

The result is the American people are gouged into poverty by the pricing fixing of wages, products, and services. The evidence is right here in this graph:

Very very few people are in poverty due to a series of unfortunate event. Many are there because of choice and mindset.

We live in a country that you are free to get any job, you can move. You can get an education. You can forage.
The problem is that too many people are lazy and would rather complain.

You know that show undercover boss. I think they should do the reverse. Undercover CEO etc. Let people on the bottom rung see what it is like to be a CEO or executive. What they will find is that a lot of those people just work. That is all they do day in and day out. Many work every weekend for years on end. Many never take a vacation. many have failed marriage and bad family relations because they put work before all else. This is what many little guys don't see. They only see that hey that CEO makes $$$ = not fair.

a reply to: JAGStorm

It's the people not the government? I don't believe in government the way you do. I think government is the problem. The people work plenty hard. I would not characterize the American people as generally lazy complainers. Everyone I know works their guts out.

originally posted by: JAGStorm
a reply to: dfnj2015

The result is the American people are gouged into poverty by the pricing fixing of wages, products, and services. The evidence is right here in this graph:

Very very few people are in poverty due to a series of unfortunate event. Many are there because of choice and mindset.

We live in a country that you are free to get any job, you can move. You can get an education. You can forage.
The problem is that too many people are lazy and would rather complain.

I live in a place where restaurants close because they can't find workers. And nearly everyone is working, unemployment is rock-bottom. People are not lazy.

I respond because not everyone CAN move... People have families and moving is expensive. Not to mention uprooting kids from schools and friends they know.

We are a free country but there are a lot of rules and not all have the resources to take advantage of that freedom.

a reply to: dfnj2015

Have you ever been to a foreign country?
And I dont mean canada, aka America north.

Have you visited france or belgium?
Many Mexico since it's so close and I dont mean a resort on Cancun, actual Mexico.
How about the Bahamas?
The island not the resort areas..

India perhaps?
China?
England?
Italy?

I guess my biggest question is, ,,
Have you ever experienced a culture and economy other than the United states first hand?

a reply to: Admitted

I agree people are not lazy. I remember growing up in the 70s and seeing Big Oil executives testify in front of Congress once or twice per year on why gasoline prices are so high. I think gasoline prices are probably twice as high as they should be.

Or, the CEOs have to be more generous in sharing corporate profits in terms of raising wages. There are two parts of this equation.

Why is it that people always blame the worker? I don't understand. People work plenty hard.

a reply to: Bluntone22

I was in Beijing in 2003. I would love to see 8% real growth in this country like they have in China.

a reply to: dfnj2015


Nice Chart!! Thank you.

Fascism quote is good also and very apropos.

originally posted by: JAGStorm
a reply to: dfnj2015


Very very few people are in poverty due to a series of unfortunate event. Many are there because of choice and mindset.

And where is your proof for this 'opinion'. Just saying something does not make it true. Don't believe everything (or really anything) you think.

Show me the facts not the delusion.

And so, I never got further in your post. A real deal breaker - leading with an unsupported opinion stated as fact.

originally posted by: dfnj2015
a reply to: JAGStorm

It's the people not the government? I don't believe in government the way you do. I think government is the problem. The people work plenty hard. I would not characterize the American people as generally lazy complainers. Everyone I know works their guts out.

I tend to agree with you; however, I recently heard the author of:

Bull# Jobs: A Theory Hardcover – May 15, 2018

... David Graeber interviewed and he make an excellent case for many - white collar jobs.

originally posted by: dfnj2015
a reply to: Bluntone22

I was in Beijing in 2003. I would love to see 8% real growth in this country like they have in China.

There growth rate has been on a decline for years.
Its impossible to sustain that rate...
Not to mention that doesnt trickle down to the billion people living there. The government owns everything... check out their coal industry.

But that's not the point.
What was you're experience with the buying power of the Chinese people...
And remember you were in the biggest industrial city in the county.
Look at it this way. If you come to America and never leave New York city, how much of America and its economy and culture did you really experience?

a reply to: dfnj2015

I would love to see 8% real growth in this country like they have in China.

I almost spit out my coffee reading this... China is one of the worst perpetrators... they are building ghost cities, railroads, roads and bridges to nowhere to artificially inflate their GDP. They also have "re-education" programs and journalists/government officials/citizens can be whisked away if they speak out against their government.

You do know that pretty much all governments manipulate their "official" economic data?

If you love China and think it's so much better than the US perhaps you should expatriate and see how that works out for you

Nm

Maybe we should all be recognizing that the problem with this country is ourselves as the people. We choose to make the same polarizing decisions on a daily basis, and we continue to project our dissatisfaction on to our perceived enemies. Its reached the point of social polarization.

If you want to take the criminal element out of the government, remove the criminal intent from your heart.

a reply to: FamCore

Just walk across the border like the Mexicans do?

That will be an eye opener..

a reply to: Bluntone22

What? Come on people, this is a conspiracy site,
BUU the establishment!
BUU the Government!
And (SNIP) the Police!

Well i take that last bit back, this one time they were really helpful and caught the bad guy that wronged me,

-Edit, LIARS AND THIEVES! oh that feels better, got it out of my system.

originally posted by: dfnj2015
a reply to: Bluntone22

I was in Beijing in 2003. I would love to see 8% real growth in this country like they have in China.

Beijing is a big place. They have everything from mega-billionaires all the way down to people living in a cardboard box.

So, back to Bluntone22's question...have you ever "experienced" a culture other than the US? Just a tourist visiting there there doesn't cut it. I'm talking about having been completely immersed in a culture...have you? Have you ever seen "poor"? I'm thinking you haven't.

Homeless people in this country live like kings in comparison to some countries. In SE Asia, for example, if you don't have anything...then you don't have ANY THING! And I'm dead-serious too! Absolutely nothing...until you die...kind of nothing. No soup kitchens, no shelters, no WIC cards, no hand-outs, no "programs"...absolutely NOTH-ING.

We responded to a Kampong (a remote jungle village) one time which had been overrun by a wild bull Elephant. The people weren't even supposed to be there, and part of what we had to do was to destroy the rest of what the Elephant hadn't destroyed and chase them off. They were illegally squatting and if they didn't leave the government was going to come and gun them down...as in DEAD. THAT, kind of nothing! When we got to the Kampong, about 20 people had been trampled by the Elephant and I fully expected to see people wailing in grief. Nope. It was like nothing happened. And do you know why? Because most of them were too busy chasing lizards into the snake infested jungle in hopes of capturing something to eat. A jungle thoroughly infested with King Cobra snakes put there intentionally to kill anything and everything which trespassed on the ground. Mostly the snakes were to kill the rats, but these people were lower than even the rats. Yet there these people were.

An 8% economic growth to these people would mean absolutely zero! THAT...is what "nothing" is like, and until you've experienced it you don't know what you're talking about. These people were living inside shelters built from scraps of metal, pieces of cardboard and palm leaves. They weren't even 'huts', more just lean-to things to keep the monsoons off (which they didn't do very well).

You "wish" this country had an "8% growth" like China. 95% of the people in China have exactly zero knowledge or first hand experience / benefit from that 'growth'. The top 5% maybe, but not the other 95%. You're only going by what you see on TV and what they let you see when you traveled abroad.

You pontificate about other countries in a feeble attempt to defend the socialists and communist movements in this country, but you are misguided.

Oh, and you know what they did with all those bodies who got trampled on, the ones with "nothing"????? They threw a couple sheets of newspaper over their corpses and left them to rot! Their own families! THAT's "nothing! Human life means exactly zero. That's your communist utopia! Have at it.

**Rant REJECTED!**

You're living in fantasy land, and eating from a silver, sheltered, spoon with your OP!

a reply to: JAGStorm

That is all they do day in and day out. Many work every weekend for years on end. Many never take a vacation. many have failed marriage and bad family relations because they put work before all else. This is what many little guys don't see. They only see that hey that CEO makes $$$ = not fair.

Come on Jag, those ''little guys'' work long hours as well. Many people work three or four jobs all hours of the day and night. They know what it is like to work all the time.

And while there is certainly some truth to the idea that few people are out of work due to a series of unfortunate events it is also certainly true that the whole structure of work in this system is geared to generously support those on the top to a degree thousands of times greater than those on the bottom. And as far as those dividends go, share holders do not work for their profit at all, they just sit and collect their money and then with that money take it and compound it elsewhere. So that a dollar returns a dollar ten then that dollar ten returns a dollar fifty and that dollar fifty brings back two twenty five, all with no work or labor at all.

a reply to: FamCore

This isnt about China tho... or any other country. The thread is about the problems within the US.
Although, as insane as China is, they have taken a nation in shambles, and took over 600 million people from rampant poverty to middle class status. And it's still growing.

a reply to: Admitted

respond because not everyone CAN move... People have families and moving is expensive. Not to mention uprooting kids from schools and friends they know.

I remember flying out of O'Hare years ago and viewing the slums of poverty beneath our flight path. There was a rather snooty couple over the isle and their conversation took to the poverty below. It went something like'' I just don't know how people can live like that'' with the reply '' I know, why don't they just move'''

That was 20 years ago and I still remember how obtuse those two were.