I can see there are a lot of jealous people on here.
Most of the rich people started off just as poor as you and me. You too can be rich, if you would stop being jealous, and actually get some educational and a hard work ethic.

Originally posted by PlatinumShatinum
I can see there are a lot of jealous people on here.
Most of the rich people started off just as poor as you and me. You too can be rich, if you would stop being jealous, and actually get some educational and a hard work ethic.

The problem isn't that rich people exist. The problem is that the ultra rich game the system in their favor. This has been allowed for so long, that all which is left is the elite gaming the rest of us all.

The american dream is fading fast. You can still be well off with a good work ethic and education, but that won't last too much longer.

There are five big addictions in America.

Alcohol
Drugs
Sex
Food
Money

Alcohol has taken a big hit in the past thirty years due to mothers against drunk driving.
Drugs have taken a big hit due to the drug wars.
Sex has taken a big hit due to STD's and STI's.
That leaves food and money.
The two big epidemics in America today are obesity and gambling.
www.spiritualdiseaseofaddiction.com

If we look at a 850 pound man we are disgusted and cannot finish our own plate of food.
What is the difference between that man and the man who gorges himself on money, $300.00 per hour and upwards.

Seven deadly sins, and we pretend to be shocked and hurt about the greed in others while we practice lust or sloth ourselves.

Gluttony
Greed
Sloth
Lust
Pride
Envy
Wrath.

Hello, First time poster here, long time lurker.

I'd like to share my take on a solution to this problem. I think that there is a great amount of power in crowd funding. Have many of you heard of kick starter. Basically kick starter gives people the ability to create a pitch, and set a funding goal, and use social media and viral video to spread the project to people who are willing to fund it from anywhere from a dollar to thousands of dollars.

I was reading a story about a kick starter campaign that was started with the goal of purchasing kick starter out from under the current owners. It was quickly deleted and not allowed to continue as a kick starter campaign. I thought about this story and some interesting ideas have come to mind.

Theoretically, we should be able to use crowd funding to create competitive company's in the major market places which can significantly reduce mark up at the consumer level due to the lack of a centralized entity who extracts the profit for personal benefit, all while creating millions of viable jobs for the working class.

Imagine 1 million people banding together at a price of $10 investment to raise the capital to create a company that can actually compete with the fortune 500 giants. Then imagine this company was ran and organized by people who made a decent salary. A company with no profit extracted would have the means to cripple the current power corporations which are completely focused on bottom lines and profit. Imagine a company that's purpose was to sustain the needs of the consumers, deliver higher quality products for a lower price. And for a $10 investment you stand to benefit from a major company creating a quality product at a price point that makes it affordable for the average house hold income.

I completely believe with the right people involved, the right viral marketing and social media campaign, we can go after the super powers and win.

I think this method or something like it, is our only chance and means to fight back against corporate giants. I'd really like to know what others people here think of this idea.

P.S. I'm sitting in the hospital right now waiting for my son to be born. just a side note

Until Jan 1, 2013 there was no death tax. Now it is 55%. One has to wonder if that fits into an agenda other than more tax revenue.

Originally posted by jimmiec
Until Jan 1, 2013 there was no death tax. Now it is 55%. One has to wonder if that fits into an agenda other than more tax revenue.

There used to be a saying that the only sure things in life, were 'death and taxes'.

Someone decided to 'improve' on that maxim by making it 'taxes, death and taxes'.

That's progress for ya.

I watched the "how hot dogs are made" video after watching the first one....

NEVER EATING HOTDOGS AGAIN

Originally posted by PlatinumShatinum
I can see there are a lot of jealous people on here.
Most of the rich people started off just as poor as you and me. You too can be rich, if you would stop being jealous, and actually get some educational and a hard work ethic.

You obviously haven't ever been anywhere near the kinds of people who populate the C-levels of Big Business. My brother and I (and the 11 PLM superstars that we employed) invented FlexPLM in 2003, and it's gone on to revolutionize the entire Footwear and Apparel manufacturing industry by allowing companies like Nike and Timberland and Liz Claiborne (to name only a few of the many, many dozens of name brands that now standardize on that software platform) to effectively and efficiently control the entire 6 week design, development, and manufacturing product cycle that all clothing and footwear companies struggle through 4 times each year. The software is designed to create a virtual hub, with spokes reaching out to all suppliers, customer retail outlets, designers, management, back-up suppliers, financing firms, and as any other partners as it takes (and it can take a lot of partners per clothing line - with dozens of clothing lines per cycle) to get the line up, developed and through the manufacturing/crisis process - and in real time. As in minutes of response time versus hours, as it used to be with phone calls and spread sheets and emailed drawings and all that slow electronic technology.

We invented it, and we got the initial 15% implementation incursion done with the very top brands in the world. And then the Big Business "professional caste" discovered us, and our line of credit with CitiCorp evaporated without explanation. Then we were tagged by Dun and Bradstreet as being "unstable" (immediately after CitiCorp decided that they had problems with our lack of concrete assets - we were a software products firm, which of course isn't about "concrete assets" like a building or machinery, but that was the loophole that CitiCorp used to suddenly - after 7 years of a good relationship - pull out on us). This D&B rating scared the hell out of Nike and Reebok and - well - everyone, and our initial penetration contracts were put on hold until we could "stabilize", which began a 6 month search for a financial partner to simply present as proof that we weren't on the verge of bankruptcy. That became almost a "spy versus spy" adventure, and that's when I learned that a company called PTC was behind the sudden attack on our company.

PTC wanted our software's "guts" to put into their own loser product "PLMLink", since we'd designed ours to complement their flagship product "Windchill", and they wouldn't have to do a damn thing to shoehorn it in. They spent the next two years tearing us apart, with the help of literally every bank and PLM vendor company in the industry. They were the biggest player in the industry, and they demanded that we no longer exist. My brother and I did what we could as our team of 11 geniuses hunkered down and continued to work (and get paid) to make FlexPLM applicable to BioTech, the Process Industry, Consumer Products development, Pharma, in our own hopes that we could diversify enough to free ourselves from the PLM dominated PTC, but the banks knew where their bread and butter came from in this specific case, and in the summer of 2005, we sold everything to PTC for less than 2 million - my own cut, as the Marketing Director, was only $36K, since I had only softened the Footwear and Apparel (F&A) Industry and opened it up for this revolutionary concept in product development. I hadn't coded the product or done any bubbles and arrows in its development.

The product is so successful that PTC doubled its net revenues during the financial collapse of 2008, and is the only serious PLM player in the entire F&A business sector. In China, this software is legendary and I was the one who suggested that it be implemented as a pay-per-month Internet space for those tiny forms that can't afford to take on the costs of a full implementation but still want to get into a supply chain associated with a major label. That's been bread and butter income worth 10s of millions per month.

And with all of this, my brother and I and our 11 PLM geniuses were not allowed to survive because we weren't part of the Big Business professional caste, and didn't have moms and dads who were part of that elite business caste of families. We didn't attend the right private schools, the right prep schools, or the right universities. And we sure as hell didn't join the right fraternities. We just had a brilliant idea and worked hard to build it and to convince the biggest F&A companies in the world to try it out - and they did, and they loved it, and that was the beginning of the end for us as a company.

So, save your crap about working hard and smart. This isn't the early 1900s. Things are different now.

Originally posted by Dfairlite
Let's sum up the discussion

"blah blah blah"

I'm sick of you lazy whiners complaining about others being "greedy" but you're blind to the fact that your jealousy is only a thin mask over your greed.

So, what do you say about all of us lazy whiners getting together and refusing to buy anything from one company after another - targeting each one, one at a time, until it dies completely? Then we move on to the next company and kill that "winner" off. Just to show you winners that us lazy losers are actually the ones with the power as long as we gather together and exert that power.

I could easily see the largest international conglomerate on Earth collapsing within 6 months if the largest and riuchest market on Earth (that'd be us lazy losers) simply decided to buy brand B instead of their brand A - as well as the products of every one of their subsidiaries and holding and investment companies (not hard to establish and publish online to make sure everyone is onboard and following the plan). Hell, imagine the fear in the eyes of the winners. It'd be worth it just to watch one of these monsters die (along with the millions of Chinese jobs that'd evaporate with them) and to feel that sudden realization that we lazy losers really do have an impact on how things happen in this world.

Then, it'd really be fun to take that aim and direct it at the next "winner" for termination. Or maybe for negotiation. Like bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US? Or laying off the lobbying against us in Congress? Or any of a bunch of things that most of these enormous companies do against the rest of us?

It'd really be fun if they agreed and then got caught breaking that agreement. The death would be epic.Legendary even. Wonderful TV news drama as the stock value spirals and the Wall St. vultures descend upon it. The 2nd collapse wouldn't take anywhere near as long as the first corporation kill. The big money would run as fast as possible at the first sign of the laser dot on that company's lapel.



I love the 21st century. There's so much possible that was never possible before.