Vote Republican

Your possible yet cynical story is but proof you have little idea of what harm you are doing to others with your " boot strap" mentality. I feel very sorry for you because a person with so little understanding can hardly be blamed for his/her ignorance. How you describe those Wayne's world workers with seeming contempt or the idea of the disabled needing the ADA as some socialist plot is really pathetic. I guess your frugal middle class parents either are or were an embarrassment or they just didn't teach you any compassion for others!

What harm am I doing paying people well and helping with the ADA?
I am providing something valuable.
I'm not in contempt of my workers merely using a colorful metaphor for a high school drop out.
ADA is not a socialist plot as disability transcends political beliefs.
It is merely an opportunity for those who can help out.
You have no understanding of what it takes to succeed at making money while creating value in this world especially when the government demands almost 50% of my profits.(to hand out to the middle class)
 
Are you really so daft? Did you not call the ADA " Socialist feel good legislation"? Colorful metaphor? Are you so insensitive to others that you say what every drivel you think of? Also do you not understand that by this insistence on "boot straps" you ignore not only your callous behavior but perpetuate the myth and allow others to be just as callous? Maybe you do pay well maybe you don't I certainly can't confirm such statements from you. As for what I understand about success and value I don't think you know what I know. It might just be I have a conscience and you maybe don't.
 
We socially feel good helping the disabled but maybe I got carried away with my quip.
It's the Alex from Clockwork Orange in me.
Can a man or man in general be made good?
By your definition business is a callous endeavour.
 
No actually what is callous is not business but thinking that everything a person does with their business is not subject to other things outside their control and influence. That their community is of little consequence to their success. Seems to me from what you describe as your business it is very much part of the community and you take advantage of that to your own goals and then resent the fact you are asked to help pay for those advantages. BTW a lot of those "boot strap" employers don't pay a living wage and your taxes take up their slack by keep their workers from starving. After all "dropouts" have to eat too! Nice try but trying to be aloof about your role is still pathetic.
 
No actually what is callous is not business but thinking that everything a person does with their business is not subject to other things outside their control and influence.

Fortunately, NO ONE is actually arguing that. It is simply another straw man created by very radical ideologues and bought into almost exclusively by useful idiots incapable of any critical thought.

Read the essay, "I, Pencil". It is a great demonstration of the pro-free-market side of the debate acknowledging and understanding the interdependence.

Of course, that argument for collectivism is both sloppy and VERY telling. It is used to justify a blank check when it comes to confiscation of private property through taxes. It is sloppy because it is a non sequitur; the conclusion has absolutely nothing to do with the premise. It is telling because it is an argument against any limiting principle on government power; basically an argument for totalitarianism and against individualism. It is not a new argument though.
 
The most generally expressed will, the will of the majority is most just because the voice of the people is the voice of God.
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Whoever refuses to pay obedience to the general will shall be liable to be compelled to it by the force of the whole body. And this is in effect nothing more than that he may be compelled to be free.
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State; and it is for the individual in so far as he coincides with the State, which is the conscience and universal will of man in his historical existence. It is opposed to classical Liberalism, which arose form the necessity of reacting against absolutism, and which brought its historical purpose to an end when the State was transformed into the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the individual.
-Benito Mussolini, Doctrine of Fascism

You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

-Elizabeth Warren

...look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

-President Obama, remarks in Roanoke, VA
 
No actually what is callous is not business but thinking that everything a person does with their business is not subject to other things outside their control and influence. That their community is of little consequence to their success. Seems to me from what you describe as your business it is very much part of the community and you take advantage of that to your own goals and then resent the fact you are asked to help pay for those advantages. BTW a lot of those "boot strap" employers don't pay a living wage and your taxes take up their slack by keep their workers from starving. After all "dropouts" have to eat too! Nice try but trying to be aloof about your role is still pathetic.

Actually I dropped out of school myself after I crashed my dad's car into a ditch while joyriding with my droogs and my brother and I fixed it. From this Serendipity of a fortunate accident at age 15 we self taught ourselves bodywork and started painting cars for money in the parents 2 car garage.
Bodywork and paint are expensive and it paid some real money like up to 1000.00 a week cash only in 1978 with 30.00 overhead for electricity to the parents compared to a typical meagre teen McJob.
After doing about 100 cars out of the parent's garage I moved up to a rented real bodyshop at 21 with a partner buddy and a dealers license but it tanked after 14 months for various reasons and was my first failure settled for 40 cents on the dollar which is high for a virtual bankruptcy when usually nothing is left.
I got a GED later and went to community college for a year on a 2 year business degree but I was already on my career way.

My products are national and the local community is not the source of my income like say a regional contractor or a multimillion dollar new car dealership complex would be.
The labor component is less than 5% of the cost of production.
I'm the job creator offering good paying work in a depressed area to urban minorities and working class whites who would otherwise be making minimum wage.

There's no debt to the local community to give back as I'm the one who has done the giving of good paying jobs(not minimum wage jobs) to the community and 50% in taxes to the government.

I'm paying 45-50% combined federal and state tax.
New York is a high tax state at 9% with the 2% "millionaire's" surcharge on those making over 250k (what a bunch of liars! Obama and his cronies are, 250k is not 1 million but the american public is not smarter than a 5th grader when it comes to math) but old industrial real estate is cheap in the depressed Buffalo area at $7 per sq ft to buy.
My factory building was built for the war effort in 1943.
The large industrial equipment I own( the means of production) is of similar and newer vintage that was bought for less that 10% of it's new value and modified and updated with new motors pumps and controls.

Some of my production workers on piecework make up to 40k a year for a 30 hr week.
It's repetitive monotonous work done over and over on a plastic molding press but it's perfect for some as no formal education is required and those who can't do it leave immediately but those who can get very good at it.
Big fast food companies and restaurant chains as well as hotels and travel industries are notorious very profitable low payers but I'm not one of them.
Your comparing me to them and painting me with same brush shows you have no experience in knowing what you are talking about but merely think you do by repeating popular cliches.

The big returns now is squeezing money in the millions out of the poor with no credit who need a car to have a job are the buy here pay here used car dealers that charge 500.00 a month 125.00 weekly for financing a 10 year old car with 100k plus miles and repossess and resell it if you miss one payment.
The returns are 38% and these titles are being bundled and resold as "Securities"

There really aren't enough rich people (1% of 150 million taxpayers is 1.5 million people making over 250k a year and only 150,000 people in the top .1% making 2.5 million and 15,000 people in the .01% making 25 million or more like Romney)to make more than a week's difference (2%) of government spending on entitlement benefits and our wasteful big dick military.

There's 150 million middle class people and this is where the money is.
It is an inconvenient truth, the gorilla in the room that the left is loath to even aknowledge.
The Bush tax cuts need to expire for everybody including the IMO coddled american middle class.
At the same time the tax code needs to be rewritten in light of outsourcing and it's incentives.
S Corps need to be eliminated with some exceptions and C Corp tax rates need to drop to 25% from 35% while personal rates rise to 39%.
This would cut down the outsourcing advantage of low tax and wage countries and encourage not taking the money out of the company and putting it into 15% tax rate capital gains instead of spending it on research and development for product and job creation.
We have to do something smart if we are going to get anywhere in solving this countries problems without adopting an undeclared Nazi like policy of killing the debt by encouraging the euthanizing of the indigent old and sick as a Horror Show solution.

A different Hunger Games with old indigents as targets instead of teenagers.
 
Hey SCTLS, We seem to be getting closer in thought although I beg you to explore the shift of wealth from the middle class to the top 20% since 1949. And the effect it is having on our economy.
 
Shag, how you got "collectivism" from my post is amazing as I didn't imply anything of the sort! I talked of how the community in most cases are huge contributors to the success of most business men and how certain " boot strappers" claim that they are somehow solely responsible for their total success when they owe some of the credit to their communities. Been up and working myself for 16 hours now with little break so off I go to bed.!
 
Hey SCTLS, We seem to be getting closer in thought although I beg you to explore the shift of wealth from the middle class to the top 20% since 1949. And the effect it is having on our economy.

actually, that is something you should do...right after reading an introductory book on economics.

The fact that you would actually talk about a "shift in wealth" in the manner you are shows you have absolutely no clue about how markets work...otherwise you would not by into pleasing lies that assume a zero sum economy (the economic equivalent of thinking the earth revolves around the sun).
 
Shag, how you got "collectivism" from my post is amazing as I didn't imply anything of the sort!

So the context of the quotes you are parroting - including the worldview they reflect and the ideas they aim at justifying - are irrelevant to understanding those quotes/arguments?!

If the rants by Obama and Elizabeth Warren that you are repeating are not talking about collectivism then what relevance do they have to the political debate?

Can you actually defend any of the talking points you spout against the counter-points I have raised? Or can you only mock and avoid those counter-points?
 
Hey SCTLS, We seem to be getting closer in thought although I beg you to explore the shift of wealth from the middle class to the top 20% since 1949. And the effect it is having on our economy.

Its not a plot by the Avarice of Older Men or greedy republicans or something like that just natural forces.
Natural selection, Darwin's survival of the fittest
We had 50% of world GDP or GNP in 1949 and now it's under 30%.
WWII made the US an economic superpower while Japan and Europe lay in economic ruins.
The building of the interstate highway system caused tremendous growth and demand.
There was so much wealth being created it actually trickled or even poured down.
Workers could demand more and cheap at the time tax free benefits were offered up by companies competing for labor.
Then came foreign competition.
The US has the dubious distinction of the world's highest corporate tax rate of 35% that greatly encourages offshoring.
It's the government's fault for overtaxing corporations that they move manufacturing to lower cost jurisdictions if they can not the other way around.
Now the rest of the world is catching up by pulling itself up by it's bootstaps (as you're fond of dissing)
500 million people have been lifted into a middle class since 2006, (to the level of our poor) mostly in India and China at the same time we've been stumbling and sputtering since 2008 recession.
The top 20% would probably include people making 100k or even less if 250k is the 1% threshold.
Actually we are only 5% of the world population so all Americans are in the top 1% (of the world) economically.
Absolute poverty does not exist in the US merely relative poverty to the wealthy and middle class.
I don't think anything effective can be done about inequality as poor americans are rich by world standards and it is a natural progression of many long and short term forces and as I have said there simply aren't enough rich people for equalization to make more than a 2% difference towards greater equality if you take most or all of the rich people's money.
 
as jessie has said reds or blues bloods or crips the two party system is controled by big money. ON BOTH sides the only thing to do is keep you ammo and supplyes dry. was thinking of takeing a concelled carry class but that is another way of tracking who has a firearm. getting hard to not be on the radar.
 
Germany’s tough bailout stance rooted in ‘cash only’ culture

[url]http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1232695--germany-s-tough-bailout-stance-rooted-in-cash-only-culture[/URL]

BERLIN — Head to the checkout at an Ikea store in Stockholm to pay for your new leather corner sofa and with the swipe of a Visa card it’s yours. Don’t try that in Berlin — that’ll be 1,699 euros ($2,107 Cdn) up front, please.
It’s that financial culture — a deep-seated aversion to debt and

an emphasis on responsibility

— that makes Chancellor Angela Merkel’s hardline approach to solving the European financial crisis so popular in Germany.
The attitude shows up in all walks of life, from the daily trip to the grocery store to putting a roof over your head.
The economy is so reliant on cash for transactions small and big, a way to ensure you don’t spend more than you have, that Germany pushed hard for the 500-euro note to replace its popular 1,000-mark bill when it joined the common currency.
It’s one of the largest denomination notes being produced anywhere today, worth around $620, and is even known in neighbouring France as “the German note.” While even discount supermarkets in Germany happily take the big euro bill, very few shops in France will accept it.
Even though Germany is Europe’s largest economy and one of its richest per head, it is last in home ownership with just over 40 per cent. That compares to some 80 per cent in troubled European Union countries like Greece, Italy and Spain, and around 70 per cent in Britain and the United States, where owning your own home is part of the “American Dream.”
Germans tend to be instinctively averse to taking out a mortgage. And lenders often demand a 20 per cent down payment on a house or substantial collateral. So a culture has sprung up of just renting and holding on to cash.
When mortgage debt shot up by more than 20 per cent in the 27-member EU between 1998 and 2010 — and more than 35 per cent in Britain and 60 per cent in Ireland — Germany was the only EU country to see it fall, with a drop of 5.4 per cent in that time period, according to the European Mortgage Federation.
The German aversion to debt also translates to credit card use — or non-use. Only 36 per cent of Germans over the age of 15 even possess a card, compared with 62 per cent in the U.S., according to World Bank figures. And even when Germans do have a card, the limit is usually tied to a customer’s bank balance and the bill is automatically paid off — in full — from the customer’s account within a month or so.
“If I pay with my Visa, then Visa takes it from my account — I don’t get any real benefits,” said Rainer Hoedt, a Berlin high school teacher.
“When we use our credit cards it’s basically only when we go to the States and do our travel expenses through it because it’s so easy. Here in Germany I don’t use it at all.”
Around the world Merkel has been derided as intransigent in her approach to the financial crisis, demanding budget cuts and fiscal austerity from allegedly profligate EU members.
But her hardline stand plays well among the people who elected her.
A new poll for Stern magazine shows 64 per cent of Germans think the chancellor should stick to her guns, while only 32 per cent think she should reconsider her insistence on austerity. The Forsa agency questioned 1,003 adults on July 5 and 6 for the poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

That means measures which some politicians and economists believe offer a way out of the debt crisis are considered unacceptable here.
Take Eurobonds, for example. Such joint debt could help ease the crisis by pooling risk between rich eurozone countries like Germany and their crisis-hit neighbours. No way, say Germans.

Eurobonds, they argue, would just encourage profligate countries to blow their budgets even further, not to mention raise German borrowing costs.

Bailouts? Fine, but only if countries agree to strict austerity measures to get their financial houses in order. Print money? Not a chance, Germans say, still haunted by the memory of the hyperinflation of the early 20th century that helped create the conditions for Hitler’s rise.
Germany’s attitude to credit and debt largely stem from the financial trauma of the years that preceded the Nazi era. In the wake of massive reparation payments after the loss of the First World War, the German mark went from its wartime level of about 4-5 per dollar to several trillion to the dollar.
Germany only agreed to eventually give up the mark in favour of the euro because the European Central Bank was designed just like the Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, as an anti-inflation watchdog whose mandate does not include political considerations — such as stimulating job growth like the U.S. Federal Reserve.
The experience of hyperinflation is one that has been passed from generation to generation, said DZ Bank research economist Michael Stappel.
“My grandmother always talked about how every day prices were going up, how a bread roll that cost 10 pfennings then cost five million marks, and that could never be permitted to happen again,” he said. “And my grandmother never spent — she always saved, maybe 80 per cent she saved.”
Germans today don’t save quite that much — 11 per cent on average — but that’s still much higher than less than six per cent in the U.S. or 6.5 per cent in Japan, for example.
And even the approach to saving is conservative, with 40 per cent going into bank accounts, 30 per cent into life insurance — and only 6 per cent into stocks, Stappel said. Another three per cent goes into bonds.
So when Merkel holds Greeks and Spaniards to strict standards in return for European Union bailout funds — to which Germany is the largest contributor — and regularly shoots down ideas on quick fixes to the euro crisis, it should come as no surprise, Stappel said: “It’s a part of the German culture.”
Attitudes toward debt are starting to change, albeit slowly.
Credit cards, for example, are often needed for online purchases and are starting to become accepted in more places — albeit often only with a roll of the eyes. And Ikea is taking them now in two of their nearly 50 German stores, spokeswoman Josefin Thorell said.
But both the stores that do take plastic are near the border with France where there’s more demand from customers that they accept credit cards, said Thorell.
“It’s to make it easier for the French customers,” she said.
 
So I just read this entire thread and it's kind of funny how it went from "vote Republican", to candidate bashing, to policy agruements, to financial/economic debate. Congrats and thank you to any business owners. Is there a system in place that made your business possible, yes, but you also had the drive to put that business together and keep it going. I've been unsuccessful at a number of business ventures already, I'm 29, but I continue to learn, improve and look for opportunities. I WILL keep moving forward and trying UNTIL I become successful and I hope that when I am successful that my success is not downplayed as only happening because of our preexisting system. Everyone has opportunity, not the same opportunity, but some type of opportunity which can be seen by the fact that a large number of the millionaires in the US are not originally from our country. I know personally a number of millionaires, even a billionaire, that came here LEGALLY, barely knew English, and built something successful. They started out working jobs that would be "beneath" many Americans, didn't expect anything for free and they are super humble and greatful for everything they have, all of the people that helped them along the way.

So since this is a vote Republican thread and I'm a Ron Paul supporter I'd like to hear some talk of him. This is the first year I am really getting into politics so I don't think I'll be putting up the large detailed post like some of you or using quite as large of a vocabulary.

Ron Paul has fought hard and won enough delegates to be placed on the ballot at the RNC in August. I plan on attending his event on August 26th where there will be a huge turnout of Ron Paul supporters. The media has downplayed his chances, saying he had NO chance, from the beginning but he and his supporters never gave up and look where it has taken them! I believe the chance of his winning the nomination are slim but there is still a chance.
 
Ron Paul is the most principled man to run for the presidency in my lifetime (I was born in 1980). There is a lot I don't agree with him on, but I respect him greatly for that.

If you want to study Ron Paul's worldview in depth, deconstruct it but looking to the thinkers who are largely behind it; Lew Rockwell, Murray Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Ludwig Von Mises, Fredrich Hayek, etc. There is a lot of truth to learn in that viewpoint, as well as a lot they get wrong, IMO.

I don't see Ron Paul as a viable nominee, but he has garnered a lot of attention and influence for the viewpoints he espouses. Really, the Austrian school of economics (which is the basis of Paul's worldview) is the only school to foresee and warn about the 2008 housing bust. All the others either missed it or (in the case of Keynesians like the hack, Paul Krugman) saw the bubble as a positive. If nothing else, the Austrian business cycle theory should be taken very seriously when it comes to understanding that economic crisis and the boom and bust cycle in general.

I think Ron Paul has paved the way for his son Rand in future elections. Frankly, I would love the choices in a GOP primary to be Paul Ryan, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio.

I view Romney as the lesser of two evils and, unfortunately, that is all I see as viable this election.
 
And it is unfortunate that our choices for the past number of elections have been the lesser of two evils. I fully believe that Ron Paul will absolutely do what is necessary to get this country back on track if elected and may be the only one who would do so. I know in a number of polls they did, Ron Paul faired better against Obama than any other candidate. I will be supporting him through the convention and see what happens!
 
The two party system pretty much guarantees a "lesser of two evils" option to most any critical thinking person, IMO. I don't see going third party as a viable option though, at least on the national level. The better approach is to fundamentally change one of the parties. I see the tea party movement as something with the possibility to do that.
 
[url]http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/01/news/economy/poor-income/index.htm?iid=HP_River[/URL]

Are you poor if you have a flat-screen TV?

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Can you really be poor if you own a flat-screen TV ... or two? Depends on whom you ask.
With income inequality at the center of the national political debate this year, it should be no surprise that conservatives and liberals are coming down on opposite sides of the tracks

Conservatives point to spending patterns, saying consumption is a better indicator of living standards than income. Using that metric, the nation's poor are living better than they have been in decades, enjoying many of the amenities that the middle class have."People are not as badly off as you think," said Aparna Mathur, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning organization.
Liberals, however, counter by saying that while electronics and appliances have become more affordable, basic necessities such as child care, health care and transportation have not. These costs have left the poor struggling to make ends meet.
How many TVs should you own?
There's little argument that modern amenities have worked their way into most Americans' homes.
For instance, some 62% of households earning less than $20,000 annually owned between two and four televisions, according to the 2009 Residential Energy Consumption Survey, conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy. That compares to 68% of those earning $120,000 or more.
About one-third of the lowest income households had either LCD or plasma TVs.
Granted, that's less than half the share of the highest income group, but conservative researchers say it's a sign that the consumption gap is narrowing.
Mathur also points to other appliances and electronics that are now commonplace in the homes of those with the lowest incomes, including microwaves and air conditioning.
"This is not what you think of when you think of poverty," she said. "The fact that people can afford these things suggests improvement in living standards over time."
Concerns about rising income inequality, falling wages and growing poverty have been in the spotlight over the past year. The Occupy Wall Street movements of last fall brought them to the world's attention, while the 2012 presidential campaign has kept them in the national dialogue.
Still, the improvement in living standards cited by conservative researchers is likely due to three factors. Prices for many appliances and electronics have dropped significantly, making them less expensive for everyone.
Also, during the boom times before the Great Recession, many Americans loaded up on debt to finance purchases and keep up with their neighbor's lifestyles.
Finally, government policies, including tax credits, put more money in the hands of lower-income families, Mathur said.

To be sure, gaps still exist and modern conveniences aren't universal in poor homes. For instance, 52% of the lowest income families lack a computer, compared to just 3% of the highest income homes. Some 69% of the poorest households don't use a dishwasher, but only 10% of the richest lack this amenity.
Several conservative researchers, however, say that Americans don't have a true idea of what living in poverty means.
The average household defined as "poor" in 2005 had air conditioning, cable TV and a DVD player, according to government statistics cited by Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. If there were children in the home, the family likely had a game system, such as a Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) Xbox or Sony (SNE) PlayStation.

Related: Americans discuss getting off government aid

Poor Americans had more living space than average Europeans and were not hungry, Rector said.
"If you took the typical poor household and put them on TV, no one would think they are poor," he said. "They struggle to make ends meet, but they are not in any type of deprivation."
Not your grandmother's poverty
Advocates for low-income consumers say there's no doubt that poverty today is different than what it was a century ago, when being poor often meant lacking conveniences most Americans now take for granted.
Cell phones, for example, are essential, especially for those who are working or looking for employment. Many of these devices also are relatively affordable.
"We have a new standard of living, but it's not a sign of luxury," said Jodie Levin-Epstein, deputy director of CLASP, which advocates for the poor.
Also, TVs and dishwashers aren't what's breaking the backs of the poor. Instead, they are locked into poverty by the rising cost of work-related expenses, such as child care and transportation, or medical charges.
"Technology is getting much cheaper, but the cost of basics is really putting pressure on family budgets," said Melissa Boteach, director of the Poverty to Prosperity program at the Center for American Progress

_______________________________________________________________

Income inequality is a Red Herring.

The rich already pay for an almost middle class lifestyle for the 48% who don't pay any federal taxes.

Obama is plainly wrong.
Government is the B list and private enterprise is the A list.

An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

George Bernard Shaw

The poor did not build that but it was the Autobahn that inspired Eisenhour who hanessed the rich and middle class to design, build and pay for it.


during the boom times before the Great Recession, many Americans loaded up on debt to finance purchases and keep up with their neighbor's lifestyles.
Typical:rolleyes:

Now these people also want the rich to pay.
The middle class used to pay it's fair share of taxes but has IMO been skipping out recently for morally hazardous reasons like in quote

If you step back outside the box this is all squabbles amongst the top 1% (of the world as all Americans are)

This article doesn't even mention washrooms and running water which 1/3 of the world doesn't have or solid shelter both of which are taken for granted.
 
I have relatives who are poor and they have flat screens ...bought by not so poor relatives and have cell phones....cheaper than land lines and can be pooled with not so poor relatives ...I believe they pay $10 a month for a cell when on a group/family plan. But is it possible that they have family help out or is that against the boot strap rules? BTW although I can afford cable TV....I don't have it I have broadcast.... You seem to worry about everyone else and what they have ..... I know you might not be a Christian but I believe that is in the top ten on Commandments.
 
I have relatives who are poor and they have flat screens ...bought by not so poor relatives and have cell phones....cheaper than land lines and can be pooled with not so poor relatives ...I believe they pay $10 a month for a cell when on a group/family plan. But is it possible that they have family help out or is that against the boot strap rules? BTW although I can afford cable TV....I don't have it I have broadcast.... You seem to worry about everyone else and what they have ..... I know you might not be a Christian but I believe that is in the top ten on Commandments.

I worry about what others don't have but want and what free thing they will want me to pay for under the guise of "fairness" since I can't just go offshore like the big guys and get stuck paying 50% in taxes instead of 20.

Charity begins at home.

Boot Strap rules?

The problem with America is we have grown soft and afraid to hurt people's feelings, a problem Steve Jobs famously said he didn't have when he said he was not afraid to p!ss people off.
His attitude based on his experience was that religion is for suckers.
Were you one of those Occupy Wall St protesters?
They didn't get anywhere because nobody feared them.
I'm not saying being poor in the US is fun but it's not any kind of deprivation as compared to the rest of the world or what things were like 100 years ago.
But then most Americans are ignorant of history and completely unaware of the rest of the world or that they are in the top 1% (of the world.)
In my biased opinion:p
My beef is that the middle class is not self supporting and costs more money every year and wants to punish the tiny 1% rich by taking their money.
4.5% more federal tax (the Bush tax cuts) will add another 11% to my tax bill which will be squandered on spending for the middle class while they pay nothing.

Unfortunately the middle class goes all stupid and cognitively dissonant and just won't accept the FACT that there aren't enough rich people to make more than a 2% difference towards entitlements and that they will eventually have to pay their fair share instead of ducking and passing the buck.

The rich should be allowed to keep their money as the fruits of their sacrifices and accomplishments and the middle class should pay more for itself.
 
As a pallette cleanser

Here's one of the multinational Big Boys at play
Companies only pay what they have to for workers with the exception of
a premium for good management talent which pays for itself.

Caterpillar to unions: Drop dead

[url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/caterpillar-to-unions-drop-dead/2012/08/03/7af72d6c-da9f-11e1-9745-d9ae6098d493_story.html[/URL]

For decades, executives at unionized companies have harbored the fantasy that they could dictate the wages, benefits and working conditions of their employees, just like non-union firms. What stood in their way was the unions’ ability to mount a strike that would prove more costly than paying above-market compensation. In the language of economics, the strike gave workers market power.
Now, at a hydraulics plant in Joliet, Ill., this corporate fantasy is about to become economic reality. Thanks to globalization, declining union density and years of chipping away at labor laws, Caterpillar is set to prove that even unionized companies can operate as if they have no union at all.
It’s no longer just a matter of getting unions to agree to “concessions” and “give-backs” in order to save their plants or avoid corporate bankruptcy, as happened in the steel and auto industries. As Caterpillar aims to demonstrate in Joliet, even a thriving, global powerhouse posting record profits can take a strike and impose market-level wages and benefits on its unionized workers.
It’s been three months since Local 851 of the International Association of Machinists voted overwhelming to reject Caterpillar’s “best and final” offer and go out on strike. In terms of negotiations, there really haven’t been any. From the outset, Caterpillar made it clear that there really wasn’t anything to negotiate.
In the previous six-year contract, Caterpillar won a two-tier wage structure: Existing employees would get to keep wages that average about $26, but there would be no raises and new employees would be paid wages pegged to the existing market — roughly $12 to $19, depending on the job classification. Instead of the old defined-benefit pension plan, the company would put 3 percent of each worker’s base pay into a 401(k) retirement account, and match employee contributions up to an additional 3 percent. The company would continue to pay 90 percent of the premiums for a generous health insurance plan, and profit sharing that averaged $2,300 a year.
Now, six years later, the company is offering pretty much the same — no raises of any sort for the “old” employees, whose compensation the company says is still 34 percent above the market, with pay for new employees continuing to rise only with prevailing market wages. In exchange for more flexibility in shift scheduling and elimination of certain seniority rights, the company was willing to offer a no-layoff pledge. And it demanded that workers increase the share of health premiums to roughly 20 percent, which by the end of the contract would represent an increase of roughly $3,800 if premiums continue to escalate as they have been. The company also offered a one-time $5,000 per worker signing bonus if a contract were signed without a strike.
The union counterproposal was, by historical standards, rather modest: in effect, a 1.5 percent raise each year, along with continuation of most existing seniority rights. The company rejected it out of hand.

The reason Caterpillar has no intention of negotiating with its workers is pretty simple: It doesn’t have to. In the three months since the strike began, the company says its Joliet plant has produced all the hydraulic parts it needs. The work is done by supervisors, newly hired employees and employees contracted from temporary help agencies, along with 80 and 100 union members who have crossed the daily picket lines and returned to work. If things really got tight, the company could always import the same parts from other Caterpillar plants around the world.
Caterpillar’s success in effectively neutering its unions is the result of decades of disciplined work and billions of dollars in investment. The turning point came in the 1990s when, after two long strikes, 9,000 members of the United Auto Workers at its giant facility in Peoria, Ill., effectively capitulated and went back to work on terms dictated by the company. The strikes demonstrated to Caterpillar’s workers that they were not as irreplaceable as they thought, and that their picket lines would no longer deny the company the workers or the raw materials needed to continue operation. As it turned out, the capitulation also allowed Caterpillar to avoid the near-death experience of the Big Three automakers, which accepted the UAW’s overly generous contracts for another decade.

Caterpillar makes no bones about the fact it intends to bring its “market-based” approach to worker pay and benefits to every location. That message, apparently, was lost on the 465 unionized workers at a 62-year-old locomotive plant in London, Ontario, that Caterpillar bought a few years ago. Those workers had been getting $35 an hour. Caterpillar’s take-it-or-leave-it offer was for half that, along with substantial cuts in benefits. When the workers balked, Caterpillar closed the plant, took its cutting-edge diesel-electric technology and moved production to Muncie, Ind., where workers lined up for a shot at one of $12- to$18-an-hour jobs.
It is easy to get moralistic about a company that pays its chief executive $16.5 million as a reward for squeezing the incomes of employees who, even at the top of the scale, earn about one-half of 1 percent of what he does. It’s easy to get nostalgic about the loss of union power that really did make it possible for generations of workers with only a high-school education to enter the middle class. But the reality is that Caterpillar probably has no choice but to bow to the dictates of the markets — not only the markets from which it gets it labor but also the markets from which it raises its capital and the markets into which it sells its products. If it can’t sell its products at above-market prices or offer its investors below-market returns, it can’t afford to pay its workers above-market wages.
Even from a market perspective, however, there is a valid critique of Caterpillar’s hardball tactics.
The first is to note that when it comes to its executives, managers and engineers, Caterpillar does not use the same criteria of paying the average market wage. In those instances, the company has seen the competitive benefit of paying above the average to attract and retain a cadre of above-average employees and give them sufficient incentive to work hard, take risks and deliver superior performance. There is no evidence to suggest that having better-than-average production workers will not have the same beneficial results. To believe or behave otherwise is nothing more than the sort of class snobbery better suited to the country-club locker room than the executive suite of a modern global corporation.
If Caterpillar were really serious about having a world-class workforce, it would be willing to negotiate wage and benefits levels 15 percent above the market. And if it were serious about insuring that all workers share in the company’s success, then it would offer production workers a profit-sharing plan that reaches at least 10 percent of base pay in good times.
Because of its size and reputation, companies like Caterpillar also need to acknowledge that they have an outsize impact on the social, political and economic environment in which markets operate. Caterpillar should not expect voters to embrace its aggressive free-trade philosophy if globalization merely gives it license to grind down the incomes of average workers. It shouldn’t expect politicians to approve more money for public works projects, or give the green light to increased coal and shale-oil production — both big generators of Caterpillar sales — if the profits from those sales won’t be shared fairly with front-line workers. And it shouldn’t expect to win the good opinion of investors or the public if its human-resource strategy is to become the recognized leader in the corporate race to the bottom.
The reason the union movement is in trouble is because unions abused their market power and overplayed their hands. Now, it is Corporate America that has gained the upper hand, and if the news from Joliet, Ill., is any indication, it is about to make the same mistake.
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The pendulum has swung back the other way on the unions after they pushed it too far.
I don't think the author's "wish list" will come to pass.
 

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