|
|
| Post Number: 31
|
|
|
| Post Number: 32
|
Self-Banished 
Group: Members
Posts: 22597
Joined: Feb. 2006
|
 |
Posted on: Mar. 17 2013,10:25 pm |
|
    |
^ people that actually beleive in profit, there is hope. 
--------------
Remember boys and girls,
Don’t be a Dick …
Or a “Wayne” 
|
 |
|
|
| Post Number: 33
|
grassman
Group: Members
Posts: 3858
Joined: Mar. 2006
|
|
Posted on: Mar. 18 2013,5:19 am |
|
|
We all believe in profit. What has happened to this country though is that most believe in outrageous profit or nothing. 
Both Republicans and Democrats say concern about the middle class is at the heart of the ongoing, vituperative debate over taxes, entitlements and fiscal discipline, but the political spat never seems to honestly address the gaping and growing class divide in the United States. As politicians in Washington, D.C., slam each other over competing budget priorities, most avoid facing up to the disturbing question behind all the numbers: Is the American Dream temporarily stalled or permanently kaput?
Last Sunday, Parade magazine presented its annual survey “What People Earn,” an exercise guaranteed to appall and infuriate readers as they compare their own salaries with the likes of Brad Pitt and LeBron James. The story is pretty much the same every year; entertainers and athletes rake in tens of millions while secretaries and forest rangers scrape by on $35,000 to $40,000.
Sure, it seems a little insane that 19-year-old Justin Bieber makes $55 million – $6,261 an hour – while his high school music teacher probably struggles to pay the mortgage on his house, but the difference between what superstar entertainers earn and what undervalued educators are paid has always been ridiculous. The economics of Hollywood are abnormal. They may say something about our warped values, but they have never been representative of the entire economy – at least not until now.
It is more telling that Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz made close to $30 million last year while a typical 20-something barista at one of his coffee shops cannot find a better job, even with a college degree at the top of her resumÈ, and so lives at home with mom and dad. CEOs and bankers and hedge fund managers are the new superstars of the economy. In many industries, the few men at the top make a hundred times the income of the guys and gals on the factory floor or in the office cubicles. And this is not because the men and women with the lower salaries fail to work hard enough.
Economics columnist Jon Talton recently did a rundown of the facts about today’s American economy. Among his findings:
• Worker productivity has increased nearly 23 percent since 2000, but hourly wages rose a pitiful 0.5 percent in that period.
• Taking a longer view back to 1973, productivity is up by 80 percent between now and then, but pay is only up by 11 percent.
• People at the bottom of the wage scale are earning less now than similar workers in 1979.
• Employees in the middle of the wage scale are getting 6 percent more than in 1979, but all that increase happened in the 1990s.
• High earners, meanwhile, are making 37 percent more than back in the 1970s and the much-talked-about folks in the top 1 percent have enjoyed a 131 percent increase in earnings.
It is bad enough that we are going back to the income disparities of the 19th century’s Gilded Age, but Talton, like many other observers of the U.S. economy, notes that modern America is also becoming more stratified. We are moving toward the “Downton Abbey” society of the waning British Empire and away from the anyone-can-make-it-big America of the 1950s and ‘60s. The United Kingdom of 2013 has greater social mobility than the USA. In fact, it is now easier for the average German, Japanese or Dane to rise through the income ranks than it is for the average American. And, if you are undereducated or mired in poverty, you are almost certainly stuck where you are – and the same goes for your children.
This is not the country we like to think we are and it is not the country our political leaders are willing to admit they have helped create. Thirty years of catering to Wall Street, big business and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has not boosted the American economy the way it was meant to do. Yes, the financial industry and giant corporations are awash in wealth, but they are not hiring more workers, they are not paying better pay, they are not enhancing benefits, they are not sharing the wealth. On the contrary, the typical American is working much harder for worse compensation. He or she is paying a bigger share of the health care bill and has no pension plan waiting at the end of the line.
This is an all-American crisis bigger than the deficit or the War on Terror, but no one seems ready to take it on.
--------------
git er done!
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 34
|
|
|
| Post Number: 35
|
Botto 82
Group: Members
Posts: 6293
Joined: Jan. 2005
|
|
Posted on: Mar. 18 2013,12:21 pm |
|
|
Our economy was likened to a parable about 10 hungry people and 10 candy bars. We give 9 of the candy bars to the first person. Then we divide the remaining candy bar into 10 pieces, and give 9 of those to the next person. We divide what's left among 6 more people, and don't give anything to the last two people, and tell them they need to get their share from the seven that are sharing that last candy bar.
Life may be tough, Buttercup, but it is made even more so by a small elite who get to rewrite the rules to favor them. There's your fugging control. The super-rich control everything, but you're okay with that control. When the little people back control of a different kind, something along the lines of leveling the playing field, then you get all upset. 
--------------
Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.
- Kurt Vonnegut
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 36
|
MADDOG
Group: Moderator
Posts: 7821
Joined: Aug. 2003
|
|
Posted on: Mar. 18 2013,2:44 pm |
|
|
AMMO-
1.6 billion rounds bought by the DHS. 2717 armored vehicles bought and are converting them to urban vehicles to be used domestically. For what purpose? Are they going to pass out the ammo to all the agents for target practice? That would be close to 30,000 rounds per agent. Why does the DHS feel they need this much firepower? Who or what are they afraid of? An invasion?
Does anyone on the side of gun control want to tell us? Why are these starting to show up in Hometown, USA?
Attached Image
--------------
Actually my wife is especially happy when my google check arrives each month. Thanks to douchbags like you, I get paid just for getting you worked up. -Liberal
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 37
|
Self-Banished
Group: Members
Posts: 22597
Joined: Feb. 2006
|
|
Posted on: Mar. 18 2013,4:01 pm |
|
|
(Botto 82 @ Mar. 18 2013,12:21 pm)
QUOTE Our economy was likened to a parable about 10 hungry people and 10 candy bars. We give 9 of the candy bars to the first person. Then we divide the remaining candy bar into 10 pieces, and give 9 of those to the next person. We divide what's left among 6 more people, and don't give anything to the last two people, and tell them they need to get their share from the seven that are sharing that last candy bar. Life may be tough, Buttercup, but it is made even more so by a small elite who get to rewrite the rules to favor them. There's your fugging control. The super-rich control everything, but you're okay with that control. When the little people back control of a different kind, something along the lines of leveling the playing field, then you get all upset.
This is all very simple, if you don't like your lot in life then change it.
You're not required to go through life always being the sheep.
--------------
Remember boys and girls,
Don’t be a Dick …
Or a “Wayne”
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 38
|
Moparman
Group: Members
Posts: 684
Joined: Dec. 2005
|
|
Posted on: Mar. 18 2013,8:17 pm |
|
|
(Self-Banished @ Mar. 18 2013,5:32 am)
QUOTE
(grassman @ Mar. 18 2013,5:19 am)
QUOTE We all believe in profit. What has happened to this country though is that most believe in outrageous profit or nothing. Not all believe in profit, some like a lot of our politicians believe in control. Outrageous profit? What do you consider outrageous? This is subjective. If you think a profit margin is out of line? Then don't buy or work for or whatever the case
It's pretty simple, outrageous profit includes shipping jobs and money out of the country, it includes compensating someone tens of millions for utterly failing at their job, it includes undercompensating other employees for their contributions. Nobody has a problem with a profit margin, it's the means used to achieve that profit that is becoming more and more outrageous.
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 39
|
Self-Banished
Group: Members
Posts: 22597
Joined: Feb. 2006
|
|
Posted on: Mar. 18 2013,11:32 pm |
|
|
^ and so is our gov taxation policies. 
--------------
Remember boys and girls,
Don’t be a Dick …
Or a “Wayne”
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 40
|
|
|
|
|
|
