I've already said what I mean by poor. People living month to month with no ability to having a savings. We also know how the middle class is rapidly getting smaller and smaller.



That's generally what a pension fund does, right? The individual doesn't get to make a choice where the company puts the money though. No trolling going on here. Fact is that shares is something that only the upper classes have to quote from somewhere else "about one-third of families in the lower half of the income scale had stock holdings. In the next 40 percent of the income scale, about 70 percent of households held stocks, while households in the top 10 percent of the income scale had stock ownership rates above 90 percent.". For most people it's a daunting task directly owning their own shares and if they don't have an advisor giving them the right advice. This is why it always baffled me when Trump would go on about how well the stocks were doing. That's nice but for most it doesn't affect them.





Very good and well done on doing what businesses should be doing.
However, my problem here is that whilst you state about how you made sure you paid contractors on time etc In pretty much the same breath defend the practices of previously said corporations. You defend Walmart and their ilk even though their practices are the shittiest of the lot. They may have paid you on time but you've got them paying milk farmers less and less, driving farmers (businesses) to bankruptcy just so you can say "hey honey, look how cheap I got this milk! God I wish I could guzzle the cum of everyone at Walmart and their super cheap prices just to show how much I love them". But hey, "I'm alright jack" right?
This also relates back to Trump who consistently fucked over contractors. He was just doing what he could to make a profit so that's ok, right? Or because it's Trump it's NOT ok? I forget where you stand on it.




So? If you're an employer you gotta do that shit for employees. Cry me a river.


Miracle how people managed to cope before 24/7 opening times isn't it? But you're detracting from the argument here.


So does putting the economy into the hands of ignorant free marketeers.

what is “ruthless” though?

i have friends who used to work at video stores. a bunch of them, actually, due to my predilections ha ha hahaha.

when netflix came around, they were pissed off! netflix was eating their lunch.

did netflix offer the same amount of expertise and deep knowledge of cinema as your local tarantino?

hell the fuck no.

but overall, netflix’s near infinite selection, easy mail delivery, lack of late fees and other conveniences had, overall, the better offer for the general public.

so the video stores went under.

the ones who did this part-time were sad but understood the market had changed.

the ones who did it full time were incensed! and swore off “predatory ruthless” netflix forever. they took it personally. to this day. they’d go to a redbox but refuse netflix.

me, i’ve had to adjust my business model several times because of changing market conditions. just like i wear different clothes in different weather. can’t expect sunny days always. ruthless weather.

speaking of ruthless—one of the stores that closed noticed that their clerks giving away too many freebies/discounts to their friends had greatly accelerated their demise! that was cold...

as in delaying the payment of outstanding invoices to a small supplier but giving them the opportunity to accept a smaller settlement, knowing they couldn't afford to wait for the full agreed amount.

well then we’re talking about 3 different things so STOP TROLLING.

also i disagree hugely about “the shrinking middle class”. the middle class is growing all around the world and billions of people have been lifted from misery, hunger, famine, thanks to the expansion of trade and markets.

this is something inept governments promised they’d do and never did and created poverty instead.

yesterday on reddit i read the story of some chinese woman who in the days of communism received monthly meat rations of 77 grams.

nowadays the average chinese citizen eats 136 grams per day

i’d rather be served by the market than by some idiotic central planner


this is a jumble of concepts.

yes a pension fund manages investments so that it can pay its contributors.

a lot of working class people are participants in said pension funds

therefore they have a stake in the stock and bond and securities market

why is that so difficult to comprehend and why does it to be conflated with “trump”? what a crock of shit. jeezus fucking christ.

—

now pardon me, i have to go stand at the bread line to receive my rations from local party chairman

oh... a government entity did that to me once

they hired me to do a bunch of work. i gave them a price. we signed on it.

halfway through it and me still waiting for my initial down payment i get a call from the guy i was working with.

they had run down the budget line for my purchase and could i do it for less.

i said okay i can work for less but i have to do a smaller package. i can’t deliver on the initial thing (the initial thing required me to hire a bunch of contractors)

he protested but i tried to explain that i would lose money

i never heard back and was left holding my dick...

this story is not about corporations though. itks about the challenges a business faces. FROM ALL SIDES.

anyway i really have to go to the bread line now and get my rations from party chairman comrade bernie

Nothing wrong with running a business, and yes it is very difficult. The fact that a man like Jeff Bezos started Amazon by selling books in his garage is commendable.

However, when you consider hoarding the nation's resources... when is enough enough? You reach a certain point as a business where certain things are possible for you which others could never dream of. How exactly is someone supposed to compete with Amazon at this point? Amazon can barely keep up with Amazon Prime without pushing their employees to the bone, and even Wal-Mart can do little more than their best to copy Amazon's every move. Then Amazon finds legal loop holes where they end up paying $0 on their income tax? It's fucked man.

Y'know, I used to identify as a Libertarian. A LaVeyan Satanist Libertarian, "survival of the fittest" blow hard. I would preach for people to innovate and find a way to survive or be left in the dust. I'm older now, and understand that life isn't simply so black, and white. I'm far softer now: there's a lot of grey out there, and I feel like people need help. It's the system itself that's fucked, we've had too much of a good thing for too long. If someone like Bernie is fighting to help the little guy, then I feel we should seize the opportunity. Most of his policies will never fly through but if he can make enough changes to help out those in need, to give students some breathing room, give everyone tax-paid health care, protect our environment: we can re-build. Everything is so tense right now. The nation can use a sense of comfort.

No, but mine was. You asked what I meant by ruthless which I assumed you meant in reference to my point about ruthless corporate practices, so I gave a real world example of one.

What about when automation takes hold? How are people going to find work then? We need to prepare for that, symbols. People are going to need a way to feed themselves, and provide comfort for their families.

I don't know if it'll ever be accepted in the US but I can see the Universal Basic Income idea becoming an inevitability in Europe before very long. Personally I think governments need to stop being squeamish about this and look to introducing some version of it at least as soon as possible.

Finland just trialled a two-year UBI scheme (only for 2000 people though) - not sure what the results of it were yet, but there's a site here for more info:
https://www.kela.fi/web/en/basic-inc...ment-2017-2018

that is a deadbeat customer not a “corporate practice”

deadbeat customers come in many forms, from internet pirates to people who default on their credit cards and the banks has to “settle”. the orange blob was also a consummate deadbeat. sometimes when a good honest business begins to fail they can’t meet their obligations either. shit happens to everyone.

there is a risk when you lend money to anyone. filling a purchase order is an act of lending. it takes trust. this is where credit ratings come handy—you know who is a credit risk.

a customer with good credit usually will have a running account with a business, even get discounts.

a deadbeat might be required to pay upfront in cash.

a business in the habit of stiffing their suppliers is going to run out of suppliers very fast

these things are part and parcel of doing business. this is why there is loss as well as gain. this is what the average uninformed indoctrinated does not understand—they think that “business” is all gain all the time.

the question of getting paid sooner but less, or later but in full, is the reason why lending risk needs to be factored in. sometimes everyone pays on time and you have “excess profits! shame on greed!”. and other times you’ll be robbed.

this is also why there is a trade in business notes. if you’ve ever considered a “money market” account in the bank, it comes from the trade of, among other thing, short-term business debts as financial instruments.

so... i get that your employer was stiffed by a corporate customer but that is not a feature of “corporate practices”.

Two reasons the Bookies are probably correct:

TRUMP gains with Blacks, Hispanics and Women

CANDIDATES Embrace Reparations For Slavery

here in the US we have Earned Income Credit.

when you make below a certain treshhold, you get PAID taxes instead of paying them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earn...ome_tax_credit

i think it’s a good anti-misery tool. it’s never gonna buy you all the pleasures in life but it prevents some of the worse scenarios.

the ubi idea might work. read the news the other day the finland results were that it does not encourage more work, but it’s not so bad either. would have to look into again but it remains an interesting proposition.

i’m more interested however in UNIVERSAL BASIC CAPITAL. which rather than pay an income would give everybody a stake in the stock market.

i don’t know how that would work or if people would be easily dispossessed of it the same way indians were swindled out of their land allotments in oklahoma.

but in a post-labor era when we’ll start to be replaced by automation and artificial intelligence, it might be a way forward

That's the point.


Yeah, possibly the worst idea I've heard since ... I dunno ... ever?

no that wasn’t. there were several things being tested:

i’ll be a deadbeat customer and copypaste you this short article:

https://www.economist.com/finance-an...ork-incentives

Finland’s basic-income trial did not much affect work incentives

Among the adherents of universal basic income (ubi) are the Italian government, India’s opposition party and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic congresswoman in America. Boosters argue that a minimum income would be a safety-net for people in precarious jobs—eg, those at risk of being displaced by automation. Others see a way of eliminating complex, even corrupt, social-security bureaucracies.

Naysayers, horrified by the potential cost of ubi, fret that state handouts will put recipients off work. Early results from Finland’s basic-income experiment, released on February 8th, suggest that such fears are overdone, but don’t resolve much else.

Researchers randomly chose 2,000 people on the dole to receive for two years a monthly payment of €560 ($634) instead, whether or not they sought or started work. After a year, recipients were no less likely to be working than those on the dole. On average, both groups worked nearly 50 days a year and earned around €4,250.

Some ubi supporters may be disappointed that the scheme did not increase time worked. Unlike other benefits, which are withdrawn as claimants find work and so tend to discourage them from accepting a job offer, the basic income creates no such disincentive, because it is paid even after claimants take up work. But most proponents do not see employment as ubi’s primary goal. They will be cheered by the fact that the participants reported being happier.

There are limits to the lessons from the experiment. The results only assess its first year. Even the trial’s full two-year duration—a time period settled on because of a lack of resources, and ministerial impatience—may not be enough to observe changes to behaviour, says Minna Ylikännö, a researcher on the project. The scheme was also restricted to the unemployed. Other pilots, such as that funded by y Combinator, a startup accelerator, in America, will also shed light on how low earners might respond if they are paid a basic income. Evidence so far is scant. But that has not stopped Italy, which begins its “citizens’ income” scheme—a variant paying €780 a month to those living below the poverty line—in the spring. True believers need no proof

seriously? what’s the basis of your judgment?

here’s some stuff to think about

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse...egalitarianism

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lea...le26122852.ece

i have no position on the matter at this point but it’s worth considering since the purported problem of inequality is not one of income but of wealth

Trimp football pal was paying $70 at the "asian spa"

UBI can be sold any way, on any principle but the only reason governments are starting to consider it is because they face a social disaster as up-coming generations face a future with less and less real job opportunities. It'll be ushered in gradually using different rationales but the ultimate aim is to effectively normalise unemployment.

the purpose of production is consumption

if we can produce without employment—why not?

we’d get to retire at birth....

we’re all naturally rent seekers. as long as we don’t cheat or steal or manipulate others for it... i’ll take it

The Daily News for the WIN!!!

This will be a lot of people's sole income. If they want to play the stock market with it that's up to them I suppose but I'd rather those of who want to steer clear have that option too.

“playing” the stock market for civilians is just that... “playing”. a recipe for disaster. nobody beats the market in the long run. hence the genius of john bogle. actually he got the idea from a professor? but yeah he was the entrepreneur who turned that vapor into a reality: the index fund.

...

UBC: think about it as a trust fund.

see, the reason for the dreaded inequality is not one of “income” per se. it’s wealth.

when you’re born poor and come from nothing and maybe have the wrong hairdo one small fuckup can spiral into a lot of trouble. unpaid traffic tickets literally can land you in jail—im not joking. the u.s. still has debtors prisons in some jurisdictions. good luck finding a job as an ex-convict.

but when you have a wealth cushion you can fuck up and suffer misfortune and still come up smelling like roses.

and yes not everyone is great at managing their capital. people often squander their lives. maybe the bounty should be contingent on passing an economics course. i don’t know...

i just think that the future might very well be unemployed. and if income is tied to employment... good luck beating the robots

then again we might be to work at things we haven’t dreamed of yet.

but the way for the people to “own the means of production” is to ACTUALLY own them instead of trying to loot them. be a shareholder. PAY ME MY DIVIDENDS, COCA-COLA.

New UN Ambassadress....climate change denier and heavyweight R contributor, friend of Elaine Chao..


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2UFtm33dLB8&t=17s

Drawering by Matt

OK, fine. But my point still stands. If people want to get into that they can maybe transfer their UBI into a UBC. I won't complain if they end up doing really well out of it, but as someone who reads this stuff and frankly hasn't the foggiest, I'd rather just take my chances with a liveable income, discipline myself to spend within my means each month (which I've been doing all my adult life anyway) and accept my fate.

i hear you and that is a great point. indeed could be swappable—that’s what an annuity is, or a dividend fund.

and your stoic stance should be the beginning of everything.

unfortunately “discipline” is un-pc these days. “oppression,” or something. “how can i have discipline i deserve to eat at the same restaurants everyone else does” etc.

the other thing to consider is that beyond our basic needs (see maslow’s hierarchy etc) the economy is determined by DESIRE. i.e., what is valuable is what people want. a baby beanie or a hot croissant or an airplane.

what humans may desire in the age of basic need satisfaction is unfathomable to us. might look like star trek—materialize a meal on command, yet chase the dilithium across the galaxy.

maybe porn stars will become the new bazillionaires because bots wont be able to best them for a while. or professional dancers. who knows really? we can’t know.

but it’s the next big thing to solve. unlimited solar power, vat meat, robotic labor... where does it end? i expect once liberated of basic needs we might reach for unimaginable things. then again could be zardoz-like stagnation. or dumb shit like twitter fame—humans are hierarchical after all.

alternatively, look at borges’ “utopia of a tired man”, or however “utopía de un hombre que está cansado” was translated.

i like speculating about this shit. might be important, might be pointless wank, but do you remember life pre-internet? hahahahaaaaaa

i was living in the middle ages until recently in a voluntary experiment. trust me, the present is fantastic and we’re rich beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors.

i drink better wine than charlemagne ever did and it comes in a box that takes 2 hours of minimum wage to pay.

please enjoy the ride.

On Friday, the Trump administration announced a new rule that would bar family planning centers that offer abortion or provide referrals to doctors that perform them. This is bad. Very, very bad. And it's also extremely unlikely that the Supreme Court, in its current state, will be striking this down.

The $286 million will be redirected to "faith-based" programs like crisis pregnancy centers. You know, those shady places that lure women in by pretending to be abortion clinics and then try to talk them out of having abortions? And also don't offer birth control or condoms or STD tests or anything else remotely related to family planning? Yeah. Those. They're getting $286 million for, I suppose, especially ritzy Bible studies or something. Because that is a thing that is very helpful to people and a good use of our taxpayer dollars.

Trump does supply/demand with Evangelicals.

Whatever the Evangelicals demand, Trump will supply.

It depends how you want to define rich. Yes I can get more stuff than say, my parents generation, but they could buy a house on a very modest income in a city I can now barely rent a room in. They could plan for the future whereas the thing that marks the current era is an almost total lack of stability. I'm one of the lucky ones, with a (for now) steady income but I look around me, especially at those a generation or two below me, stuck in jobs with zero-hour contracts, with no prospects and the only word I can think of to describe their situation is hopeless. Tomorrow for those people is a horrifying place so it's hardly any wonder that so many of them are blowing what little they have on things that help blot it out. Your excursion into the middle ages may have been a voluntary experiment but for many it's an enforced reality, even if they happen to own a smart-phone and a pair of Nike Air-Max.

More rights for others doesn't mean fewer rights for you.

In my 29 years of Employment, it never dawned on me that my pending retirement could make someone angry. I’ve been blessed to have health insurance for every day of my Employment......and for my family for the almost 21 years we’ve been married. Of course, while my job pays 100% of my insurance (and will do so until the day I die), the amount I pay monthly to cover my family is equivalent to a new car note......dental is extra! And this is why I drive a 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee with 180k miles on it.

I’ve worked long and hard to reach this point, it’s something I’m proud of. More importantly, it’s something I’ve earned! Dedication and loyalty are traits one carves out for themselves over the course of 30+ years. I’ll be contacting the Retirement office next week, giving the go ahead to prepare my Retirement packet. Next month my wife and I will go sit down to ask questions and weigh my options:

A) retiring in 2020 after 30 years of service
B) retiring in 2023 after 33 years of service

If I retire in 2020, the plan is to NOT touch the Retirement money (let it keep compounding) and start a new carrier. Not touching my Retirement for five years will cause my monthly payout to double and I hope to take advantage.

overabundant food
too many clothes
horseless carriages
central heating
refrigeration
power on demand
24/7 hot water
running water
sanitation
garbage service
home theaters
telecommunications
fire/police/ambulance on call
washing machine
dishwashing machine
blender, microwave, etc
year-round ice cream
spices!


and yes, yes, MODERN MEDICINE.


we all can

this thing about standing on the shoulders of giants is true

we sit on piles of accummulated wealth we can’t even perceive

we’re spoiled as fuck

real estate changes. reason we left dc in the mid aughts. saw a $50k apartment go for $500,000 and said “we’ll never be able to buy a house here”

at the time i cried “gentrification!” and sure it was not easy to leave a city you love, but when i came back it was a different city. things just change. such is life. we all lose things.

if your parents generation did not cash in on the golden opportunity of exploding real estate prices it was probably due to taxes, fees, “excess profits”, and that kind of stuff. but how lucky to have invested at the right time! imagine? in dc a lot of modest homeowners walked away with millions.

i could have done the same in d.c. actually. i remeber looking at a $60k apartment that must have sold for 20 times a decade later. but i chose to pursue bohemian foolishness and globetrotting adventures instead! can only blame myself, but hey, i was young, had my fun, was stupid.


so we are richer but less stable. sure... or more mobile.


well, like you said, you have discipline and accept limitations. it’s nice of you to thank your luck but those are qualities an employer would appreciate.


what is a zero-hour contract and what types of jobs are we talking about? i cant see what you mean.


haaaaa haaaa i did the same thing at their age. i was not serious. road of excess, palace of wisdom, all that shit.

i understand the notion that delayed gratification is difficult for the distressed (jordan peterson talks about that extensively actuallly) but it’s up to the individual to get their shit together. we can’t be children forever.


do they chop their own wood? grow their own food? butcher their animals and preserve their meat? haul their water? i seriously seriously doubt it. it takes constant hard work and is exhausting and it doesn’t pay.

unless you’re talking about the homeless—different story.

i had the luck (we all have some luck some time, like your lucky steady income) of having a chance to build my own house in a remote area. living there was super cheap but very hard. it definitely had its joys. but i found first-hand why peasants left for urban life. IT’S HARD BEING A PEASANT.

what works best in the modern economy is:
-specialize in something that has a future (a career, not a “job”)
-trade with the rest of the world
-mommy is not here. be entrepreneurial about what you have to offer the world. don’t sit there waiting for opportunities to come to you.
-strive to provide a good value instead of just crying for more
-be grateful about what you have instead of envious of what you see on teevee/facebook/whatever
-and learn to manage your resources like a grownup. dont make excuses.
-keep your wits about you and be aware of change

is success guaranteed? no. will your shitty poetry get you the big bucks? FUCK NO. lolololol. unless you’re a rapper then maybe you’re onto something haaa haaahaaa.

on the one hand (what my brother did, he’s doing amazingly well)

https://www.collegechoice.net/50-hig...ege-graduates/

on the other hand if you insist that you must be a dumb boho (what i did)

https://www.vulture.com/2018/11/jerr...an-artist.html

Lesson 20: Accept That You Will Likely Be Poor

Even though all we see of the art world these days are astronomical prices, glitz, glamour, and junkie-like behavior, remember that only one percent of one percent of one percent of all artists become rich off their artwork. You may feel overlooked, underrecognized, and underpaid. Too bad. Stop feeling sorry for yourself; that’s not why you’re doing this.

—

PRECISELY. thank you.

don’t tell me that i must be resentful.

I CHOSE.

now im gonna eat cake

(for breakfast. cuz we baked one yesterday.)

it is so nice to have a front seat to liverpool-man u this morning!

[

[quote=!@#$%!]
do they chop their own wood? grow their own food? butcher their animals and preserve their meat? haul their water? [?quote]

Of course not, but nor did you risk catching the Black Death, so let's not turn this into a Medieval pissing contest.


I've never written a line of poetry, shitty or otherwise, in my life.


I've said already, I made my choices and I stand by them.

me too! i blame nobody but myself.

and im ok with it! i made my choices and i own them.

i dont want the state to be my mommy and i dont have time to hate “the rich”. what dumbfuckery. i have what i want. which is little—but i enjoy it like a crackhead loves his pipe

and im the dumb boho who wrote poetry lmfao. was i not clear??

also, precisely, no black death. i counted the absence of the black death (i said “modern medicine”) to the definition of “being rich”

it’s always about the alternatives!

our standard of life is unequaled in the history of humanity.

Not an issue I've come across due to my location (adoption is borderline impossible in Australia, to the point where it's easier to adopt a child overseas and return to the country with them).

Oh god, the fucking bakery argument.
I mean, the literal job description for being a baker is to bake things. If you pick and choose whether you'll bake things because of personal characteristics of the buyer, then you're kind of a terrible person.

It'd be like a car salesman refusing to sell cars to women, because it goes against his 'personal convictions'.

Nobody's making the bakers watch the wedding. They just need to bake a cake.

EDIT: and when the business inevitably closes due to bankruptcy, spare me the Fox News tears about the terrible liberals running this poor owner out of business in an anti-religion conspiracy. It's called the free market, something that has its benefits - namely, businesses that suck aren't businesses for very long.

the idiots' god created gays and liberals just as it created racist and rapists and conservatives, but their stupidity does not let them understand this.

Comet Pizza. It is ALWAYS projection with these guys.