the reason I called the stock market gambling is that the HOUSE is predisposed to win. risk is risk, and comes with being alive. Investors and their ilk try to get you to believe you are noting all risks when investing, but what you do not have access to is the inside info which is where the tr5uly rich and powerful make their money. regular people are basically left behind to throw darts at a board.

The entire nation (USA) has been fooled into thinking that a 401K is a retirement plan, when it is in fact, a very high risk gamble. a pension that you put a certain amount in, which goes into CD's or an annuity or something that has a small, BUT ASSURED, growth rate, is sound. Putting your money into random funds because the company managing the 401k's of a corporation suggests it, is pure gambling.

It is one thing to ask people educated in finance and investing to manage their retirement accounts through the stock marke4t, but to ask every single working american with access to it to do so is fucked. A CEO would never let the mailroom guy decide his 401K investments, but that mailroom guy is expected to decide for themselves, with no help, and with no training.

It is a CON GAME

yeah, so is being born, because you end up dead.

the mailroom guy is not expected to do it himself, he is not CONSIDERED in the system at all because there is no longer any interest in him, since as i already said helping him invest his small savings is not worth the time of any advisor since the commission they will get on this is so low.

the system is not directed at him, he is an ancillary character, a statistic most of the time.

however, simply whining that its a con is no help to him or anyone else, and is in fact the very kind of simplistic frustration that will guarantee he never gets anything other than a living pay cheque to pay cheque life. it has already gamed you before you were even born, and everything around you is of monetary value, or just a static lump of inert matter. everything is entropic and opportunities and traps are appearing all the time.

its best to deal with this rather than believing there is some sort of valor in cynically sneering at the whole thing and deciding you'll just hold onto your own righteousness. reality doesn't care.

the system as i said is inhuman and does not care about what you believe or how you feel about it. it can be gamed but has no interest in serving your vanity or faith in humanities goodness or evilness.

well, stockbrokers and brokerage houses have a tendency to make a mint, if that's who you mean by "the house". or do you mean the CEOs and executive teams of publicly traded companies? or do you mean large investors who can influence the market? who is "the house"?



yes, but financially speaking, it means that your saved assets are always at risk of loss. it could be your treasured books being eaten away by mold in the "safety" of your home or it could be your savings being eaten away by inflation while they rest "safely" under your mattress. there is no guaranteed safe storage for assets-- there is only more risk and less risk. and we all have the responsibility to learn to manage that risk.

historically, there is no safest investment than the stock market-- not a single company but the market as a whole-- because the market follows economic growth-- which is why index funds offer such promise vs old-style investments.



if you're a full-time employee with any kind of retirement plan, you're an investor



eh, people make money out of selling all kinds of worthless shit, it doesn't mean you have to buy it. people know more about buying cars or tvs than about buying financial products.


where would you stash your savings that isn't a very high risk gamble? name the place. name it.



inflation is eating up the "assured" growth rates.

only fools will put their money in "random" funds. and i'm not surprised because the only "financial education" the employed get is consumerism and careerism-- earn more, buy more, do as you're told. but that's acting like a lemming.



it was once fucked to ask that every citizen know how to read and write and only priests knew how



the mailroom employee has the choice to go home to watch dancing with the stars or school themselves and take responsibility for their future like an adult instead of relying on some paternalistic entity to do it for them.


so you don't save or invest money? or are you asking that nobody else does?

game set and fucking apocalypse

No they really don't. Poor people have no business in the market, if anything, MOST people not addicted to gambling or point blank sleazily ripping people off have no business in the market. Let the rich people eat and fuck each other..


Or the biggest disaster, and by the way, what the fuck does mysticism have anything to do with either Detroit or economics? You're just trolling now, grow the fuck up. You sure have some big chip on your shoulder yo, you are more preoccupied with religion then even I am preoccupied with accusations of racism ;)

dead_battery, !@#$%!, y'all do realize than increasingly over the past months the comments, insights, and opinions y'all have been posting have me strongly suspecting y'all switched sides!

 

talking bout 401K's and the lies they breed.

do you have control of asset allocation in your 401K? you gotta talk to your HR department.

I mentioned a couple of non-high risk savings. annuities, CD's, government bonds, etc.

the higher the potential reward the higher the risk, as always. However, a fluctuation of 20 grand in the 401K of someone who invests 15% of a 6 figure salary is a lot different than the same fluctuation of someone who earns $35,000/year and can only afford to put in $50 a paycheck.

you have vague control. The investment house any business sets up the 401K congame with tells you what 3-6 different groups of investments you can enter into. 401K's do not allow for individual choice about individual stocks. It is about funds, and those are controlled by individuals who you have no contact with, and who could be as crooked as Madoff or any of his ilk.

lol i love being self-employed---- no paternalistic entity controls my money

but if you study up a bit, you can figure out what funds are good for you.

also, i gotta tell you, the biggest fish in the investment pond aren't "maddoff" but INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS-- basically, your representatives.

also you don't have to save just what the suckas say. you could open a roth IRA on your own or just buy gold and bury it in a pot in your backyard. really there are many ways to save. some people buy houses and rent them for profit-- there is a risk there as well (deadbeat tenants, etc). other people buy dividend stocks and build up an income stream. the choice is yours in the end.

you know, i've realized that the pointlessness of discussing anything with you is that you're not a thinker, but a believer. in other words, since you're a religious zealot in all things, one is with you or against you but never in dialogue with you. tl;dr; once a baptist, always a baptist.

I've realized you're not a thinker either, but a windbag fueled with empty hubris and a snug "more intellectual than thou" attitude which is crassly self-defeating. Me? I'm just an opinionated smart-ass, but I don't dance with the Devils like you do..




You're cute and all but seriously, sometimes you say some naive things. You honestly think your money is yours?? Lets ask Jesus about this one

"Hand me a dollar. Whose face and inscription does it bear? Caesar. So give what's Caesar to Caesar.." ;) ;) ;)

who has time for this shit!

or maybe we're ahead of the curve and wont tow the party line to whatever you or anyone else thinks the left or right is supposed to be?

personally, im more conservative than true conservatism because i dont even see any way to ameliorate the pitiless realities that it was originally based on grappling with. most of their strategies failed. i can at least say that i've grappled with the other sides arguments, rather than refusing to touch the parchments the enemy drips their poison ink on. to be honest, most of what i found there was a facile, myopic and flawed as much of what the left puts out.

anyway, you've produced same list of responses you trot out everytime you dont like what i post - what the fuck does religion have to do with it - you're trolling now - you're so preoccupied with religion - another way of saying dont go there because its too sensitive for me.

the fact is that all the crap you post here and talk about has about as much liberatory potential as my own trolliest of troll posts.

sorry - the rich will not eat themselves - they will be eating YOU as its your broke ass body being harvested as a junkie rat to move coins around and keep the capital flowing. sorry, but there is NO pure position outside the system anymore. its not the 1990's anywhere but in your head, there is no outside, no ironic distance you can affect to escape. SORRY. thats the way things are. some of us want to try and move on and keep one step ahead of reality rather than just recycling the dust from our navels over and over again with nice jpegs and quotes to make it more platable. i searched the city for people at least interested in discussing revolutionary politics ideals: typical response: "lol fuck that commie shit coming insurrection lol sounds like a bad star trek movie lol". and heroically ended up homeless, but of course if i'd only held on i could have gotten coffee and a blanket from some christians who would have surely gone to the capital with me and stormed the bastille. yeah fucking right! you selfish assholes are as bad as everyone else.

keep going with your soup kitchens and outreach work - seriously - do - but at best you are bandaging up the wounds inflicted by the system and thats why you are tolerated. the churches around here dont even do that shit, they just scam their paritioners - this is the man who will help you with your finances, yes, he'll rip you off but if you happen to realize it and complain well goodbye! the church gets a nice cut out of it of course.

and those RICH FUCKS are also the ones financing new medical research and drug cures and tech and farming methods etc. etc. too unpure for you? too instrumental and revealing of a harsh indifferent universe were rasta shit won't save anyone? welcome to hell - some of us would still rather make the bed than joining in the 'lets use the entertainment industry to glorify our little online (non) brand identities FOREVER.

and frankly as obsolete as you obviously are, its not likely you will change because you've become as conservative and stuck in your ways as most people do as adults.

Wait, I'm sorry dead_battery, is this better?

i am seriously done with sitting around waiting for neo liberalism to go. its not going anywhere but its taking us all down anyway. i'd rather go THROUGH it than end up mewing for pity like another 'gloriously' romantic failure.

maybe this superstitious bullsit you're promoting that "DONT TOUCH THE RICH MAN COIN COS IT GON CORRUPT YALL" is precisely the problem.

if im going to be a broken, twitchy zombie i'd rather be one who can at least rely on the security of knowing what the money is doing and that its not just waiting to run out again. nothing good can come from constant instability and precarity. in the end you will end up selling your shit as your body forces you to stop dreaming and go get it some carbs. which cost money. i man not gonna answer your prayers with tangible edible goods. i opened the doors of perception and all i found on the other side was a joint. the gutter might give you the best view of the stars but its not for me, thanks.



i bought this:



and then found an automated software programme reading it on a youtube video. unspeakable irony in that.

yo - lets stop with the same list of complaints so that we can have threads that dont devole into trolling and so i dont have to write tldr after tldr in response

also - the bible says that LOVE of money is the root of all evil, not money. it says money is for protection. jesus lived as he did so we dont have to. isnt that the point?

all those schools and hospitals and non maurijuana or dreadlock based shit that people actually need come from MONEY. all the people that keep the community together require at least some MONEY. glorification of the righteousness of poverty is a very middle class affectation.

also, he's white

oh what the hell - more trolling - i think the "spirit" suchfriends thinks the poor need in lieu of finance is actually his own farts and bong smoke. pungent wafting plumes of circular logic and collection plates! i and i survive on your donations folks, so lets keep this drum circle going for jesus etc. etc. etfuckingcetra

this classy bitch did some great things, some evil things and was fucking batshit half the time but she was infinitely more interesting, sexy and important than any white rasta, at least since the slits and poly styrene. i like some levellers songs.

what answers though? you man dont give i man any answer to anything man.

i laughed for over 30 seconds

thanks


this was funny too because of the tremendous lack of self-awareness. but also sad.

!@#$%!, haven't you realized that over the past 10 years, essentially we've just been engaged in some kind of epic, Dragon Ball Z esque troll battle?





As to ni'k, we've just been fucking with each other like dudes who more or less get along yet don't get along on the same sports team. When we're wining games, its all high-fives and butt-taps, but when the other team is up, its all empty accusations and angry fits ;)

To you both I dedicate this song, Feels Blind

it's all about the ego with you isn't it?

and you still havent gone super saiyan

Actually, quite the opposite. Interesting that you'd go there though ;)

as soon as someone soothes my raging narcissism i switch from trolling against them to subtly tag trolling with them

That is fine. Me and AmerikkkanGod have had similar moments of mutually affirming trolling. Its what the internet is for!

theres a spanish saying that only god and imbeciles never change.

you're so desperately entrenched in your stale ideas, i'm guessing it's a god complex (or son-of-god. or his very own prophet.)

Haha. !@#$%!, what part of epic-trolling battle didn't you understand?

religion is for suckers

Sometimes. Others? Its the very depth and meaning of life. I always find it interesting how relatively intelligent people like yourself entirely dismiss 5,000 years of collective human wisdom, insight, and deep psychological insights as somehow invaluable. That is not as intelligent as you really are !@#$%!, and that's not trolling, that is my serious lamentation. ni'k? He lives in Ireland, religion has a bad rap there, I get that. You? Meh. You're just living out your rebellious "I hate church because I'm 14" vibe only bolstering it with the same empty pseudo-intellectualism as Dawkins. God could be a figment of our imaginations, sure, but how does that negate the wisdom of religious teachings and literature about the human mind, feelings, and behavior? I digress, this has little if anything to with Detroit, and further I'm not trolling you so I should get back to it..




Besides, I think you're friends are waiting outside for you ;)

tribalism, superstition, and imbecility

For an intelligent man, I see you've never read Saint John Chryostom, Saint Ambrose, or even the Buddhavacana before.. That's a shame but the wisdom and insights are far from your scathing condemnations of them, but your knee-jerk rejection of them surely is indeed tribal, superstitious, and primitive impulse ;)

yeah because you know, the Enlightenment produced such marvelous, safe, and enlivening inventions which bring so much joy, peace, and happiness to our lives ;)

suchfriends this thread needs to stop and become solely about you and the absolute conservatism behind everything you say and do here.

because you mostly recycle the same single post with the same set of points, that i could list very easily.

these little bits of wisdom are more like literature. they can help aggrandize you and make you appear very cool but they do very little for anyone else.

then its back to the joke jpegs and the winks.

you reduce everything to your own viewpoint. there is MORE TO IT than religion having a bad rap in ireland. its catholicism that has a bad rap, im not catholic. im surrounded by fundies and evangelicals who believe god sent an earthquake to new zealand in punishment for its parliaments legislation of gay marriage (i have links for this if you dont believe me).

but its more than my own biases. its the recognition that as literature the bible is above most else but its no more than that. most of it reads like a desperate manual of advice and prayer out of a horrendous dark age of slavery, criminality, primitivism and fear.

you have been utterly dazed by the advances of our times and retreated into an oscillation between fundamentalism and consumerist kitsch. most people just chose the former or the latter mixed with heavy doses of secular liberalism. you are reacting (badly) to the meaningless, indifferent world that so obviously exists.

people like you and me and probably many others have these reactions because we're the LOSERS of the game. we flee back into these retreats - and they might give us some temporary relief, but ultimately they hold us back.

and there is SERIOUS cognitive closure going on with you. you have clamped down on a set of beliefs and refuse to see anything else. we're all hostile to uncertainty but the answer is not just settle for the comfort of idiocy.

you want to dazzle everyone with this stuff, fine, we're all vain. but stop pretending its the single heuristic you can use to see everything else clearly. its not.