Poor America

[Seshmeister]

A lot of people talking about this doc here this week...

[conmee]

Sesh,

Las Vegas is particularly bad, in part because so many unskilled and uneducated laborers flocked here during the good
times. It wasn't uncommon for folks without high school diplomas to make $100k a year. Vegas was an anomaly in that it offered a very good lifestyle to those folks who would be far less employable and certainly far less compensated than anywhere else in the U.S.

In the six months I've been back in Las Vegas, I am panhandled regularly. At fast food restaurants (some even come right to your table while you eat), outside casinos, outisde malls and shopping. Everywhere you can see people just milling around on street corners, huge commercial real estate and office space empty. Not just tiny strip malls, but large 80,000 sq ft spaces empty with graffiti all over the walls and windows.

I always keep a few dollars for the occasional straggler. I've bought three meals this month for homeless people basically just camped out in front of McDonalds. Thank god for dollar menu items baby!!!

The storm drain life is dangerous. Flash floods occur without warning in spring and summer, and there are a series of natural flood plains/channels that have been rerouted using the storm drains. When it floods the water gets very deep 10ft or more and is quite rapid, often washing away cars, causing sink holes. Quite dangerous.

But this documentary didn't even go to the really bad parts of town. Where it's predominantly black and constant drugs and violence. Also just up the street from the welfare offices and homeless shelters, there are huge tracts of desert with tent cities. When I was a kid growing up in Vegas, there was maybe 200-300k residents in the entire county. Now over 2M. Never had tent cities before. I'll try to take some photos but driving the Benz through that part of town makes me look like a dealer, pimp to the police and a car jacking prospect to locals. Maybe I'll roll the dice so to speak to bring you all the real deal from the streets of Vegas!

More to come.

Icon~

[Seshmeister]

Every country has junkies and drunks at the bottom, I think what they were trying to show working or until recently working people and what happens when you have no proper safety net.

You've done some travelling and seen what it's like in countries with no welfare. Part of the reason to pay for it through taxes is for selfish reasons so you don't have people fucking hassling you all the time for money or feeling you can't walk down the street because someone will kill you to feed their family.

[conmee]

I agree, it's kind of like a "Safety and Stability" tax so the folks with Benz's, at country clubs, and in penthouses don't have to worry about Occupy Protests and uprisings. I'm all for keeping as much of my filthy hard won lucre as possible, but also keep the restless and idle from getting out of control.

Part of the problem with govt in this country is all the influence-peddling and waste. I think we have a revenue AND spending problem. A lot of waste and useless agency funding could easily be redirected to safety net programs if not for the fact that govt has become so big and polarized.

Back to Vegas. Not all, but many of these folks profiled were living or following a dream in Vegas that was not sustainable. There aren't many places in the world that two uneducated adults with four children could afford a couple new cars and a three bedroom home with hot tub. Americans tend to live beyond their means as it is, and when things crash, the so-called American dream crashes like a house of cards. Unless you work hard and own your own business, it's just not realistic anymore to expect a particularly high standard of living without marketable education or specific skills. I have English degrees for chrissake and if not for all my tech Kung Fu and business school, I'd be living in a ditch.

Sure folks living in a Vegas motel still have a better quality of life than the folks living in corrugated metal and wood shacks that I witnessed in Sao Paolo, but seriously, no one should be stuck living in a motel or drain ditch in this country.

The solution is streamlined govt and simplified/fair tax code, everybody needs to contribute a little to the pot, waste and lobbying needs to be significantly reduced, and a message that we're all in it together as opposed to rich v poor v middle class. Everyone feels put upon and resentful. Not sure things will get better before they get worse.

Icon~

[Nickdfresh]

Every country has junkies and drunks at the bottom, I think what they were trying to show working or until recently working people and what happens when you have no proper safety net.

You've done some travelling and seen what it's like in countries with no welfare. Part of the reason to pay for it through taxes is for selfish reasons so you don't have people fucking hassling you all the time for money or feeling you can't walk down the street because someone will kill you to feed their family.

And that things like welfare, and unemployment, are actually one of the most direct infusions of cash into the economy, much more so than tax breaks for the wealthy like Icon.


I'll try to take some photos but driving the Benz through that part of town makes me look like a dealer, pimp...

And? :)

[Nitro Express]

There are two kinds of welfare. Welfare for the poor and welfare for the rich. The politicians seem to like both. You can bus the poor welfare recipients to the polls and buy them off with food and ass for the favor. Then you take the bribes from the rich and return tax breaks and bailouts for the favor. So both sides of the spectrum are getting rewarded. Who's getting screwed are the middle class. 40% of the population in the US pay no income tax. That's almost a joke as well because they just print the money anyways. I guess they need the taxes to help create the illusion the money is actually worth something.

There really are two modern economies in this modern age. The paper economy and the real economy. The paper economy is the central bank producing money and distributing it. Then you have the real economy which is actually making things and selling them.

In the paper economy a few people become very rich moving paper around. Unless you move paper around or are a politician on the take, the other people don't have jobs and have to get on welfare to get some paper.

The real economy actually creates jobs. Lots of them. You can start off as a line worker, go to school, get a management job and make more money. It used to work that way once upon a time. It really cuts the need for welfare. The rich usually don't make as much money as they do in the paper economy and it's more work but it's real and it creates a more productive society with a work ethic.

What went wrong in America is the corporate interests outsourced the real economy because it was more profitable to print paper, exchange paper and putting the people on welfare is no big deal. Once they get used to it they never want to get off of it and they will keep voting in the same corrupt politicians that promise never to take the welfare away. A great way to control the population.

[Nitro Express]

No great nation ever was built on welfare. When you start to see a lot of welfare it's a sign that things are on the downside. If the country has particularly good welfare, nobody wants to work. It makes them lazy. It also keeps them from rioting when the fat cats make their returns moving money around. It's really a form of public pacification more than anything.

[conmee]

Hey now, I am not WEALTHY™©®.... I have a high INCOME™©® but very little WEALTH™©®... no DEED free and clear to the house, no title to the Benz, and a shitload of STUDENT LOANS (STILL)™©®, and I'm hardly wealthy. Which brings the topic of what should be taxed and how we define "rich." I'm gonna go socialist for a minute and argue (despite knowing the arguments against) that INCOME from passive/investment activity should be taxed MORE than income from labor. Why? Because to me, if you are just letting your MONEY MAKE MONEY™©® for you, with little effort other than having money to invest and connections and the like, any money from that activity is gravy. Money earned by the sweat of one's brow, whether digging ditches, washing cars, or rebuilding servers, seems that labor should get a break on the tax side. My rule: tax rate should be inversely proportional to the level of actual labor necessary to generate the income. You work your ass off for a buck, that buck should be taxed at a lower rate than the buck I just made on Apple's stock price jump. Now I may change my mind when my income shifts from 40+ hours a week to day trading, but until then...

That is all.

Icon™©®

[Nitro Express]

The average American doesn't realize the United States Federal Government is a corporation and a stand alone entity. That is why it's in a district instead of a state. The states are separate. If the federal government gets into debt, the citizens are not personally liable for that debt. If a corporation you own stock in goes bankrupt, you as a stock holder are not liable for it's debts.

Another thing that needs to be pointed out here is the biggest creditor to the Corporation of the United States of America is the Federal Reserve Bank which one of the owners of that bank is Goldman Sachs. If you look at all the corporations in the world many of them are owned by financial institutions like Goldman Sachs. So what happened is they made 100 times leverage legal and the big banks played high roller on the derivatives. Sometimes they won big and other times they lost big. We are talking trillions of dollars of debt being traded here. To cover their losses the Fed printed up their own bailout and they had to stick the American tax payer with some of it to make it look legitimate.

It's not reality. Just because a bunch of political hacks decide to say a lead balloon can fly doesn't mean nature is going to change the laws of physics to satisfy the law.

When you have only around $70 Trillion of real assets in the world you can't have a financial system that trades many times that and have it mathmaticaly legitimate. It's like going into a bank with a gum wrapper and telling the teller you want $100 in trade for it. There's no integrity or reality in the system.

The real joke is these bankers actually think we are going to pay it.

Most people just don't understand the problem. Europe and North America are still ruled by the people who made this mess but outside of the G5 nations, they are already deciding what the future world financial system will be. China just figures they will wait the Euro and the Dollar out because they make real stuff and have a real economy.

It will be interesting. The only card the banks have left to play is start a war with Iran as a red herring and hope they can just take things over by force. I don't think they have enough muscle to do it. Talk about some crazy shit. The assholes actually are willing to risk World War III to distract from their banking shenanigans.

It's not that the United States really is the biggest debtor nation, it's more like it's the nation that has had the most loot stolen from it. What they really stole was the reputation of the money and used the military for their own selfish purposes. Amazing what you can do with some bribes and whores.

[Seshmeister]

Making this same post again and again and again day after day 100s of times no matter what the content of the thread has crossed the line from OCD now into a more serious mental illness.

You should see someone about that.

[Nitro Express]

Paying fraudulent banking debt is a mental illness. It's the oldest trick in the banking world. It's so easy in the digital world. Ever notice the financial institutions seemed to want to get you into debt? When the money costs them nothing debt becomes an asset. Then when you default they show up and want real goods. 100% profit minus paying some overhead. Then you get the public to blame some publicly known rich people who probably didn't have anything to do with it. The politicians are expendable too once the money is stolen.

All this talk about welfare and political parties and who to blame is small talk at this point. You have to fix the financial system before anything can happen and when you are dealing with central bank fraud at the highest levels, it's an international mess to sort out. They should be sweeping back in using off shore accounts to buy us up cheap soon enough unless of course someone has frozen their accounts. It's going to be an interesting summer.

When the IMF chairman is in Brazil begging for money, something has changed.

The reason Obama is spending money hand over fist is that's been the plan. Get the US in even more debt so the banks can steal real assets later. It's nothing more than a setup but like all things, they have gotten so greedy the scam is too obvious. It's going to be fun watching these fools go crazy trying to keep their game going. The funny thing is the fool just signed a law that allows the military to arrest and hold indefinately without a trial. That applies to politicians as well and they aren't exactly winning a popularity contest with the military these days. LOL! They could have just signed their own demise into law. Enjoy the freak show!

Even if I had Joey Ramone levels of OCD I would be sane in this crazy world full of fruitcakes.

[ELVIS]

We are talking trillions of dollars of debt being traded here. To cover their losses the Fed printed up their own bailout and they had to stick the American tax payer with some of it to make it look legitimate.



The plan all along has been to stick the losses and the bailouts on the taxpayer...with intrest...

The game is rigged and it's gonna come to an end one way or another...

Just look at Grece...


:elvis:

[binnie]

That would be 'Greece'

[ELVIS]

I know how to spell greeeeeeeece...

My keyboard doesn't......

[Seshmeister]

No great nation ever was built on welfare. When you start to see a lot of welfare it's a sign that things are on the downside. If the country has particularly good welfare, nobody wants to work. It makes them lazy. It also keeps them from rioting when the fat cats make their returns moving money around. It's really a form of public pacification more than anything.

The countries with the best welfare systems in the world are in Scandinavia and they seem to do pretty well and always top the charts for population happiness, low crime and so on. If you don't have a bunch of pointless crooks at the top eating all the pie then there is enough pie for everyone.

[Seshmeister]

I know how to spell greeeeeeeece...

My keyboard doesn't......

I think your keyboard expects to be fingered properly, it's a useful skill...

[ELVIS]

So does the SM...:biggrin:

[FORD]

What I didn't like about this documentary is that they seem to put all the blame on Obama, and act as though the entire country went to shit in just the last three years. Rather than the policies of the BCE systematically tearing down the country over three decades.

Even so, it's more coverage than you would get from ABC, CBS, CNN, or FAUX.

And that douchebag from the "Heritage Foundation" needs to have his fucking face punched in.

[Seshmeister]

It's just human nature, whoever gets caught holding the ball is 'it'.

Also most people seem to think the president runs everything.

[ELVIS]

What I didn't like about this documentary is that they seem to put all the blame on Obama

Oh, that's right, Obama turned the ship around with "hope and change."


NOT


:elvis:

[Nickdfresh]

There are two kinds of welfare. Welfare for the poor and welfare for the rich.....

The welfare for the poor is trillion$ cheaper, vastly more benevolent, and has a greater net positive impact on the economy...

[Nickdfresh]

Hey now, I am not WEALTHY™©®.... I have a high INCOME™©® but very little WEALTH™©®... no DEED free and clear to the house, no title to the Benz, and a shitload of STUDENT LOANS (STILL)™©®, and I'm hardly wealthy. Which brings the topic of what should be taxed and how we define "rich." I'm gonna go socialist for a minute and argue (despite knowing the arguments against) that INCOME from passive/investment activity should be taxed MORE than income from labor. Why? Because to me, if you are just letting your MONEY MAKE MONEY™©® for you, with little effort other than having money to invest and connections and the like, any money from that activity is gravy. Money earned by the sweat of one's brow, whether digging ditches, washing cars, or rebuilding servers, seems that labor should get a break on the tax side. My rule: tax rate should be inversely proportional to the level of actual labor necessary to generate the income. You work your ass off for a buck, that buck should be taxed at a lower rate than the buck I just made on Apple's stock price jump. Now I may change my mind when my income shifts from 40+ hours a week to day trading, but until then...

That is all.

Icon™©®

Hardly a socialist argument when I read The Economist making the same argument, especially in relation to Mittens...

[Nickdfresh]

Making this same post again and again and again day after day 100s of times no matter what the content of the thread has crossed the line from OCD now into a more serious mental illness.

You should see someone about that.

I don't even read NyQuil Express anymore...

[Seshmeister]

The post was fine, but why twice a day for 2 years?

Mental.

[knuckleboner]

What I didn't like about this documentary is that they seem to put all the blame on Obama, and act as though the entire country went to shit in just the last three years. Rather than the policies of the BCE systematically tearing down the country over three decades.

Even so, it's more coverage than you would get from ABC, CBS, CNN, or FAUX.

And that douchebag from the "Heritage Foundation" needs to have his fucking face punched in.

dude, you expected any different from the heritage foundation? they're not a think tank, they're a hyper-conservative spin factory.

[knuckleboner]

Oh, that's right, Obama turned the ship around with "hope and change."


NOT


:elvis:

sorry, are you saying the nation hasnt' turned around since he became president?

you're saying manufacturing hasn't started growing for the first time in a decade? 700,000 a month job losses haven't turned into 100,000+ a month job gains? the stock market hasn't increased more than 50%? consumer and business sentiment hasn't improved?

now, if you're wondering if the economy has fully recovered from the worst recession in 80 years, then the answer's no, it hasn't. not yet. of course, it's kind of hard to recover overnight when half the government's only willing to support spending cuts and tax cuts for the rich.

[Nickdfresh]

Don't expect dummies like Elvis' Harecutt to actually support their cliches with actual facts....

But we have turned, the Dow is at nearly 13,000: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204880404577228740704517980.html

[FORD]

dude, you expected any different from the heritage foundation? they're not a think tank, they're a hyper-conservative spin factory.

No, I know exactly what to expect from them. I just didn't think the BBC would take them seriously enough to give that asshole so much air time. I guess the Tories must have taken over the network since Cameron moved into 10 Downing St?

[ELVIS]

sorry, are you saying the nation hasnt' turned around since he became president?

Yes...

you're saying manufacturing hasn't started growing for the first time in a decade? 700,000 a month job losses haven't turned into 100,000+ a month job gains? the stock market hasn't increased more than 50%? consumer and business sentiment hasn't improved?

No...

The economy picked up around the holidays, as it always does...

There is no sustained growth or increase...

now, if you're wondering if the economy has fully recovered from the worst recession in 80 years, then the answer's no, it hasn't. not yet. of course, it's kind of hard to recover overnight when half the government's only willing to support spending cuts and tax cuts for the rich.

Manipulating the economy with bailouts and looking for who to raise taxes on next isn't the answer...






:elvis:

[FORD]

Manipulating the economy with bailouts and looking for who to raise taxes on next isn't the answer...

Depends on what you mean by "bailouts".

When Chimpy bailed out the criminal Wall Street banks, due to the housing bubble caused by 30 years of BCE policies, he obviously made things worse. The correct response there - if you were going to spend money at all - would be to give it directly to the people. Let them pay off their mortgages, and then if some of that money made it back to the criminal banks and allowed them to stay in business, so be it. If not, no great loss to the world. (Seriously, has the world at all suffered since Lehman Brothers ceased to exist??)

The bailouts of GM and Chrysler were entirely different. The auto industry is one of the few examples still in existence of stuff actually being made in America. Millions of jobs were at stake, and not just in the car factories themselves. Anybody (I'm looking at you, polygamist dog abuser) who thinks it would have been a good idea to let them die really needs to have their head surgically removed from their ass.

And yes, taxes on the rich need to return to reality-based levels. I would prefer they went back to where Eisenhower had them. He was able to build the Interstate highway system and all those goddamn missiles to keep us safe from the big bad Commies, because the rich were paying their fair share.

At the very least, they need to go back to 1980 levels. And when we can afford huge infrastructure projects (like Ike did, and like FDR did) millions of jobs will be created in the process. And those millions of newly employed people will then be spending their money and paying taxes.

See how goddamn easy that is?

[knuckleboner]

The economy picked up around the holidays, as it always does...

There is no sustained growth or increase...


unless the holiday is 2 years long, then no, you're 100% wrong. the economy, itself has been growing for each of the past 10 quarters. that is a fact. the private sector has created jobs in each of the past 23 months. fact. your seasonal hires would've been in november and december, and yet january - after the holidays - was the biggest month for job growth in 4 years.

the economy has turned the corner, without question. the problem for partisan hacks, of course, is that it doesn't fit their pre-existing narrative. because that means that either: 1) obama is helping, or at the very least 2) the improving economy shows he's not really hurting it that badly. the hacks can't admit that, so they simply ignore the improving economy. because reality isn't as important as political spin.




Manipulating the economy with bailouts and looking for who to raise taxes on next isn't the answer...
:

the stimulus, recovery act was mostly tax cuts and contracts. not exactly "bailouts." but, if you've still got a bank account that works, you probably ought to thank george bush for his bailouts.