Thread: Who is the enemy?

Working your entire life at a business only to be laid off just before retirement is risk. Working for an employer that doesn't provide health insurance is risk.

everything we do in this life is a risk , there are no guarantees , we are not entitled to anything , and we should make provision for our own future and not rely on employers or governments to do it for us.

if we think otherwise then we are our own worst enemies.

nobody really needs 42 inch plasma tv sets , 1000 watt cinema surround sound in our living rooms , a set of 2000 pound alloy wheels on a car that already comes with alloy wheels as standard , or new silicone tits and chins at 45 years old but millions of people willingly , happily , joyfully and boastfully will pay for these things yet complain at having to put money away for healthcare or a decent education for their kids.

life is a matter of priorities.

we have been spoilt for the past 40 years and expect too much.

we have to take responsibility for ourselves.





most people get rich through a combination of hard work and good luck , many of them use their wealth to create employment to allow others to prosper too.

it smacks of envy when i hear of "the rich" being spoken of as if they are all uniformly undeserving of their fortune.

capitalism does work , it has always worked. unfortunately greed and a lack of willingness by governments to control the things it should be controlling ( the economy) has led to the sorry mess that exists at the moment.

but it will blow over , the fat will be trimmed , and in 3 or 4 years economies will have recovered.

but communism , or socialism ( as it exists in the uk) , no thanks.

Originally Posted by Norton

Originally Posted by taxexile

communism and socialism reward laziness , which is why those societies have always failed.

When practiced to the extreme, I agree. Capitalism when practiced to the extreme with exclusion of consideration for the welfare of a nations citizens is also an imperfect solution. Both the needs of the market and the needs of the people have to be considered if any governmental form is to survive and prosper.

Agree there. Finding the balance between quality of life for the population and providing incentives for business is the utopia we all seek.
Various nations try various degrees of the mix with various degrees of success.

The Egyptians built a wealthy and strong empire on the backs of slave labour, Romans did it too, and the Americans went down that road for a while as well. Cant deny it does work as far as financial wealth of an empire goes.

But civilization has moved on, or at least we like to think and hope it has.

The best system we have been able to come up with to find that balance between quality of life for the majority and exploitation of human resources is democracy. Its far from perfect and open to manipulation, but its the best we have, or will ever have.

Democracy tends to blend rampant capitalism and pure communism into a social system we now call socialism. The degree of swing from left to right tends to vary from country to country, but the underlying principle remains the same under a democratic system of government.

USA is further to the right than just about any other developed country. Places like Sweden are much further to the left.

Finding the balance that suits the population is whats important, and that can only happen in a democracy.

Personally, I think the Yank version of democratic socialism sucks. But it is their country so they can have it.

Life goes on. But one thing is certain. Life is a lot better for the vast majority of people under a democratic system of government.

The truth is simple. The problem is the corrupt greedy people. They work their way into everything. I guess you could label them as the devil if you like as they are against mankind. They feed off the dreams of others be they capitalists, communists, socialists, muslims, christians, ect. They control whatever they can. They aren't some organised group intent on controlling people and the world. They are just criminals intent on exploiting others even killing others for their own personal gain. Benbaa, Yes, they should be lined up against a wall. People should have lined them up long before this current crisis.

Before any laidoff worker decides to kill himself, I say go out an kill one of those who has taken your wealth and opportunity.

Originally Posted by Lynn

The real problem has always been too much fucking credit to people who can't really afford to buy large cost items, but they just keeps on buying because he/she thinks they need it when they actually just want it. .... Too much credit will always separate the men from the boys because in order to benefit from it you have to understand some economics and most people don't have a clue.

Aren't you missing something here? What about companies that extend credit to stupid, irresponsible people? In reality, both borrowers and lenders are at fault. The borrowers might be too stupid to understand economics but the lenders are too greedy and corrupt to care. That's why executives at AIG can go on company-paid golf junkets even after being public funds have been committed to their insolvent company. Pure capitalism works as designed if failure is allowed for everyone. Socialism works as designed if failure isn't allowed for anyone. But economic failure has been socialized for just the wealthy and the USA now has the worst of both worlds.

Originally Posted by benbaaa

Glad we agree on something. So why were all those CEOs rewarded with huge bonuses while their companies hurtled into the ground? How about we take all that money back, take their houses, take their money, throw 'em out on the streets, let 'em dig through dustbins for scraps of food? These bastards didn't risk any of their own assets. They took risks with other people's money, lost the lot, and still walked away with billions.

Makes one blood boil when those incompetant CEOs walk away with million dollar bonuses for running a company into the ground.

another example of this problem.

these same shopping malls who were allowed to monitor cash registers in the stores and take a cut of the gross takings.

kick the cnuts in the nads

THE Australian Greens have criticised the federal government's $4 billion program to cover the expiry of overseas loans for shopping centre and real estate developers.
Greens Leader Bob Brown said the money should be go into a different form of construction – public schools, hospitals, fast and efficient public transport and public housing.
"We believe the public money should be going into the public good, not into the big corporations who can look after themselves," said Senator Brown.
"This is a very serious discussion Australia has to have.
"The Rudd Government does not have the numbers in the senate to simply flick this legislation through.
"Just to get to the middle of OECD education spending Australia has to spend six billion dollars per annum more.
"We are way behind in educating young people, and yet this money is going across to the private sector to build shopping centres.
"There's something wrong there," Senator Brown said.

Rudy Giuliani: Wall Street bonuses big boost for New York City

Former mayor Rudy Giuliani urged President Obama and others to go slow on cracking down on Wall Street bonuses because they help boost New York City coffers.

"If you somehow take that bonus out of the economy, it really will create unemployment," the former two-term mayor said Friday. "It means less spending in restaurants, less spending in department stores, so everything has an impact."

Giuliani noted he gauged the city's budget by the size of Wall Street bonuses.

"Wall Street has $1 billion, $2 billion in bonuses, the city had a deficit," he said on CNN's "American Morning." "Wall Street has $15 billion to $20 billion, New York City had a $2 billion, $3 billion surplus, and it's because that money gets spent."

And Giuliani wants everyone to reconsider cracking down on the big bonuses.

No doubt the level of bonuses can be used as a gauge, but I doubt all, or even most of it for that matter gets spent in NY. Additionally the budget surplus is hardly due to the big bonuses.

Those bonus are indeed a problem,

unfortunately they are bound by law, and technically it's not the "employee" fault if they made a profit for their firm, but that the company as a whole lost money,

those bonus are merit based with benchmark, hardly given for free, unless you are on the board of directors of course or in management,

For years they have got bonuses for blowing up a bubble and they thought they deserved it since it was a hard job to blow.

Last year the bubble burst and now they want to have their bonuses since they really blew hard last year.

There's something very disturbing in that logic...

A couple of articals of interest (well at least to me):
Obama to announce limits on executive pay - U.S. business- msnbc.com

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration plans to mandate new executive pay limits on Wednesday for government-assisted financial institutions in a new get-tough approach to bankers and Wall Street.

"If the taxpayers are helping you, then you've got certain responsibilities to not be living high on the hog," President Barack Obama said in an interview Tuesday with "NBC Nightly News".

The president and members of Congress are weighing various proposals to restrict chief executives' compensation as one of the conditions of receiving help under the $700 billion financial bailout fund.

If they limit executive pay I wonder how long the limits will remain in place? Until they pay back what they get in aid?

Wells Fargo cancels Las Vegas trip - U.S. business- msnbc.com

WASHINGTON - Wells Fargo & Co. abruptly canceled Tuesday a pricey Las Vegas casino junket for employees after a torrent of criticism that it was misusing $25 billion in taxpayer bailout money.

The company initially defended the trip after The Associated Press reported it had booked 12 nights beginning Friday at the Wynn Las Vegas and the Encore Las Vegas. But within hours, investigators and lawmakers on Capitol Hill had scorned the bank, and the company canceled.

The conference is a Wells Fargo tradition. Previous all-expense-paid trips have included helicopter rides, wine tasting, horseback riding in Puerto Rico and a private Jimmy Buffett concert in the Bahamas for more than 1,000 of the company's top employees and guests.

Turn out the lights, the party's over.... well, for now at least.

benbaa

Well, at least you are consistently stupid.

But it looks like you are just following the majority here, just looking at the "crisis" in isolation will obviously give a distorted viewpoint.

"Capitalist" country that have had less protectionism have much higher standards of living than countries that have chosen other paths. Sure, China has had higher GDP growth i recent years, but still the vast majority of Chinese live in or near poverty as opposed to a small minority in Western Europe and the USA.

Blaming the government is easy, but we have had a democractic congress in the US for the last two years and the congress, not the president, controls the budget and spending. The government contributed to the problem by continuing to spend too much, Bush was bad about this but Obama seems worse.

History does not teach us that increased government regulations and spending led to prosperity. Communism fell for a reason, Africa remains poverty stricken for a reason, Asia has been experiencing growth for a reason.

But, too often political idealogy and hatred of politic opponents blinds us and we go off in the wrong direction.

Oh well, when this current type of economic policy once again fails we will eventually get back on a better path, but looks like that will be a few years off.

^Dont confuse Capitalism with Democracy. It works for the Commies too.
In fact, in its most extreme form, Capitalism amounts to nothing better than slavery. Just as Socialism can work quite well in a Democracy.

"China: Capitalism Doesn't Require Democracy"
China: Capitalism Doesn't Require Democracy

^
WTF? yes, China only started to prosper when moving away from socialism to capitalism. This move has resulted in over 300 million people being lifted out of extreme poverty, in other words, changing from socialism to capitalism in China was the greatest poverty reduction program the world has ever seen. No foreign aid (like in Africa), but an encouragement of foreign investment. But, as successful as China has been in recent years, the living standard of the average Chinese is far below that of the Average Thai, let alone the standard of living in western democracies. It is one thing to bring growth to a totally inefficient economy and it is another thing to move towards becoming a developed economy.

The concept of a dictatorship (outside of the oil rich countries of the Middle East) with a developed economy is still an unproven theory. And the concept of rapid economic growth and poverty reduction in a socialist economy also has no precedence.

So much depends on the time frame one is looking at. If one ignores the latest headlines and look at the trends of the economies of the last fifty years a very clear pattern has emerged. At the end of World War II, Latin American economies had double the per capita GDP as Asia, today it is reversed. Asia has (in general) opened up to foreign investment and moved away from government control and regulations while in Latin America has seen more protectionism and government interference in the economies.

Capitalistic economies do get out of whack at times, but they also have a self-correcting mechanism that has proven to work in the past.

Focusing only on the recent “failures” of the American and other economies is a very biased view. 95% of people living in China would gladly exchange their income, adjusted for purchasing power, with that of the average American.

anyway, Capitalism is dead, Socialism is our only future, there will be no choice soon, so it's not like we have to debate for hours which system is the best

^

100 years too late to be making that kind of statement gayfrenchiefly, socialism has been tried in many different forms and in many different contexts, it has failed each and every time. You say the same thing over and over and over and over again, yet there is NO evidence to support your dream of a socalistic utopia.

Sure, the world is on a leftist path right now, just like the UK and US were on in the 1970s, which of course resulted in huge hardships for people before both countries moved to the right starting in 1980 leading to 2 and a half decades of economic prosperity. Cycle repeating itself now.

Chances are Obama will be another Jimmy Carter, nice guy, but ineffective with a flawed economic philosophy who provides the example of how not to run a nation's economy.

Originally Posted by Accidental Ajarn

Cycle repeating itself now.

Yup, conservatives break it- progressives fix it. The cycle continues.

^

I think we can assume you have never done indepth research into econmic history.

Too bad, political alliance often clouds rational thoughts.

^Just experience.

Reagan years were stagnant because of trickle down economics. Papa Bush put us in a recession and a short war. Clinton led the U.S. through a great economic recovery that actually gave us a budget surplus for the first time in decades. Bush Jr. let the jackals on Wall St run things while he played Genaralissimo in the Middle East thereby running up the largest debt in history and and sending the nation into an economic meltdown.

So, 3 Republican administrations = bad times for anyone not super wealthy. 1 Democratic administration = one of the longest economic expansions in U.S. history.

That's my man on the street view.

Originally Posted by Accidental Ajarn

a repub congress was elected which followed fiscal conservatism

Yes, I like the conservatives platform regarding fiscal prudence, shame is they didn't follow it when they had absolute power (House, President, Judiciary). Bill Clinton was a moderate and made deals with the Republican congress, particularly on welfare reform. I hope Obama does the same.

Originally Posted by Accidental Ajarn

but if you forget the partisan politics you would probably see a little clearer picture

I'm not as partisan as you may think. You'd probably laugh if you knew whose political views I jive with the most--Jesse Ventura! He doesn't have the political savvy but he's got common sense. Saw an interview with him sometime last year and I couldn't help but to agree with just about everyhting he said.

Originally Posted by benbaaa

Originally Posted by taxexile

there is a new order now and we had better adjust to it and stop blaming those whom we were quite happy to believe yesterday. move on.

So you're happy to adjust and move on when people steal your money, are you? Jeeze, I wished I lived next door to you, I could retire...

. wot a strange ting to say tax.
a lot of the crimes were premediated.
they knew they were conning people
are you sayin that they have no responsibily ?
and this new order looks ancient to me.