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Which of the following "Dilbert" characters would your co-workers say best resembles you?
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To be a kind of moral Unix, he touched the hem of Nature's shift.
-- Shelley
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday May 13 2020, @11:46AM (8 children)
And over the exact same span, how rapidly has everyone's standard of living increased? And don't give me the standard "it's so much worse", nostalgic, idiotic nonsense. Think about what life was actually like for poor folks when you were a kid and compare it to now. See, huge currency gains equate to one of two things for every individual (inheritance aside as it's lateral or downward movement of capital, almost never upward): massive contributions to society by them or a deft hand at gambling. They either made their money by providing what people want or by gambling in the markets. Neither of those are harmful to anyone in society in any way and neither are morally or ethically bad.
No, there's not. You think there is only because, not wanting and refusing to take said responsibility, you do not understand that responsibility's value. For the most part, people get paid what the folks hiring them think they're worth. Now the ones doing the hiring may be right or they may be wrong but that's irrelevant since they're using their best judgment and you can't expect more. Yes, there are exceptions. No, the exceptions are not the norm and aren't even really statistically relevant.
Dude, you're buying the class warfare envy line the Dems are selling when you're absolutely smart enough that you should be able to see it for the idiotic, self-serving, morally repugnant nonsense that it is. Someone having more than you, even millions of times more, does not make your life any worse. It does not in any way entitle you to any of what they have. And it does not make them in any way morally incorrect. They did not step on your neck to get their wealth. They sold you goods and service you were willing, often even eager, to pay for to improve your life in some way. And they contributed many jobs and much wealth flow back into the economy to do so.
Lastly, fuck, man, do you think only poor people have to take risks if they want rewards? Aside from sticking your money in a bank and hoping the interest rate outpaces inflation (it often does not and you lose wealth by doing that), there are no safe ways to make more money. What folks are lacking is not opportunity or potential, it's education in how to life. Little things like "never spend more on a car than on your house", "acquire a skill that has a history of always being in respectable demand", and "keep a bare minimum of three months living expenses saved back for emergencies no matter how much you have to tighten your belt until you've done so". Parents who don't know this shit can't teach it, so we need to be teaching this shit from some other angle. Could be in public schools, could be through for-profit ventures (necessarily low cost), or could be outright charitable endeavors.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Thursday May 14 2020, @09:02PM (2 children)
When I was growing up, most families only needed one paycheck. Today, most families require two paychecks.
That doesn't sound like a better standard of living.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 15 2020, @11:25AM (1 child)
You're really going to ignore the undeniable fact of all the quality of life advancements that've become available even to the poorest folks over the past 50 years? Dude, we're done here if you're going to be that disingenuous.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday May 28 2020, @12:15AM
There are certainly improvements in technology, and some can reasonably be associated with quality of life. There's no denying that, I wouldn't try.
But at what cost do those things come? Quality of life isn't about having the best things, even the best medicine. It's more important in quality of life terms to have time for your family than to have any of those things.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 17 2020, @04:14AM (4 children)
So, here I think our difference in life experience is why we're never going to agree on this point.
You may see small business owners as highly responsible heroes worthy of their position... I might begin to agree with that point, although I've known far too many heartless greedy assholes who focus on the power of their position far more than the responsibility aspects - quick to hire at bottom dollar and bottom benefits - quick to fire with zero notice for zero cause on the part of the employee. If I'm not mistaken "employment at will" wasn't a thing until the 1990s, that's a major step back in quality of life and security for everybody who works under it.
What I have experienced more of are petulant trust fund babies at the top of their businesses, abusing and neglecting their responsibilities - literally cocaine addicted landlords who show up once every couple of years to check on their building managers, the list is long and twisted, but these are the people I have seen at the tops of many dung heaps - maybe they have responsibility and they're abusing it, but it's not stopping them from getting paid.
I do know plenty of smaller landlords and other people who do take responsibility and get money for it - they're not all bad or evil and the position of being "in charge" doesn't automatically corrupt, my first CEO was a genuinely good guy - flawed like we all are - and Jewish so we were never paid more than market rate, but he did try to keep us around market rate, and would fix it when we reminded him we were falling behind. So, so many others are just power tripping and taking advantage of their position for personal gain with their only regard for their employees seemingly being to disable their ex-employees from suing them.
Has "standard of living" really gone up for the poor? What kind of debt did kids graduate from college with in the 1960s? Almost uniformly zero. What kind of work did these kids have to do if they needed to work their way through school paying their own way? Well, for starters, that was an actual physical possibility back then - now you're lucky to get a 4 year degree on your even with loans. What kinds of jobs waited for them when they got out with a degree? Proportionally more and better than today where kids go back home and live in the basement for years - it's not entirely because "kids these days are just lazier" - although that might be part of it - there genuinely is less opportunity, where it took me and my parents a few weeks to months to find a decent job in our chosen fields that time is much longer on average now, and many more people are forced into employment "downmarket" from their skillsets. Yeah, should have studied a more valuable skill, right? Hard to do when the market flip-flops faster than you can get a degree.
All good common sense, and I think it all still applies, but... big but here... it's not Dems peddling brainwashing, Dems are a big part of the problem, there really is a difference in the cost/opportunity landscape out there and nobody is doing anything real about turning around the changes in the world to bring costs down and opportunities up.
Personally, I think the whole system is too damn corrupt to fix it with little pork projects here and there, special laws for special interests, etc. A structural change, like a flat tax where everybody from the short order cook to Warren Buffet pays the same percentage of income in income tax, plus UBI to bring up the bottom to a "living wage" - that could change things for the better. Throw out minimum wage, throw out most of the social security crap - UBI - Universal Basic Income for every citizen. Want to live and work in the country as a non-citizen, fine - but until you become a citizen: no UBI for you. Would solve the whole immigration/wall thing real quick. It could change the landscape for the better for most people, except those who get off on having people serve them because they're afraid they (or their children) will starve if they don't.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 17 2020, @12:01PM
I see them as people, the same as everyone else. Except that they contribute far more to society than if the same person were shoveling shit or slinging burgers.
No, you haven't. They just chap your ass to an absurd degree, so you think you have. Trust fund babies are a lower percentage of the population than transsexuals.
Dude, you just took the position that not being able to go to college at all was better than being able to go to college by assuming idiotic levels of debt. That's a stupidass position. Rethink it.
And college is an expensive luxury. It has never been a necessity. The idea that it is was created by the boomers inadvertently teaching their kids that there was something terrible about working for a living. I've been both blue and white collar and I'll tell you straight: your life will be happier with a blue collar than a white one if you put the same amount of effort into learning a trade that you would have learning shit at college.
But in selecting college as your standard, you've neglected computers (including the one you carry around in your pocket), air conditioning, multiple televisions, game systems, the Internet, access to healthcare worlds beyond what we had in the 60s, being able to finish school at all without having to drop out and take a job, and countless other things that even most of the poorest households take for granted nowadays. Take the rose-colored glasses off and remember how that shit really was.
That would work for approximately one election cycle. The very next one the Dems would be trying to add extra handouts on to buy votes. Having a party dedicated to making people think they can vote themselves someone else's money and that it's perfectly okay to do so is insanity of the highest order and will destroy the nation. That's not hyperbole.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2020, @02:56PM (2 children)
Yes the actual reality is WAY worse than you think, you have watch a video to grok it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @11:43PM
Good luck getting Buzzy to actually view that, and if he does he'll still have some Libertarian excuse for it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @08:55AM
I'm a pretty conservative and free market guy. I was off the first two by favoring the rich more than the stated amount. But even so, I way underestimated the third one.