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Featured Replies

...
Chalk up at least part of their good fortune to interest rates, said Stephen Colavito, chief market strategist at Lakeview Capital Partners, an Atlanta-based investment firm for high-net-worth investors. People can’t get much of a return on certificates of deposits and other passive investments, so they’ve pumped money into stocks and propped up the market overall, he said.
...
The real problem here isn't the 1%.  It's our unstable (insane) monetary system.  Central banks are distorting interest rates and QE is fueling this fire.


Bingo, this also doesn’t belong to any political party, but since this thread is in the politics forum we get the cheerleaders trying to blame it on the red team / blue team.

Why is our monetary system designed the way it is?

The 1%.

The problem is the 1%.

Why is our monetary system designed the way it is?
The 1%.
The problem is the 1%.

Also the 99% for allowing it to happen for decades and completely missing it.
51 minutes ago, Hank Scorpio said:

The seed man is the personification of the Republican base. He’s out there working In the fields with his seeds but he would gladly die for any billionaire to pay less taxes because America. 

That's basically the Civil War.  Poor white farmers were dying for the rights of rich white farmers to own black people.

2 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

That's basically the Civil War.  Poor white farmers were dying for the rights of rich white farmers to own black people.

That's basically the majority of wars fought throughout history.

11 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

That's basically the Civil War.  Poor white farmers were dying for the rights of rich white farmers to own black people.

Nuh uh... it was about states' rights and stuff or something like manifesto destiny's child.  Derp.

27 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

That's basically the Civil War.  Poor white farmers were dying for the rights of rich white farmers to own black people.

 

2 hours ago, workswithseed said:

Ahhh.. the whole it was never really tried before tactic. It must been those pesky dictators, that you need, but then need to somehow throw away? 

It’s not a tactic, and I take by your evasive, not to mention clueless and incoherent, response that you really have no idea.

Edited by hpslugga

16 hours ago, gmr548 said:

That's a lot of wealth. Should start tickling down any minute now, right?

Had you splurged on that Costco membership, you would have spent yours already. 

isn't this how it's been for forever?

36 minutes ago, hpslugga said:

It’s not a tactic, and I take by your evasive, not to mention clueless and incoherent, response that you really have no idea.

Tell me where true Communism tried? The proletariat is counting on you comrade. 

Edited by workswithseed

isn't this how it's been for forever?

For most of history prior to the Enlightenment. You could say the same thing about slavery too. Doesn’t mean that we should go back to the way it was though.
1 minute ago, Rusty Shackelford said:


For most of history prior to the Enlightenment. You could say the same thing about slavery too. Doesn’t mean that we should go back to the way it was though.

even after the enlightenment this trend persisted.  and to clarify, i was speaking to the apparent surprise that this was happening.  

6 minutes ago, gsoda3 said:

even after the enlightenment this trend persisted.  and to clarify, i was speaking to the apparent surprise that this was happening.  

It's not like the middle class and poorer class isn't earning more as well.

6 hours ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

You're on board with every position the democrat party takes ?   I don't agree with many positions the GOP takes. I don't agree with many more positions the DNC takes.  

Genuinely sorry too hear about your mom and alzheimers.

Hell, I'm not even a democrat, I disagree with about 50% of their platform. But here's the deal.... for me, income inequality is the single biggest issue facing this country today. A lot of the other flashpoint issues (health care, education, even racism/classism, etc....) all stem from the fact that it's getting harder and harder for people to get by, let alone prosper and they are fucking pissed off.

The US is the wealthiest country in the world, if we cant make it work shame on us. Yet starting with the Reagan tax cuts and their trickle down economic bullshit, there's a very small subset of this country that gets better off every year. The GOP party relentlessly pushes legislation that worsens this situation. Yet Bubba Shit-for-Brains in SEC country keeps voting for them cause....muh guns. The 1% laugh at these fucking rubes and how easy it is to hoodwink  these morons. 

So yeah, I will hold my nose and vote democrat, because for all their faults, they at least recognize what's happening to the 99% and the risks of continuing to ignore them. It's the GOP that started this downward slide and they are only continuing to exacerbate it. If you really believe this ends badly for the US, how the fuck do you keep voting GOP? Maybe it's not a big deal for you, and you are more concerned with building a wall, 'bortions, guns, etc... but for me it is THE issue. So fuck the GOP.

spacer.png

Wanna guess what year the Reagan tax cuts started?

26 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

Tell me where true Communism tried? The proletariat is counting on you comrade. 

Isn't it weird that this bullshit gets trotted out on this board fairly regularly, and yet it's never mentioned that millions of people died due to the switch to capitalism that followed from the collapse of the Soviet bloc?  It was one of the great mass killings of the 20th century and yet in this country it's like it never happened.

1 hour ago, gsoda3 said:

even after the enlightenment this trend persisted.  and to clarify, i was speaking to the apparent surprise that this was happening.  

In recent history, the wealth gap had been trending down toward more equal distribution, but this trend reversed in the late 1970s.  data: https://wid.world/

54 minutes ago, Blotto said:

Hell, I'm not even a democrat, I disagree with about 50% of their platform. But here's the deal.... for me, income inequality is the single biggest issue facing this country today. A lot of the other flashpoint issues (health care, education, even racism/classism, etc....) all stem from the fact that it's getting harder and harder for people to get by, let alone prosper and they are fucking pissed off.

The US is the wealthiest country in the world, if we cant make it work shame on us. Yet starting with the Reagan tax cuts and their trickle down economic bullshit, there's a very small subset of this country that gets better off every year. The GOP party relentlessly pushes legislation that worsens this situation. Yet Bubba Shit-for-Brains in SEC country keeps voting for them cause....muh guns. The 1% laugh at these fucking rubes and how easy it is to hoodwink  these morons. 

So yeah, I will hold my nose and vote democrat, because for all their faults, they at least recognize what's happening to the 99% and the risks of continuing to ignore them. It's the GOP that started this downward slide and they are only continuing to exacerbate it. If you really believe this ends badly for the US, how the fuck do you keep voting GOP? Maybe it's not a big deal for you, and you are more concerned with building a wall, 'bortions, guns, etc... but for me it is THE issue. So fuck the GOP.

spacer.png

Wanna guess what year the Reagan tax cuts started?

What's even wilder is how the great satan Reagan screwed over the middle class in France, the UK, Germany, China...

 

https://wid.world/world/#sptinc_p99p100_z/US;FR;DE;CN;ZA;GB;WO/last/eu/k/p/yearly/s/false/5.487/30/curve/false/country

8 minutes ago, Rusty Shackelford said:

What's even wilder is how the great satan Reagan screwed over the middle class in France, the UK, Germany, China...

 

https://wid.world/world/#sptinc_p99p100_z/US;FR;DE;CN;ZA;GB;WO/last/eu/k/p/yearly/s/false/5.487/30/curve/false/country

Huh? The Euros have hardly risen in comparison to the US.

https://wid.world/world/#sptinc_p99p100_z/US;FR;GB;WO;DE/last/eu/k/p/yearly/s/false/5.734999999999999/30/curve/false/country

Edited by bolverk

2 hours ago, Rusty Shackelford said:


Also the 99% for allowing it to happen for decades and completely missing it.

a decade

1 hour ago, Blotto said:

Hell, I'm not even a democrat, I disagree with about 50% of their platform. But here's the deal.... for me, income inequality is the single biggest issue facing this country today. A lot of the other flashpoint issues (health care, education, even racism/classism, etc....) all stem from the fact that it's getting harder and harder for people to get by, let alone prosper and they are fucking pissed off.

The US is the wealthiest country in the world, if we cant make it work shame on us. Yet starting with the Reagan tax cuts and their trickle down economic bullshit, there's a very small subset of this country that gets better off every year. The GOP party relentlessly pushes legislation that worsens this situation. Yet Bubba Shit-for-Brains in SEC country keeps voting for them cause....muh guns. The 1% laugh at these fucking rubes and how easy it is to hoodwink  these morons. 

So yeah, I will hold my nose and vote democrat, because for all their faults, they at least recognize what's happening to the 99% and the risks of continuing to ignore them. It's the GOP that started this downward slide and they are only continuing to exacerbate it. If you really believe this ends badly for the US, how the fuck do you keep voting GOP? Maybe it's not a big deal for you, and you are more concerned with building a wall, 'bortions, guns, etc... but for me it is THE issue. So fuck the GOP.

spacer.png

Wanna guess what year the Reagan tax cuts started?

I bet it is due to 1 part tax restructuring, 1 part automation.  The brains at the top get paid heavily for figuring out how few of the chumps at the bottom are needed.

10 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

Tell me where true Communism tried? The proletariat is counting on you comrade. 

It’s only been attempted on small scales, a la the Israeli kibbutzim and Catalan in Spain during the 1930’s, neither of which were in any remote fashion whored by some dictator who only used those same buzzwords for his own selfish political ambitions.
 

Catalan fell because it was invaded by a fascist with an army of foreign mercenaries, and the kibbutzim is arguably still alive, though crippled due to economic destabilizations that could be blamed both on them and the State of Israel back in the mid 1990’s. 

Your use of the buzzwords is curious because it seems to indicate that you’re just another American that thinks socialism/communism is an economic practice that was concocted by Karl Marx in the 19th century and was carried through as a political reality via Vladimir Lenin, which couldn’t be more wrong even if it was phrased as “Karl Marx, the black lesbian nun, had a secret affair with Lenin while Trotsky filmed and Engels fluffed.”

That you use such confident-sounding verbiage just exposes you as yet another sufferer of the Dunning Kruger effect.

3 hours ago, bad_teammate said:

Why is our monetary system designed the way it is?

The 1%.

The problem is the 1%.

Sorry pal - I am 1% and I vote for your pocketbook way more than I do my own...

3 hours ago, Rusty Shackelford said:


Also the 99% for allowing it to happen for decades and completely missing it.

THIS is the issue.  The millions and millions who vote against their own financial interests bc the GOP uses some boogeyman to scare them into voting a certain way.  

6 minutes ago, hpslugga said:

It’s only been attempted on small scales, a la the Israeli kibbutzim and Catalan in Spain during the 1930’s, neither of which were in any remote fashion whored by some dictator who only used those same buzzwords for his own selfish political ambitions.
 

Catalan fell because it was invaded by a fascist with an army of foreign mercenaries, and the kibbutzim is arguably still alive, though crippled due to economic destabilizations that could be blamed both on them and the State of Israel back in the mid 1990’s. 

Your use of the buzzwords is curious because it seems to indicate that you’re just another American that thinks socialism/communism is an economic practice that was concocted by Karl Marx in the 19th century and was carried through as a political reality via Vladimir Lenin, which couldn’t be more wrong even if it was phrased as “Karl Marx, the black lesbian nun, had a secret affair with Lenin while Trotsky filmed and Engels fluffed.”

That you use such confident-sounding verbiage just exposes you as yet another sufferer of the Dunning Kruger effect.

spacer.png

5 minutes ago, ChiTownDoc said:

Sorry pal - I am 1% and I vote for your pocketbook way more than I do my own...

THIS is the issue.  The millions and millions who vote against their own financial interests bc the GOP uses some boogeyman to scare them into voting a certain way.  

BT is a .1% 

The end results of communism and unchecked capitalism are exactly the same.

We're seeing that play out now. 

If you don't find and work to keep middle ground it'll always get worse for the vast majority of the population. 

9 minutes ago, Hank Scorpio said:

Oh I bet the seed man has some thoughts on the Jews. 

Yeah I do. One gave me anal, they seem alright to me.

No, but Karl did put it in the foreground, so why can't we use recent travesties that is the USSR, or China now?

 

2 hours ago, workswithseed said:

It's not like the middle class and poorer class isn't earning more as well.

But... they aren't? At least, not on an inflation-adjusted basis. 

Just now, Biff Tannen said:

Damn Minnie Driver, what's up?

She was choice in that movie. 

6 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

Yeah I do. One gave me anal, they seem alright to me.

He must have been gentle. Gentle souls, those Jews.

5 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

Yeah I do. One gave me anal, they seem alright to me.

No, but Karl did put it in the foreground, so why can't we use recent travesties that is the USSR, or China now?

 

1) Because the whole concept of it came up 200 years before the best part of Karl Marx rolled down the crack of his mother’s ass and wound up a brown stain on the mattress.

2) It’s radically different than what his infantile mind had to say about it.

3) Even Marx himself would have been completely revolted by the idea of Leninism and Maoism. 
 

Thus far, everything you’ve said has been laughably and indefensibly wrong, and you seem to think that this is just some circle jerk meant to derive physical gratification. I gave you the opportunity to explain what you meant by that asinine comment made previously, and you failed spectacularly in every way you could fail.

3 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

She was choice in that movie. 

Thread drift.....She's been choice in most things she's done.

57 minutes ago, Rusty Shackelford said:

Not true.  Change that little drop-down on the top left of your graph to "base 100"

So far as can tell, doing that sets 2008 as the base year for the index (not 1980) so it looks a little wonky. That said, it gives the following for 1981 (UK unavailable for 1980):

USA 56.6

France 71.0

UK 54.7

Germany 66.3

World 74.5

And, as indices work, all nations rise to 100 by 2008, meaning inequality rose much more rapidly in the US (+43.4) and UK (+45.3). Thanks Reagan and Thatcher!

4 minutes ago, hpslugga said:

1) Because the whole concept of it came up 200 years before the best part of Karl Marx rolled down the crack of his mother’s ass and wound up a brown stain on the mattress.

2) It’s radically different than what his infantile mind had to say about it.

3) Even Marx himself would have been completely revolted by the idea of Leninism and Maoism. 
 

Thus far, everything you’ve said has been laughably and indefensibly wrong, and you seem to think that this is just some circle jerk meant to derive physical gratification. I gave you the opportunity to explain what you meant by that asinine comment made previously, and you failed spectacularly in every way you could fail.

I mean you mentioned only two failed true communists. So you're not batting 1000 here either. At least the USSR beat their Nazis.

Edited by workswithseed

22 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

But... they aren't? At least, not on an inflation-adjusted basis. 

Sorry this is off mark of your answer but it makes me wonder if someone whose poor, but comes up with an idea and becomes rich cause of it. Does he become bad once he becomes rich? 

36 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

BT is a .1% 

Nope, but I have a shitload more than I need or makes any god damned sense relative to what I actually provide the world.

19 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

I mean you mentioned only two failed true communists. So you're not batting 1000 here either. At least the USSR beat their Nazis.

The USSR has about as much to do with communism as candy corn has to do with vegetables. You’re not helping yourself here

6 minutes ago, hpslugga said:

The USSR has about as much to do with communism as candy corn has to do with vegetables. You’re not helping yourself here

And you haven't showed me where it worked.

31 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

I mean you mentioned only two failed true communists. So you're not batting 1000 here either. At least the USSR beat their Nazis.

Every system fails if you wait long enough.

Capitalism fails every generation or so.

 

4 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Every system fails if you wait long enough.

Capitalism fails every generation or so.

 

Yeah, that's what recessions are.

If I’m reading my books correctly, we’re going to go through another world wide depression followed by a world war soon.

2 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

Yeah, that's what recessions are.

Exactly. Thank goodness for bad ol' gubment for keeping capitalism afloat.

Edited by David Dennison

7 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

And you haven't showed me where it worked.

Except I did. I gave examples of where it was tried. You interpret their current status as being “failed,” but “failed” in that context means that it was destroyed internally. If external factors contribute to its demise, that’s not a failure. For example, it’s hardly a “failure” of libertarian socialism when a ruthless thug bludgeons the entire area with a foreign army of mercenaries as Franco did with his merry band of Northern Africans in the late 1930’s. 

Beyond that, you’re showing your ass with these piss ant exhibitions of mental gymnastics. You first argued that, as B_T put it, “What we really need is a worldwide dictatorship of the proletariat and a dissolution of nations” had been tried. You were wrong because such a dictatorship has never existed. Lenin was by no means a proletarian. He was the kind of union buster and statist that Ronald Reagan couldn’t have been even in his wettest fucking dreams, as were Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, etc.And after I explain that to you, you shift the discussion from “Marxism tried to take over the world” very seamlessly to “socialism has never succeeded” as if the two were even remotely the same topic.

Either way, to be a communist/socialist, it takes more than merely proclaiming yourself to be one. The same is true of capitalism, Christianity, Islam, having a big dick, being smart, etc.

45 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

Nope, but I have a shitload more than I need or makes any god damned sense relative to what I actually provide the world.

don't sell yourself short! 10k political posts is worth something

3 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

don't sell yourself short! 10k political posts is worth something

Posting isn't a profession

it's a passion.

motivational-quotes-if-you-find-somethin

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