Amerika up shitz creek

[macdoc]

TYhe most frightening finding in the Federal Reserve’s Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2014 concerns a matter of $400. Four-hundred bucks. Twenty twenties. Four Benjamins.

Or just enough to crush half of all American households.

“Forty-seven percent of respondents say they either could not cover an emergency expense costing $400, or would cover it by selling something or borrowing money,” reads this year’s annual report.

http://www.citylab.com/work/2015/05/hal ... he/394274/

How's that trickle down Reganomics working these days...

[tattuchu]

Four hundred bucks? I'd have to sell my body for medical experiments

[Seth]

TYhe most frightening finding in the Federal Reserve’s Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2014 concerns a matter of $400. Four-hundred bucks. Twenty twenties. Four Benjamins.

Or just enough to crush half of all American households.

“Forty-seven percent of respondents say they either could not cover an emergency expense costing $400, or would cover it by selling something or borrowing money,” reads this year’s annual report.

http://www.citylab.com/work/2015/05/hal ... he/394274/

How's that trickle down Reganomics working these days...

No, that's how "spend a bunch of money you don't have and didn't earn on stuff you don't need and bury yourself in debt while refusing to save anything at all because the gubmint will take care of me" works. Without "trickle-down Reaganomics" they wouldn't have $400 at all, or anything else, like a job, or a home, or a car, or a flat-screen TV, or a cell phone, or an iPad. They might have camel to fuck after they squat down, take a shit in the desert and wipe their asses with a rounded pebble. Or not.

The economy's not their problem, their lazy socialist entitlement dependent class expectations are.

[laklak]

Drive down any street here. You'll wonder how all those bozos manage to buy those massive 4x4 F250 pickups towing that 35 foot center console fishing boat with three 300 hp outboards. Go into their house and there's a 60 inch HDTV with 400 cable channels, they're wearing $200 fucking tennis shoes, and they've got a gas grill out back that looks like the bridge of the starship Enterprise. It's called "EZ CREDIT!! BUY HERE PAY HERE!!", and it has a very strong appeal to morons. Then they get hit with a $400 repair bill and have to go to the Payday Advance store and pay 1000% interest because they have the willpower and responsibility levels of a three year old.

[Blind groper]

Nothing to do with socialism. Just that most people cannot postpone gratification enough to save money.

The book "The Millionnaire Next Door" pointed out that anyone with the average American income can become a millionnaire by simply saving their surplus cash for 20 years and investing it all in sound investments with compound interest.

Sad that so few people can even avoid spending all their weekly income in that same week.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Nothing to do with socialism. Just that most people cannot postpone gratification enough to save money.

The book "The Millionnaire Next Door" pointed out that anyone with the average American income can become a millionnaire by simply saving their surplus cash for 20 years and investing it all in sound investments with compound interest.

Sad that so few people can even avoid spending all their weekly income in that same week.

The only reason that there are "sound investments" is that the rest are busy spending faster than they can earn! If everyone tried to become a millionaire in that way, the law of diminishing returns would kick in pretty quickly. Fortunately (for those that do try it), there are plenty more buying into the acquisitional, easy-credit trap that the entirety of Western economy, its media and its advertising, is geared up to promote.

[Seth]

Nothing to do with socialism. Just that most people cannot postpone gratification enough to save money.

It's everything to do with socialism. Generations of Americans have been carefully indoctrinated into the socialist mindset that everybody is supposed to get everything everybody else has and that it's the government's job to make sure they get all that. One of the ways the government builds this debt trap is by, for example, creating Freddy and Fannie and making banking laws that encourage poor people with bad credit to buy houses they can't afford by guaranteeing that the taxpayers will protect the banks against defaults, which is what caused the 2008/2009 housing meltdown. The whole purpose of that program was to make poor people, and even middle class people more and more dependent on government for their very survival so that they will vote for even more socialist playing-field leveling.

It's an insidious socialist plot that got us where we are today. A very deliberate and carefully calculated one.

[pErvinalia]

Drive down any street here. You'll wonder how all those bozos manage to buy those massive 4x4 F250 pickups towing that 35 foot center console fishing boat with three 300 hp outboards. Go into their house and there's a 60 inch HDTV with 400 cable channels, they're wearing $200 fucking tennis shoes, and they've got a gas grill out back that looks like the bridge of the starship Enterprise. It's called "EZ CREDIT!! BUY HERE PAY HERE!!", and it has a very strong appeal to morons. Then they get hit with a $400 repair bill and have to go to the Payday Advance store and pay 1000% interest because they have the willpower and responsibility levels of a three year old.

Yeah, this. Although, this probably applies more to Australia, as we still have a middle class. You guys don't really have a middle class left, thanks to Reagonomics. But then, you have far easier credit than we do here in Australia.

[pErvinalia]

Nothing to do with socialism. Just that most people cannot postpone gratification enough to save money.

The book "The Millionnaire Next Door" pointed out that anyone with the average American income can become a millionnaire by simply saving their surplus cash for 20 years and investing it all in sound investments with compound interest.

Sad that so few people can even avoid spending all their weekly income in that same week.

The only reason that there are "sound investments" is that the rest are busy spending faster than they can earn! If everyone tried to become a millionaire in that way, the law of diminishing returns would kick in pretty quickly. Fortunately (for those that do try it), there are plenty more buying into the acquisitional, easy-credit trap that the entirety of Western economy, its media and its advertising, is geared up to promote.

Yep.

[pErvinalia]

Nothing to do with socialism. Just that most people cannot postpone gratification enough to save money.

It's everything to do with socialism. Generations of Americans have been carefully indoctrinated into the socialist mindset that everybody is supposed to get everything everybody else has and that it's the government's job to make sure they get all that. One of the ways the government builds this debt trap is by, for example, creating Freddy and Fannie and making banking laws that encourage poor people with bad credit to buy houses they can't afford by guaranteeing that the taxpayers will protect the banks against defaults, which is what caused the 2008/2009 housing meltdown. The whole purpose of that program was to make poor people, and even middle class people more and more dependent on government for their very survival so that they will vote for even more socialist playing-field leveling.

It's an insidious socialist plot that got us where we are today. A very deliberate and carefully calculated one.

It's not socialism, Seth. It's capitalism. As record levels of personal debt show.

[cronus]

What you have is a massive population of city dwellers totally out of kilter with the natural biological systems of the planet, lacking all resilience in the event of a socio-economic collapse. What you have is a human die-off waiting to happen. The ruins left behind will rival that of other great civilizations that perished in their hubris. Like the stones of the aztecs or ancient egyptians folks a thousand years from now will come to stare at the crumbling edifices, (not)looking so modern today, and ponder why it was not seen - train crash civilization wreck right ahead.

[JimC]

Nothing to do with socialism. Just that most people cannot postpone gratification enough to save money.

It's everything to do with socialism. Generations of Americans have been carefully indoctrinated into the socialist mindset that everybody is supposed to get everything everybody else has and that it's the government's job to make sure they get all that. One of the ways the government builds this debt trap is by, for example, creating Freddy and Fannie and making banking laws that encourage poor people with bad credit to buy houses they can't afford by guaranteeing that the taxpayers will protect the banks against defaults, which is what caused the 2008/2009 housing meltdown. The whole purpose of that program was to make poor people, and even middle class people more and more dependent on government for their very survival so that they will vote for even more socialist playing-field leveling.

It's an insidious socialist plot that got us where we are today. A very deliberate and carefully calculated one.

Au contraire. This mindless consumerism and desire for the latest material goods is a direct result of a capitalist society with little else to balance it. The unending refrain from modern advertising is buy, buy, buy, and if a society has little other values of real significance, then people will automatically be drawn to spend more and more and more...

[pErvinalia]

That's socialism, Jim. Don't you know anything?

[rainbow]

It's an insidious socialist plot that got us where we are today. A very deliberate and carefully calculated one.

Tinfoil hat time!

[laklak]

I blame idiots. There are a lot of them about, you know.