Poverty in America

Gold isn’t worth any more than a piece of paper unless you need it for some industrial use.

That is true. Old world riches have to do with a large family and a large farm.

I exchanged a pile of scrap gold for paper… It seemed like a fair exchange at the time. The paper has been quite useful on a number of occasions.

I’ve always been a big fan of money.

I used to buy tons of silver eagles when the spot was low, then wait for it to go up a few bucks, tale it all to gun shows and sell it at a big premium to kooky old men who want precious metals that the government doesn’t know they have. Old men at gun shows get boners for shiny American made silver coins.

The ol’ silver eagle to elderly militiamen gambit. Classic.

That’s what I’m saying. Everyone wants a house and a car and a phone and some food and insurance, but nobody wants to hustle at all. Kids these days…“I worked my 40 hours! Why do I still have problems!?”, or “I didn’t earn anything, why don’t I have anything!?”.

They’re all fucking crazy man. Blaming the corporations and the big boogie man government when what they need is right in front of them the whole time.

My beef is with corporate America and how they undervalue their employees, among other things. Wear all the ties you want but keep your own moral judgments about my moral judgments straight.

I definitely don’t like cheats and liars be they rich, poor, or the non-existent middle class.

The funny things is,
you give 1 million dollars to a single guy,
or you give it to 100 people,
the 100 can just as easily waste it or use it to con others.

Public ownership does not reduce crime and depravity.

Maybe im being negative…
but my point seems to stand.

The market values workers. If you want 40 grand, and someone walks up and says they’ll do the same job for 20…what kind of business am I running if I just give you 20 grand that I don’t have to give you. What am I supposed to tell my investors…who had discipline, anf foresight, and saved up to invest, making sacrifices so they could save and have more? I’m supoosed to tell them that your needs cone first and therefore I’m paying you twice what the market would have me pay to get a job done?

Thats charity. Businesses and charities are different.

The market is too free to undercut the workers who have to eat. The government must restrain capitalism before we become a third world country due to the desperate being taken advantage by the overall corporate monopoly having all the purse strings. You do realize that the average majority of people no longer hold the purse strings?

On second thought, I do have a problem with the rich wasting what’s left of our natural resources to operate their cut throat businesses and purchase multiples of everything at home which denies them to people with actual need and the future of need.


Purchasing excessive stuff bloats landfills.

For every rich person who owns more vehicles than the number of people in their families…there’s the tires they replace every 50,000 miles
If the rich would just build their own landfills on their own properties, the cities could stop charging them for trash removal.

It’s not just the rich who are wasting resources, it’s everyone. Single-use products, disposable products, excessive packaging, heat set too high, A/C set too low, food not consumed(both at restaurants and at home), etc.

All part of the “life-style”.

Certain groups of people live the “lifestyle” more than other groups. Poor people are aware of waste more than people with discretionary monies. The poor have to be, they can’t afford to be frivolous.

If you want to restrain capitalism, then you have to do it all aspects of life. You cannot pick and choose as per your convenience. Without capitalism mindset, US would become countries like China and Russia. Are you ready to lead that kind of social life?

There is no monopoly. Manufacturing shifted out of US simply because cost of production for companies became too costly there to survive the competition. And, that happens precisely because of what you are demanding. Are you aware of the fact that Apple do not make a single phone in US but outsources almost all its manufacturing to Taiwanese companies like Foxconn. That is necessary for the survival of Apple otherwise its phones would become so costly that even US citizens would not able buy those. The more wages would go higher, the more manufacturing would shift from US.

Globalism and capitalism tend to level things all over the world. Recent progress is communication technology has hasten this process manytimes. The difference between the third world countries and developed ones would become less and less with the time in all aspects. Countries like US would have to come down to some extent and lower countries would climb some steps of the ladder. Though, some difference would always be there but not that much as it is now.

When i was in my twenties thirty years ago, the difference between the life standard of an average indian citizen and an average US citizen was of 50-60 years. In last 30 years, it has been decreased to almost half. In the next two decades, it would be half again and perhaps stabilize there.

In capitalism and globalism, you cannot help it. It would be better that US citizens realize this inevitable and start adjusting accordingly, though their leaders would never say or admit this publicly. They will continue to sell grand dreams and people will continue to buy it too.

with love,
sanjay

But but… zinnat, you can’t even mention the interconnectedness of global anything without being labeled an elitist, or a shill of the illuminati, or an oppressor of the masses. It’s all “America First” without any regard to reality - except the alternate reality that seems to be made more of wishful thinking than connection to fact. Currently, there is little or no dialog between nation states in devising plausible (read doable) solutions to our shared reality. Why? Because we have no intention of compromising. It’s our way or the highway. We want simple answers while blithely ignoring the complexity. You are right that regardless all the hulaballoo, there will be an evening effect over time. But Americans will do so unwillingly, kicking and screaming all the way.

Zinnat

What is that kind of social life?

Tentative

Everything with you is complexity. There are simple answers to chip away at all the complexities, to whittle them back down to the basics.

People who think they deserve more than other people make complexity, when one is considered self-denial, when practicality means two $80,000 cars, instead of one $15,000 car, when it must be 6 lbs. of prime rib instead of 2 lbs. of ground beef, when used means an embarrassing poverty, when being normal or average is not good enough, when everything must be a self-serving, showy superiority, that’s when life gets complex because a lot of finagling had to be done to keep life so out of kilter.

I am not an elitist by mindset but on the other hand it is also a reality that everyone or everything in this world is not the same. It cannot be. They are bound to be somewhat different in all aspects. The matter is only the degree of differences. Secondly, if you go by the original definition of illumunati, it is actually the opposite of oppressor of the masses.

There is nothing wrong in America first but everything has its limits and it is wise to understand the limits of all things. If one goes beyond the reasonable limits, it will come back to haunt itself sooner or later.

But, i want to make one point here for sure, even at the cost of making some people angry. US or at least its establishment, is imbued with some sort of superiority complex for sure. That applies to its citizens also, though neither to all nor to that extent but something of that kind is certainly there in their mindset. This BIG DADDY syndrome is so deeply amalgamated in US establishment mindset, they cannot or do not want to see the world without that prism. That applies to other developed countries also but certainly not to that extent. Their prism is not that much thick and they are even ready to let go that too.

Everyone has to make compromises, more or less, whether US or any other country. Look at what Trump said about China or Mexico before becoming a president and how he behaved towards those after becoming a president. Has he stopped imports from China or Mexico? Or he compelled China to appreciate its currency? No, simply because he realizes that neither these things can be done nor in the real overall interest of US.

Speeches can be done in poetry when one has to use hardcore prose when it comes to actual governance.

with love,
sanjay

Where govt would tell you that how much children you can have like China.
Where the leaders of political opposition would be sent to rot in the prisons like Russia.
Where anti establishment protesters can be killed by assault rifles and tanks like Tiananmen Square of China.

You can still lead the life more or less you want in a capitalism and even shout against establishment too, but you cannot even whisper otherwise. What would you prefer?

with love,
sanjay

I believe that all of these situations could quite easily happen here in the USA in the near future.
Any type of outside established government political opposition that gained traction here would be met with I think worse than imprisonment, more like murder. We only have two recognized parties here, in other words, other political parties are not taken seriously for they wield no major power in Washington, DC or with the majority of citizens…should that change and other real challengers took root here in the USA which has never happened before, those opposition leaders would either be falsely imprisoned, disappear, or be found dead. And there haven’t been any anti-government protests here since Vietnam where…

Resistance to the established political machine shot dead.

These were protests to stop war, rather than to unseat the established government, people were still killed by military and over 12,000 were arrested. If there were major protests against the government itself, it’d turn ugly real fast and martial law would be declared.