The Goat Pen

I wish you wouldn't survive

"If your family has an adjusted gross income of $66,193, you’re in the top 25 percent. And if it’s $32,396 – you’re in the top 50 percent!

If you want to look at your salary, you have to look at the 2010 results from the American Community Survey run by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The top 25 percent make more than $90,000 a year. The top 10 percent make more than $140,000. The top 5 percent make more than $180,000, according to the Census Bureau."

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2012/04/1 ... t-are-you/

lets put that in perspective for a moment

making $8.35 an hour, working 40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year, you net $16,700

two adults working full time is $33,400.

Now AGI takes out deductions and what not but if 50% of this country's families are pulling in less than 2 full time minimum wage earners?

We got serious problems

Well, they do, anyway. But I'd say the problems of people making $90K a year are somewhat less serious...

hedge wrote:Well, they do, anyway. But I'd say the problems of people making $90K a year are somewhat less serious...

Hillary said that too

sardis wrote:Macron will win because like Spain, Italy, Greece, and every other Catholic nation, they are a country full of deadbeats who can't survive without the EU.

Heh. I see what you did there.

eCat wrote:

hedge wrote:Well, they do, anyway. But I'd say the problems of people making $90K a year are somewhat less serious...

Hillary said that too

Actually I am guessing that those out of work Rust Belt Trump voters weren't making 90K a year...

Their whole extended families didn't make 90K a year combined. The Democrats despise them. Who else were they going to vote for?

but if 50% of this country's families are pulling in less than 2 full time minimum wage earners?

We got serious problems

Amen.

eCat wrote:you should be angry that you aren't making $90K a year, not angry at the guy who is and says it isn't enough

too many of those people that aren't making it look to the government to make up the difference in their lives in the form of income security or support.

That's who the democrats have been focusing on.

Shit cost too much. Until you understand that you aren't able to grasp the true anger that is fixing to reshape this country. All the soft-handed elites who are grumbling about having to cut back on vacations but love to bitch about taxes and the liberal elite are the ones who are truly out of touch.

Saint wrote:

eCat wrote:you should be angry that you aren't making $90K a year, not angry at the guy who is and says it isn't enough

too many of those people that aren't making it look to the government to make up the difference in their lives in the form of income security or support.

That's who the democrats have been focusing on.

Shit cost too much. Until you understand that you aren't able to grasp the true anger that is fixing to reshape this country. All the soft-handed elites who are grumbling about having to cut back on vacations but love to bitch about taxes and the liberal elite are the ones who are truly out of touch.

its all relative. People that are making $90K are acknowledging they are making $90K but they aren't living like it. They made the right choices, they got to where they should be in life, so they should be able to afford the 3/2 ranch with Ford Fusion in the driveway, the yearly Florida vacation , set aside a enough to see their 2 kids to college and still sock away enough to retire on so they don't eat dog food.

As I said, look beyond your front yard - if the $90K people a year aren't making it, you should be scared too. Your choices are make it , take it or do without. The $90K people have decided no one is taking it from them.

The reshaping you are talking about isn't going to end well for anyone. It will be insolvency, not re-calibration. Those antifa folks have a harsh education coming to them in regards to what equality truly means if/when there is no safety net.

The $90K people aren't making it because shit cost too damn much. It's not taxes, although that tired cliche keeps putting assholes in office. The cost of living has gone off the rails and I don't want to hear shit from our parents generation bc the vast majority of them had affordable health care, homes, autos, secondary education — just about everything that none of us have now due to wages not keeping up with the cost of living. Now is it the gov't's job to make that right? We can argue all day but the gov't has done a good job of allowing it to happen.

It's easy to say that people haven't made the right choices in life but my dad grew up on a farm, didn't graduate from high school because he had to run the farm when a tractor rolled over on my grandfather. He went in the army, got out in 3 years and then worked at Orkin for 40 years where he probably never made more than $35K a year. My mom put herself through nursing school and helped pay for her parent's 4th house (she was one of 9 kids) in Baltimore. They both worked hard and made sacrifices but had the assurance that would be enough to meet the basics in life. They made good choices but they wouldn't stand a chance today. I haven't squirreled away money for 30 years like either one of them had done when they were my age but I've worked my ass off and have shit to show for it. You know that would be fine if we were talking about me not having a retirement nest egg bc I made the decision in my 20s and early 30s to probably blow all that (literally). But now we're talking about not having enough money for basic needs like health care, housing, auto, even food some times.

It's not a matter of who to blame. It's a matter of wondering why the fuck we (those of us in our 40s, 50s, 60s) don't have the same middle class allowances that our parents had and why so many people seem to think the answer has to do with people not working, planning or saving when the problem is clearly an economic system that has been diseased for more than 30 years and it keeps getting worse. The $90K a year folks will be feeling greater pain soon enough and then the $120K folks and then the $150K folks. It's just a matter of time.

you're right - but the answer to why is government

Why does a house cost $160K when its made up of $35K worth of raw materials? Could it be because the government guaranteed loans and created a bubble when President Carter AND Clinton decided that everyone in America should be able to buy a home thru the Community Reinvestment Act.

Why does health care cost so much? Set aside Obama's ego driven huge fucking blunder and just look at Medicaid and Medicare - Government funded health care for the people that consume the largest percentage of health care in the nation. Medicare fraud alone is a $60 billion dollar industry. Government has driven the cost of medical care up because it writes the checks...not to mention lobbyist do things like convincing the government - the largest purchaser of drugs in the nation of which is the largest purchaser of drugs in the world to not negotiate directly with them for drug prices.

Why does education cost so much? We live in a world where schools are making record profits from sports revenue and yet kids are saddled with debt when they graduate from state and private schools. I bet you can guess my answer by now. Guaranteed Federally backed student loans and student direct loans which incidentally the government makes $6b in profit from while creating an education bubble for students to be in debt trying to pay for schools tuition their parents can't afford.

housing, health care, education - As a father, what is the biggest percentage of your paycheck going to?

So what do people do ? They want to vote a democrat into office because they'll create more social programs to help the people in need. Its a vicious circle that makes it worse on everyone. Government takes a $1 from one group and gives a $1 to another, and in the meantime raises the price on everything by $3

Think about that next time you dog the people who vote to politicians who promise to get government out of their lives. Its not just for the white supremacists that want to live in Idaho.

I'm guessing that runaway profits going into the pockets of fewer people at the top of the corporate ladder is a bigger reason that shit costs more but salaries/wages aren't rising at the same rate. It's not hard to see how that has been the case in the history of our country. Blaming the gov't for everything ultimately is a lazy cop-out that fails to grasp the notion that squeezing the middle and lower classes is what our economic system has been designed to do. And eventually it will come for you.

Saint wrote:I'm guessing that runaway profits going into the pockets of fewer people at the top of the corporate ladder is a bigger reason that shit costs more but salaries/wages aren't rising at the same rate. It's not hard to see how that has been the case in the history of our country. Blaming the gov't for everything ultimately is a lazy cop-out that fails to grasp the notion that squeezing the middle and lower classes is what our economic system has been designed to do. And eventually it will come for you.

tomorrow you could create the next Facebook, write a hit song, cure cancer or build an autonomous driving automobile. What are those people at the top of the corporate ladder doing to stop you?

Americas burgeoning middle class was a confluence of two things - being on the winning side of a world war where European and Asian industry was rubble while our was virtually untouched AND the rise of unions to give the worker a voice.

Look at Detroit and Hiroshima in 1945, and look at it now. Americans determined they could not compete in the global economy while maintaining their standard of living - and that belief started the erosion of the middle class.

No, ECat, anybody who doesn't vote Democrat is automatically a racist sexist homophobic transphobic xenophobic religious nutcase climate denier.

And possibly a Russian.

I love the selective whiny Dem blame-a-thons. Snowflake seems like a relative term. It's all the fault of Carter, Clinton and Obama...if my math is right on names named.

eCat wrote:

Saint wrote:I'm guessing that runaway profits going into the pockets of fewer people at the top of the corporate ladder is a bigger reason that shit costs more but salaries/wages aren't rising at the same rate. It's not hard to see how that has been the case in the history of our country. Blaming the gov't for everything ultimately is a lazy cop-out that fails to grasp the notion that squeezing the middle and lower classes is what our economic system has been designed to do. And eventually it will come for you.

tomorrow you could create the next Facebook, write a hit song, cure cancer or build an autonomous driving automobile. What are those people at the top of the corporate ladder doing to stop you?

Same old idiotic argument. It's not about what one person can or can't do; it's about having a system that will offer opportunities for as many people willing to work for them. Sound crazy? It shouldn't because we grew up in that scenario. But it's all gone now because of the overarching greed of the last 2 generations and the blatant stupidity of our generation and the ones behind us. This mentality that nobody owes anybody anything when we all owe each other what we can give to keep this country moving along.

Saint wrote:

eCat wrote:

Saint wrote:I'm guessing that runaway profits going into the pockets of fewer people at the top of the corporate ladder is a bigger reason that shit costs more but salaries/wages aren't rising at the same rate. It's not hard to see how that has been the case in the history of our country. Blaming the gov't for everything ultimately is a lazy cop-out that fails to grasp the notion that squeezing the middle and lower classes is what our economic system has been designed to do. And eventually it will come for you.

tomorrow you could create the next Facebook, write a hit song, cure cancer or build an autonomous driving automobile. What are those people at the top of the corporate ladder doing to stop you?

Same old idiotic argument. It's not about what one person can or can't do; it's about having a system that will offer opportunities for as many people willing to work for them. Sound crazy? It shouldn't because we grew up in that scenario. But it's all gone now because of the overarching greed of the last 2 generations and the blatant stupidity of our generation and the ones behind us. This mentality that nobody owes anybody anything when we all owe each other what we can give to keep this country moving along.

so what is your solution? take away from the wealthiest and give to the have nots? Enact laws that prevent a disparity between the wealthy and the poor?

" it's about having a system that will offer opportunities for as many people willing to work for them"

that system has never gone away Saint. But its a two way street. I'm big on providing a living wage for anyone that is working 40 hours a week. At the same time, you just can't show up and take a job that anyone can do or that few want you to do and expect to prosper in a capitalist society. That Eastern Europe in the 1950's. And prosper mean you could take off early to go stand in the bread line

willing to work can mean different things - and a willingness to work also means a willingness to learn new skills and trades if you are not happy with where you are in life right now.

With the exception of those with learning disabilities there is not one child in America that cannot take advantage of a free public education and move that into an skill trade or a college education.

That $90K is out there for anyone that wants it. But its not going to happen by dropping out of high school, or staying in an impoverished area when your 30, or just showing up for a job at subway and then believe society owes you the American dream.

Bklyn wrote:I love the selective whiny Dem blame-a-thons. Snowflake seems like a relative term. It's all the fault of Carter, Clinton and Obama...if my math is right on names named.

Feel free to chime in on what the Republicans have done. They aren't blameless. But the stark difference isn't about them as a party, its about what the people that vote for each party based on their ideology expect from government. And its about how they as a party sell their ideology to the American public.

I'm also listening if you want to tell me the government is blameless in creating bubbles for housing, health care and education. I'd be interested to hear that.

It took Everyman on Main Street some time to figure out that they've been had and finally revolt - 35 years to be more precise. There has been no shortage of big promises since Reagan's "It's Morning again in America," but in the end, they all left the middle class staring into thin wallets while their manipulators were living high on the hog. The failed big ideas began with Reagonomics. The stimulating effect of its tax cuts was supposed to "trickle down" to the masses, but the flow had the viscosity of molasses and stuck with the ultrarich.

Under Reagonomics, the ultrarich had their taxes cut sharply - by about half. A millionaire who was paying $700,000 in taxes in the 1970s saw his taxes cut to $350,000 in the 80s. But what was he or she going to do with the $350,000 windfall? Some spent it on conspicuous consumption, but many decided to fund think tanks and hire economists to support their ideology, while others used the windfall to influence politicians and shape laws. And so the tax cuts became a vicious circle in which wealth begot more wealth and still more influence.

Headlines about border walls and 'who uses which bathroom' and 'which athlete didn't stand for the anthem' suit the ultra-rich just fine.