sportage
Lifer
- Feb 1, 2008
- 11,492
- 3,163
- 136
Most people can not "save money" in todays world in America.
You can't get rich working for someone else. it never happens.
And the hits that come your way in daily life make it impossible to get ahead of the game let alone actually "save money".
Take 2008. People with retirement investments in the market were nearly wiped out. People lost their job. Companies closed.
Was that the average Joe's fault?
No, it was the faults within the system and how rigged the system is against average Joe.
People live paycheck to paycheck with both dad and mom needing to work just to stay in the game. Who even thinks about getting ahead?
And this attack on the lower, middle and upper middle class is now worse than ever. And all because of stupidity and GREED within the government and within our institutions not to mention from our law makers in Washington. The average Joe and his family are being set up to take even more severe hits. More severe than ever before. With our leaders ignoring and denying climate change, the storms will be greater and cleanup costs after those storms will be outrageous. And who will pay the bills for that cleanup? As always, Mr and Mrs average Joe and their family.
Then take the banks, they are still at it. Figuring out ways to screw the public out of money by shady financial practices and activity that should be deemed criminal, yet they still do it. 2008 did not change anything. No lessons learned. And it doesn't help when the politicians refuse to do anything about the greed. They actually help it along by eliminating regulations and protections. Is it any wonder that Donald Trump and his administration would cut regulations allowing more corruption, given that Donald Trump himself is the most corrupt and greedy of them all?
Trump built an empire on cheating people and cheating the system, so naturally they dislike any regulation that perfects Mr average Joe.
Is it bad? Yes, it is bad. And it will get much more worse.
The American family will shoulder all the burden and pay out of pocket for all the failures and greed from poor leadership and poor management from the top.
We will have great depressions and great recessions which average Joe will be forced to pay for.
The banks and wall street will become even more greedy than 2008, and average Joe will have to pay for that too one way or the other.
So don't blame the middle class or blame average Joe for not saving money. They can't. It is impossible.
The system is against them. They have been left out in the cold.
Trump promised average Joe a tax cut, but instead handed average Joe an even higher tax bill in the end.
GET AHEAD? Are you serious?
The middle class are the ones always stuck paying for all the failures of government, politics, and wall street.
The system is rigged and rigged in such a way that poor Mr and Mrs average Joe can never get ahead let alone prepare for their future.
Put the blame where it belongs.
On our politicians, on our failed leadership, and on the greed.
You can't get rich working for someone else. it never happens.
And the hits that come your way in daily life make it impossible to get ahead of the game let alone actually "save money".
Take 2008. People with retirement investments in the market were nearly wiped out. People lost their job. Companies closed.
Was that the average Joe's fault?
No, it was the faults within the system and how rigged the system is against average Joe.
People live paycheck to paycheck with both dad and mom needing to work just to stay in the game. Who even thinks about getting ahead?
And this attack on the lower, middle and upper middle class is now worse than ever. And all because of stupidity and GREED within the government and within our institutions not to mention from our law makers in Washington. The average Joe and his family are being set up to take even more severe hits. More severe than ever before. With our leaders ignoring and denying climate change, the storms will be greater and cleanup costs after those storms will be outrageous. And who will pay the bills for that cleanup? As always, Mr and Mrs average Joe and their family.
Then take the banks, they are still at it. Figuring out ways to screw the public out of money by shady financial practices and activity that should be deemed criminal, yet they still do it. 2008 did not change anything. No lessons learned. And it doesn't help when the politicians refuse to do anything about the greed. They actually help it along by eliminating regulations and protections. Is it any wonder that Donald Trump and his administration would cut regulations allowing more corruption, given that Donald Trump himself is the most corrupt and greedy of them all?
Trump built an empire on cheating people and cheating the system, so naturally they dislike any regulation that perfects Mr average Joe.
Is it bad? Yes, it is bad. And it will get much more worse.
The American family will shoulder all the burden and pay out of pocket for all the failures and greed from poor leadership and poor management from the top.
We will have great depressions and great recessions which average Joe will be forced to pay for.
The banks and wall street will become even more greedy than 2008, and average Joe will have to pay for that too one way or the other.
So don't blame the middle class or blame average Joe for not saving money. They can't. It is impossible.
The system is against them. They have been left out in the cold.
Trump promised average Joe a tax cut, but instead handed average Joe an even higher tax bill in the end.
GET AHEAD? Are you serious?
The middle class are the ones always stuck paying for all the failures of government, politics, and wall street.
The system is rigged and rigged in such a way that poor Mr and Mrs average Joe can never get ahead let alone prepare for their future.
Put the blame where it belongs.
On our politicians, on our failed leadership, and on the greed.
MagnusTheBrewer
IN MEMORIAM
- Jun 19, 2004
- 24,122
- 1,594
- 126
Trump made his name gaming the system. Many people think that's smart. Now he's gaming the American people. Only the 1% think that's smart. The Orange one's outlook hasn't changed one bit. Who knew ripping off the country wasn't as admirable as ripping off a company?
BonzaiDuck
Lifer
- Jun 30, 2004
- 16,870
- 2,184
- 126
It's a pity we all swallowed the American Dream Myth, but it was easy to swallow 60 years ago after Roosevelt had reset things to mildly favor the average Joe. There had never been a time in our history before or since when the Geni Index showed the broadest distribution of income and wealth. Labor unions had clout, because unions were more pervasive with greater membership.
But I turn to the basic notion of Jonathan Swift's "Modest Proposal" -- a satire suggesting that the solution to famine and growing population was eating babies. You can't save much especially if you have a family. Oddly, that better time in the fifties preceded the advent of reliably effective birth control.
It works like this. There are only so many squares on the chessboard of life, each with a different value and different future prospects. You get the one you were born on, first of all. It takes energy to jump from one square to another, no different than the way things work in quantum physics. You can jump from square to square, and statistically you may wear yourself out. You do not get rich by humping a day job.
With the wealth you might accumulate in a day job ("wealth" is an overstatement), you won't likely get rich day-trading. You only think you will, just like Trump thinks that he can score big at the Black Jack tables for his intuition and despite his poor memory or ignorance of card-counting. Once in a while, someone may get lucky. Maybe even win the lottery. But the odds are against it.
You could be Howard Schultz. What did he do, coming from a working-class family? He didn't even pursue a journalistic career in his college major, but landed a position in middle-management. Yet, that wasn't the square for his great success. He just started three barista bars. He chose to start those barista bars! He chose that square to land on, even as most people would first think of the Pakistani immigrant on the street corner with a stand mixing Lattes for passersby. Not a particularly glamorous vision, but Schultz did it, and grew into Starbucks.
You can save money slowly if you manage your subsistence yellow crumbs like an unrelenting accountant. You can help yourself by avoiding leaks in your stocks and flows for payment of interest. But you'll never likely buy a house without paying interest. You will likely buy a used car to avoid paying interest.
I can pontificate about these things. Many people have posted blogs about quitting their $100,000/annum jobs and moving their family to the country to live on $25,000/year, perhaps later supplemented by a business in the home. But most people can't train their mind enough to adopt that discipline. The less you have and the less you get, the shorter the timespan of a future that you imagine.
You can say that people have their own responsibility -- their self-reliance -- to manage. According to that view, we live in a jungle anyway, and your lack of reward is your own fault. But that ignores such chance misfortunes as catastrophic illness, or losing your job because a major bank took a dump during the last recession. You cannot be expected to predict the Mistakes of the Manipulators.
And when I pontificate, I fail to account for the fact that I have Milton Friedman's "Permanent Income". I'm retired. I'm "funded". People who go out into the world and work for a living don't have permanent anything. So they get payday loans, looking from one month to the next to keep the transitory income coming in.
Even small businessmen make mistakes because they're under the same pressure. They might incline to cheat a customer to obtain more income in the short run, as they fail to see how the satisfied customer may come back with a stream of income in the future for not being cheated.
I've always imagined you look like this at your keyboard when you get all worked up and angry talking about rich people on ATPN when you realize they're better than you.
You're beyond lame. Go worship at the altar of Greed in the temple of Mammon.
dank69
Lifer
- Oct 6, 2009
- 37,611
- 33,330
- 136
I'll just leave this right here:
www.yahoo.com
'OK Boomer' Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations
In a viral audio clip on TikTok, a white-haired man in a baseball cap and polo shirt declares, "The millennials and Generation Z have the Peter Pan syndrome, they don't ever want to grow up."Thousands of teens have responded through remixed reaction videos and art projects with a simple
www.yahoo.com
1prophet
Diamond Member
- Aug 17, 2005
- 5,313
- 534
- 126
And here is a movie to go along with that.I'll just leave this right here:
'OK Boomer' Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations
In a viral audio clip on TikTok, a white-haired man in a baseball cap and polo shirt declares, "The millennials and Generation Z have the Peter Pan syndrome, they don't ever want to grow up."Thousands of teens have responded through remixed reaction videos and art projects with a simple
View attachment 12626
I'll just leave this right here:
'OK Boomer' Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations
In a viral audio clip on TikTok, a white-haired man in a baseball cap and polo shirt declares, "The millennials and Generation Z have the Peter Pan syndrome, they don't ever want to grow up."Thousands of teens have responded through remixed reaction videos and art projects with a simple
View attachment 12626
lol
It's hard for me to imagine how anyone could be more out of touch with reality.So they boinked the world's climate. dumped pills in thier kids mouths instead of raising them. Bilked their kids with higher edu costs. Blew up the housing prices. Blew up social security and now they will force you to pay for their end of life care.
You Might Be On The Hook For Your Parents' Nursing Home Costs
Nursing home care and long-term care services are becoming increasingly difficult to afford for many retirees. With nursing homes and state Medicaid budgets stretched thin, service providers stuck with unpaid bills might soon turn to family members for these funds.www.forbes.com
Filial responsibility laws - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Hopefully this changes or a lot of us are gonna get yet another speed bump in life due to the aging boomers who didnt save money.
Worst. generation. ever.
IronWing
No Lifer
- Jul 20, 2001
- 73,561
- 35,285
- 136
It was really the so called greatest generation that started the inter-generational screw job. Once their kids (the BBers) got through school, funding public schools become a lot less important. As long as their SS benefits were good (even though they paid very little in to obtain those benefits) cutting benefits and raising contributions for younger people (to cover the deficits caused by the greatest generation not paying much into the system) was a fine thing. Supporting anti-union politicians was a-okay once the greatest generation was safely into retirement with their union-achieved benefits. Turns out that so many of their values were transactional in nature.
Huh?, I just became eligible for SS last year, (haven't filed for it yet), I've been paying in since 1973 and no, I, (and many others) do not have a sweet pension to fall back on. The rate of SS taxes on anyone's paycheck is the same rate no matter your age, there is no "raising contributions for younger people", if it goes up it goes up for all.
I'm assuming ironwing's point is that the older generation voted to raise rates once they were retired and thus no longer had a paycheck to pay SS taxes on.
I still think all this intergenerational arguing quickly gets ridiculous. You can't compare across generations like that, it doesn't make sense beyond a very limited point. Should the "greatest generation" send later generations a bill for fighting WW2 for them? Are you all in debt to whatever generation it was who fought the revolution?
When SS first started deductions were laughably small, many times less than a dollar a week yet the "greatest generation" who often DID have Co pensions collected a nice SS check and a pension check as well. I didn't have to opportunity to vote on the tax rate, as SS expanded into medicare and disability rates had to go up I guess. I would support a means test though, if you've got a fat retirement account plus pension your SS payout should be chump-change.
I think the intergenerational arguing often misses the point but the failure and selfishness of the boomers is something they should be held responsible for.
Every generation should be held responsible for their actions while they wielded the dominant political power. While boomers held that power (and in many cases still do) they chose to cut their own taxes while letting climate change get out of control and while their own children were put into ruinous debt to get the same education they had.
As far as social security goes though I’m of the opinion that it wouldn’t have made sense for other generations to pay more because we didn’t need the money for seniors and it’s mathematically impossible to save money for future payments using the current trust fund as it uses T bills.
Hayabusa Rider
Admin Emeritus & Elite Member
- Jan 26, 2000
- 50,879
- 4,268
- 126
Hayabusa Rider
Admin Emeritus & Elite Member
- Jan 26, 2000
- 50,879
- 4,268
- 126
When the "greatest generation" stole the retirements of the Boomers you are going to have a hard time dealing with responsibilities. There's a saying "sharper than a serpent's tooth is an ungrateful child". Perhaps Boomers provided too well for their children and ought to have tossed them out as some now wish to do them?
At least the Boomers fought against Vietnam and for Civil Rights. Where are those millions marching on DC now? Typing on the internet.
Hayabusa Rider
Admin Emeritus & Elite Member
- Jan 26, 2000
- 50,879
- 4,268
- 126
zinfamous
No Lifer
- Jul 12, 2006
- 111,985
- 31,539
- 146
DarthKyrie
Golden Member
- Jul 11, 2016
- 1,617
- 1,395
- 146
Hayabusa you are one powerful dude, are you sure you're not also Pele (the Hawaiian Fire Goddess not the footballer from Brazil)?
hal2kilo
Lifer
- Feb 24, 2009
- 26,496
- 12,618
- 136
Well, the education/debt point does not apply in the UK. I keep hearing younger people making that argument and it's exasperating, because it ignores the fact that the vast majority (like 95%) of baby-boomers (and much of Gen X) didn't even go to university. I think the majority of baby boomers here left school at 15. University education has become more costly, and funded by loans, precisely because it's been massively expanded so that now about half of a cohort will attend.
Of course, a flipside is that the value of a degree has declined hugely, because it was always a positional-good, and it's not worth so much when all your competitors have one as well. So in that sense the young have it rough, they have to pay to get a degree just to keep up with where they would have been anyway. But then, they don't have to go work as a manual labourer at 15.
And then it just comes down to the traditional old questions of class - contacts and non-educational cultural-capital. And the increased use of 'contracting out' and the decline of all the old big employers with training programmes means that employment is now much more a matter of knowing the right people and hustling than of putting in your time and working your way up. The point really is that the whole context has changed so much that you can't really compare across generations very easily.
I'm Gen X, and when I went to uni only 6% of my peers did so - and in my experience, the vast majority of them came from higher-earning backgrounds.
I have to say I'm not a big believer in the whole idea of stealing retirements, in a general sense I don't even think its possible unless we're talking about some sort of mass investment in foreign assets that can be sold.
Boomers went to college and it was largely paid for by their parents. When it came time for them to do the same they cut public investment in college and shifted the burden to loans for their children. That's shitty! They also had abundant evidence that climate change is a huge problem and did almost nothing to address it.
As I've said before I'm not blaming you personally or anything, as far as I can tell you're a good guy who has tried to do his part. I do blame some of your fellow boomers though.
Well I can't speak for the UK but as far as the US goes the increasing cost of tuition at non-research public universities (ie: where most people go) has been driven primarily by declining government support for them. The fundamental question in loans vs. government funding is who pays - if it's loans the kids pay and if it's funding the parents pay. The parents have increasingly declined to pay.
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