American middle class faces impossible savings task

Discussion in 'Politics' started by a529612, Mar 22, 2007.

  1. For sure. Imagine your entire job description was to clean up daddy's mess before the sheeple wake up to the truth.
     
    #41     Mar 23, 2007
  2. Your making me laugh as much at TD. :D

    I don't get out enough, hmm? I have been to Europe 4 times in the last 5 years, have relatives in Czech Republic, Germany, Canada, and the US.

    I don't believe in using our own military for our own purposes. I am in favor of the war in Afghanistan, you would know that if you took the time to read my posts.

    Alright I am going to display some class, something of which is too often missing on ET, and bow out of this discussion. We agree to disagree. I won't agree with you and you won't agree with me.

    My purpose is not to have some cyber war. I have better things to do. The weather is nice.

    For those that wanted to talk about debt and savings I am sorry I got so off topic. Enjoy your weekend everyone. :)
     
    #42     Mar 23, 2007
  3. NOAM CHOMSKY
    He is considered to be a leading intellectual of the US by most educated people. Btw. He is a Professor at MIT, yea that MIT. I am sure they have a habit of employing "psuedo-intellectuals".
    I have read Socialist Review and perhaps two dozen other left wing periodicals and I can tell you, his stuff is on a much higher level and written for a more demanding/academia crowd. However, he has written a couple of publications where his ideas are laid out in more common fashion, try him again. If you are short on time, watch a movie titled "Manufacturing Consent." It will allow you to grasp some of his basic/main ideas.
    However, since you dismiss him, how do you account for countless articles that have been published in Harper's Magazine and the New Yorker where Bush and his policies are criticized on numerous occasions? After all, I am certain, you are not of an opinion that those two highly regarded publications are known for publishing "useless delusional crap" by "pseudo intellectuals"? On the contrary, both publications are considered premiere periodicals know for their honesty, refinement and intellectual integrity.

    Like I mention before, stop relaying on Fox network for your info and branch out a little bit, try to immerse yourself in ideas that are floating around those who are considered top 1% of our society... not in terms of wealth although I must admit some of them are extraordinarily well off, but in terms of intellect.

    Cheers and have a happy weekend!
     
    #43     Mar 23, 2007
  4. Cesko

    Cesko

    Chomsky has been a celebrity radical since the mid-1960s when he made his name as an anti-Vietnam War activist. Although he lost some of his appeal in the late-1970s and 1980s by his defense of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, he has used September 11 to restore his reputation, indeed to surpass his former influence and stature. At seventy-four years of age, he is today the doyen of the American and much of the world’s intellectual left.

    http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/may03/chomsky.htm
     
    #44     Mar 24, 2007
  5. Cesko

    Cesko

    Took few minutes to read randomly selected article from his site. Why few minutes? Because that's how long it took to get to the first non-sense he is trying to convince readers about.

    Regarding your mentioning Fox (second time) if you had as many books (non-fiction!!) under your belt like I do (believe me no bragging here) you might not have patience with professor's non-sense either.
    Thing about intellectuals is, for some reason, they succumb to delusional thinking much easier than regular "blue collar" crowd.

    None of the article from his site is from Harper, New Yorker etc.
     
    #45     Mar 24, 2007
  6. Americans are friendly, open minded, loving people. So are Muslims and Christians.
    Please don’t blame the average American, but thus who control their minds...
    I am not on American.
     
    #46     Mar 24, 2007
  7. Yes we are "Americans" "friendly, open minded, loving people".

    Yes they are "Muslims and Christians."

    "Please don’t blame the average American, but thus who control their minds..."

    I don't "blame", but personal responsibility cannot seem to gain any relevent status here anymore. I'm speaking in general of course. The lack of personal responsibility is a global (human) issue and governments are more than happy to "help".

    It is very easy to "give" from one and take from another if you are a socialist/leftist politician or "elitist / enlightened intellect" who pacifies his own inner guilt of their own success by further enslaving segments through "benefits and entitlements".

    I don't feel guilty by what I have achieved (earned through work) and I don't feel sorry for any man with an IQ above 60 and normal physical abilities who cannot succeed.

    What the hell am I on here for...it's Saturday!!

    Have a good weekend.
     
    #47     Mar 24, 2007
  8. Americans have been brain washed and programmed since the child, but they are not aware of it. Please understand they don’t know any different…And if we make them aware, they will be punished, and killed in millions, for example by artificial Earth quake or by nuking some meager city. We (free minded people) are the problem and danger, there is 97% of regular people, and only 3% of thus who control as. That bigger number must be dropped quickly to keep world in order.
     
    #48     Mar 24, 2007
  9. I wish we had something like this - - Harry Newton on saving in his native Australia:

    8:30 AM EST, Friday, March 23, 2007: Soon there will be a Federal election in Australia. To get re-elected, the governing party often produces a pre-election, BIG tax break. This election's BIG tax break is that from May 10, 2006 to June 30, 2007 (the end of the Australian financial year), you're allowed to put up to $1 million tax-free in your super fund/s (your retirement superannuation fund/s). That money can be contributed by you, and/or your employer.

    Now think where the money will go. Most of it (and I mean most of it) will go into the Australian stockmarket. And guess what the Australian stocks have done since the compulsory super law was passed in 1992? This chart compares BHP to the ASX200, over the past ten years. The ASX200 is Dow Jones index of Australia, except it covers not 30 stocks, but the 200 biggest Australian companies.

    There has always been a big incentive to put money in your super fund. Ordinary income tax can be as high as 46.5%. Allowable contributions to your super fund are deductible. But "allowable" has been low. This is the first time the government has opened it to a huge amount. A $1 million is a lot of money in Australia. And Australians are scrambling to scrounge the money before the June 30 deadline. You should hear what's going on in my sister's family, who live in Sydney, my home town. To raise cash, my sister is trying to sell her grandchildren. (Well, not really. But you get the idea.)

    Like the U.S., Australia has zillions of us baby boomers about to retire. The Australian Government, like the U.S. government, doesn't have the money to pay their old age pensions. The compulsory super fund system -- introduced in 1992 -- was to address that lack of money problem. And it's worked brilliantly.

    Australians now have more money invested in managed funds per capita than any other country, including the U.S. Compulsory superannuation in combination with buoyant economic growth has turned Australia into a 'shareholder society', where most workers are now investors in the stock market. Apart from sport, it's all everyone in Australia talks about. Wikipedia has a good piece on Australian superannuation. Click here.

    http://www.technologyinvestor.com/
     
    #49     Mar 24, 2007
  10. I took the liberty to present some of the achievements of Noam Chomsky who according to Cesko is a "pseudo-intellectual":


    [edit] Academic achievements, awards and honors
    In the spring of 1969 he delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford University; in January 1970 he delivered the Bertrand Russell Memorial Lecture at Cambridge University; in 1972, the Nehru Memorial Lecture in New Delhi; in 1977, the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden; in 1988 the Massey Lectures at the University of Toronto titled "Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies"; and in 1997, The Davie Memorial Lecture on Academic Freedom in Cape Town, among many others.

    Noam Chomsky has received many honorary degrees from the most prestigious universities around the world, including the following: University of London, University of Chicago, Loyola University of Chicago, Swarthmore College, Delhi University, Bard College, University of Massachusetts, University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, Amherst College, Cambridge University, University of Buenos Aires, McGill University, Universitat Rovira I Virgili, Tarragona, Columbia University, University of Connecticut, University of Maine, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, University of Western Ontario, University of Toronto, Harvard University, Universidad de Chile, University of Calcutta, Universidad Nacional De Colombia, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and the Santo Domingo Institute of Technology. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. In addition, he is a member of other professional and learned societies in the United States and abroad, and is a recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association, the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, the Helmholtz Medal, the Dorothy Eldridge Peacemaker Award, the Ben Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science, and others. He is twice winner of The Orwell Award, granted by The National Council of Teachers of English for "Distinguished Contributions to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language" [7]. Early in his career Chomsky was granted the prestigious MacArthur Award.

    In 2007, Chomsky will receive The Uppsala University (Sweden) Honorary Doctor's degree in commemoration of Carolus Linnaeus.[8]

    Chomsky was voted the leading living public intellectual in The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll conducted by the British magazine Prospect. He reacted, saying "I don't pay a lot of attention to polls" [9]. In a list compiled by the magazine New Statesman in 2006, he was voted seventh in the list of "Heroes of our time".[22]




    NEED I SAY MORE???????????????????????????????
     
    #50     Mar 24, 2007