Meanwhile, Kim Kardashian just turned down a $3 million offer for pictures of her baby from an Aussie magazine. http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity...n-3-million-baby-north-west-photo-deal-201327
"agencies have flocked to neighborhoods full of undocumented immigrants, finding labor that is kept cheap in part by these workers legal vulnerability: they cannot complain without risking deportation" The above sums up Americas economic collapse. The malicious enabling of rampant illegal immigrants/immigration by shady business owners who abuse these illegals when unable to offshore the jobs. Enabling illegal immigraton is part of the mantra for unbridled unregulated capitalism to enrich a few well connected individuals to the detriment of all Americans. This malicious ideology has become a religion for a segment of the population. I call it the Kochification of America.
Yes, it's a little pathetic that the only support you provided for your view point was directing others to wikipedia.
A Keynesian Success Story: Germany's New Economic Miracle from: http://www.spiegel.de/international...-germany-s-new-economic-miracle-a-707231.html Germany's New Economic Miracle During the worst of the global financial meltdown, Berlin pumped tens of billions of euros into the economy and spent hundreds of billions propping up German banks. Now, the country is reaping the benefits as Germany is once again Europe's economic motor. By SPIEGEL Staff It was just the sort of photo-op German Chancellor Angela Merkel urgently needs. Peter Löscher, the CEO of electronics giant Siemens, was sitting on a throne-like chair in the governor's palace in the central Russian city of Yekaterinburg. Contracts were being handed to him in brown leather folders, and every time Löscher signed one of the documents with his malachite green pen, the chancellor clapped with delight. The procedure took place four times, and by the time the round of contract signing ended, Siemens had secured Russian orders worth about â¬4 billion ($5.2 billion). The real purpose of Merkel's five-day visit to Russia and China last week was to hold political talks with the two countries' leaders, but the most important message of the trip was meant for the German people. Look, Merkel seemed to indicating to German citizens, German industry is in demand worldwide, even if the government at home is divided and lacking direction. The German economy has indeed come roaring back to life this summer. Two years after the outbreak of the financial crisis, the auto industry is adding extra shifts once again. The machine building, electronics and chemical industries are all reporting a rapidly growing number of orders. Total unemployment is expected to drop below the 2.8 million mark this fall, the lowest level since 1991. For the first time in decades, the former "sick man of Europe" is back to being an engine for economic growth. According to an internal government assessment, the country's gross domestic product increased by more than 1.5 percent in the second quarter of this year. In their last prognosis, completed in April, government officials had predicted only 0.9 percent GDP growth. Production in the manufacturing industry increased by 5 percent over the previous quarter. The government assessment also shows that exports grew by more than 9 percent in May. 'Number One in Europe' If the trend continues, say the experts, the German economy will grow by well over 2 percent this year, or almost twice as much as in most neighboring countries. Economists are already proclaiming a second economic miracle, while a former French foreign minister is complaining that Germany is "number one in Europe" once again. The unexpected comeback is the result of an unprecedented large-scale economic experiment. After last year's dramatic economic slump, Chancellor Merkel, after some initial hesitation, decided to support a bailout program modeled on the theories of British economist John Maynard Keynes. When the economy is in decline, the professor concluded based on the experiences of the Great Depression, the government must quickly counteract the trend with massive government spending programs. In keeping with Keynes' theory, the former grand coalition government of the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) launched an extensive package of stimulus and bailout measures, which included â¬480 billion for ailing banks, â¬115 billion for financially weakened companies and â¬80 billion for two programs to stimulate the domestic economy. As then-Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück said, the goal was to "fight fire with fire." It did not proceed entirely without collateral damage. The government kept moribund banks alive and rescued companies that didn't need rescuing. It spent money to allow companies to scale back production and paid consumers premiums to destroy assets with intrinsic value. Streets were repaved only to be torn up again soon afterwards, and schools were renovated and later shut down. Although a gigantic waste of money was put into motion, it did prove to be extremely beneficial during last year's historic economic slump. Government debt skyrocketed, but in return companies received new orders, consumers had more money to spend and banks, no longer fearing that their borrowers could soon go out of business, started lending again. *** sorry dudes I know it's a lot of effort but you'll have to click on the link to read the full article, that is if you're interested.
Government/unions interfere and create these conditions. âThis system insulates companies from workersâ-_compensation claims, unemployment taxes, union drives and the duty to ensure that their workers are legal immigrants. This trend is intensifying the U.S.âs decades-long rise in income inequality... One likely accelerant of the trend: the health-reform law known as Obamacare. 2013 will be a boom year for temping because of health care reform.â
You both have it backwards. Poor is a social issue. There is no "better" or "worse", only what society mandates is useful and worthy of high pay at any given time. There are probably an infinite number of reasons people go into these sorts of jobs, and never find the will to escape from repetitive menial labor that traps them economically. Of course, one has to do with specific mental capacities [notice I did not say worse or better or IQ or any other demeaning statistic]. My approach is that all things are devine, and from that premise no one is better than anyone else. Only society makes those judgements and divides us by class. Now, on to the science. Other than differing mental capacities, social and psychological issues, I think that repetitive actions must have an effect on certain types of people. For example: "Abstract Brain measures often show highly structuredtemporal dynamics that synchronize when observers are doing the same task. The standard method for analysis of brain imaging signals (e.g. fMRI) uses the GLM for eachvoxel indexed against a specified experimental design but does not explicitly involve temporal dynamics." http://academia.edu/181946/Solving_...namics_fMRI_over_subjects_doing_the_same_task I claim that nature has evolved people to do repetitive tasks, that this was once a highly valued by society at one point in time (still is we just don't pay for it?). Repetitive actions probably put human beings in some sort of meditative peaceful state. A kind of valium. So my claim is that people are like this because their geographical location has evolved them this way over tens of thosands of years. Nature rewarded (evolved) this kind of activity by making it "pleasurable". But have we learned anything from "Guns, Germs and Steel" http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-St...73203951&sr=8-1&keywords=guns+germs+and+steel that we keep repeating the same categorical mistakes and make racial judgments? There is nothing wrong with them. Only society and money are wrong. If I were the CEO of WMT, NKE etc I would go to these motherfuckers (yes, you can be divine and a motherfucker too) and tell them to start treating people with decency or WMT goes somewhere else.
This is fascinating. I get your thought process, and I understand the philosophy of extreme relativism where there is no true reference point other than your own which will always be biased. However, after many years of thought, I tend to agree with the Buddha that there is an absolute scale of suffering and that humans are better off avoiding suffering. In addition, I understand the claim that geographic evolutionary constraints likely gave rise to certain human traits and those can sometimes collide with values of modern Westernized societies. In fact I tend to strongly agree that geography and climate can have profound influence in human activity patterns (e.g., warmer climates might actually make the culture less competitive and cut-throat, etc.). But fortunately we humans have memes and learning to overcome most genetic dispositions. Therefore, I still do believe that it is not an arbitrary viewpoint that humans will stagnate and suffer more if they don't learn, and if they do learn, they will improve their likelihood of moving away from suffering and hardship. In the end, I believe that it might take several generations of adaptation and memetic evolution for the learning meme to take hold in people originating from diverse geographic locations. I guess the one thing I do agree with you is that it doesn't make sense to cast judgement on the fact that some people never were fortunate enough to have been handed down the meme about having the ability to improve one's plight through learning and practice.
Good post nitro. Think about it, what do successful people do with their leisure time; golf, tennis, running or walking, hunting and fishing. All repetitive and easy on the mind. Repetition does have a meditative effect.
What is wrong with being poor? There will always be poor, no matter how rich a society is. Poor people today in the US enjoy things that even Kings a thousand years ago couldn't attain to. Poor people have plenty of food to eat and a wide variety to choose from, even fresh vegetables in the winter. They drive cars, have unbelievable access to heath care and medicines, great clothes, and most get all these things for free. The poor get paid to stay poor in this country, and that's why many do the unstable odd jobs. If they got a real job they would lose their housing assistance, their food stamps, their welfare, their fat tax returns, and what ever else they get for free from the government. Even without the government communist assistance programs, that steal money from one working individual and give it to bums, the poor in this country today would still be rich compared rich people in the past.
This is how we pay for free healthcare. There is no free lunch. âIf you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.â -P.J. O'Rourke -burn8