The Unnanounced Class War

[Argus]

Not just homes, but what's in them. But this sort of argument can quickly turn into bashing the poor and middle class for wanting too much. Reducing expectations has to start at the top.

Starting at the top we have the regular house porn shows on TV, showing everyone all the incredible homes and rooms and back yards and stuff that they don't have. Just saw a commercial yesterday for one called Million Dollar Rooms. Not million dollar houses, million dollar rooms, including bathrooms, kitchens, etc. Some of these kitchens have islands so big Gilligan could get lost on them!

[Guest American Woman]

This might be a difficult concept for you to understand, but no, you can't know failure from success until you have something to compare.

Trust me. I know if my life is successful without comparing it to my neighbors' lives. I know if I'm happy without comparing my life to theirs. I know if I'm doing right because I know what's right; I don't have to compare my morals and/or ethics with my neighbors to know that what I'm doing is right. Perhaps you don't know these things about your own life without comparing with the neighbors, but I do.

You have to compare to know the value. It has to be measured against something.

I disagree. I know the value of my life, my happiness, my ethics without comparing them to you or my neighbor or any other Tom, Dick, or Harry. By your mindset, one could be a child abuser, but compared to the man down the street who murdered his child, that person's not so bad. It's a ridiculous notion that one cannot know right from wrong, good from bad, success from failure without comparing - and basing your worth, your happiness, etc. on that comparison. If you don't know your own mind, if you don't know for yourself if you are successful or happy, you are lacking something. Using your mindset, compared to Bill Gates we're all miserable failures. According to your mindset, one's speedboat looks good, just like the dirt road, until you see Paul Allen's "Octopus:" ie: the asphalt.Then, according to your mindset, the speedboat isn't so great - which is bull.

Is America the greatest place in the world? Well, a lot of Americans would say yes, but none of those international bodies which like to assess such things seems to think so, and unlike most Americans they've actually looked at other places.

Who cares about the international bodies? Their choices are based on their criteria, and everyone doesn't have the same criteria. Everyone's happiness and contentment isn't based on the same priorities. It's ridiculous to judge everyone by the same criteria - their criteria. If that's what would make them happy - great. It's not what makes everyone happy, and I'm sure not going to conform my life to someone else's opinion of what's 'best.'

If you need someone to tell you if you're happy or not, or if Canada is a great nation or not - if you don't know that without comparing yourselves to the U.S., for example, you're the one with the problem.

Edited January 2, 2013 by American Woman

[Argus]

Trust me. I know if my life is successful without comparing it to my neighbors' lives.I know if I'm happy without comparing my life to theirs.

How nice for you. But we're not talking about you. We're not talking about something as ephemeral as happiness. We're talking about whether a nation is great, or even good, and that means it has to be qualified by what others are doing which is better or worse.

You are happy? So what? Some bushman in Africa is happy too. He doesn't mind that he isn't going to live all that long, or that there are no doctors, or that he sleeps in the dirt, and is hungry on occasion, because to him, that is what life is. He knows nothing else, so he is happy. Ignorance is happiness, yes. Perhaps if he knew people in other places live twice as long as he will he might not be quite as content.

[eyeball]

I'll tell you what I, as a conservative like. I like a government with a lot of money to spare. Money is security. I never would have eliminated the GST. I would have raked it in, paid off all our debt, and then built up the biggest mother of a bank account until we could actually live off the interest and cut taxes. Now that'd be great!

I sure as hell wouldn't run up a gazillion dollar deficit the way the Republicans have, and then propose a 20% tax cut. How in the hell can that be considered conservative?

I don't know, a lot of people have been asking that regarding right-wing fiscal prudence for decades now and gotten little but shit on for having the unmitigated gall for doing so.

Any conservatives that are knew to having this sort of gall should just bite off little pieces to chew on at first.

As for anyone else experiencing evolving viewpoints out there, give some consideration to people who have had a more accurate read on things these last few decades, and the fact their sense of things has been evolving too. You've still got a long way to go. The one's ahead of you have come to realize the old conservatism versus socialism thing is really just a red herring. It's the top and bottom nature of the relationship between the governed and those who govern that's really gone to shit.

I know, I know, what about the temerity? Remember...little bites.

[Shady]

I think the mess is because of bad government, and you think it' s the result of bad businessmen

Yep. Bad government was at the heart of the housing bubble. But it's easier for people to blame the evil banks, not the ridiculous government policy pushing for homeownership for people that wouldn't otherwise qualify. In fact, what's ironic, is that's the exact same kind of policy these people support, to make things more "equal" for the little guy.

[Shady]

I'll tell you what I, as a conservative like. I like a government with a lot of money to spare. Money is security. I never would have eliminated the GST. I would have raked it in, paid off all our debt, and then built up the biggest mother of a bank account until we could actually live off the interest and cut taxes. Now that'd be great!

That's delusional. You think we could live off the interest of a large bank account? Unbelievable.

I sure as hell wouldn't run up a gazillion dollar deficit the way the Republicans have, and then propose a 20% tax cut. How in the hell can that be considered conservative?

Yeah, let's forget that your buddy Obama's added more debt than any other president in the history of the country. And when he leaves office, will have added more debt than all president previously combined.

[Michael Hardner]

Yep. Bad government was at the heart of the housing bubble. But it's easier for people to blame the evil banks, not the ridiculous government policy pushing for homeownership for people that wouldn't otherwise qualify. In fact, what's ironic, is that's the exact same kind of policy these people support, to make things more "equal" for the little guy.

Here's a question - if they were forced to lend money then how were they able to re-sell these mortgages to other financial institutions ?

[Bonam]

That's delusional. You think we could live off the interest of a large bank account? Unbelievable.

It's not delusional at all. Canada's federal budget is ~270 billion. At 6% annual return (not unreasonable for large investments), you could get that in perpetuity from a $4.5 trillion account. If Canada had a 10% ($27 billion) surplus every year, it would take ~160 years to build up such an account. All these numbers scale as the economy grows. The point being if Canada had undertaken this course at its founding in the 1800s, maintaining yearly 10% surpluses and investing them, we'd be there today.

In the UAE, their sovereign wealth fund provides enough growth/interest to pay for 1/3 of all government expenses (though they are rather building this fund up further, not drawing on it). In Norway, it's about 1/6, and they only started building up their fund ~20 years ago.

[kimmy]

Yep. Bad government was at the heart of the housing bubble. But it's easier for people to blame the evil banks, not the ridiculous government policy pushing for homeownership for people that wouldn't otherwise qualify. In fact, what's ironic, is that's the exact same kind of policy these people support, to make things more "equal" for the little guy.

It's hilarious that you continue to cling to the myth that the government caused the sub-prime crisis after all the times you've been proven wrong. The "new conservatism" isn't just blind obeisance to authority, it also apparently requires complete denial of reality.

-k

[dre]

It's hilarious that you continue to cling to the myth that the government caused the sub-prime crisis after all the times you've been proven wrong. The "new conservatism" isn't just blind obeisance to authority, it also apparently requires complete denial of reality.

-k

What even more hilarious is that anyone would even take the time to write a reply to shady's well debunked crap. He makes assertions, they are challenged, and he abandons the thread. He makes the same assertions again, they are debunked he abandons the thread.. Rinse and repeat. Shady is forever the midget with a pitcher of beer from the movie "happy gilmour". He has as much life as you choose to give him.

[kimmy]

Shady is forever the midget with a pitcher of beer from the movie "happy gilmour". He has as much life as you choose to give him.

From here on, that is the mental picture I will have when I read his posts.

-k

[WIP]

It's not delusional at all. Canada's federal budget is ~270 billion. At 6% annual return (not unreasonable for large investments), you could get that in perpetuity from a $4.5 trillion account. If Canada had a 10% ($27 billion) surplus every year, it would take ~160 years to build up such an account. All these numbers scale as the economy grows. The point being if Canada had undertaken this course at its founding in the 1800s, maintaining yearly 10% surpluses and investing them, we'd be there today.

And that money....even if your scheme was solid, would eventually end up being worthless paper because ultimately, the entire banking and currency system that dominates the world economy is a giant ponzi scheme that just keeps chugging along until it completely collapses.

Again, we have to scrutinize the system of allowing banks to create money rather than governments -- called fractional reserve banking, which produces over 95% of the new money that enters the economy, and can only be paid back by continued economic expansion. Now, that the world is getting very close to the absolute limits of what the natural economy will allow us to use, mother nature is about to put an end to the real borrowing that hasn't been costed out by measuring GDP growth: overshooting available topsoil, freshwater, depletion of NNR's and declines in arable land due to climate change, are nature's way of telling us that we should have kicked the bankers to the curb centuries ago and found a path to steady state or no-growth economics.

In the UAE, their sovereign wealth fund provides enough growth/interest to pay for 1/3 of all government expenses (though they are rather building this fund up further, not drawing on it). In Norway, it's about 1/6, and they only started building up their fund ~20 years ago.

And doesn't the fact that oil-rich countries are the only ones increasing wealth, while the major oil importers (like U.S. and the E.U.) are increasing in debt, tell you something about what really causes economic upturns and downturns? If you want to look further, 10 of the 11 major U.S. recessions since the beginning of the Oil Age in the 1860's can be correlated to shortages and spikes in oil prices. http://dss.ucsd.edu/~jhamilto/oil_history.pdf And the recessions caused by high oil prices are especially damaging since 1973 - when the U.S. went from being a net exporter of oil to a net importer. America's empire building and increasingly belligerent use of military to leverage foreign policy objectives over the last 40 years (through Democrat and Republican administrations) cannot be understood without placing the cheap and abundant oil imports as the no.1 policy goal. If we had just let the oil run out and do the hard work of reorganizing our economies along a sustainable non-capitalist system of currency and government, maybe the damage wouldn't be irreparable.

But, here we are today, here is Canada....shifting from being one of the advocates for taking action in addressing environmental crises - to becoming one of the deadenders: nations that choose to extract the last and the dirtiest sources of carbon from the earth to keep the oil-dependent ponzi scheme running a few years longer! I've mentioned previously in other threads, that even for Canada, oil is a curse, rather than a blessing - when net costs are compared to net benefits...but that doesn't stop the oil-based federal government and their minions who benefit and expect to benefit from breaking down more tar sands for something resembling oil, to export far and wide.

In 20 or 30 years time, maybe after this latest desperate oil boom is starting to run dry, the damage done will be seen by all as the biggest mistake Canadians ever made as a nation.....but, by that time it will be too late to do anything about the damage to the entire world environment. That's something that future generations struggling for survival will have to live with!

[bush_cheney2004]

America's empire building and increasingly belligerent use of military to leverage foreign policy objectives over the last 40 years (through Democrat and Republican administrations) cannot be understood without placing the cheap and abundant oil imports as the no.1 policy goal.

Quite to the contrary....it was easily understood and communicated as such by several American administrations, including the "Carter Doctrine".

[Argus]

Yep. Bad government was at the heart of the housing bubble. But it's easier for people to blame the evil banks, not the ridiculous government policy pushing for homeownership for people that wouldn't otherwise qualify.

This is total BS. The bad government responsible was one that ignored what Wall Street was doing. And which didn't put most of the bankers on Wall-Street in prison afterward. So in that sense, it's both Democrats and Republicans.

But let's not forget the real criminals were on Wall-Street. They made out, literally, like bandits, and got off scott free.

[Argus]

Here's a question - if they were forced to lend money then how were they able to re-sell these mortgages to other financial institutions ?

Because those financial institutions didn't care how bad the loans were. They were a simple package they could re-sell to others with the aid of the likes of Standard and Poors which rated them Class AAA investment vehicles.

[Argus]

This is such a perfect example of the inbred nature of the lobbyist-congressman relationship that it could only happen in America. It just shows so clearly how more and more politicians are only beholden to their funders, and not to the public.

She is a Washington native who in 1975 married a lobbyist named Bill Emerson. He went on to become a Republican congressman from Missouri’s 8th Congressional District, which encompasses much of the southeastern part of the state, with Cape Girardeau as its largest population center. During Bill Emerson’s term in office, his wife became a lobbyist, first for the restaurant industry and later as a spokeswoman for the American Insurance Industry Association.

When her husband died of cancer in 1996, Jo Ann Emerson took his seat in Congress. During her nine terms in office, the largest single contributor to her re-election campaigns was her future employer, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, the umbrella trade and lobbying organization that represents more than 900 small electric cooperatives around the nation.

On November 6, Emerson defeated her Democratic opponent in Missouri with 72% of the vote, a huge margin of victory. Yet, nine days after her election, she announced her resignation in order to become CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. The current CEO of the group is a former congressman, Glenn English of Oklahoma. According to public records, his salary is approximately $1.6 million a year.

http://ac360.blogs.c...revolving-door/

Edited January 26, 2013 by Argus

[eyeball]

This is such a perfect example of the inbred nature of the lobbyist-congressman relationship that it could only happen in America. It just shows so clearly how more and more politicians are only beholden to their funders, and not to the public.

You're such a commie and more like a holier-than-thou nouveau non-smoker all the time.

You go girl!

[Argus]

And speaking of equality in America. Anyone watch the latest Frontline show The Untouchables?

The show points out that despite massive, widespread fraud that killed thousands, that destroyed the lives of millions, that cost the taxpayer hundreds of billions, that almost wiped out the economy and the international financial system, not a single Wall Street banker has been arrested. Nor has the US Justice Department been particularly aggressive in looking for evidence. Couldn't be related to all the money flowing into Washington, could it?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/business-economy-financial-crisis/untouchables/fraud-was-the-f-bomb/

[kimmy]

I definitely plan to watch The Untouchables.

One of the bigger topics in the internet community lately has been the suicide of Aaron Swartz. And I think the contrast between the US Attorneys' relentless pursuit of Swartz vs the complete disinterest in prosecuting anybody involved in Wall Street fraud paints a very clear picture. It's astounding that nobody has been held accountable.

-k

[Argus]

I definitely plan to watch The Untouchables.

One of the bigger topics in the internet community lately has been the suicide of Aaron Swartz. And I think the contrast between the US Attorneys' relentless pursuit of Swartz vs the complete disinterest in prosecuting anybody involved in Wall Street fraud paints a very clear picture. It's astounding that nobody has been held accountable.

-k

Obama raised a record amount from Wall Street during his 2008 election, and the Republicans continue to be well-funded by Wall Street. There is thus I'm sure there is a lot of political pressure behind the scenes to not make waves for Wall Street.

[kimmy]

I did watch The Untouchables yesterday. It really made clear the extent to which outfits like Countrywide were determined to sign up as many mortgages as possible no matter how dismal the applicant. And it really made clear the extent to which the investment banks were determined to ignore the fact that a large portion of the mortgages they were buying were "defective", because they were just going to "securitize" them and sell them to suckers anyway.

And it strongly appears that the Obama administration wasn't actually interested in prosecuting anybody of any significance. It appears as if Senator Kaufman and Mr Connaughton weren't actually supported at all. One assumes the administration set them on their mission thinking that it would give the public the impression that something was being done.

I liked the contrast between the federal prosecutors being unable to do anything, compared with the blogger and documentary film-maker being able to turn up these whistleblowers and the private law firm being able to put together a civil suit.

-k

[Canuckistani]

It's all part of the too big to fail problem. Just as they didn't level criminal charges against HSBC for money laundering, nor all the other banks that engage in it, once they started pulling on the thread of going after one or two people. the whole sweater would unravel and calamity would result. If Obama's such a commie, why does he draw his financial advisors from Goldman Sachs, same as everybody else? Once he was elected, he was shown who's really in charge and went right along with it. Even his supposedly radical health reforms will just make big insurance bigger and richer, where you now have to buy insurance from private companies mandated by the govt.

[Argus]

It's all part of the too big to fail problem. Just as they didn't level criminal charges against HSBC for money laundering, nor all the other banks that engage in it, once they started pulling on the thread of going after one or two people.

You don't destroy a bank simply putting its CEO in prison. CEOs are easily replaceable. And you don't stop criminal behavior with small fines. If a bank makes $100 million through criminal activity, what is the point in fining them $10 million? If you are caught cheating on your taxes through lies or commission the fines are 5 times bigger. Heck, what's wrong with taking ALL the profit a company made in a year? That's not going to bankrupt them either. The fine HSBC paid was 10% of its profits that year. Goldman Sachs paid a half billion dollar penalty, for its fraud during the sub-prime mortgage mess, which was about 1/20th of their profits for the year.

Edited January 27, 2013 by Argus

[Canuckistani]

You don't destroy a bank simply putting its CEO in prison. CEOs are easily replaceable. And you don't stop criminal behavior with small fines. If a bank makes $100 million through criminal activity, what is the point in fining them $10 million? If you are caught cheating on your taxes through lies or commission the fines are 5 times bigger. Heck, what's wrong with taking ALL the profit a company made in a year? That's not going to bankrupt them either. The fine HSBC paid was 10% of its profits that year. Goldman Sachs paid a half billion dollar penalty, for its fraud during the sub-prime mortgage mess, which was about 1/20th of their profits for the year.

I think you bankrupt them because putting the CEO's in prison would make the next batch too afraid to lie cheat and steal, so profits would be greatly reduced. Our system can't tolerate that, honesty is much too dangerous a concept. Or as Col. Jessep said.... (could use that line for half the discussions on this forum.)

[blueblood]

Oh Moses smell the roses...