the poverty rate is accelerating

BLOWBACK from generations of Advertising.





Has the reader looked at society lately?

Has the reader looked at the goals people are setting for themselves these days.






Did we, as a society, take a wrong turn somewhere?
The following is my own diagnosis.


Mike Grouchy

This is the blowback from generations of Advertising. Which is being conducted on a saturation level unprecedented in Known-Human-History ™. These commercials have decimated all creativity out of this country.



Things used to be do-it-yourself, and personal craft was respected. One could design a new couch, build it in the garage, and sell it to the neighbor that hired you to fit it perfectly in their house. But these days... hell they don't even sell graph paper and pencils at the corner store anymore, let alone everyone having a garage full of tools. And this is because the advertising industry has never taken a day off. If a person tells people they can design and make them a couch they will picture that person as face-down-in-the-street, not as a well dressed success offering a glass of the best. The person didn't do anything to deserve this, it's just that the corrosive nature of advertising has left individuals in this position.


In order to create Brand-Loyalty ™ the Madison Avenue types have corroded a certain part of society. No one will buy things hand made, home made, or researched by someone they know personally. It _HAS_ to be their media source that recommends it to them. This is how corporations have divorced us from our own creativity, because /sarc "if it was a good idea then you would _want_ to go corporate with it" /end sarc.


This is also the reason the poverty rate is accelerating. Say everyone in one neighborhood wants to paint paintings. They won't even buy one from each other for fifty cents. But they will all spend a few hundred dollars on a print from a famous artist. We have been conditioned, through endless advertising and messages, that "if it isn't corporate produced, it isn't for me."









All these commercials have decimated creativity out of this country. And this is because the advertising industry has never taken a day off. And since television went 24 hours a day, Commercials don't take an hour off. Constantly making sure that the buying public only has loyalty to one thing. The product. Not themselves. Not one another. And certainly not any home grown creator.



Mike Grouchy

The entire education system breeds children to work for others and not themself. If you're good at something you go work for a megafirm, you don't do it yourself. I have seen it and lived it.

originally posted by: iDope
The entire education system breeds children to work for others and not themself. If you're good at something you go work for a megafirm, you don't do it yourself. I have seen it and lived it.

I agree. And I assert that it did not used to be this way. Further, that this is a new level of saturation.


Mike Grouchy

Sorry, I havn't had much time to observe between the daily fight to survive.

Between the removal from the employment market via a mj charge, to the $4000 a year for property taxes due or sold to someone else, to the price to eat healty, $5 a gallon milk, mortgage, homeowners insurance, car insurance, gas that doesn't drop when a barrel price halves, a $300 speeding ticket, forced payment of health insurance, overpriced and underbuilt imported Walmart and Lowes crap, overpriced junk clothes, HOA dues, house maintainance and sales tax, HfT frontrunning losses, I almost have forgotten what its like to be a human and not a commodity.
-end rant...peace

Great topic..imo society needs to look at its ultimate function and purpose.

its why the Great American Empire cannot be undone by the acts of man. You think NSA has the power it has just from micro chips hard drives and backdoors into every connected device on the planet? Y2k was the spawn of the beast, the AI we created which has taken over the globes networks now perpetuates a non-stop profit driven at all costs machine that cannot stop until the power is disconnected. It would take some major geological/tectonic event to rip through the worlds infrastructure of a stellar event (comet, asteroid, meteorite) to do the same to stop the expansion of the empire and its objectives.

Y2k was the first truly global "eyes over here everyone" event that followed the consolidation and buyouts of independent media throughout the nineties. Although the rest of the world frequently had access to other sources of information, they would not be so easily as duped as the Americans. Our primary sources of information was all brought under the ownership of literally a handful (single digit) number of entities.

It is a sad state of affairs, we have allowed ourselves to be sold, and dumbed down. We have allowed ourselves to forget our ingenuity, and our creative thinking. We have denied our need to create, and switched it to consume.

We do not craft, we buy and throw away when it is broken. We do not repair things, as things are not made to be repaired anymore.

There needs to be a revival to the old ways of doing things. There is something to be said about building something from scratch, for yourself, or for another.

Excellent post, OP, S&F! Now I'm itching for nice weather so I can go work on building some things in my garage, with tools I bought..

We used to make stuff in this country that doesn't break.
These days everything breaks.
Even the law.
All the while, we are being offered arbitration.
How did it come so far.


In the 70's I remember seeing people all over the south struggle to define our future. As soon as any new product was found to be of poor quality the word would spread. Cheep, rip off, junk, garbage. And the product would disappear from the market. Everyone's dad had a tool shed/garage and was trying to stock it up with everything they would require to rebuild civilization from the ground up. People still built and sold furniture, wooden children's toys, even playground equipment. A small home grown economy that was willfully going against the big box store K-mart.

But all was for naught. Fiat currency you see.
Pretty soon instead of every neighborhood having a home lawnmower repair,
a new snapper cost less than the repairs.
Of course it was junk, but at those prices...
Against Fiat currency, the argument for quality evaporates from the market.
Items that last subvert future profits.


My Grandfather said "The poor can not afford to be cheap." He was talking about shoes. But I have found it to be very true. The poor are the last people who can afford to buy discount retail in the long term. Draining all the money out of their own local economy and sending it far away. What I learned is that a really expensive pair of shoes will last decades, but everything else has to be replaced each 9 months - to a - year and a half. The rents were lower in the 70's. It seems _as_ the neighborhood commerce has dried up the rents have increased taking up all the slack. So there is no room left to grow neighborhood economies any more.

Ironic when one considers that we pay more in rent to live somewhere with less access to commerce generation.

Thoughts?


Mike Grouchy

originally posted by: iDope
The entire education system breeds children to work for others and not themself. If you're good at something you go work for a megafirm, you don't do it yourself. I have seen it and lived it.

corporations ARE the problem.

You can't get grants or loans for your ideas anymore.

You have to sell them to a corp that gets to keep 99% of the profits because they financed it, the bank gets to keep 99% of your 1% because the corp didn't fully finance you but hooked you up with a friendly bank for a line of credit.

The gov still needs it 25%, and you haven't paid your business licensing or permit fees yet, meaning you only start out 40% in the hole while everyone else gets to make bank off your ideas and labors.

Welcome to the "free" world, where if a man is smart, makes all the right choices, and works hard 20 hours a day, you get to die with nothing.


What are you complaining about, the world was handed to you with absolutely no obstacles in your way.

You only failed because you were either lazy or stupid obviously.

You pos taker.

originally posted by: mikegrouchy

We used to make stuff in this country that doesn't break.
These days everything breaks.
Even the law.
All the while, we are being offered arbitration.
How did it come so far.

In the 70's I remember seeing people all over the south struggle to define our future. As soon as any new product was found to be of poor quality the word would spread. Cheep, rip off, junk, garbage. And the product would disappear from the market. Everyone's dad had a tool shed/garage and was trying to stock it up with everything they would require to rebuild civilization from the ground up. People still built and sold furniture, wooden children's toys, even playground equipment. A small home grown economy that was willfully going against the big box store K-mart.

But all was for naught. Fiat currency you see.
Pretty soon instead of every neighborhood having a home lawnmower repair,
a new snapper cost less than the repairs.
Of course it was junk, but at those prices...
Against Fiat currency, the argument for quality evaporates from the market.
Items that last subvert future profits.


My Grandfather said "The poor can not afford to be cheap." He was talking about shoes. But I have found it to be very true. The poor are the last people who can afford to buy discount retail in the long term. Draining all the money out of their own local economy and sending it far away. What I learned is that a really expensive pair of shoes will last decades, but everything else has to be replaced each 9 months - to a - year and a half. The rents were lower in the 70's. It seems _as_ the neighborhood commerce has dried up the rents have increased taking up all the slack. So there is no room left to grow neighborhood economies any more.

Ironic when one considers that we pay more in rent to live somewhere with less access to commerce generation.

Thoughts?

Mike Grouchy

You do make a good point.

For the last 30 years wages have dropped for the majority of professions evev as the privevof goods has raised exponentially .

At present a full 1/2 can't even purchase "wanted" goods, and struggle to purchase necessary goods.

1/2 only eat daily because of welfare.

The corps must keep less and give more or war will come.

They think that turning the police into a new military on the home front will save them in their ruthless greed.

It will not.

How long before the have nothing's begin to take what they need, then what they want?

There will be much suffering as the elites proclaim "let them eat cake".

In the end they will suffer, but it is their women and children that will suffer most.

They will just be killed.

Their women will be entertainment, their children will become slaves in recompense for the evils of their fathers.

All they had to do was pay a decent wage, but their greed above even other human lives made that impossible.

Was such wealth one can't use, and has no need of really worth it?

a reply to: mikegrouchy


Well in the UK anyway, the gap between the wealthy and the least well off has been reportedly widening for some time now.
The bitter irony is that rampant capitalism somehow adjusts to this and makes available goods at a price the poverty stricken can afford, usually at a cost to a workforce, or environment with an even worse "inequality quotient" than these markets are serving.

For example I purchased a cordless electric jug kettle recently for £4,99 or roughly $7.5 USD from a popular catalogue shopping outlet. In times past elements for kettles were replaceable, but everything has built in obscelense now continually driving consumer demand.

crazy

Source

a reply to: mikegrouchy

Each and every one of us is responsible for what products and services are produced and provided.

It is through competitive private production that people's wants and need are best satisfied.

Failure to anticipate or adapt to the wants of consumers results in decreased income. Most people don't get it right most of the time and yet, everybody is much better off because no individual or group could ever make the 'right' decisions with respect to the allocation of human and capital resources.

The pain we feel is the result of the inevitable failure of the heavy handed attempts to artificially manipulate production and consumption.

Out here in my rural area there is still some respect for others with a useful skill set. Such people are the home garage mechanic, farmer produce stand, the Amish with their furniture and farm goods, small repair shops, open air flea markets, and just plain old yard sales. The best deals with respect to goods and services are well know because everyone knows pretty much everyone else or hears about it on the grape vine.

So I'd say that the disconnect with the community has a lot to do with it as well as the fact that most here are in the same boat financially, no so in higher population areas. Also the distance involved has an effect because you aren't going to drive 25 miles into town unless you know what you are getting when you go there. Also, there is less competition and contrary to logic, that actually helps because if you don't cater to the limited consumer base, you don't stay in business very long. Bad business ideas, regardless of marketing, simply won't fly, like the "gentleman's club" with topless dancers, they didn't last more than a year, or the restaurant/bar that catered to the young hipster crowd, when the locals wanted a cheap country roadhouse. Catering to the weekenders from the big city is only good for the summer season for a few days a week or on the big holidays and that doesn't get you through the winter.

originally posted by: johnwick

originally posted by: iDope
The entire education system breeds children to work for others and not themself. If you're good at something you go work for a megafirm, you don't do it yourself. I have seen it and lived it.

corporations ARE the problem.

You can't get grants or loans for your ideas anymore.

You have to sell them to a corp that gets to keep 99% of the profits because they financed it, the bank gets to keep 99% of your 1% because the corp didn't fully finance you but hooked you up with a friendly bank for a line of credit.

The gov still needs it 25%, and you haven't paid your business licensing or permit fees yet, meaning you only start out 40% in the hole while everyone else gets to make bank off your ideas and labors.

Welcome to the "free" world, where if a man is smart, makes all the right choices, and works hard 20 hours a day, you get to die with nothing.


What are you complaining about, the world was handed to you with absolutely no obstacles in your way.

You only failed because you were either lazy or stupid obviously.

You pos taker.

The world was handed to you with no obstacles? Are you kidding me? Every corporation and government is an obstacle for progression, and I am not just talking about fiat monetary gains. Do you know how hard it is to start a small business today and keep it succeeding in the green for years? With all of the regulations, healthcare laws, fees, penalties, competition, holding on to morals of not outsourcing, buying local, etc? That seems like an obstacle. Do you know how hard it it is to get a well paying job to support a child in a single family that also coincides with the hours that daycares are open? From the numbers I have crunched over and over, for a single parent to survive, including all necessary expenses one must make 1,200 to 1,500 a week after taxes, that is for my area alone, one of the cheapest places to live in the U.S. This includes transportation/registration/gas/car maintenance/vehicle taxes/licensing per year, daycare, food and household items, electricity, rent/mortgage, clothes, insurance, gas, cable/phone/internet, any healthcare that insurance doesn't cover, and a few expendable others. So based on this how many jobs out there are paying 50,000+ a year that an average college degree holder can get into after graduation? Luckily I have one, and it is hard enough to make ends meet, and now that my company is going through "spring cleaning" layoffs it makes me wonder how easily some of these people will be able to get an equal paying job once they are out. you go from making 55k a year to taking a job paying 42k with little to no benefits and see how much life changes.

a reply to: mikegrouchy

I agree with you...it is a sad state of affairs.....creativity is being stripped away at an alarming rate....just sit down the local pub and listen to the conversation an it becomes blatantly obvious.......

All this talk of a failing economy and the all the poor that cannot feed themselves is a direct result of the 1% hoarding their money and not putting it back into the economy and of course as you have stated and so have others that we are simply told what to like and buy and that comes from the brainwashing in advertising.....

I honestly believe i will see the pitch forks come out in my lifetime unless there is some serious change to this current system.....\and i am seriously concerned for my children.....

a reply to: iDope

I believe the post by johnwick you replied to was meant as crude humor/satire. Honestly though, if you cannot support a family on 50k a year, you ARE doing something wrong. I only broke 20k a year at my job starting last year, and my wife is closing in on 30k annually. We have four kids. We have never struggled.

Perhaps you should stop purchasing sodas, bottled waters, chips, cigarettes and beers??? Also if you are struggling with money, you do not need cable or the internet. Hell many companies are now offering 25$ a month unlimited talk and text cell phones, thats cheap enough if you are hard up for dough at this time.

Unless you are living in California or NYC, 50k annually is just find to support a family as we have been doing it for many years now with less without struggling, having food stamps, or WIC, or even medicaid.