Welcome to the USSA

reply to post by Merriman Weir


No, it's not a myth. In this country usually the hardest working are compensated justly. Income reflects productivity here, not always, but more often than not. Those that work the hardest are usually the ones that get promoted, and thus their income reflect this.

reply to post by Gateway




I try and look at the bright side of things.


Now that we are officially a socialist country I can finally quit my job, grow out a pencil thin molester moustache like a Frenchman and lay about the place drinking cheap wine and suckling from the government teet.

Thank you dear leader Obama...I was tired of working anyway. Viva America!!

I wonder how long it will be till my expensive degree is useless and the Government tells me where I work and what I can get paid. I fear that I might have escaped the Obama Hypnotic message too late. I have said for the last few months things will get real bad if Obama is elected. Well, I guess we will see! Practicing my USSR anthem singing. The USSA anthem might be similar. LOL! Peace out Comrades!

reply to post by Merriman Weir


Semantics. When I said hardest working I didn't imply hardest toiling citizens. Sorry if it came off as that. Intellectual labor is very, very exhausting work. Wealthy citizens happen to be highly educated, and most spend over a decade at University investing in their own personal human capital. Obviously, you'll see higher returns at such high opportunity costs. In that same time the average individual will make an infinitely higher wage working in industry or the commercial sector. Although it's true they probably don't work physically at hard, that doesn't mean a thing. To suggest that physical labor should warrant greater pay is totally unreasonable. Demand should be the only force, that determines the amount of money you are payed. Obviously the highest demand jobs require the greatest amount of education, with the fewest available job openings, and are of the greatest personal risk in pursuing (5-10 years wasted at post secondary for what will amount to a very tough few years until finally landing a satisfactory job, or not even one at all).

More importantly though, and I failed to mention this, is that income is a reflection of the productivity that any particular job actually creates. A manager of an IT firm does considerably less work physically, but because of a combination of few desirable applicants for that job, and because of the increase in human capital that the firm is getting by having such a managerial position open, suggests that by nature of its unparalleled value that individual should be awarded a higher pay.


[edit on 5-11-2008 by cognoscente]

Originally posted by Gateway
reply to post by Merriman Weir

 

No, it's not a myth. In this country usually the hardest working are compensated justly. Income reflects productivity here, not always, but more often than not. Those that work the hardest are usually the ones that get promoted, and thus their income reflect this.

The way you're using qualifiers such as 'not always' and 'usually' support my point. There maybe overlap between the two demographics - I suggested this in my post - but they're not interchangeable at all.

I know the 'American dream' likes to promote the idea of meritocracy, but you're a smart bloke, you're aware that of factors that hinder this whether it's the myth that all people are treated equally or intergenerational income correlations &c. There's people in America (as with other places) that can work every hour of their lives and still have little to show for it, and it won't be through trying or through their own fault.

reply to post by BlackOps719


Good Idea...BlackOps, I'll join you at the unemployment line...why work when Obama can pay for my gas or my mortgage...

Obama....McCain....it doesn't matter! A puppet is a puppet is a puppet!

It's time we blame the REAL cause of all of the nation's problems.... the 13 biggest money people in the world! Until we confront them it will just be BUSINESS AS USUAL!

Originally posted by Gateway
Do you mean this chart: Unemployment

YEAH!! NZ 3.5% Damn good!

i like socialism. i grew up in Europe and in particular in the Netherlands they distribute the wealth thru taxes towards social health care and thus their health care is better than in the US as well as environment and design looking nicer and being more kept up. Not like the ghettos and things we call 'architecture' in this country. So im all for this outcome! it does not mean i am communist, ijust think socialism in its purest form is fine.
O and just because I will probably be called a fascist or a commie now I am just going to let you know I don't care what you think it just shows how ignorant you are to real thinking and terminology.
its called humbling of self for the embetterement of the whole. there's nothing wrong with helping everyone out. the 'American dream' has obviously not worked when you see people like the OP having to work 60 hours a week and being proud of it? That is sad. no one should have to slave so much. Not to mention the rich and poor gap widening. So some socialism would be a good thing. It would be a move towards equality. so its time to try something new. Im happy!

reply to post by Merriman Weir


Again the American Dream isn't simply about putting in hours and getting everything you want. It's about the opportunity that every individual gets to pursue his or her own ambitions. If you fit the bill you will be considered for a place in this "dream". But hard work is a term that many people underestimate. You can't just toil your whole life in a position of relatively unskilled labor. You have to employ each and every faculty of your body and mind toward this exponentially difficult to reach goal. Not everyone actually understands how much work it actually is. And so this "American Dream" idea is discredited completely. It's a bias perpetuated by those that simply just don't understand how much work is actually needed to be put in, in terms of intellectual, creative, emotional and especially personal ideals.

Complacency just isn't a remedy for lacking these qualities. Some people take may too much pride in the fact that they hardly work at all. There's a whole world out there that's essentially been blocked off. They scoff at politicians, at corporate execs, and at entrepreneurs, yet are incapable of filling those positions themselves.

[edit on 5-11-2008 by cognoscente]

reply to post by Gateway




I dont know wheather to laugh or cry at that video.


And all I can think of is that damned Neil Diamond song....."Everywhere around the world....they're comin to America!".


Now that we are giving out free health care and welfare payments they may as well remove any blockades at our southern border and just let the flood gates open. Give us your tired, your poor, your lazy, your parasites.

And a mad mad world just became even madder

reply to post by BlackOps719


see, it aint so bad!
but we need some people to work otherwise there's no one to mooch off of. So i say mandatory work period and then mandatory paid retirement period. that would be nice.

reply to post by Merriman Weir


Qualifiers ? I cannot say that 100% certainty that people that work hard receive a salary that reflects there work. But I can make a comon sense generality that should apply, would you not say if you work hard, that your employer has an incentive to keep you?

Well then, what better incentive is there than to match up pay with productivity. Granted this does not mean that the hardest working busboy should earn $100,000, or that he should have a salary of that of an NBA player, but what it does say is that through market prices pay usually reflects productivity. Just as you buy any other product you expect the price to match its value.


[edit on 5-11-2008 by Gateway]

Originally posted by chris_stibrany
reply to post by BlackOps719

 

see, it aint so bad!
but we need some people to work otherwise there's no one to mooch off of. So i say mandatory work period and then mandatory paid retirement period. that would be nice.

Why mooch, when we have Obama and he has his boy Bernanke...he can just print the money and send us all checks.



[edit on 5-11-2008 by Gateway]

Originally posted by chris_stibrany
reply to post by BlackOps719

 

see, it aint so bad!
but we need some people to work otherwise there's no one to mooch off of. So i say mandatory work period and then mandatory paid retirement period. that would be nice.

No way man. I have had a job since I was 14 years old, and quite frankly Im sick of working my behind off in order for the government to take half of my earnings to feed and house the degenerate masses.

When in Rome I will do as the Romans do....in this case quit working and live off of the rest of the suckers. I mean why not? What is the point of working to amass any wealth when it will be taken from you anyway?

No thanks. From now on Im going to hobo it.

Were you guys asleep the last eight years?

Constitution dwindling? Rights disappearing?

You think that it's GOING to happen and hasn't ALREADY started under President Bush?

Wow.

- Lee

Originally posted by lee anoma
Were you guys asleep the last eight years?

Constitution dwindling? Rights disappearing?

You think that it's GOING to happen and hasn't ALREADY started under President Bush?

Wow.

- Lee

Maybe Im an idiot, but what is 'it's referring to in that sentence? I don't see a subject.

reply to post by lee anoma


Well this time around the Vice President won't actually be the President. Excuse me if it's not o.k. to be a sheep like the rest of them and fawn over Obama, but he seems to be a man of resolute character and constitution. He won't be run over like Bush was. And Bush was run over like a train by his father's pals. There will be fewer modes for for the vested interests in Washington to penetrate Obama's cabinet. Now especially with a Democratic House majority, that whole neo-con movement is essentially dead. Guantanamo will be shut down, terrorism will no longer be pursued to the extent that it has been over the past eight years, and foreign policy will simmer, further ensuring safety from radicals of that part of the world both domestically and abroad. I'm pretty optimistic for the next four years, actually. Bush is insignificant now and so is all the former President's cabinet's interests. In fact, so are the popular sentiments supporting any rationalization of the disenfranchisement of the Constitution for national security purposes. I wouldn't be surprised if Homeland Security was dismantled. But that's a massive stretch. And even if that is considered, that won't happen until well after the Bush presidency and its affects has been largely forgotten, perhaps during a reelected second term in Office.

[edit on 5-11-2008 by cognoscente]

reply to post by mattguy404
It's true Republicans are not big fans or regulation when it comes to free enterprise and free markets...yet most of the oversight for Wall Street and the Banks is FDR'S brainchild.

He had passed into law more varied and stringent measures, several were struck down within months of becoming law by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional.

I admired FDR for many things in many ways, and the gravity of the situation when he took office was such that he brought in a team of the best minds, towards what he conceived to be the best solutions from a purely governmental and control standpoint.

Two points to consider:

1. The wheel is oft duplicated but hard to reinvent.

2. When you can look to the past, and see through multiple legislative attempts, that every reasonable and unreasonable attempt was employed and which ones were struck down by the Supreme Court, thus establishing precedent then it becomes about overcoming the laws of physics and some how inventing a new wheel!

Hopefully people will not over react and remember that there is such a thing as the Supreme Court, which in reality perpetuates the Constitutional and it's sanctity through its very existence as the highest power and authority in the land.

No one can rewrite it without their expressed permission, and I find it highly doubtfull anyone with a job for life with both power and prestige is going to be writing themselves out of that job by writing a finding that enables anyone to have dictatorial powers in the Executive, or socialist, fascist or communist laws in the bicameral legislature that counter expressed desires in the Constitution.

Even with the Executive and bicameral legislative body working in tandem they still have no mechanism for over rulling the Supreme Court, or mechanism to defy its rullings.

Cheer up those to the right, people already thought about this 200 years ago and if FDR couldn't overcome that, Barrack Obama is likely not to be any better suited.

Take heart those to the left, you have a chance to do something better for a limited window of opportunity, where you get to be judged like all celebrities "You're only as good as your last effort"

What sounds great at rallies and in sound bites doesn't often play nearly or remotely as well as in the hallowed halls of the highest court in the land and their final and binding decisions on all things legal.

reply to post by cognoscente





I agree. For all of the jabs that I take at Obama and in spite of the fact that I disagree with much of his policies...I do recognize that he will be an instant improvement over Bush co. and will do one very important thing and that is re-establish the American reputation through out the world.

He has many faults and I believe will be subject to heavy scrutiny, but aside from his socialist economic agenda he seems to be a sincerely decent man and has potential to be a great uniting figure. I only hope that he is man enough to stand up to and defy Harry Reid and that horse face Pelosi and do what he has promised. I could easily see him being hogtied by the losers in the Democratic controlled senate.