So. Now we are getting those sign pics with people who say "I'm in the 1% and I support the 99% - I have too much money and it should be more fairly distributed." To these people i have one very short specific message: "Cut me a check, or shut the f*** up." if you can't put your money where your sign is, then your sign is BS. Pick up your checkbook, go down town, Find someone you think out to have more money and GIVE THEM SOME. THEN come back and get noble on the internet. (and yes, I know there are better ways for them to employ that money than a direct handout but I don't want to make it too complicated for the fuckers) Thought provoked by this: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-are-the-99-percent#1percent
It sounds like you know you're being screwed, but support the people doing the screwing...or is your anger so broad that covers everyone? That is a serious question by the way.
One of the kids holding a "I am the 1% sign" specifically said it was their parents who were rich and they wanted to redistribute their wealth. Talk about an evil little shit. Redistribute your own wealth if that'll assuage your guilt, but keep your dirty little commie mitts off my pie.
Y'know, we've had this conversation before. Libertarians and conservatives (yourself included) complaining about entitlements and how the social safety net needs to be eliminated, all while taking full advantage of those same programs. Then when someone tells you and your ilk to put their money where their posts are, you come out with excuses about the system, or how the government has made such a mess of things that you deserve that money to make up for it, or how you're entitled to whatever you can get since you paid into the system. If it's not you accepting welfare and food stamps, it's Ayn Rand cashing her social security cheques. So maybe you should get off that high horse.
Naw, Nova's being intentionally spot-on. Granted, you don't like it much, but that doesn't change it.
No, it does. Equating charity with taxation is stupid. Anyhow, anyone following the Occupy Movement on Facebook now has an opportunity to contact the 1%.
No! Don't piss him off...he has the wheat...without him, I'm left eating baloney on hand...wheat...wheeaat!
No to both, actually. I find some things to be less than optimal, including the accumulation of wealth by the mega-wealthy. I find very little evidence that this reality is materially keeping me in poverty (I 'might accept the notion that we'd all be marginally better off if it were not so - maybe a couple of thousand per household annually, as a generous estimate) I think my current condition is equal measure "shit happens" and my making poor choices at certain points. A much smaller percentage of my problem is "the rich guy is taking advantage of me" - that said, my circumstances obviously are frustrating as hell. I find rich people who say "I should be taxed more" exceedingly tiresome - they are either stupid or disingeniousness. there's a VAST number of ways that any excess wealth one might feel they have can be directed for the good of others, and virtually without exception the private avenue is more efficient and produces more tangible life-changing results than the public avenue. ANY person who says "I have too much money" while not having availed themselves of these opportunities is either a fool or a liar, or both.
you've never heard me say or imply that. I've said it's grossly inefficient and that it ought to be done smarter and more efficiently and always open to modification if what we are trying isn't working. I can and do complain about the execution of the system, I've never said it should be eliminated. Not precisely. I do believe the proposition that as long as we are taxed to support a program, we are morally entitled to make use of it. payment for services rendered, even if on occasion you end up drawing more than you paid in. I didn't set up the system. Nor have i ever voted my own self-interest in regards to it. BUT I've not argued that these programs create my need, I've argued that general governmental meddling in the economy contributed to it. to what extent is, of course, impossible to quantify. I've certainly never hesitated to say that a huge portion of my problem is my own doing. none of that has anything to do with be OP.
Money is power, and the power of the money wielded by the corrupt keeps you in poverty. Anyone who thinks the green pieces of paper are beating them up is indeed a naive dupe, but these people tend to exist only in the fevered imaginations of the propagandists.
I'm not equating charity with taxation, I'm saying it's much much BETTER. Find a small-business owner who'd expand if they had the funds, give them a grant. find an after school program that's tutoring underprivileged kids - buy them computers. Find people who'd go to school and train for a new trade if they could and pay their tuition. so forth and so on. all this and a thousand other things can be done better than the government can do it. and frankly, if you can't come up with actual smart things to do, even the sort of ham-handed shit the government does is better done privately if you have a couple hundred million burning a hole in your pocket. Rent support? Food stamps? cash welfare? If the government wants to give out food stamps they spend probably a 40% premium on that in administrative overhead costs.costs which could be avoided if you simply took grandma to the grocery store and paid her bill.
I can understand. Nova posts status after status about lack of money, and every single person on facebook can't seem to help. I can't help. No one can. Every source of funding has run out, for Nova and for millions of people. I've got a few friends losing their houses, and no one is stepping up to help. I wish I could pay their houses off for them, but I can't. It WOULD be nice to see some of these "1%" people actually helping instead of standing around waving signs. They can wave signs AFTER they actually help someone.
I don't even specifically want a handout, though I'd obviously take one. but if she did cut me a check for, say, $20,000 - i'd employ a big chunk of that to go out and make my life self-sustaining by relocating or re-training or some such. There are ways to make sure the person you help doesn't drink it up or whatever. Put me in a job with an even simi-reasonable income level and send me on my way. As much as i'd like to win the PCH or some shit and do all the things that lottery winners do, it takes far far less than that to get me off the bottom rung.
Did you just say that your dislike for Nova's point is what you think makes it inaccurate? Sure looks like you did. Accidental honesty: there's nothing quite like it.
congratulations... NOW you are one of the 99%. I, for one, am fed up with applying for the same wage I made in 1988 for the same type of work. Even more fed up with employers that try to dodge paying those wages.
You are pretending that someone who advocates higher taxation for the wealthy can achieve the same thing by voluntarily giving money to the state instead. That's not the case.
