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MariusLecter
Sep 5, 2009

NI MUERTE NI MIEDO
Simple solution, when the drunk and bloated swine get guillotined, be up close to catch the arterial spray in your mouth.

MariusLecter fucked around with this message at 08:56 on Sep 16, 2014

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Centripetal Horse
Nov 22, 2009

Fuck money, get GBS

This could have bought you a half a tank of gas, lmfao -
Love, gromdul

Zerilan posted:

I live in a house of 6 people and all together we probably make about 1/8th of that.

Are you all students, or, like, itinerant Gypsy tool sharpeners? $650/month/person is a crazy low income, assuming you don't live somewhere where the currency has a name like "the sump."

thathonkey
Jul 17, 2012
It's pretty old now but the Daily Show did a really great segment on the same subject as that horrible green infographic:

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/jfmt11/world-of-class-warfare---the-poor-s-free-ride-is-over

You food chilling motherfuckers!

thathonkey fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Sep 16, 2014

Forgall
Oct 16, 2012

by Azathoth

FuzzySkinner posted:

Why is this still a loving issue for homophobes/christians with persecution complexes? Why? The guy is gay and he kissed his boyfriend when he was drafted. Somehow he's not allowed to do this period because you feel Tim Tebow is being "Mocked" for his faith? Why does this bug you so drat much?
They are conservatives. That means they want to hurt people. If homophobia becomes socially unacceptable, that's one less way they get to hurt people with impunity. And they don't like that.

borkencode
Nov 10, 2004
That wasn't the first terrible WSJ thing I've seen, had to dig a little, but I remembered this from 2013.



Even the people with no change in their taxes are unhappy.

Crain
Jun 27, 2007

I had a beer once with Stephen Miller and now I like him.

I also tried to ban someone from a Discord for pointing out what an unrelenting shithead I am! I'm even dumb enough to think it worked!
^^yep, that one. ^^

Did they just invent a "budget" that burns through $400K a year a think "Welp, the money is spent so now people will understand the burden of having so much money and how hard it is to live like this. Clearly they will see our list of outlandish spending and conclude that taxes are the problem"?

This is as bad as the comic that showed how much various family's tax burden would rise and how hard their lives are going to become (while they were all making 6+figures).

Absurd Alhazred
Mar 27, 2010

by Athanatos

borkencode posted:

That wasn't the first terrible WSJ thing I've seen, had to dig a little, but I remembered this from 2013.



Even the people with no change in their taxes are unhappy.

We were just talking about that one in the discussion thread a few days ago. Rebuttal:

woke wedding drone
Jun 1, 2003

by exmarx
Fun Shoe

Centripetal Horse posted:

Are you all students, or, like, itinerant Gypsy tool sharpeners? $650/month/person is a crazy low income, assuming you don't live somewhere where the currency has a name like "the sump."

If only the poor would gain numeracy, maybe they'd stop being poor. :smugdog:

King Metal
Jun 15, 2001
You guys are making fun of this but you have no idea. After I had to buy my daughter a new dressage horse after we got back from our 4 week (got stiffed on vacation this year) mediterranean adventure, I only had enough money left to get a new E250 instead of the E550. Do you know how shameful it's going to be pulling into the country club in that? I haven't even gone for the last few weeks, I'll probably just consider the membership fees a loss

Soviet Commubot
Oct 22, 2008


Centripetal Horse posted:

Are you all students, or, like, itinerant Gypsy tool sharpeners? $650/month/person is a crazy low income, assuming you don't live somewhere where the currency has a name like "the sump."

I've lived in places in rural Michigan where this wouldn't be a surprisingly low income for poor people. If you work a lovely minimum wage job and they won't give you more than 20 or so hours a week that's about what you're going to get, and that's not an abnormal situation in places where there aren't multiple minimum wage jobs to be had.

RagnarokAngel
Oct 5, 2006

Black Magic Extraordinaire
It's entirely possible some people are unemployed too (or less likely but possible, have children and those are included in the number).

Guess the original poster would know though :v:

Pedestrian Xing
Jul 19, 2007

Look, man, I totally understand your situation. Back in my college days, I had to sell some of my stocks just to get by.

Jerry Manderbilt
May 31, 2012

No matter how much paperwork I process, it never goes away. It only increases.
Sorry we couldn't go to that Broadway show tonight, Ann, I had to sell the tickets to afford our nightly foie gras!

Amused to Death
Aug 10, 2009

google "The Night Witches", and prepare for :stare:

Centripetal Horse posted:

Are you all students, or, like, itinerant Gypsy tool sharpeners? $650/month/person is a crazy low income, assuming you don't live somewhere where the currency has a name like "the sump."

'Sup? $650 to $700 a month is around my actual job earnings(net, not gross) every month. Also the mean average for the bottom income quintile is $11,490 a year
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=330
Which works out to around $955 in gross pay......or around $820 a month assuming 15% is taken out per paycheck(looking at my last check which was for $157 I had 15.4% taken out in federal taxes, so I'm going by that).

And no, I'm not a student my currency is US dollars.

Polybius91
Jun 4, 2012

Cobrastan is not a real country.
I'm trying to wrap my head around the cognitive dissonance that allows the same people to say "goddamn entitled shits, most of you have microwaves and cars what are you complaining about :bahgawd:" and "b-b-but $400000 a year isn't that much :qq:".

Ashcans
Jan 2, 2006

Let's do the space-time warp again!


God, gently caress these people. 'Oh, Toronto is such an expensive city, $196,000 here hardly goes anywhere, you hardly feel middle class.' gently caress you. The median household income in Toronto is $70,000. If you are making twice the median, you are not loving middle class so quit your posturing and be glad to get to keep your greasy piles of cash.

That also goes for the assholes making six figures and whining about how expensive it is to live in New York (median income, $50k) or LA ($49k). Your cities are packed with people making a fraction of your income, toiling to enable your extravagant lives possible.

Al Harrington
May 1, 2005

I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow in the eye

Amused to Death posted:

'Sup? $650 to $700 a month is around my actual job earnings(net, not gross) every month. Also the mean average for the bottom income quintile is $11,490 a year
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=330
Which works out to around $955 in gross pay......or around $820 a month assuming 15% is taken out per paycheck(looking at my last check which was for $157 I had 15.4% taken out in federal taxes, so I'm going by that).

And no, I'm not a student my currency is US dollars.

jesus christ is this depressing

Amused to Death
Aug 10, 2009

google "The Night Witches", and prepare for :stare:

Al Harrington posted:

jesus christ is this depressing

Yes, my life is depressing, but it's actually less depressing than a lot of people in my situation, both by personal circumstances and living in a sane state with empathetic social workers, so I actually have health care and a reasonable amount of food stamps.

Soviet Commubot
Oct 22, 2008


Al Harrington posted:

jesus christ is this depressing

Now imagine being in your mid 50s and having been in that sort of situation since your early 30s because that's pretty much been my mom's life, and there's no end in sight! I'd love to help her but I'm a 32 year old student so I don't really make any more money than she does.

Amused to Death
Aug 10, 2009

google "The Night Witches", and prepare for :stare:

Soviet Commubot posted:

Now imagine being in your mid 50s and having been in that sort of situation since your early 30s because that's pretty much been my mom's life, and there's no end in sight! I'd love to help her but I'm a 32 year old student so I don't really make any more money than she does.

Same with my grandmother, except replace 50's with 69. The cycle continues :v: At least she legitimately likes her low wage job since she works at a daycare and loves her kids, and no longer needs the money to barely live(lives with my aunt/uncle/cousins now)

Eggplant Squire
Aug 14, 2003


Polybius91 posted:

I'm trying to wrap my head around the cognitive dissonance that allows the same people to say "goddamn entitled shits, most of you have microwaves and cars what are you complaining about :bahgawd:" and "b-b-but $400000 a year isn't that much :qq:".

The rich guy EARNED it since he has the money while the poor guy is obviously lazy and thus sponging off the government. If the poor man takes ANY government aide at all that is money taken directly out of the rich man's rightful property.

My dad pulled the "$250k" isn't that much" line with me and I asked then how the hell can someone live on $30k? He at least had the decency to admit yeah that would suck really hard and changed the subject.

Redeye Flight
Mar 26, 2010

God, I'm so tired. What the hell did I post last night?

Radish posted:

The rich guy EARNED it since he has the money while the poor guy is obviously lazy and thus sponging off the government. If the poor man takes ANY government aide at all that is money taken directly out of the rich man's rightful property.

My dad pulled the "$250k" isn't that much" line with me and I asked then how the hell can someone live on $30k? He at least had the decency to admit yeah that would suck really hard and changed the subject.

It's important to remember that $30k is the theoretical, golden $15 an hour minimum wage total that people are calling outrageous. The minimum wage right now is not livable, not even CLOSE. If you can't live on 400k then how the gently caress can you suggest that $15 an hour is too much?

Al Harrington
May 1, 2005

I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow in the eye
we truly deserve an asteroid impact that wipes humans from the planet

SmuglyDismissed
Nov 27, 2007
IGNORE ME!!!
I think these articles just go to show the relative emptiness of the consumer lifestyle. I mean, these people could be building some actual wealth that could support a modest lifestyle indefinitely and/or doing something in the world that makes a lasting, positive difference. Instead, they have to keep on working so they can just keep buying more and more. I can't say I am really jealous of any of the examples they gave for where the money goes.

turn it up TURN ME ON
Mar 19, 2012

In the Grim Darkness of the Future, there is only war.

...and delicious ice cream.
Everybody basically forgets that by raising the minimum wage, we are injecting money into a part of the market that is very likely to spend it on non-durable (and some durable) goods. It'd be a massive stimulus that would benefit just about everyone running a small business.

Imagine, as a business owner, if you no longer had to convince people to buy your widget... but if they had enough money to just buy your widget on a whim.

hamster_style
Nov 24, 2004
neenjah!
In response to me saying "Remember the number one rule of pricing is that everything is worth what the purchaser is willing to pay for it"

quote:

Prices also raise out of necessity to keep the company in business. You think a company with 10 employees makes so much money they can afford to lose $8000 per month without an increase in production or demand?

To your point of only giving raises to those under the proposed rate. Why do you feel they deserve an increase when the person just over that Mark doesn't. I'm guessing person B has taken steps to get where he/she is only to find themselves making the same as new hires.

Another rule you are overlooking is companies are in business to make money. Make it easier for them to make more money and money will be distributed.

If a company can't afford to lose you they will pay you more. If you are already at the max they can afford you'll have a good recommendation for the next company you apply. There a several reasons our economy is where it is. Blaming it on big businesses eliminating the middle class is a talking point. There are people who go up as well as down from there. Life is about choices and consequences. If you live outside of your means bad things can happen. We have been living outside our means for years now and finally the chickens have come home to roost.

"Trickle-down economics works! There's a plethora of jobs out there and if you've reached your max at your current employer just move on. Also the elimination of the middle class due to the surge of big businesses is just a talking point. Now let me tell you about this Just World we live in and how the poors(? I think that's what he's saying) ruined everything."

I'm bowing out of the convo with him at this point in order to maintain what sanity I have left.

Duke Igthorn
Oct 11, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

quote:

Prices also raise out of necessity to keep the company in business. You think a company with 10 employees makes so much money they can afford to lose $8000 per month without an increase in production or demand?

But...the whole point is that demand WILL increase since there will be more disposable income...

quote:

To your point of only giving raises to those under the proposed rate. Why do you feel they deserve an increase when the person just over that Mark doesn't. I'm guessing person B has taken steps to get where he/she is only to find themselves making the same as new hires.
I like the idea that someone will quit their cozy job with a set schedule and 40 hours a week to go flip burgers all day in a hot kitchen for less than 30 hours a week maybe at uncertain times.
I've worked retail, I make more money, more hours, and put up with so much less poo poo and do less work in my solidly blue collar job now than I ever did in retail.

I'd honestly gladly make minimum wage working guaranteed 40 hours a week, 9-5, weekends off, vacation time, less work, less poo poo from customers, constantly worried about being fired by one of the seven managers etc etc etc etc


quote:

Another rule you are overlooking is companies are in business to make money. Make it easier for them to make more money and money will be distributed.
Wal-Mart is constantly and consistantly posting losses because they refuse, they REFUSE to give up short term gains for long term gains. If they can make $5 today but lose $10 tomorrow they'll choose that over losing $10 today but makin $50 tomorrow. And they are hardly the only ones.

Duke Igthorn fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Sep 16, 2014

Amused to Death
Aug 10, 2009

google "The Night Witches", and prepare for :stare:

Duke Igthorn posted:

they REFUSE to give up short term gains for long term gains.

Also see: the entire finance industry pre September 2008

Zeitgueist
Aug 8, 2003

by Ralp

Amused to Death posted:

Also see: the entire finance industry pre September 2008

Almost the entire corporate world.

namesake
Jun 19, 2006

"When I was a girl, around 12 or 13, I had a fantasy that I'd grow up to marry Captain Scarlet, but he'd be busy fighting the Mysterons so I'd cuckold him with the sexiest people I could think of - Nigel Mansell, Pat Sharp and Mr. Blobby."

Making it easier for businesses to make more money means those businesses will have more money which has to come from other people, anything else (like where it ends up) needs to be shown/proved.... like increasing the amount they have to pay people.

quote:

To your point of only giving raises to those under the proposed rate. Why do you feel they deserve an increase when the person just over that Mark doesn't. I'm guessing person B has taken steps to get where he/she is only to find themselves making the same as new hires.

Wages sure as hell don't respond to individual performance unless they're commission based or you're in a powerful enough position to directly bargain your personal contract. Any skill or experience which places someone above the very bottom still exists if the bottom rises. This doesn't even matter at all if your argument is 'people working full time deserve to earn enough to live properly'.

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.
To be specific, it's a phenomenon of publicly traded corporations- it's a lot less prevalent in other corporate forms because the perverse incentives aren't as common or as strong.

Davethulhu
Aug 12, 2003

Morbid Hound
I'm crossposting this from the political cartoon thread because it's really too crazy not to share:

The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics

quote:

One strategy, named the r-strategy, imbues those who are programmed with it to be averse to all peer on peer competition, embrace promiscuity, embrace single parenting, and support early onset sexual activity in youth. Obviously, this mirrors the Liberal philosophy's aversion to individual Darwinian competitions such as capitalism and self defense with firearms, as well as group competitions such as war. Likewise, Liberalism is tolerant of promiscuity, tolerant of single parenting, and more prone to support early sex education for children and the sexualization of cultural influences. Designed to exploit a plethora of resources, one will often find this r-type strategy embodied within prey species, where predation has lowered the population's numbers, and thereby increased the resources available to it's individuals.

The other strategy, termed the K-strategy, imbues those who pursue it with a fierce competitiveness, as well as tendencies towards abstinence until monogamy, two-parent parenting, and delaying sexual activity until later in life. Obviously, this mirrors Conservatism's acceptance of all sorts of competitive social schemes, from free market capitalism, to war, to individuals owning and carrying private weapons for self defense. Conservatives also tend to favor abstinence until monogamy, two parent parenting with an emphasis upon "family values," and children being shielded from any sexualized stimuli until later in life. This strategy is found most commonly in species which lack predation, and whose population's have grown to the point individuals must compete with each other for the limited environmental resources that they are rapidly running out of.

It's really one of the dumbest things I've ever read.

Al Harrington
May 1, 2005

I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow in the eye
Wow that is quite stupid indeed

TerminalSaint
Apr 21, 2007


Where must we go...

we who wander this Wasteland in search of our better selves?
I don't even know where to start tearing that apart. There's so much wrong with it.

Sulphuric Sundae
Feb 10, 2006

You can't go in there.
Your father is dead.
So the only decent argument I got from somebody about a minimum wage hike being a job killer was from a dude who ran a manufacturing business that I would assume has really really tight margins. He told me he couldn't compete with overseas manufacturers with a wage hike because he was barely able to compete with them as is. I'm sure he probably blames Obama and taxes for his current trouble in competing.
But yeah, I'm sure a wage increase would kill your business if you're barely able to stay afloat in the first place because you're a small fry in an industry that's fiercely globally competitive.

VideoTapir
Oct 18, 2005

He'll tire eventually.

Duke Igthorn posted:


Wal-Mart is constantly and consistantly posting losses because they refuse, they REFUSE to give up short term gains for long term gains. If they can make $5 today but lose $10 tomorrow they'll choose that over losing $10 today but makin $50 tomorrow. And they are hardly the only ones.

If exectives could be sure they would be the ones getting rewarded for long term gains, rather than the guy who comes after them, maybe they would reprioritize.

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.
The author, "Anonymous Conservative", is listed as the author on a couple other books, a conservative version of the Art of War and illustrations on Rules for Radicals. Notably, Rules for Conservative Radicals is coauthored with Michael Patrick Leahy and someone named Gina Loudon- apparently the wife of a John William Loudon, a Missouri state senator from 2000 to 2008.

Anonymous Conservative's real name is probably Michael Trust, since that's the name appearing on the copyright for this book. There's other folks online who've identified him, and he has some degree of fanbase, despite seeming quite possibly unbalanced (that link is similarly soul-crushing, btw). He also has a website, anonymousconservative.com . I'm going to quote a large section of the "About the author" page, because it's suitably nutty. Let me know if I should cut it down:

Michael Trust, aka Anonymous Conservative posted:

Although there were multiple authors involved in this work, I am the primary author. It was I who was responsible for the overwhelming majority of the work behind the theory and its conveyance. If there is anyone to blame, I am the primary party responsible. I am choosing to remain anonymous for now as I view this scientific advance as a guerrilla movement, and wish to keep all of my options on the table going forward.

How did all of this come about? I once found myself isolating and identifying microbes in nature. After pulling out a specific microbe, it would get an ID by 16s rRNA barcoding, an antibiotic sensitivity profile, and then a reference culture would be dispersed in glycerin, and put in a deep freeze.

[really inaccurate description of microbial and cephalapod environmental pressure and evolutionary mechanisms cut here]

As I watched this, something in the back of my mind clicked. I had seen this before, somewhere. Manly men, seeking to pit their abilities against each other in rule governed competitions of fitness, and feeble, effete cowards, who would be eaten alive in a state of nature, adopting feminine countenances, and desperately seeking to avoid the terror of getting destroyed by their betters. Bravery and cowardice. Honorable and dishonorable. Honesty, and the lack of honesty. Selfless, for the good of a species, and shameless selfishness, for the good of one’s basest urges, at the expense of one’s species.

Images flowed through my head. Competitive Warrior Cuttlefish and cowardly transvestite cuttlefish. Evolved bacteria that were honed by competition, and devolved colonies of useless microbes dependent upon the state. Dick Marcinko and Barney Frank. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. John Wayne in the Quiet Man, and that mousy guy who was always kissing Victor McLaglen’s rear end, saying “Aye Squire Danahur, that be a right fine idea! Nothin’ short of a genius ya be!”

As the images flowed through my brain, I saw one side, brave, strong, and honorable, the other, groveling, weak, and pathetic. The presence of one side enhanced the fitness of the population, while the persistence of the other deteriorated it. One was genuinely good and created magnificence, and one was not. The daring and the cowards. The patriots and the traitors. The Warrior and the Hippie. The Capitalist and the Communist. The stoic NRA member, and the easily frightened and insecure anti-gun pussy. The Marine, and the Womyn’s studies major at UC Berkeley. Republicans and Democrats, Conservatives and Liberals. Complexity in adaptation and a devolved simplistic fecundity. Evolution and Devolution. The production of a great society, and the decline into chaos of a collapsing society. It all made sense. I thought back to the microbes, and the conditions which produced them, thought of r/K theory, and all of this was borne in my mind.

Have no doubt, this is all correct. In fifty, or one hundred years, this would undoubtedly have been described by many others, had I not seen it. The similarities between politics and r/K Theory are just too obvious. However due to the whim of circumstances, you are seeing this all here first.

I don’t know why it hasn’t been written about before, but it is my pleasure and my honor to be among the first to scientifically demonstrate the inferiority and danger that Liberalism poses to our species and our societies. I hope you enjoy being a part of this nascent intellectual movement, and enjoy your stay here.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Sep 16, 2014

Zeitgueist
Aug 8, 2003

by Ralp

Sulphuric Sundae posted:

So the only decent argument I got from somebody about a minimum wage hike being a job killer was from a dude who ran a manufacturing business that I would assume has really really tight margins. He told me he couldn't compete with overseas manufacturers with a wage hike because he was barely able to compete with them as is. I'm sure he probably blames Obama and taxes for his current trouble in competing.
But yeah, I'm sure a wage increase would kill your business if you're barely able to stay afloat in the first place because you're a small fry in an industry that's fiercely globally competitive.

That's still not a great argument on his part, though, because if he can't pay his employees a living wage and stay in business, he's being propped up by social programs as it is.

It's lovely all around though, because the real issue there is the bigger fish lobbying for trade agreements that allow themselves to outsource(an option a small business doesn't have) and a wage hike probably would put him out of business.

Having said that, most of the businesses fighting the wage increase aren't in this situation.

Guavanaut
Nov 27, 2009

Looking At Them Tittys
1969 - 1998



Toilet Rascal

Discendo Vox posted:

Anonymous Conservative's real name is probably Michael Trust, since that's the name appearing on the copyright for this book. There's other folks online who've identified him, and he has some degree of fanbase, despite seeming quite possibly unbalanced (that link is similarly soul-crushing, btw). He also has a website, anonymousconservative.com . I'm going to quote a large section of the "About the author" page, because it's suitably nutty. Let me know if I should cut it down:
Would it be acceptable under his brand of Darwinian competition to render him sterile with a hardcover copy of this?

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Fulchrum
Apr 16, 2013

by R. Guyovich

Davethulhu posted:

I'm crossposting this from the political cartoon thread because it's really too crazy not to share:

The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics


It's really one of the dumbest things I've ever read.

I'm pretty sure a freeper wrote that. I know I've seen one of those morons trying to use that as some kind of sick burn and getting a group tug for it.

Also, the group he claims likes competition has an attitude to sex that by definition is the absolute pinnacle of anti-competitive and means you never ever have to compete against anyone for a mate by proving yourself any better than anyone, as neither of you will never know how poo poo you both are. Fancy that.

Fulchrum fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Sep 16, 2014

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