BF2S Forums Presidential Election 2016

DesertFox- wrote:

This is where I would cue the Baby Boomers talking about how they worked summers to pay for college and then graduated and bought a house.

To be fair, a number of them acknowledge that it isn't as easy anymore. Particularly ones still in touch with real estate pricing, or who were hit hard by the 80s economy. They aren't all bootstraps fetishists.

DesertFox- wrote:

I suspect Jay misinterpreted my motivations for criticizing the tax cuts, which is why his response was that I was jealous and/or should ask for a raise or get a better job. As I stated, I'm perfectly happy with my job (which reminds me, I still have some pictures from my Euro business trip I should share) and compensation for me as a single twentysomething, as I know it's above average. My debts consist of $1900 at 0% interest on a car compared to my friends still paying student loans, so I also am aware my financial situation is far rosier than a lot of my peers.

My criticism is not coming as a "well I should've gotten more!" view. I don't want to ask for a raise because the company got a tax break. I want everyone to get a raise so they can actually have a reasonable standard of living. My qualms, as described by others above, are that it is economically unjustifiable to give breaks to the exceptionally rich. The wealth gap has starkly increased over the last half century and the average Joe is worse off. This is where I would cue the Baby Boomers talking about how they worked summers to pay for college and then graduated and bought a house.

The wealth gap doesn't matter. If anything it's good because it keeps inflation down. You're worried about affordable housing, yes? Give everyone an extra $2000 per year and yeah, they can buy more stuff, but prices will go up because demand went up. You end up back at square one.

As far as baby boomers buying houses for cheap. Yeah, that was possible when they were converting farmland near established city into suburbs. The automobile allowed that to happen, but only one time. The issue now is that zoning laws have become outrageous because the people who live there now do everything in their power to protect the property value of their home. (Can you blame them?) But it means severe limits on multi-family housing, severe restrictions on building apartment buildings, height limits, minimum lot sizes, traffic studies, environmental studies, etc.

I apologize if I was a bit over the top, I was having fun with it. I'm sure you're doing your best. Just stop bitching about the rich, they aren't taking money out of your pocket, the government is.

uziq wrote:

except the rich did take money out of working people’s pockets. it was called the bailout. whether directly because of tax payer funding or indirectly because of cuts to public spending or increased living costs. there has been a huge redistribution of the national wealth and people are not seeing their fair share.

besides that, isn’t the idea of everyone in a democracy paying their fair taxes a good one? your average family loses a lot of directly useful liquid cash when they dutifully pay their 20–40%. that money could make a great deal of different to their household budget. meanwhile the rich who don’t need to worry about living costs or any budgets shirk their taxes or hire great (and expensive) financial advisors to help them pay as little as possible.

i guess we’re all jealous marxists or ‘social media influencers who have been mothered too much’. lmao. didn’t you grow up with an absent father? jesus christ man.

My dad was around. I have six maternal uncles, a stepfather and a grandfather. Plenty of men in my life.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Jay's dad literally got shoveled into poverty during a robbery (probably a drug deal gone bad). You would think he would be more sympathetic to the needy since he was the stepson of the school's janitor growing up.

Next time the school's janitor is emptying my classroom's garbage, I will remember to say a little prayer for the less fortunate like Jay's immediate family.

Thank you for being the local face of the failure that is the public school system. With every post you help to lessen the revere that people reflexively have for the people the state trusts to teach our children. My parents may not have been stockbrokers, but they worked hard. You are scum that I would dox and have fired in a heartbeat. You do not deserve to be within ten miles of a child.

uziq wrote:

except the rich did take money out of working people’s pockets. it was called the bailout. whether directly because of tax payer funding or indirectly because of cuts to public spending or increased living costs. there has been a huge redistribution of the national wealth and people are not seeing their fair share.

The latest is the tax reductions and the import tariffs, I'm amazed no-one is holding that up as the largest wealth redistribution is US history, since the tax reductions overwhelmingly benefit the rich and the tariffs will be effectively paid by the poor as companies put their prices up.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2018-11-09 15:52:09)

That reminds me, does anyone else remember ATG threatening to shot Gunslinger in the head or Parker threatening to stab someone?

This forum was really ahead of its time in many ways.

Yes, the knives he used to scam a bunch of people out of their money before disappearing.

Jay wrote:

I've frankly just been exposed to too many whiny columns, blogs etc. written by millenials who blame things like the gap between the rich and the poor for all of life's ills.

There is some element of this, but it doesn't cover the whole issue. I don't agree with the 'millenials are all snowflakes' line boomers peddle.

Meanwhile they're trying to make a living in journalism or being a social media influencer or whatever other bullshit job they can think of that is 'cool' and doesn't require much effort.

Journalism and media influencer are almost all thats left for someone who doesn't have a specific in-demand skill.
IBM, Ford etc don't swallow up tens of thousands of generic graduates every year to sit in cubicles, drink coffee and hold pointless meetings with each other, everything is that much leaner and many of the opportunities and cushy careers boomers could snooze through and still get a great lifestyle and comfy retirement out of are gone forever.

The boomer generation has offshored and improved the efficiencies of industries to the point entire industries have gone abroad and multiple tiers of management have ceased to exist. America does not make TVs any more, apart from the manufacturing which is obviously gone all the development and R+D is also gone, same for many other industries.

Banking is largely automated, I think I've spoken to a bank employee about twice in the last decade whereas 30 years ago it was at least a weekly event.

The world is a different place, obviously there are opportunities but they're fewer, there are more people chasing them and they pay a lot less than they used to. The average person can no longer expect to sail through life and retire rich, the critical boomers don't seem to get this.

Meanwhile pissing on Desertfox with your 'self-made-man' rhetoric just makes you look like an ass.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2018-11-09 16:28:42)

Not any more, anyone with internet access is a journalist now.

Jay wrote:

DesertFox- wrote:

I suspect Jay misinterpreted my motivations for criticizing the tax cuts, which is why his response was that I was jealous and/or should ask for a raise or get a better job. As I stated, I'm perfectly happy with my job (which reminds me, I still have some pictures from my Euro business trip I should share) and compensation for me as a single twentysomething, as I know it's above average. My debts consist of $1900 at 0% interest on a car compared to my friends still paying student loans, so I also am aware my financial situation is far rosier than a lot of my peers.

My criticism is not coming as a "well I should've gotten more!" view. I don't want to ask for a raise because the company got a tax break. I want everyone to get a raise so they can actually have a reasonable standard of living. My qualms, as described by others above, are that it is economically unjustifiable to give breaks to the exceptionally rich. The wealth gap has starkly increased over the last half century and the average Joe is worse off. This is where I would cue the Baby Boomers talking about how they worked summers to pay for college and then graduated and bought a house.

The wealth gap doesn't matter. If anything it's good because it keeps inflation down. You're worried about affordable housing, yes? Give everyone an extra $2000 per year and yeah, they can buy more stuff, but prices will go up because demand went up. You end up back at square one.

As far as baby boomers buying houses for cheap. Yeah, that was possible when they were converting farmland near established city into suburbs. The automobile allowed that to happen, but only one time. The issue now is that zoning laws have become outrageous because the people who live there now do everything in their power to protect the property value of their home. (Can you blame them?) But it means severe limits on multi-family housing, severe restrictions on building apartment buildings, height limits, minimum lot sizes, traffic studies, environmental studies, etc.

I apologize if I was a bit over the top, I was having fun with it. I'm sure you're doing your best. Just stop bitching about the rich, they aren't taking money out of your pocket, the government is.

You keep talking to me as if the solution is for me to get more money, despite my saying I don't need more money. I grant you that I would not say no if employers collectively decided to adjust pay so workers are getting a fairer shake. The wealth gap is not good because people working at what we decided should be the minimum wage live in poverty, while again the super rich get to hoard more than anyone could hope to need. It's not good for society. Even with a modest marginal rate increase, you'd still have absurdly wealthy billionaires, but some of the money could be applied to actually be useful via education, infrastructure, etc.

Your housing argument doesn't really make sense, either. Demand has remained the same, but an extra $2k would only make things more
affordable. I don't know why you're talking about suburbanization in the '50s, either, since I'm talking about the wealth gap since about the '70s.

The rich aren't taking money out of my pocket, they're taking money out of all of our pockets (and the government's by fighting tooth and nail to avoid taxes), which is clearly evident by the way the wealth gap has worsened. Again, I don't give a fuck if they toss me a $1500 tax break while giving themselves millions. It's not jealousy. It's an awful policy for a government that hasn't learned the lessons of Brownbackistan. I like when government is actually somewhat able to function and provide services. This sort of "fuck you, got mine" attitude is among the most infuriating self-delusions in recent history.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Jay wrote:

I've frankly just been exposed to too many whiny columns, blogs etc. written by millenials who blame things like the gap between the rich and the poor for all of life's ills.

There is some element of this, but it doesn't cover the whole issue. I don't agree with the 'millenials are all snowflakes' line boomers peddle.

Meanwhile they're trying to make a living in journalism or being a social media influencer or whatever other bullshit job they can think of that is 'cool' and doesn't require much effort.

Journalism and media influencer are almost all thats left for someone who doesn't have a specific in-demand skill.
IBM, Ford etc don't swallow up tens of thousands of generic graduates every year to sit in cubicles, drink coffee and hold pointless meetings with each other, everything is that much leaner and many of the opportunities and cushy careers boomers could snooze through and still get a great lifestyle and comfy retirement out of are gone forever.
The boomer generation has offshored and improved the efficiencies of industries to the point entire industries have gone abroad and multiple tiers of management have ceased to exist. America does not make TVs any more, apart from the manufacturing which is obviously gone all the development and R+D is also gone, same for many other industries.
Banking is largely automated, I think I've spoken to a bank employee about twice in the last decade whereas 30 years ago it was at least a weekly event.

Yes, but new jobs have replaced the old ones. There are many more jobs in tech, and the vast majority don't involve programming. Entire corporate bureaucracies have sprung up within Google, Facebook etc. They are no longer lean startups, and they make so much money and are so beholden to lefty belief that they won't cut staff until they face bankruptcy.

We're at near universal employment, so there are plenty of decent jobs out there, they just might not be the sexy ones. The ones that have the time to whine online are also the ones trying to pile into the sexy jobs that pay shit because there's so much demand for the positions and very low margins.

At the same time, the old classic trades are facing a severe shortage, even though the pay is high. There's just too many people who grew up thinking they deserved to be a Kardashian and want the life without putting in the work.

Jay wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

Jay wrote:

I've frankly just been exposed to too many whiny columns, blogs etc. written by millenials who blame things like the gap between the rich and the poor for all of life's ills.

There is some element of this, but it doesn't cover the whole issue. I don't agree with the 'millenials are all snowflakes' line boomers peddle.

Meanwhile they're trying to make a living in journalism or being a social media influencer or whatever other bullshit job they can think of that is 'cool' and doesn't require much effort.

Journalism and media influencer are almost all thats left for someone who doesn't have a specific in-demand skill.
IBM, Ford etc don't swallow up tens of thousands of generic graduates every year to sit in cubicles, drink coffee and hold pointless meetings with each other, everything is that much leaner and many of the opportunities and cushy careers boomers could snooze through and still get a great lifestyle and comfy retirement out of are gone forever.
The boomer generation has offshored and improved the efficiencies of industries to the point entire industries have gone abroad and multiple tiers of management have ceased to exist. America does not make TVs any more, apart from the manufacturing which is obviously gone all the development and R+D is also gone, same for many other industries.
Banking is largely automated, I think I've spoken to a bank employee about twice in the last decade whereas 30 years ago it was at least a weekly event.

Yes, but new jobs have replaced the old ones. There are many more jobs in tech, and the vast majority don't involve programming. Entire corporate bureaucracies have sprung up within Google, Facebook etc. They are no longer lean startups, and they make so much money and are so beholden to lefty belief that they won't cut staff until they face bankruptcy.

We're at near universal employment, so there are plenty of decent jobs out there, they just might not be the sexy ones. The ones that have the time to whine online are also the ones trying to pile into the sexy jobs that pay shit because there's so much demand for the positions and very low margins.

At the same time, the old classic trades are facing a severe shortage, even though the pay is high. There's just too many people who grew up thinking they deserved to be a Kardashian and want the life without putting in the work.

THE TRADES FUCKING SUCK. I used to be in the trades. No one in the trades wants their kids to go into the trades.


You ever notice how it is always people who were never in the trades suggesting people go into them?