Occupy Wall Street?

[ScatMan]

So how do you feel about people who went to college, got a good degree(wife got marketing/management and I went engineering), worked hard to move up in life(buy our two cars, our home, etc.) and then lose it all through being laid off because of corporate downturn? After a couple years of struggling to find full time work my wife got a job fulfilling internet orders for a major retail store and is also going to school full time to get another degree to make herself more marketable. I was able to keep my job, but have barely avoided being laid off myself a few times, and have also started going to school again full time to earn another degree. We're both working very hard, but were still forced to sell our home due to factors out of our control. Can you still blame our situation on us and our decisions or did we just get screwed over by the system and are stuck trying to crawl out of a hole that we didn't dig?

You got a bad deal. Sry but its life. You deal and try but you cant expect others to suffer cause your bad deal.

i gotta agree with lep on this one. it sucks, but you can't expect others to pay for your misfortune, even if they're rich. that's called STEALING.

i suggest you ask family, friends, church or some other non-profit for help before anyone turns to stealing via taxes. ask and you shall receive.

 

[ScatMan]

sorry, video is too long for me to watch now.

I don't deny the govt is needed for some stuff as us the people are too stupid to behave properly... at the same time I don't need the govt telling what kind of health insurance I should have.

government isn't needed for any of that stuff. i hate to endorse ayn rand, but if you want to know what government is needed for, give her paper on 'man's rights' a read. it explains why property rights are essential to life and freedom.

http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=arc_ayn_rand_man_rights

and if that tickled your fancy, you might also like this...

'the nature of government' explains why, and how much, government is actually needed.

http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=arc_ayn_rand_the_nature_of_government

 

[ScatMan]

I greatly encourage you to leave this thread; not everyone has the good fortune of having the success that you did even if they live within their means and work hard. The idea that hard work and living within your means will get you any where in life is a major fallacy; most people who do so never see the level of success that should be expected from the effort that they put into keeping themselves and their families afloat. One of the main points of these protests is to keep to the 8 hour a day/40 hour work week that was made the standard so long ago for being able to support oneself without having to sacrifice health, time with family, etc. while still being able to live on the provided wage and not have to worry about having enough money in order to get by should something bad come up. Nowadays, it's tough to get by one just one job, let alone two, and people often forgo things such as health insurance in order to get by; while they may be fine in the short-term, they and their families might not fare so well should they get sick or injured and find themselves unable to work even if they have a healthy savings account.

Also, Cain's "awesome" 9-9-9 plan increases taxes on pretty much anyone who doesn't have a ton of money e.g. middle class and lower class while lowering taxes for the upper class and big businesses, so he's definitely not someone that we should support at all!

imo, the 999 plan is too complicated. he claims to be working toward a fair tax, but why work toward it instead of simply having a fair tax? the only way for taxes to be fair is for everyone to be paying the same % without exception (poor or rich). nobody can be excluded or exempt from paying a fair tax, otherwise it wouldn't be a fair tax.

if cain got rid of 2 of his 9's it would start to make sense. sales tax (or consumption tax) is the only tax i agree with. we all buy stuff so we all pay tax! you have to reform the rest of government for this fair tax to be truly fair, because if government is paying for un-fair entitlements with a fair tax, obviously someone is paying for something that they don't need... that doesn't sound fair to me.

 

[DavidW]

Ayn Rand was a complete degenerate sociopath.
here are some 'fun' quotes from her:

• “It was the morality of altruism that undercut American and is now destroying her.”

• “Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society. Today, the conflict has reached its ultimate climax; the choice is clear-cut: either a new morality of rational self-interest, with its consequence of freedom…or the primordial morality of altruism with its consequences of slavery, etc.”

• “I am done with the monster of ‘we,’ the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: ‘I.’ ”

• “The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man’s first duty is to himself.”

• “To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men.”

• “The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral….”

 

[Lepisosteus platyrhincus]

Cain has my vote over romny or perry

 

[Inglorious]

i gotta agree with lep on this one. it sucks, but you can't expect others to pay for your misfortune, even if they're rich. that's called STEALING.

i suggest you ask family, friends, church or some other non-profit for help before anyone turns to stealing via taxes. ask and you shall receive.

Nowhere did I say that I wanted or was receiving help, so don't you dare accuse me of stealing your taxes. All I was doing was disproving JD7.62's "theory" that if you work hard then you WILL succeed and if you aren't as successful as you would like then you can only blame yourself. While that may be true for some people others just get caught in the middle and get screwed over by others decisions.

 

[ScatMan]

Nowhere did I say that I wanted or was receiving help, so don't you dare accuse me of stealing your taxes. All I was doing was disproving JD7.62's "theory" that if you work hard then you WILL succeed and if you aren't as successful as you would like then you can only blame yourself. While that may be true for some people others just get caught in the middle and get screwed over by others decisions.

i didn't accuse you of anything!?! touchy much? my use of "you" is rhetorical, not you specifically.

 

[Inglorious]

i didn't accuse you of anything!?! touchy much? my use of "you" is rhetorical, not you specifically.

Sorry for jumping to conclusions, but when you quote me and then say "you" it's a fair assumption that you were speaking to me directly. And yes I am touchy because we have worked hard for everything we have, and not have had anything given to us so I don't like being lumped in with the freeloaders.

 

[ScatMan]

Ayn Rand was a complete degenerate sociopath.
here are some 'fun' quotes from her:

• “It was the morality of altruism that undercut American and is now destroying her.”

• “Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society. Today, the conflict has reached its ultimate climax; the choice is clear-cut: either a new morality of rational self-interest, with its consequence of freedom…or the primordial morality of altruism with its consequences of slavery, etc.”

• “I am done with the monster of ‘we,’ the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: ‘I.’ ”

• “The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man’s first duty is to himself.”

• “To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men.”

• “The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral….”

these (her other) points of view don't take away or discredit her other unrelated works that i linked earlier.

what you're doing is a typical tactic used by lawyers when they don't have a case, they attack the character of the witness instead of the evidence.

this is why i said

i hate to endorse ayn rand

 

[ScatMan]

Sorry for jumping to conclusions, but when you quote me and then say "you" it's a fair assumption that you were speaking to me directly. And yes I am touchy because we have worked hard for everything we have, and not have had anything given to us so I don't like being lumped in with the freeloaders.

you know what they say about assumptions...

you could have asked for some clarification before reprimanding me for something i didn't do. apology accepted, i'll do my best to speak more clearly.