Cracked: The Occupy Wallstreet Generation

I will just end with this.

I have read everything that Ayn Rand wrote and even saw the recent Atlas Shrugged movie. In theory her philosophy makes sense. Take care of yourself. Don't expect others to take care of you, etc. But anything can be taken to an extreme and I think this is the real problem we have in this country right now.

A few years ago my MGB broke down at an intersection in the middle of a snowstorm and was blocking traffic. I got out and started pushing it to get it out of the way. A police car came up behind me, drove up on the sidewalk to get around me and took off without offering to help and took off down the road at a slow pace. Behind him came another guy in a pickup truck . I asked the pickup truck guy to help me push the car and expressed some concern about the policeman blowing by me without trying to help. Pickup truck guy proceeded to block both lanes and create an even bigger hazard as he treated me to a 15 minute objectivist rant about how helping me out was not the policeman's job or his job and how he was an objectivist and no other man's slave and blah blah blah. While he was ranting another car came up behind him, slid on the ice and almost ran into the back of his pickup truck then traffic started backing up behind that car and horns started honking. Pickup truck guy then gunned his engine and took off, sliding sideways and almost taking out the street sign.

Thats when I decided I was more of a utilitarian than an objectivist. A utilitiarian would take 5 minutes to help me get my car out of the way, traffic would move on without backing up, the opposite lane wouldn't be backed up for 15 minutes going the other way, and nobody else would be inconvenienced. The objectivist ran his blood pressure up, caused a traffic hazard and made everybody else there think he was a little nuts. That's where you guys are right now. Ranting and raving, keeping things from getting done and showing the world that you are angry and a little bit nuts.

Bobzilla wrote:

Snowdoggie wrote:

SVreX wrote: Hmmm... you started the "Teach them to fish.." line, but want to call me a hater when I don't want to give them a fish??? Sir, call it what you want. I firmly believe that it is a far greater love to teach responsibility then to give handouts. That's why I spent 10 years volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. Giving out handouts and failing to encourage people to rise above their bad circumstances is a cruel, and deceptive form of captivity and enslavement for political agenda and power, spun as fake compassion. I've never owned a BMW, never made more than $50K in one year, spent more than a decade volunteering for poor families, been on the front lines of more than a dozen national disaster response teams, I was smuggling food and medical supplies into Haiti after the earthquake in small planes, but I have no compassion. I am a hater. I keep learning more and more about myself in this thread. It's truly amazing. I admire your work with dogs. I've done some animal rescue too (though certainly nothing like you have). I also admire that you have acted responsibly in the decisions in your own life. So, there you have it. I admire you, and I'm a hater. Go figure!

To be clear, the posts here that shocked me with the amount of hatred involved were not yours, nor were they in this thread but I do see stuff that really bothers me here and I usually do not participate or respond to those threads. I saw something last week about teachers that highly offended me because my 80 year old mother just happens to be a teacher and a very good one. She was California Teacher of the Year (Yeah, yeah, I know. You guys all hate California and want it to fall into the sea.) back in the late 70s and continued to work as a substitute up until last year when she was 79. I honestly wanted to hunt the guy who made that post down and deck him. Instead, I logged and cooled off. But I really am getting tired of crap like this. Hey. If you guys from the right want to shut down the post office, do nasty things to teachers, slaughter government employees and laugh when people without health insurance die in the gutter in front of the hospital, go right ahead. You only have yourself and whatever god you worship to answer to. Just don't expect me to join your angry mob or want to have anything to do with you.

OK, I went through and re-readthis entire thread and the only "hate" I am seeing is coming frm the same person, over and over. You.

I don't know. From re-reading this thread I clearly understand that you have no love for college professors, even though you don't really admit to even meeting or knowing one.

Doggie, look at it from the other side as well.

This is why nothing gets done. You just called most of the board nuts.

Snowdoggie wrote:

Bobzilla wrote:

Snowdoggie wrote:

SVreX wrote: Hmmm... you started the "Teach them to fish.." line, but want to call me a hater when I don't want to give them a fish??? Sir, call it what you want. I firmly believe that it is a far greater love to teach responsibility then to give handouts. That's why I spent 10 years volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. Giving out handouts and failing to encourage people to rise above their bad circumstances is a cruel, and deceptive form of captivity and enslavement for political agenda and power, spun as fake compassion. I've never owned a BMW, never made more than $50K in one year, spent more than a decade volunteering for poor families, been on the front lines of more than a dozen national disaster response teams, I was smuggling food and medical supplies into Haiti after the earthquake in small planes, but I have no compassion. I am a hater. I keep learning more and more about myself in this thread. It's truly amazing. I admire your work with dogs. I've done some animal rescue too (though certainly nothing like you have). I also admire that you have acted responsibly in the decisions in your own life. So, there you have it. I admire you, and I'm a hater. Go figure!

To be clear, the posts here that shocked me with the amount of hatred involved were not yours, nor were they in this thread but I do see stuff that really bothers me here and I usually do not participate or respond to those threads. I saw something last week about teachers that highly offended me because my 80 year old mother just happens to be a teacher and a very good one. She was California Teacher of the Year (Yeah, yeah, I know. You guys all hate California and want it to fall into the sea.) back in the late 70s and continued to work as a substitute up until last year when she was 79. I honestly wanted to hunt the guy who made that post down and deck him. Instead, I logged and cooled off. But I really am getting tired of crap like this. Hey. If you guys from the right want to shut down the post office, do nasty things to teachers, slaughter government employees and laugh when people without health insurance die in the gutter in front of the hospital, go right ahead. You only have yourself and whatever god you worship to answer to. Just don't expect me to join your angry mob or want to have anything to do with you.

OK, I went through and re-readthis entire thread and the only "hate" I am seeing is coming frm the same person, over and over. You.

I don't know. From re-reading this thread I clearly understand that you have no love for college professors, even though you don't really admit to even meeting or knowing one.

You missed the part where he spent multiple years in college. I'd sure hope he met a few professors in that time. Otherwise, what exactly was he paying for?

In reply to Snowdoggie:

I don't think anyone is saying that they wouldn't help people in trouble out. They are just disagreeing on how the government should spend our tax dollars.

For the record, i'm not truly taking either side, other than to say that i turned out just fine despite initially being in a somewhat similar situation to the OWS Protestors.

E36 M3's broken. I don't see any good solutions. I consider myself somewhat adept at "adapt and overcome" and wouldn't dream of asking for special treatment.

SVreX wrote: Doggie, I don't know where you are coming from. If that was intended to be an apology, it was frankly completely lame. I don't know how you possibly manage to say something like this in DIRECT RESPONSE TO ME:

Snowdoggie wrote: The one thing that I have that you and your hater friends don't have is compassion.

...then try to claim that my posts were not the ones that offended. Name calling and backpedaling will get you no where. I'm afraid you have completely lost credibility with me.

Outside of posts on the internet and a few e-mails I don't think we know each other. We have never met. You are not my client or part of my family or anybody else I need 'credibility' from. I'm simply a guy who disagrees with you on an internet board. Your philosophy seems rather hateful to me and I stand by that observation. You aren't the worst of the 'mob' but there really is kind of a mob mentality here towards anybody who doesn't have certain political beliefs.

Snowdoggie wrote: I will just end with this. I have read everything that Ayn Rand wrote and even saw the recent Atlas Shrugged movie. In theory her philosophy makes sense. Take care of yourself. Don't expect others to take care of you, etc. But anything can be taken to an extreme and I think this is the real problem we have in this country right now. ... snippy ... That's where you guys are right now. Ranting and raving, keeping things from getting done and showing the world that you are angry and a little bit nuts.

Who's ranting and raving or angry? I think topics like this are fascinating and a little fun. It reminds me of why I believe what I do.

Just because I don't support government bailouts or bailouts in general, it doesn't mean I don't give a crap about my fellow man. In fact, I think charities, religious orders, etc. have done wonderful jobs of feeding the poor, taking care of the sick, etc. In fact, the ones I support the most teach life skills, extend a hand to help people take care of themselves and help them become contributing members of society. And they do it on a much smaller budget than a government directed program would do it.

Ultimately, you have to ask yourself one question. What is the role of government in our lives? Is it to be the helicopter parent that tries to do everything for the "child" citizen? Or is it a guardian of our freedoms? It cannot be both.

In reply to scardeal:

The government sucks at guarding our freedoms. I've noticed this. From local council members all the way up to DC, I don't get the feeling that anyone cares much about guarding our freedoms.

And people have weird ways of defining their freedoms anyway. Some people want freedom from gays getting married. Other people want the freedom from their student loans.

scardeal wrote: Ultimately, you have to ask yourself one question. What is the role of government in our lives? Is it to be the helicopter parent that tries to do everything for the "child" citizen? Or is it a guardian of our freedoms? It cannot be both.

All hail scardeal; he get's it.

Government is necessary, but it has become so pervasive in so ways that too many are totally dependent on it. OWS has some valid points while it is ignorant (naturally or willfully) of government's role in their plight.

They would have much more impact if they would OTP - Occupy The Polls. Unfortunately, the "gotta have it now" folks have taken to public demonstrations with no cohesive message and a dubious alliance with rogue organizers that have a different agenda.

It all makes me think of this:

For the record, I don't think corporations control government. I think politicians use corporations to gain personal wealth and power. Politicians and government are the problem.

92CelicaHalfTrac wrote:

Snowdoggie wrote:

Bobzilla wrote:

Snowdoggie wrote:

SVreX wrote: Hmmm... you started the "Teach them to fish.." line, but want to call me a hater when I don't want to give them a fish??? Sir, call it what you want. I firmly believe that it is a far greater love to teach responsibility then to give handouts. That's why I spent 10 years volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. Giving out handouts and failing to encourage people to rise above their bad circumstances is a cruel, and deceptive form of captivity and enslavement for political agenda and power, spun as fake compassion. I've never owned a BMW, never made more than $50K in one year, spent more than a decade volunteering for poor families, been on the front lines of more than a dozen national disaster response teams, I was smuggling food and medical supplies into Haiti after the earthquake in small planes, but I have no compassion. I am a hater. I keep learning more and more about myself in this thread. It's truly amazing. I admire your work with dogs. I've done some animal rescue too (though certainly nothing like you have). I also admire that you have acted responsibly in the decisions in your own life. So, there you have it. I admire you, and I'm a hater. Go figure!

To be clear, the posts here that shocked me with the amount of hatred involved were not yours, nor were they in this thread but I do see stuff that really bothers me here and I usually do not participate or respond to those threads. I saw something last week about teachers that highly offended me because my 80 year old mother just happens to be a teacher and a very good one. She was California Teacher of the Year (Yeah, yeah, I know. You guys all hate California and want it to fall into the sea.) back in the late 70s and continued to work as a substitute up until last year when she was 79. I honestly wanted to hunt the guy who made that post down and deck him. Instead, I logged and cooled off. But I really am getting tired of crap like this. Hey. If you guys from the right want to shut down the post office, do nasty things to teachers, slaughter government employees and laugh when people without health insurance die in the gutter in front of the hospital, go right ahead. You only have yourself and whatever god you worship to answer to. Just don't expect me to join your angry mob or want to have anything to do with you.

OK, I went through and re-readthis entire thread and the only "hate" I am seeing is coming frm the same person, over and over. You.

I don't know. From re-reading this thread I clearly understand that you have no love for college professors, even though you don't really admit to even meeting or knowing one.

You missed the part where he spent multiple years in college. I'd sure hope he met a few professors in that time. Otherwise, what exactly was he paying for?

Don't throw facts, reality or anything to derail his hate-speech. I don't know who pissed him off, but someone did.

for the record, I liked all of my professors.... but I knew what their limits were. They were teaching us a theory of how to do something, not the actual practice of doing it. None of my actual prof's were actual businessmen/women. They were all teachers. There's a diffrence.

scardeal wrote:

Snowdoggie wrote: I will just end with this. I have read everything that Ayn Rand wrote and even saw the recent Atlas Shrugged movie. In theory her philosophy makes sense. Take care of yourself. Don't expect others to take care of you, etc. But anything can be taken to an extreme and I think this is the real problem we have in this country right now. ... snippy ... That's where you guys are right now. Ranting and raving, keeping things from getting done and showing the world that you are angry and a little bit nuts.

Who's ranting and raving or angry? I think topics like this are fascinating and a little fun. It reminds me of why I believe what I do. Just because I don't support government bailouts or bailouts in general, it doesn't mean I don't give a crap about my fellow man. In fact, I think charities, religious orders, etc. have done wonderful jobs of feeding the poor, taking care of the sick, etc. In fact, the ones I support the most teach life skills, extend a hand to help people take care of themselves and help them become contributing members of society. And they do it on a much smaller budget than a government directed program would do it. Ultimately, you have to ask yourself one question. What is the role of government in our lives? Is it to be the helicopter parent that tries to do everything for the "child" citizen? Or is it a guardian of our freedoms? It cannot be both.

This. Just because I want people to have some personal responsibility, to take ownership of their life and learn to do it themselves does NOT mean that I am not willing to help them along the way. I am NOT willing to offer a plain handout. I would rather give the guy on the corner a job app over money.

I agree...I get very tired of hearing I want old and poor people to die in the streets because I want responsible laws instead of ones that say we have to supply cradle to grave care of everyone in our country. I would maintain that most people want the health system reformed in some way, but in a way that can be sustained and not one that puts the worst possible entitiy in the world in charge. Costs are what is out of countrol, and the govt. itself is mostly to blame, but that's another discussion.

One of the reasons many now oppose so strongly what is going is that we know from experience that the current path leads to the destruction of our wealth as a nation, and our ability as citizens to grow and prosper. Our current path of spending leads to a permenant lower class and sure collapse of our dollar.

Just yesterday the head of the CBO, the same one that scored it positive at the time, said under oath to congress that the original stimulus is dragging down the GDP and will do so for another decade. That's only a small fraction of what we have spent, printed and borrowed. People can go on and on about how unfair life is and how we need to fund this and that, but the truth is, we can only fund it with borrowed or printed money. Both of which are options that lead to collapse of this country. We are totally broke as a nation. At 100% tax rates, we couldn't even put a dent in our debt. It absolutely has to stop, that is why you cannot compromise as much as you would like and why many people feel as strongly as they do about this.

I for one want my grandkids to experience the same opportunities I had, but right now that is unlikely.

In reply to racerdave600:

At this point, the Republican presidential candidates with plans are for raising taxes on the poor and middle classes while cutting taxes on the wealthiest.

Tax revenue isn't the only problem. Obviously spending is an issue too. All this overspending by the government as well as the general populace ends up as wealth for someone, and it isn't the poor or the middle classes.

Otto Maddox wrote: In reply to racerdave600: At this point, the Republican presidential candidates with plans are for raising taxes on the poor and middle classes while cutting taxes on the wealthiest. Tax revenue isn't the only problem. Obviously spending is an issue too. All this overspending by the government as well as the general populace ends up as wealth for someone, and it isn't the poor or the middle classes.

And Obama/pelosi and crew want to increase the spending AND increase taxes across teh board. It's a no-win. Both parties suck. Big time.

I'm just tired of the "all or nothing" attitude from both sides lately, like what Snowdoggie showed earlier. If you are not for their side, then you are an america hatin' socialist/redneck that wants to kill babies/force your church on others..... it's the same rhetoric. It's black or white and NEVER grey, green, blue purple or anything other than their opinion or the "enemy".

Hell, look at some of the politicians like Andre Carson and such that want to "wage war" on people like the tea party because they don't have the same opinion. It's fighting a friggin holy war, without the church as backing.

In reply to Bobzilla:

I agree with your assessment of the political climate. Obama is called a socialist but he is far from it. He does his best to protects two things - Wall Street and his chances for reelection. George W. Bush was called a neocon, but his goals were pretty much the same.

It makes it really hard for any kind of compromise to be reached. Democrats won't cut spending. Republicans won't cut taxes. Something has to give.

racerdave600 wrote: At 100% tax rates, we couldn't even put a dent in our debt.

Well thats only kinda true. With current spending, you wouldn't see a reduction in the debt, since the deficit is larger than the money a 100% tax rate would bring in. We all know spending has to come down, I hope everyone also realizes is that taxes have to come up. But a 100% tax rate would bring in a lot of revenue (although using a 100% rate as an example just makes me feel kinda dumb...makes me feel like im talking about unicorns or something). But just because one thing can't by itself lower the debt doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, and shouldn't be discounted as infeasible as a solution. It is going to take a lot of steps to fix our problems. This is going to be a sum of many things, not just one or two. We should also know we can't lose sight of the fact that nothing is going to happen immediately. Even if we operate in a budget surplus, it will take a looooong time to reduce our debt significantly. Like decades.

Otto Maddox wrote: In reply to racerdave600: At this point, the Republican presidential candidates with plans are for raising taxes on the poor and middle classes while cutting taxes on the wealthiest. Tax revenue isn't the only problem. Obviously spending is an issue too. All this overspending by the government as well as the general populace ends up as wealth for someone, and it isn't the poor or the middle classes.

You chose to focus on tax cuts first and spending cuts second. Democrats steadfastly refuse to consider cuts even after they have raised expenses over 20% in the last three years. We can cut off a lot of fat before coming close to the meat.

Let's have immediate, ironclad, good faith cuts first and then generate more revenue; this is commonly referred to as putting the horse before the cart.

Also is any one pissed that the budget reduction super committee wants to offer vague terms that essential takes the burden of the decision off of them and delays anything for another year?

oldsaw wrote:

Otto Maddox wrote: In reply to racerdave600: At this point, the Republican presidential candidates with plans are for raising taxes on the poor and middle classes while cutting taxes on the wealthiest. Tax revenue isn't the only problem. Obviously spending is an issue too. All this overspending by the government as well as the general populace ends up as wealth for someone, and it isn't the poor or the middle classes.

You chose to focus on tax cuts first and spending cuts second. Democrats steadfastly refuse to consider cuts even after they have raised expenses over 20% in the last three years. We can cut off a lot of fat before coming close to the meat. Let's have immediate, ironclad, good faith cuts first and then generate more revenue; this is commonly referred to as putting the horse before the cart.

This.

In reply to Bobzilla:

Yeah, taxes are really low, lower than they've been in our lifetimes. Spending is really high, higher than it has ever been. Take your pick on what to jump on first. I think everything should be on the table.

Of course, this in a perfect world. In the real world, if we raise taxes, Congress will likely find a way to spend the new revenues and then some more.

^ Exactly. Cuts first, then taxes. Problem with taxes, they will not go away.

oldsaw wrote: You chose to focus on tax cuts first and spending cuts second. Democrats steadfastly refuse to consider cuts even after they have raised expenses over 20% in the last three years. We can cut off a lot of fat before coming close to the meat. Let's have immediate, ironclad, good faith cuts first and then generate more revenue; this is commonly referred to as putting the horse before the cart.

To me, it seems like the national budget is like a hamburger in a mountain of lard. But, as I'm not a keen political observer, take that as exaggeration.

Otto Maddox wrote: In reply to Bobzilla: Yeah, taxes are really low, lower than they've been in our lifetimes. Spending is really high, higher than it has ever been. Take your pick on what to jump on first. I think everything should be on the table. Of course, this in a perfect world. In the real world, if we raise taxes, Congress will likely find a way to spend the new revenues and then some more.

Be careful about raising taxes. As I mentioned earlier if you look at our corporate tax rates, they are much higher then many of the countries we are competing against. It is no wonder business is leaving our shores.

People only want to compare past tax rates within the US only, and only on a specific part of capital. Otherwise, its not very friendly to their arguement that their taxes are too low.

Take a good look at that graph:

Corporate Income Tax Rate: US - %35 Mexico - %30 Canada - %17

Its not an accident that more cars are being built in our neighbors in the last 20 years, and less cars built in the borders.