there was a show on TV where they added up all the taxes in my country and they also factored in "secondary tax" this is after tax, when you actually and go spend your already taxed earnings in the shops a considerable part of this money goes to the state also...the figure they came up with is 80+%

my country has a smaller tax rate than the USA...

many lazy shits living off of a few successful people...there lies the real problem IMO

Proof why Americans have turned into the lazy creatures you think they are please.

And no bullshit about because they can.

Because that means millions of Americans have accepted a far lower standard of living than they used to enjoy. So what has changed in America to make so many give up on living a life where their earned income would far exceed their welfare payments. Why have they lost the appetite to better themselves, their children and family? Because if you're right, then America is on a slide down that will only pick up pace.

Of course the truth is easy to find.

Average number of applicants per job

23 per job across all sectors in the UK
Most competitive sectors:

46 per customer service job
45 per secretarial job
42 per retail job

http://recruiterspace.totaljobs.com/...onal_analysis/

http://www.expressandstar.com/busine...bs-in-regions/

http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-tim...ch-job-vacancy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012...-for-21-degree

Maybe they sit at home and don't bother because they know it's a waste of time.

Proof will be to stick an advert on Craigs list for a shop attendant, toilet cleaner and see how many applicants you get.

Minte will tell us better about the situation of hiring people in the US. Highly trained and untrained.

I can tell you about Czech. When Eva puts an advert out for a HGV driver, there are few vacancies. The training is expensive and paid for often by the applicant. Plus these guys are hung onto by employers. When she puts an advert in for a office clerk. Her email box gets over loaded.

Is the solution that Robbie pays more tax now, so the Government can train more people to fill jobs that have fewer applicants. Or waiting for the private sector to spend the money. Knowing once trained the employee can quit and go elsewhere.

China employs a million people making iPhones. Work so tedious that the factory has a high suicide rate among its workers. Work so repetitive that it is destined to become automated in the near future. Then those people won't be needed. Automation is a major blessing because it can be applied to nearly any task. Google is pushing very hard to legalize and build fully automated 'driverless' cars. We aren't that far away from having them. Bye bye taxi drivers, bus drivers, teamsters and the like. We are too smart and too efficient to pay people to drive us a few blocks when we can build cars that do it on their own.

Any idea how many people make a living one way or another driving a vehicle? Soon all of those people will be 'lazy bums who don't want to work or get a job.' Retraining won't fix the problem, we aren't automating a specific job, we are evolving beyond having to do ordinary mundane work. Many people lack the aptitude to be creative, innovative or inventive. Not from laziness, from not having the talent for it. They may be great worker bees, but that doesn't make them capable of creating new products or services, and even if they do it doesn't stop someone else from copying and automating those ideas. Why do you think Apple, Nathan Mhryvold and that crowd are busy patenting everything under the sun?

Repetitive, mundane, hard 9-5 work is drying up and won't be needed. Add in a glut of intellectual property already protected by law and you will end up with a huge out of work population permanently incapable of getting work. There are many now who lack the skills to work a job without getting fired every few weeks. Most people call them lazy idiots or bums. It will be interesting when they are 50+% of the population rather than 15%.... and we are talking about a few decades from now, not a few centuries.

Incidentally, add the number of people in prison and the number of people unemployed, retired, disabled etc...
And the % of extra people is already getting close to half our population or more....

I don't think people ever realize all of the secondary taxes that we get nailed with. I know the numbers are out there, but I don't know them, but how much of our money we actually walk away with at the end of the day

Federal income tax, state income tax, property tax, sales tax, gas tax, automobile tax, etc. etc. etc.

Massive.

Fuck you. :1orglaugh

I was waiting for Robbie to tell us they were all lazy worthless layabouts who like living on the dole. And YOU go and spoil it all by posting the truth. :thumbsup

I didn't really mean FU, my little joke. :winkwink:

Just a few milllion dollars a year.

I think the forty-seven percent number is a little bit too vague here. Someone who receives social security might in fact be collecting money from the government, but in reality they are merely taking out what they put in earlier.

a lot of the 'bums' have mental disorders, learning disablities, etc, etc. not everyone is a perfectly abled person in this world. in fact, there are more people now with problems than ever (so it seems).

We have an HR manager and division VP's. I only get involved in hiring on a staff level.
Last I heard we have more than enough applications for direct labor.

Plato wrote The Republic to further punish humanity for allowing his mentor to be murdered by the state. This means that most of you are thinking and arguing within the paradigm laid out by a vindictive philosopher who has been dead for thousands of years.

...so pardon me for skipping 7 pages of philosophical midgets grunting about what to do with money that should have never been stolen in the first place.

That's why I always say the middle class & the poor pay far more taxes overall than the rich. It's the point I tried to make either earlier on or in some other topic just like this one.. ( I can't remember which)

They always love to say the 1% pay more than the 99%.. Well 99 people buy a hell of a lot more shit than that single 1%er. This is why the entire argument about taxing the rich less because they create jobs is absolutely retarded at best.

The simple fact is the middle/lower class spends more than the upper class because there is many more of them, that means they have more buying power and use more products.. That is what creates more jobs. Not to mention, states receive much more sales tax simply due to the numbers games. 99 people are going to buy more things than that single person. (granted the upper class of course is not just 1%)

Thank you. :thumbsup

Many Western countries are developing a 4 class system.

Upper class, middle class, working class and unemployed class. With the brainwashing applied by the 1-2% the unemployed class are being blamed for the countries problems. Closer inspection shows they are merely victims of the 1-2%.

Why are there 12 million unemployed in the US, UK 2.59 million, France 3.011 million and yet Germany it's under 3 million 5.5%?

Simple answer. Germany is the world's third largest exporter with $1.408 trillion exported in 2011

While countries like America were exporting jobs, Germany was building factories.

Who was exporting jobs? You got it. Now they are laying the blame at the feet of the unemployed. And many here swallow the bullshit while they outsource to anywhere they can get it done cheaper.

Blaming the unemployed or Government spending takes the blame from the real culprits. While everyone from the middle of the middle class down get poorer and those above that line get richer. Too many blame the wrong people.

They don't need to take away your guns to take over the country. They have you brainwashed.

A good read about what you are talking about.

http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org/20...t-meet-andrea/

This issue hasn't been settled yet after 7 pages?
WTF people?

Paul you are totally ignorant of the people you THINK you are talking about.

The people I am talking about have NEVER had a higher standard of living. I'm talking about rednecks in the town I lived in in South Carolina. They were in their 20's, most of them sold meth on the side and collected welfare from the govt. because they had no proof of income.

Were they "poor". I guess. But they certainly had plenty of money (from slinging meth for instance) to party their ass off, put new rims on their car, buy dances at the titty bar.

You are so out of touch with what I've seen with my own two eyes that it's stupid of you to even be in this thread commenting on a country that you do not know anything about.

I am nots saying that ALL people are like that. But there are MILLIONS of them here.

People who were raised that way. Their parents were white trailer trash..and now they are white trailer trash. And their kids will be white trailer trash. They haven't lowered their standard of living. Hell they are living it up (in their minds) at a much higher standard. They are "poor"...and yet all have cellphones, a car, cable t.v., a big flat screen, etc.

Now...if you want to talk about the bums on the street begging...a percentage of them are mentally unstable.
But the majority of them are scamming.
I watched a documentary a few weeks ago with John Stossel where they followed "homeless" people...back to their HOMES! And then sat outside and waited until the "homeless" person came back outside dressed in their real clothes and then they confronted them.

Stossel himself put on a fake beard and some shabby clothes and held up a sign. He made over $200 in cash in just a couple of hours.

Again, I'm not saying ALL people are like that.

But to have these discussions and just pretend that millions of Americans don't scam the system is total bullshit.

About 500 billion is spent a year on welfare. Not a big number in the big picture,hate to break it to you.

In the town I grew up in there was an apartment complex that had about 20 units in it. It was a very low income place. Most, if not all, of the people living there were on some kind of welfare or government assistance. There were a few disabled people people there, but most of them were single moms with kids who lived off the system. It was not a glamorous life by any means. I would imaging it was a struggle, but they had food stamps so they had food, the government paid the rent and the welfare covered the rest of the bills so they survived.

The problem was the mentality of the place. There was one woman who had three kids in a two bedroom apartment. Her oldest daughter got knocked up at 17 and immediately went on welfare. The mother was proud! She actually went around telling people how her daughter "makes" $400 a month. Living on welfare is the family business., This woman even told her daughter she can't get married or she will likely lose her welfare so her boyfriend just moved in with them so now they had five people living in a two bedroom apartment.

They have lived their whole lives with a very low standard of living and don't seem to aspire to anything more. Those types of people will never change. No matter what opportunity you offer them they will find a reason to not be able to do it.

No it is because of fucks like you making excuses for them.....
Now that I have said that, YES Lots of People Need help and LOTS are trying to get off assistance, BUT
I know people that when the benefits start to run out, they THEN go look for a job. One bad apple!

But, again this small amount of spending isn't the problem, the taxes are Not the problem. We are all fighting over drops of Water, while the Ocean is being spent every day.
Robbie is Very on track about how much we spend and how much we barrow.
Can YOU keep getting credit cards and maxing them out and then getting more, and one day hope it will be ok? What about when your Monthly min payment is more than you make. IE GDP

When I was a kid and everyone was alive. On Sundays I watched my family have monster arguments about politics. Never once did someone ever change someone else way of thinking.
The trick is not to get mean and personal. It just debate at the end of the day it will change nothing.

Uhmm... 1/2 a TRILLION dollars is not a "big number"?

Of course there are govt leeches.. just like there are corporate leeches that also milk the govt tit.

I'll give you an example..

General Electric. In 2010, GE earned a whopping $14.2 billion in profits - yet did not pay a dime in U.S. corporate taxes. Not only did they not pay any taxes they received $3.2 billion in govt incentives.

Now lets talk big Oil.. When you combine state & federal subsidies this industry rakes in roughly $133.8 billion to $280.8 billion a year of tax payer dollars in subsidies. Now this is of course the entire industry as a whole, but just the three top oil companies made $80 billion profits last year. (that's about 200 million a day)

A interesting article from the NY Times about how these companies get out of paying taxes and essentially leech/abuse the system.. (humm sound familiar?)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/bu...tax.html?_r=3&

I guess it's ok for rich white CEOs & and their cronies to milk the govt tit, but not poor white trash rednecks & black hooligans. As long as you wear a suit and tie while you steal tax payer money it's all good.

If that is true, I feel very sorry for your family.

When you argue 'this or that candidate' it becomes impossible to push people off their stated positions. However, when you argue ideas it becomes very easy to change the mind of anyone seriously interested in finding solutions, or to have your own mind changed by people you respect. If you have no interest in changing your mind and no hope of changing theirs... why not just go talk to a wall instead?

I used to be a huge proponent of a flat tax. My time chatting with Minte and KK, mostly on JBM back in the day convinced me a national sales tax is a better method (though a nominal flat tax in the 10% range for everyone would likely be needed as well). I've changed my mind on plenty of other things over the years discussing them with people I respect. I know I have also changed the minds of many people in the discussions. You ought to try doing it that way, you will likely find it refreshing. :2 cents:

This issue hasn't been solved in 30 years, you think a 7 page post on GFY will get it done? That's like asking the kiddies over at 4chan to create peace in the middle east. :1orglaugh

Why feel sorry, it was spirited fun? People hugged and kissed when it was time to go home. Im very open minded to facts not fiction presented as facts.

What does that have to do with anything? And yeah...500 billion a year is a LOT of money.

Anyway, I wasn't talking about how much we spend, I was talking about the fact that millions of low lifes out there scam the system.

Tony, if online piracy has taught you anything it should be that if you give people free shit, they will take it.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Sadly an all to often true story.

So where do you think America went wrong to create this culture? By the way I was also talking in a wider sense than America. Nice of you to ignore that.

Yes there will always be some who will work the system, like you do by only paying a 13% tax rate. BUT why have some countries gone that route and some haven't?

In England there is the same culture, yet in Germany it seems not, here in CZ it's kept to a minority who are mainly gypsies. There are countries where people do go to work and want to or keep trying. What has happened that these people have lost their self respect, their drive to do better for themselves and their families?

Could it be that as jobs in factories like Fords disappeared these kids realised with their education, postcode and race, they had so little chance of getting a job. Working the system was the only way to survive. Sending out CV after CV or turning up for interview after interview or working for an employer who will pay you less than the State. Have some just given up?

And please don't turn around and bleat the same brainwash dished out by those employing and paying less than the State. They are working the system as well. Like employers taking on illegals and paying very low wages, like farmers or food processors. So you can buy cheaper goods. Which is why most of the equipment around you and I are built in Third World sweat shops.

Yes blame the victims of the way our world has changed from a time when the West produced so much and imported so little. It doesn't change a thing. Take the benefits away and those guys smoking and selling meths are coming to your front door for your stuff. And they won't knock on the door so you can get your gun from the cupboard.

Cut military spending and highly trained killers will join them and they can knock on the door with a grenade. Or worse.

So come up with a solution.

Mine is simple, switch the money from funding what those in work can afford to pay direct for. Or tax you higher. Then put it into training for jobs that have a shortage of applicants. Any bright kid who can pass the college entry exam to be a science, engineering, hi tech, etc student and let the State pay for it. Or pass the cost onto those who want to be tax lawyers of plastic surgeons and other such professions that pay very well.

Give grants to factories who take kids on for a year. Even if it's to sweep the floors it teaches the ethic of work.

Then huge public projects, like painting the houses of old or infirm, rebuilding the poor areas of New Orleans or the flooded towns and cities in the UK, any disaster ravaged area. To give unemployed a job in return for their dole. A person doesn't turn up, an ex office worker will be looking at the file, then someone will be knocking on the persons door. Without a great excuse. No benefits. Yes it's tough, but that's what it needs. There are no sugar coated remedies.

Imported finished goods + 10% import tax. Unfinished goods will be determined by the state of the work required. Putting windscreen wipers on a Jaguar, isn't going to qualify to miss the 10%.

The only people who can solve this mess are Governments. Relying on the bosses or the 2% is going to make the problem worse.

Yes it is a big number. A huge amount of money going into the US to keep it afloat and make the Doomsday Preppers waste their time. Take it out and then they will be the guys who were right.

Everyone is pointing the blame here. I'm suggesting solutions. This I know for sure. $500,000,000 divided by 12 million is $41,666. An unemployed person on average gets $????. Not $41,666 a year. So a lot of that goes to pay civil servants, office workers and the costs of running the system.

So $500,000,000 is spread around and being spent in the US. IT HAPPENS IN OTHER PLACES. Cut taxes and all you do is move a slice of that money from Jim to John. There is no extra spending, none at all.

In fact if the money is cut. The cut adds to the unemployed. Simple to work out, shops wont take on anyone new to handle the extra business, the amount of extra good bought, that are made in the US will be negligible and the docks might take on a couple of guys. There is no boost to spending, no recovery. In fact it dumps us all in the shit a bit deeper. Except we will all be able to buy a new imported phone. :Oh crap

If you want to return online porn back to the same as 2000-2006, you have to get in a time machine or have the exact same conditions.

If you want to return the World back to the times of full employment or close to it, again you need a time machine or the exact situations of those times.

The issue could be solved and will have to be one day. Problem is it will need people to accept there are not enough jobs to go around in the system we currently run. Once that happens, there are two solutions. Form of communism where everyone working take a much lower wage so employers can employ more people. which will be a huge risk. Or we accept the world as it is and will be and give people who can't get a real job something in their lives to give the direction and a feeling of belonging to society. Blaming them for not feeling like they belong, is a weak argument. WHY^ don't they feel they belong. WHY do they prefer taking Meths?

Robbie, they can't all be selling it. :1orglaugh

I think everyone agrees that people scam the system, the problem that many try to point out, is the guys on the right "ONLY" focus on the low income whom scam while ignoring the scamming done by big business. In fact the right, almost tries to justify it when it's done by big business or the wealthy while damming the low incomes thieves.. Yet both are cheats & thieves.

I would love to flip the table on the whole 1% & 99% deal. I know how many on the right love to use the quote that the 1% pay more taxes.

I wonder if that same thing works in reverse on the scamming the system. I just wonder about all the tax dollars that are scammed in one form or another whom makes up the biggest recipient of that scammed money?

Do we really think it's those lazy rednecks in trailers or blacks in govt subsided apts with big screen TV's, or is it rich white CEO's & their corporations with off shore bank accounts that hide their investments over seas while getting maximum tax deductions? Whom do you really think the biggest criminals are?

and for the record. I was brought up in a family where everyone worked. My Grand Parents were working class, embroider and a market trader. My parents and many of my uncles became middle class. My brothers and I are.

I can't stop working, even if it's jigsaws I have to do something. Which is why I'm here, writing a book, got a blog. Even though I could do nothing, I'm so bloody work ingrained I have to work.

Now where did we go wrong with so many who don't have a similar ethic?

And the guys on the "left" ONLY focus on the poor who genuinely need help while totally ignoring the massive fraud and scamming that goes on.

As far as corporate scamming...that is not just the corporations. It takes TWO to tango. And their dance partners are the lifetime career politicians in Washington D.C.
The Federal Govt.
THEY are the ones who force us to give them our money in income taxes. And THEY are the ones handing it out for favors in return.

"left" and "right" are making bank in Washington D.C.

The federal govt. is spending 10.6 billion dollars a day. 4 billion of that is BORROWED money. Every day.

They haven't slowed down one bit through all of this. Not one bit.

The only thing that the "right" and "left" are arguing about is how much to INCREASE the spending next year. And if you INCREASE it less than they themselves predicted it to INCREASE...they call it a "cut" in spending.

Fucking thieves. And we are the sheep who keep feeding them. That's why I can't believe that anybody in their right mind thinks it's a good idea to raise taxes and give them even more money that isn't theirs.

Well I think at this point it's pretty clear.. We have become the Roman Empire it's now is only up to time to see how long it takes to finally fall. The only difference is the rest of the world will come down with us, including China whom most seem to think will be the next super power.

Corruption & Greed have pretty much ruined this country, so it's only a matter of time before it fails. The only smart thing they did, was to make sure everyone else would be just as fucked as we are once it finally happens.

I don't understand people like this.

I grew up in a "well off upper to middle class family" in NJ. We took vacations in Europe and has a vacation house in Canada. But my father died when I was a baby, and while my step father was a decent enough man, I left home at sixteen and never looked back. I ended up in the Marines and four years after that I landed in California - I did everything I could to stay on my feet and make ends meet. I started my day with a paper route (no kidding), worked at a restaurant till 2pm, then a fast food job until 9pm, and then at Target after hours.

I remember taking the bus through South and North Carolina when I was in the Marines and seeing how these people lived... And I could never do that.

I never said it was okay for rich white CEO's to milk off the govt tit. I think that needs to be stopped as well. Hell, Mitt Romney got a government bailout a few years ago and now he is railing against them.

There needs to be a reform of corporate welfare as well. Look at Ford. When the car companies went before congress looking for money Ford was right there begging for a handout. When congress finally told them what they would have to do in order to get the money Ford decided they had enough money to fun their own turn around so they declined the offer. That means they had enough money for this all along, but still came looking for a free handout.

It all annoys me.

Yes, but what is going to change it. Neither party is capable or willing to do it. I think it would take a zombie apocalypse at this point to change the world. I say world, because it's no longer a single country's problem but every country's problem because we are so interconnected.

Look at Egypt for example.. They had their uprising and govt has changed, but do you really think anything has changed in the long term outside of exchanging one ruling party for another?

You couldn't just leave it at this?
No, you had to throw in this part:
Why bother commenting at all, then? philosophical midgets... Please, cut the shit. Like you're having these socio-political discussions over trays of hors d'oeuvres with Noam Chomsky and Henry Kissinger at Washington cocktail parties, and not just reading a couple of fucking Lew Rockwell articles in between bong hits, jack sessions and blog updates. Aren't there enough condescending douchebag commenters on this board without you tossing in your condescending douchebag comments?

They have names for people who think they have a direct fucking pipeline to the truth, they call them Nazis, Jihadists, Assholes, Stalinists, Evangelicals, doctrinaire Libertarians, teenagers, etc. - which category do you fall under?

You are right. I finally took the plunge today and registered to vote as a Libertarian.

At least take a few minutes to check out his stand on the issues:
http://www.garyjohnson2012.com/issues

What he says makes a lot of sense to me. Maybe if enough of us said "fuck this" and took a stand we could maybe get some kind of real change in Washington.

In 2008 I voted for Obama's "Hope and Change" and believed him when he said he was going to "fix" Washington.
We all see how that ended up.

Maybe it's time for a REAL change and a President who isn't in either the Republican or Democrat party.

Check it out and see what you think. I'm voting Johnson on Nov. 6th

I assume that you are aware that even if he were to be elected he would be basically without power as he would be facing a hostile Congress and it is only Congress that can make changes and that controls the purse strings.

Of course the people can make Congress pay attention if they become proactive instead of remaining passive. The real power in this country lies with the people if and when they decide that they really do want a change.

The President still has to sign every bill...or VETO it. So he wouldn't be without power. But I know what you mean.

However, as Bush and Obama have shown...the President has a lot of backdoor ways to do shit without Congress.

I'm guessing he could pull all of our troops home without their consent. I'm also going to say that he could order his DOJ to stop all federal drug busts.

And who knows...being a guy with no ties to the Republicans or Democrats, maybe he is the guy who could get things done with Congress. God knows Obama hasn't. And if Romney is elected he will have a steep hill to climb with the Democrats.

They are only taking out their own money providing they don't live longer than a couple of years after they begin collecting SSA benefits...beyond that point they are taking out other peoples money.

I personally think that if a candidate from another party were to be elected it would be a good start as it should give the Democrats and the Republicans a wake up call...but until the people themselves wake up...and take a proactive interest...nothing is going to change.

I would bet that at least 90% of the people do not know the name of their Congressman or Senator...and I would bet that 99% have never contacted them to complain or approve of a single bill or about anything that the government is or is not doing.

I agree 100% that there is very little on the horizon that would lead us to believe anything will change anytime soon. Both parties are bought and paid for by big business so the government handouts to big companies will not stop anytime soon. Hell, both parties end up with people on their cabinets and making policy that are or were part of the same companies that are getting the handouts.

There won't be a change in the people as well. Many people who live in poverty have a mindset that they will always be poor and short of winning the lottery there is nothing they can do about it. Upward mobility is as much a mindset as it is a skill set. I have always aspired to work for myself. I have always done things on the side to earn extra money. The risk of not having a steady paycheck is one that is well worth taking for me. But there are a ton of people who don't feel that same way. Many are very happy working for someone else and many are happy doing whatever they can to work as little as possible. There is no election that can fix that unless those who are elected simply cut off those who are leeching.

I still feel that the actual number of people who are capable of working and simply choose to live on the system instead of working and bettering themselves is pretty small. To me the bigger problem is a general lack of education and training. There are a ton of people who graduate high school (or drop out) and get jobs only to find out that for many of them there is a ceiling on the amount they are likely going to earn and the types of jobs they can get. We don't put enough emphasis on higher education and training nor do we put enough emphasis on the evils of personal debt so many get jobs, get in debt and find themselves stuck.

Some of it too is simply the way our system is built. Capitalism is a pyramid. The higher you move up and the more you make the fewer of those opportunities there are. In order for the system to work you need worker bees. Walmart doesn't exist without all of their employees. The same can be said for any manufacturing company or any company that provides a product or service and employs many people to help deliver that product or service. The odds are these people are not going to make a lot of money, but they are needed to make that company run. We can't glorify the success of a business and then flog those who work for it because they don't pay enough into the system or ask for some extra help.

Bank Teller = ATM
Check out clerk = automated 'self-checkout' system
Driver = Autonomous Vehicle Software
Street Light / Exterior Electrician = Bulbs that now last 10+ years
Librarian = Google
Bookkeeper Accountant = Quickbooks and TurboTax
Simple legal instruments = LegalZoom

The amount of people needed to manage things has shrank quickly. It will only shrink more and faster as we move forward.
That is the nature of technology, it accelerates itself.

Anything repetitive can be automated.
90% of 'work' for most people comes down to repetitive tasks.
Walmart will exist with a skeleton crew soon.
A few people who fix the things that replaced all the other employees.

It is happening already all around us.

:thumbsup Yup. And what's more disgusting; a very poor person who steals, or a very rich one that does?

How many rich people murder others while stealing? How many poor people murder others while stealing?

That's how it works sometimes.

So what's the solution?

No the power will switch away from the West to the East. Other countries will become the customers. The new powers will be based on a few at the top and many underneath. Most empires worked that way.

Greed for consumer goods and the dream life did the damage. The West is running up bills because it lives in a style it can't afford. Take out the debt, borrowing and Government spending and the end will come faster. The West can't survive without it.

After the way the Stock Market crash of 1929 was handled we learned not to make that mistake again. We made the mistake of inflating the financial sector far beyond it's real value and when a pin burst the bubble. The weakness of the system around it was exposed. How many here before he crash were boasting about how much they were making in the dealings in the financial markets? you still see it in the buy gold or silver threads.

That's the life support America and other Western Countries are running on. Take it out and the Great Depression returns. And many in this thread will be broke within a year.
$1,456,000,000,000 is being pumped into the system to keep people thinking they're doing well. Can you imagine the knock on effects of taking it out?

It won't happen, neither Romney, Bush or anyone else is that stupid.

Unless The West can invest that money to start to grow, the West will sink.

And it won't be the fault of the kids dealing or taking meths.

Now what changed the mindset of people between 1970 and today?

Why shouldn't there be a ceiling? I'm serious. Why should people who have no special skills to give to society expect to get the American Dream of a house, two cars, wide scree TV, 2 holidays a year, etc?

If they want that life, they need to deserve it. Or their job goes East.

Agreed and those putting people out of work, expect them to live on scrapes. In fact some expect them to starve. Or is cutting the spending excluding cutting spending on poor to eat?

Those who can make money, need to go full steam and make it. AND expect to support those they leave behind.

Or build some gas chambers. :mad: