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Crazy
Location: The state of denial
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Originally Posted by pan6467
I'll give you a good example, I don't make much and I do live fairly well within my means tho. My cell phone doesn't recieve a signal in my apartment, so I called SBC for the cheapest landline available. They offered 30 calls a month for $2.95 monthly connection fee. Cool...... HOWEVER... $12 is added in taxes so my monthly bill is now $14.95 (no long distance, no pay per calls, no caller ID, no voice mail, nothing 30 calls (incoming and outgoing) a month and .08 cents a phone call over the 30.
So I am paying $12 in taxes on a $3 phone bill...... how is that fair to the poor? How can a person making less than me, who has a phone as a sole way of communication (and to say it's a luxury is BS because you need one to get a job, get any kind of credit, even just emergencies...). So me or this poor person paying 400% in taxes on our phone service is ok, yet the rich (someone making more than $5 million/year) paying maybe 5% more in income taxes is unfair.... I guarantee the poor person, and I miss that $12 far more than that rich guy would miss another 5% of his income.
What are they investing in? Where is the growth industries in America? If there is this great influx of investment in our country why are we continuing to go deeper into debt, while wages continue to go down?
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Don't really know how to argue against this repsonse cause I don't feel too strongly for the income tax anyway. I feel we should move towards a system that uses a consumption tax. That way the people actually using up resources are the ones who pay and it encourages people to save, which is something very few people do. Wasn't the average savings rate .2% of income last year?
What wages are you talking about, I've noticed wages actually going up over the past years.
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Originally Posted by pan6467
How can you justify saying that paying your workers a $1 more an hour increases your cost when the upper management is making more % wise over their employees than ever before...... In other words... paying say 1,000 workers $1 more an hour ($40,000/wk.... $2,080,000/yr) is costing the company more than that $5 million dollar bonus the CEO gets, those $50,000 bonuses VP's get...... We're expected to believe that $1 an hour grants them to raise their prices while not cutting the CEO's, and VP's pay???? Plus, the workers have a little more money in their pockets, to spend, to save to work with.
Also, that very tiny percentage controls the vast majority of the wealth.
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Are these workers worth $1 more an hour? Nothing is forcing them to work for that company. Companies do not owe their workers higher wages unless they deserve it. If they have the skills to demand a higher wage they can go find a company that will pay them for it. I agree some CEO's compensation packages are ridiculous but I think you fudged your numbers there a bit. I don't know of any medium sized company like you say where the CEO is getting a $5million dollar bonus every year.
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Originally Posted by pan6467
Bullshit, Outsourcing jobs and cheaper labor continues the downward spiral at a faster rate. Let's use Canton, Ohio for example. Hoover closes shop and moves out for cheaper labor so that the "company" can show better profits. However, the employees that made $15/hr are now forced to make $8 yet pay the loans off they took out when they made $15.
Property taxes in the rich areas go up to make up for the lost income of the Hoover plant. Property values in middle class areas bottom out, thereby those people have no way to sell their house to pay the loans. Schools suffer, police, fire, all services get cut..... and again city income taxes and property taxes keep going up so that the city can run....... so the people who lost their jobs and are making far less are heavily in debt and cannot sell out just to break even...... it's a bottomless pit and the foreclosures are skyrocketing.
SO again it is fair that these workers get this situation handed to them, while the company itself goes overseas pays those workers $1.25, increases their profits and the executives make millions in bonuses and salary raises....
That is a true and factual acount of what is happening in North East Ohio.... They are not cutting jobs and closing because they can't afford to pay these people, they are moving out to increase profits and salaries of executives....
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Granted that situation sucks and no one would like that to happen to anybody but that company did not owe these people jobs. The jobs were the company's to give out where they wanted to. It's a very competetive world. Say Hoover doesn't move their plant, their profit margins are lower than the competition. Now another company comes in who did move their plant overseas or wherever and can undercut Hoover's prices. Now Hoover has to match them or risk losing a lot of market share which brings in less money. The value of the whole company goes down and they end up having to shut down the plant anyway. Yeah it looks like Canton got screwed but if the only thing in that city was the Hoover plant they were putting all their eggs in one basket anyway. Plus, was it the best thing for these people to try to make their career out of a factory job for $15 an hour?
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Originally Posted by pan6467
Again, bullshit..... would you rather watch family members that have cancer or some other disease spend every penny they have because insurance ran out and they have to buy outrageously priced meds, and go through excrutiating pain.... Come on.... fucking bullshit.... I'll use the same argument you do for tax cuts for the rich.... These people worked lifetimes to make money and to live a little bit of the American dream and you would rather have them lose it all, while facing death than to offer them a healthcare system that protects their hard work?
You take out what companies pay for their employees healthcare, you take away the payments for the meds, the premiums and the deductibles and guess what..... everyone has far far more money to spend, save, whatever. To say that a human's life is not worth trying to save because they cannot pay for healthcare or to say that someone should lose everything because they are sick.... is disgusting and very hypocritical of these "pro-life" religious right GOPs. If life is so valuable, then why are they so fast to take away every penny a person has for life saving medical procedures....
And we won't discuss how a universal healthcare system (or a system that is on a sliding scale, would promote healthier and happier workers that could maybe possibly be more effective....
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I think we are arguing about two different things here. Of course I want everyone to have health care. Everyone has health risks and it makes perfect sense to have everyone pay into a system so the unfortunate people who do end up getting sick can be taken care of. What I am saying is that the price of health care is so freaking high because people don't take care of themselves. The leading killer of men and women is heart disease which a vast majority of which could be avoided if people would exercise and eat right. Diabetes is on the rise because of the nation's growing waistline, people continue to smoke years and years after it has been proven that cigarettes destroy your body.
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Originally Posted by pan6467
I didn't say social programs would help educate them, some may.... but it is a far better policy to help give hope to people and a belief that they can succeed, by giving small business loans, by allowing the poor access to universities and colleges without going heavily into debt, than to offer low waged jobs that go nowhere, college educations that have them maxed out on loans, and the prospect of no future. I would much rather placate the masses by giving them hope and faith than to point fingers and say, "fuck you get a job at McDonald's" work your ass off and get nowhere in life.... and that my friend, is what is happening at an alarming rate in this country.
Our country has not been so divided and hate filled since the Civil war and we better find some way towork together and solve the problems. Instead of pointing fingers and saying the poor are lazy and the rich pay too much in taxes. Same as, we need to stop pointing fingers and say the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer, so fuck them. ETC.....We need to work on a solution everyone can live with instead of a solution that just 1 side can and fuck the other side.
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Well I guess I'm not really sure what you mean by social programs if you don't mean educational programs. And I'm not arguing against them if that is what you are thinking. It's just that from what I've seen a lot of people are content to complain about everything and waste their money than go and try to better themselves using the programs that are available.
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Originally Posted by pan6467
(BTW I blame noone but myself for my mistakes, and except for help with school and grants (that are available already) to start my recovery center, I ask for no help from anyone, to pay my bills. But I suppose asking for scholarships (even though I am a Dean's list student), affordable loans that I can repay and private and public grant monies that are already avaible to others.... makes me a leech in your eyes..... even though there would be no way for me to afford school, let alone my recovery center without the help.)
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Well I don't know where you got this opinion of me, considering I did much the same thing.
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Originally Posted by pan6467
So because you take care of your body and exercise.... if you get (God forbid and I truly wish none of this upon you) ALS, or any form of MS, if you have a child and it is born with CP, or your wife gets breast cancer..... and in any one of those situations your insurance runs out, the meds send you far into debt..... you feel you are the one responsible for it all ..... God Bless you for that..... but unfortunately reality is you are in a very very small minority in that attitude and even the rich use all the government resources they can, plus they can afford better health insurance (guess that's why those Hoover executives moved the plants overseas so they could boost their bonuses and salaries).
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I think I've already addressed this above.
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Ok, when the debts come due, you have no middle calss anymore and a populace heavily indebt. Our economy is built one CONSUMPTION...... when people can no longer consume at the rate they are, or to a healthy degree.... and can only consume necessities..... guess what..... ALL INDUSTRY GOES DOWN THE SHITTER.
The world's economy is built on the USA's consumption when we can no longer consume, unless one of these third world countries can pick it up.... the world will go into depression.
And guess what, the debts are coming due.
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Again this is what we agree on, but I don't see a solution to it except for people to be responsible for themselves and realize what is going on. Maybe when it happens everybody will wake up.
Edit: BTW thanks for your kind words. I'm glad I did submit my post and I guess your reaction is why I love this place.
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Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast.
Last edited by madcow; 04-16-2005 at 08:06 AM..
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