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Originally Posted by ngdawg
Or some of us go to school later in life, get fed the "financial aid" BS and after graduation, can't find a job and get stuck with 10's of thousands of school debt.....get the ARM because the school debt has swallowed us whole and then can barely make the mortgage....these weren't bad decisions, just bad results because those that control the money don't want to give it up without a fight.
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Or one goes to the Dr. one day and hear a string of words put together that they've never heard before. Two years later their bank account is near empty and three out of every four calls are from companies, mainly hospitals and doctors, are looking for "their" money. The other call is from some fool thinking you have money to buy something they're selling. I was lucky I had insurance and a business that continued to earn income even in my absence. Still wasn't enough. Insurance companies, it turns out, love to deny things. You know like medical care. Could have sworn when I bought it it was called medical insurance. Fortunately an arbitrator agreed with me.
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Originally Posted by ngdawg
Being caught up in exactly that, it's hard to see it as "just business" but what else is it? The spouse lost what was thought to be a very secure job with a huge cosmetics manufacturer only to be told after 16.5 years that it's "just business,buhbye" as they move to Costa Rica or some such place.
This nation is becoming a nation of services, no longer interested in the pride of the American-made label because it's become too expensive to support those who make slapping that label on the box possible. It is a cycle of greed, but it's not the American worker who comes out of it unscathed. CEO's discovered the power of vested interest, took their wallets and ran outta town.
Jack Roush, a NASCAR car owner, ranted last year about allowing Toyota into Cup racing because it wasn't an American carmaker. Ironically, the badge, Camry, is the only fully-made American car in NASCAR. Chevy, Ford and Dodge all have most of their parts made off-shore.
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No shit! I drove down to southern Mexico last summer. Eleven days in my Ford truck. I never once worried about finding a part. Must have pasted 15 very large Ford plants on the trip. I can also almost guaranty you any Wranger jeans you buy are being made down here.
Nafta was suppose to benefit everyone, at least to some degree. Well try buying an imported item down here. I just went in search of a digital camera to replace one that went tits up. I looked on-line and thought I'd buy a Nikon. Amazon had it for around $750 with the lens I wanted. Down here at Costco? $1500, most of the increase is the national sales tax. I glanced at the laptops and the one I bought right before leaving for about $1200 was $2300.
I know people who fly to Florida to replace their laptops, it's cheaper.
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Originally Posted by ngdawg
AMEN! This election year is pitiful. Simply pitiful. There's two candidates arguing their "experience" and there's less than 20 years of that experience between them. Since when is being married to a president "experience"? I'm actually scared of whatever the results in November will be and I've been voting for 30 years. Did you know that if Hillary got elected, by the end of that first term we'd have had a quarter century of Bush/Clinton "leadership"? *me shudders
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Yep, seems we're left looking at the lesser of three evils, which I'm told is still evil.
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Originally Posted by ngdawg
Nixon probably thought that by opening the trade with China, it would cause the downfall of their communism. He was wrong. In the meantime the afore-mentioned CEOs liked their growing bank accounts and couldn't care less about the politics of it all. Greed has no social conscience.
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No some people will always want more. They're members of the "never is enough" club. And they don't give a shit if you starve.
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Originally Posted by ngdawg
People care, but the power is not in laymen's hands. As you mentioned, look what we have running for president. Look who is controlling the money, the war machine, the nation's resources. It's not you, not me and not our neighbors. The millions of us are controlled by the few of them. Know how, if you go to a go-go bar, wave a 10 dollar bill, the dancer will come to you, wiggle her ass and get your $10? We're expected to wiggle while the ones holding everything call the shots. Example: I just got our gas and electric bill-$1200, part of which is from being past due. Can I pay it all? Nope. Can I tell them to shove it and I'll go elsewhere? Nope. I gotta wiggle....and I'm too busy wiggling to help anyone else or even come up with how to help anyone else.
We care, Pan, at least most of us. But we're all going down the same spiral and grabbing onto whatever we can to at least slow the fall. There are those who, like CYN, feel it's NMP and they're probably right. But when things get so askew that every newscast starts with what's happening with our economy, when people are forced to make choices between going out to dinner or paying a bill, the effects spread to everyone, whether they care or not.
Every decade for as long as I can remember, we've been listening to the doomsayers proclaim this country near a recession, in a recession, heading towards a depression, etc. It's still never gotten as bad as 1929 and I doubt it will.Doesn't make it any less scary for those of us walking the edge, but I have to believe that not every tunnel is endless.
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Really since it became necessary, for whatever reason, for families to need two incomes the tunnel end never seems to appear, IMHO.