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(MSNBC) Obvious Ric Romero reports that "jobless consumers will hold back recovery." It's not news, it's MSNBC   (msnbc.msn.com) divider line 77
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Ghastly [TotalFark] 2009-07-05 06:57:51 PM  
YouPeopleAreCrazy: Cyrus982: Almost every wealthy person alive in the country today is only rich because they inherited the cash from their dead dads.

[Citation needed]


Some people are born on third base but go through life thinking they've hit a triple.

 
rat_brain_flies_plane 2009-07-05 07:05:56 PM  
rewind2846: This is one of the most stupid f*cking articles I have read in my f*cking life, ever, even for MSNBC. How in the motherf*ck are people ("consumers") supposed to f*cking "consume" if they don't have f*cking jobs with which to get f*cking money so that they can buy sh*t? Did the f*ckers who sat down and wrote the piece of sh*t actually THINK about what the f*ck they were typing? WTF?
Motherf*cking ridiculous.
/getting laid off at the end of august
//and yes, I'm f*cking pissed


Yep.

/pretty much hate everything
//and I mean EVERYTHING

 
Chelsea Clinton Is Carrot Top's Lost Twin 2009-07-05 07:08:52 PM  
Cyrus982: I just want things to be fair. I don't understand why a CEO who does absolutely nothing gets paid millions a year while the foundation of the company, the people at the bottom, the people who make everything possible because they come in each day and do horrific back-breaking work ONLY get paid min. wage. It's freaking ridiculous, and I don't know why everyone isn't as pissed off as me...


Then become a CEO and shut your pie hole.

/or, just shut your pie hole.

 
rat_brain_flies_plane 2009-07-05 07:10:25 PM  
aquaticphoenix: It really pisses me off that the fat cats in government and business keep calling average Americans "consumers", as if that's the only thing they are. That's completely false, and frankly, I find it insulting and offensive. The People are not mindless consumer sheep who exist only to dutifully move wealth up the ladder!

I think it's high time we told Congress and big business and the whole lot of those soul-sucking parasites, in no uncertain terms, that we're sick and tired of being raped in every conceivable way, that we're fed up with busting our arses while they sit in the halls of power, fark hookers, and Hoover our wallets dry!


THIS

i125.photobucket.com

Carry on.

 
Lamune_Baba 2009-07-05 07:54:18 PM  
jonny_q: Apparently your suggestion is to continue employing people you can barely pay to keep producing things that people can't afford.

Well... continuing to spend and grow your business when you're flat farking broke seems to be working well for the Government...

 
Lamune_Baba 2009-07-05 08:00:55 PM  
Mongo cut wood: While everyone is biatching about the "Evil" Corporations, no one is biatching about Congress, who despite the falling job numbers, voted themselves a nice raise in January.

I though raises for those nitwits were guaranteed and automatic? They actually had to go through the motions to vote not to get a raise...

850 Billion in spending on Rich, Failed Corporations (WallStreet) by the Obama Administration. Would have been better spent giving it directly to those unemployed, those who live on Mainstreet.

We could have avoided the whole war in the sandbox by paying each person in the desert $25,000 USD and telling them to stop farkin' things up. That'd buy enough hookers and opium to keep the entire country in a fark-filled haze for at least two full terms. A couple thousand years of constant religious war would probably come to an end once everyone is too tired and sticky to keep fighting.

 
maddogdelta [TotalFark] 2009-07-05 08:27:52 PM  
JRoo: Nebraska is not empty, we are growing the corn and cows that feed the country.

Didn't you get the memo? These are the same economists who think that we are a nation which buys food, but doesn't need anyone to grow it. Just like we all spend money, but don't need jobs to earn that money.

 
Cyrus982 2009-07-05 08:51:13 PM  
Chelsea Clinton Is Carrot Top's Lost Twin: Cyrus982: I just want things to be fair. I don't understand why a CEO who does absolutely nothing gets paid millions a year while the foundation of the company, the people at the bottom, the people who make everything possible because they come in each day and do horrific back-breaking work ONLY get paid min. wage. It's freaking ridiculous, and I don't know why everyone isn't as pissed off as me...


Then become a CEO and shut your pie hole.

/or, just shut your pie hole.


And how does someone not born into the elite aristocracy of this country go about doing that? They don't let people just "Work their way up the corporate ladder" anymore. Most CEOs today are either the children or grandchildren of the original owners, or they got skipped right up the ladder by who their rich daddies knew. The same is true for politicians. It's the farking monarchy allover again. People who have no right to lead anything getting to be in charge of everything because of some twisted birthright the rich have laid claim to.

There are no opportunities left for normal people.

 
redeyedfrenzy 2009-07-05 08:57:19 PM  
Graduated a year ago, NOT with a degree in English or Philosophy (Sustainable agriculture with a focus on sterile mushroom cultivation and composting) and now I'm working night freight in the health food department at the local chain grocery store, Fred Meyer, which is about ten percent less evil than WalMart. They cut our hours every week or so and still expect the same amount to be done, and more. Then they talk about efficiency and how we're a family and have the manager walk around the store quizzing us on store policy. There are teams! If enough people in your team get it right, then you get a sandwich party!

Husband can't find a job, though God knows he's looked. The only reason why we're getting through this is because my mom helps us out every month, but we've decided to pack up and pretty much become farmhands until this crap stops.

None of this is new, or even unique. I'm just farking pissed.

 
rat_brain_flies_plane 2009-07-05 10:03:38 PM  
redeyedfrenzy: Graduated a year ago, NOT with a degree in English or Philosophy (Sustainable agriculture with a focus on sterile mushroom cultivation and composting) and now I'm working night freight in the health food department at the local chain grocery store, Fred Meyer, which is about ten percent less evil than WalMart. They cut our hours every week or so and still expect the same amount to be done, and more. Then they talk about efficiency and how we're a family and have the manager walk around the store quizzing us on store policy. There are teams! If enough people in your team get it right, then you get a sandwich party!

Husband can't find a job, though God knows he's looked. The only reason why we're getting through this is because my mom helps us out every month, but we've decided to pack up and pretty much become farmhands until this crap stops.

None of this is new, or even unique. I'm just farking pissed.


You had to pay thousands of dollars for that degree too... or either you still owe it.

Either way... while higher education is a wonderful thing and all... I've been getting the feeling that this whole "get a college degree or fail in life forever" thing is a sham.

 
BIGNICKEL 2009-07-05 10:24:12 PM  
Cyrus982: Chelsea Clinton Is Carrot Top's Lost Twin: Cyrus982: I just want things to be fair. I don't understand why a CEO who does absolutely nothing gets paid millions a year while the foundation of the company, the people at the bottom, the people who make everything possible because they come in each day and do horrific back-breaking work ONLY get paid min. wage. It's freaking ridiculous, and I don't know why everyone isn't as pissed off as me...


Then become a CEO and shut your pie hole.

/or, just shut your pie hole.

And how does someone not born into the elite aristocracy of this country go about doing that? They don't let people just "Work their way up the corporate ladder" anymore. Most CEOs today are either the children or grandchildren of the original owners, or they got skipped right up the ladder by who their rich daddies knew. The same is true for politicians. It's the farking monarchy allover again. People who have no right to lead anything getting to be in charge of everything because of some twisted birthright the rich have laid claim to.

There are no opportunities left for normal people.


Despite your rage-filled rants, I respectfully disagree. My company, though not doing staggeringly well, is surviving. My CEO was on his own from age 15, and ripped his way to the position he has now (granted, he is a psycho, but that is pretty much a requirement).

I'm in the lower middle-class myself (for the area I live in- Boston area; probably upper-middle class in areas with a lower cost of living, depending on how such things are defined). Didn't' inherit anything, but did come from a stable home, and originally a from country in which you could actually work your way through an undergrad and end up rel;relatively debt-free if you didn't have much fun during the years you were doing it. I do consider myself lucky, but I don't think I was handed it.

I've been on a relatively faster promotion track. That has come to a somewhat halt however, as I think it is time that I actually spend time with my young daughters, rather than spend all my time at work. If I kept that pace up for another 10 years though, I can imagine a CSO slot. Then a pharma division for another few, finally ending up a start up biotech CEO. In theory of course, it would require luck and more sacrifice than I'm willing to make (all my upper management if quite divorced).

I realize this is just one case, but I'm just not tracking your blame for all but none on yourself
/srsly, you "signed up for websites" but only applied to a few places? farking yourself there, chum

// tl;dr

 
BIGNICKEL 2009-07-05 10:28:51 PM  
redeyedfrenzy: Graduated a year ago, NOT with a degree in English or Philosophy (Sustainable agriculture with a focus on sterile mushroom cultivation and composting) and now I'm working night freight in the health food department at the local chain grocery store, Fred Meyer, which is about ten percent less evil than WalMart. They cut our hours every week or so and still expect the same amount to be done, and more. Then they talk about efficiency and how we're a family and have the manager walk around the store quizzing us on store policy. There are teams! If enough people in your team get it right, then you get a sandwich party!

Husband can't find a job, though God knows he's looked. The only reason why we're getting through this is because my mom helps us out every month, but we've decided to pack up and pretty much become farmhands until this crap stops.

None of this is new, or even unique. I'm just farking pissed.


Grow shiataakes on a log. Grow white buttons even. Get them good, grow them efficient. Then start selling them to people like me on the net. (Or locally, which makes more sense, but damn,I loves me mushrooms). You have really neat sounding education, but it really sounds like a self -business driver, rather than a clock punching kind of preparation. Best of luck to you though. I wish I had learned something that cool in school.

/In Canada, you would already have a Psilocybin business thriving

 
zzrhardy 2009-07-05 10:39:41 PM  
I don't like our current economic system which is designed around artificial scarcity. We need an energy based economic system.

They need to give Technocracy a dust off, bolt a brand new enviromental front end on it and away we go.

 
Cyrus982 2009-07-05 10:57:50 PM  
BIGNICKEL, I don't know about your story. You didn't give me much to go on. Did you go to college? How did you pay for it? Did your parents help you or did you get loans, etc. What exactly is the business you're in that's still doing okay despite the fact that most are circling the drain right about now? How big is the company? And so on, and so forth.

Makes it hard to debate when you gave little to no information...

Anyhow, I can say for certain that your CEO is a lying sack of shiat. Really now? You bought the whole "I pulled muhself up from nothing at 15!"? Lol. If I had a dime for every time I heard a story like that...

Anyone else ever notice that CEO's, businessmen, and generally all the wealthy consider themselves "self-made men"? Whata crock... there's no such thing. Anyone who is anything got that way with help from other people. If it wasn't their parents giving them money, then it was the hundreds of people that busted their ass working under them, or it was the thousands that bought their service or product. No man is an island unto himself. No one has ever walked into the woods alone and then later came out a millionaire.

They forget how bad they need people like us... much more than we need them. The reason shiat has gotten so bad is because those at the top forgot that we're all in this together.

 
redcard 2009-07-05 11:01:06 PM  
neongoats: I just got the "fark you in 60 days" letter 2 days ago from my company. Reasons why my company lost the project:

a)The middle/upper management try to run the place some kind of Sweatshop in Bangalore. Routinely clearing out veteran employees that do quality work to fill their spots with new untrained people making less and doing a shiatty job.

b)When they expect spikes of volume, they know about it a month or more ahead of time, and start pointing people up/etc to force them to work overtime, instead of, you know, motivating, they manipulate.

c)The middle/upper management are like.. 12. Or may as well be, they have the management acumen of your typical person with a business degree, IE: farking none, and no actual other job skills, again, like your typical person with a business degree.

d)People with a business degree and no technical acumen or experience shouldn't be training people to perform technical positions. Me and a few others essentially had to retrain all the new people, because of this, for oh, the last year or more now. The trainer is a furry obsessed with squirrels, and teaches about that instead of the job.

e)the project manager can barely type an email that is legible language. He is a white guy from Ohio, but just mind numbingly retarded.

I can't wait to suck that company for 52 weeks of unemployment, they deserve to go under.


Yeah. 52 weeks of unemployment.. at $550 a week. If you're lucky.

 
redcard 2009-07-05 11:08:48 PM  
And, since you're from Ohio, you're not lucky.. so you max out at $503 a week , if you have enough dependants. Likely, you'll be at $372.

But enjoy sucking them dry :)

 
ZeroCorpse [recently expired TotalFark] 2009-07-05 11:40:41 PM  
Legalize weed and prostitution, but regulate both and require them to do business in taxed, established, legitimate businesses. No skanky backroom crap... Nice brothels and hash bars that are inviting to middle and upper-class citizens... And you'll see the unemployment rate drop. If people could legally sell their bodies, and legally grow and sell weed and marijuana-based merchandise and paraphernalia, we'd have a whole bunch of job openings overnight.

We'd also solve our national budget crisis with the tax revenue from legalizing and taxing both weed and prostitution.

I'd be there RIGHT NOW is such an establishment opened up in my town. Hash brownies and a fark? Hell yeah. That's a night out.

 
GomezAdams [recently expired TotalFark] 2009-07-06 12:23:53 AM  
zzrhardy
I don't like our current economic system which is designed around artificial scarcity. We need an energy based economic system.

They need to give Technocracy a dust off, bolt a brand new enviromental front end on it and away we go.


I suppose you're one of those visionary types but leave the details to the workers in the trenches to realize your dreams. Or do you just happen to have a PhD in economics and a real plan?

The current plan works just fine but it rewards hard work and innovation. Not dreaming, slacking, and gameboiz skills.

 
Melgania 2009-07-06 12:38:11 AM  
GomezAdams:
The current plan works just fine but it rewards hard work and innovation and financial leveraging skillz.


FTFY.

There are 3 types of people I know who've made reasonable money. ie More than just being regular wage/salary stiffs:

1. Inherited old money.
2. Came up with some sort of innovation.
3. Manipulated finance or real estate.

"Hard work" comes into the picture with number 2 only. Those who had an idea worked their arses off to get that idea off the ground and build a business.

The problem with the "hard work" spiel is that it's too often used to keep wage/salary stiffs in their place. Truth is, there is little to no relationship between "working hard" and making good money. However, it's very convenient to uphold that myth to keep average working stiffs in their place.

I used to work back-breaking labouring jobs for below minimum wage. Now I do nothing and make an order of magnitude as much. Hard work doesn't even enter the picture.

 
GomezAdams [recently expired TotalFark] 2009-07-06 01:10:12 AM  
Melgania

Hard work: Show up everyday. Clean. Sober. Learn your business. Pay your dues. Read, learn, and upgrade your skills constantly. Talk with the successful people in your area.

It worked for me. Didn't have any money. Didn't have real estate. Didn't have a college degree. I just came in and out worked and out thought all the slackers. When I didn't get the pay off I expected I shopped my resume with all my new skills and experiences and hopped off to higher pay, greater risks, and greater rewards.

Went from nothing to comfortable six figures in under 10 years of changing careers. And I ain't no genius and was born into lower middle class family. Flipped burgers, drove trucks, herded pigs, and more. I just knew I wanted more and wasn't afraid to work for it. Guess I could have whined that there were too many road blocks or complain that I wasn't hired as the president of the company making that salary to start.

You have no idea how many people of your type I left behind and who are still in their little dead end lives. Whining about how unfair it all is.

 
neongoats 2009-07-06 02:23:43 AM  
redcard: And, since you're from Ohio, you're not lucky.. so you max out at $503 a week , if you have enough dependants. Likely, you'll be at $372.

But enjoy sucking them dry :)


There is always under the table work for cash spending money.

I have no debt, so being dragged down by a mortgage/carpayment/credit card balance isn't happening. Taxes and insurance for my home+utilities/internet/phone/food/gas pretty much. I can ride out 52 weeks of little disposable income while I search for a ceo to kidnap somewhere.

 
neongoats 2009-07-06 02:31:10 AM  
GomezAdams: Melgania

Hard work: Show up everyday. Clean. Sober. Learn your business. Pay your dues. Read, learn, and upgrade your skills constantly. Talk with the successful people in your area.

It worked for me. Didn't have any money. Didn't have real estate. Didn't have a college degree. I just came in and out worked and out thought all the slackers. When I didn't get the pay off I expected I shopped my resume with all my new skills and experiences and hopped off to higher pay, greater risks, and greater rewards.

Went from nothing to comfortable six figures in under 10 years of changing careers. And I ain't no genius and was born into lower middle class family. Flipped burgers, drove trucks, herded pigs, and more. I just knew I wanted more and wasn't afraid to work for it. Guess I could have whined that there were too many road blocks or complain that I wasn't hired as the president of the company making that salary to start.

You have no idea how many people of your type I left behind and who are still in their little dead end lives. Whining about how unfair it all is.


I'll take all that at face value and give you the benefit of the doubt, but I'm sorry, 9 times out of 10 when someone says that shiat, what they really mean is "I spent 10 years sucking dick and walking all over my coworkers and stabbing my competitors in the back".

Just sayin.

 
Melgania 2009-07-06 03:34:43 AM  
GomezAdams: Melgania

Hard work: Show up everyday. Clean. Sober. Learn your business. Pay your dues. Read, learn, and upgrade your skills constantly. Talk with the successful people in your area.

It worked for me. Didn't have any money. Didn't have real estate. Didn't have a college degree. I just came in and out worked and out thought all the slackers. When I didn't get the pay off I expected I shopped my resume with all my new skills and experiences and hopped off to higher pay, greater risks, and greater rewards.

Went from nothing to comfortable six figures in under 10 years of changing careers. And I ain't no genius and was born into lower middle class family. Flipped burgers, drove trucks, herded pigs, and more. I just knew I wanted more and wasn't afraid to work for it. Guess I could have whined that there were too many road blocks or complain that I wasn't hired as the president of the company making that salary to start.

You have no idea how many people of your type I left behind and who are still in their little dead end lives. Whining about how unfair it all is.


Hey JFP,

I don't have a dead end life or a shiatty low paid job. Read the last paragraph of my post again. I was basically aggreeing with you. According to my categorisation you'd fit in with number 2, although it sounds more like job-hopping and self improvement than "innovation" in the sense of patenting a new invention. But meh.

What I was getting at is the type of "work hard" mantra which is sold to pacify the average stiff. ie "Work hard and break your back on this factory floor for 60 years, and you may become the boss!". Taken on face value, that sort of thing is more of a pacification of the worker than anything else.

Wasn't accusing you of doing that really, just making a general point about how that mantra is often used to that effect.

"Work smart" makes more sense. How much real "hard work" that requires varies. It often doesn't take much at all.

 
JK_Huysmans 2009-07-06 11:51:27 AM  
Cyrus982: What I'm trying to say, is that most of the companies in this country CAN afford to pay MOST of their employees A LOT more than they do. They don't though, and when it comes up they biatch about the overhead and how it would bankrupt them and blah, blah, blah... while the top ten positions in said corp. make millions a year for going on vacations, snorting blow offa hookers asses, and generally not doing a single damn productive thing. And if those companies have that kind of money to pay the least productive members of the business, and to blow on things like "golden parachutes", then they most certainly have enough to pay their people on the front line a few more bucks an hour.

As a general rule, companies are more concerned with paying their stockholders large dividends than paying their employees good wages.

 
jonny_q 2009-07-07 10:52:22 AM  
Mija: With that attitude slaver and child labor would still exist. There wold be no minimum wage that only gets raised once every few decades. Sometimes you have to force evil people to act more decently.

Slave labor is bad and is a different ballgame.

However, lots of things you consume were produced by people we consider "children" and people working for less than minimum wage. Sure, you ignore it because you don't have to actually see them, but it's true. Also, you wouldn't have what you have without it.

Here, though, we're not talking about small 1800s villages where the jobs are at the local coal mine and moving is impossible. Today, there are plenty of places to work and the market is competitive. Those laws aren't as necessary as they once were.

 
jonny_q 2009-07-07 11:01:18 AM  
Cyrus982: In the real world, people can't just "go work someplace else." For the last six months I've been signed up to job sites that e-mail you when companies in the area are hiring, and for the last six months every single last "career opportunity" has been some shiatty fast food place that only pays min. wage. Well, except the Joan Fabrics one from a few months ago... but I don't have a vagina so I doubt they would have hired me. (That probably only payed min. wage to though.) I've applied to other stores and haven't heard anything back.

Dude, I've been there. I don't where you live, but once you reach a certain point, you do what you have to do to survive. Sell vacuums door to door (yes, I almost did this once), temp agencies (I actually did this), fast food (that too).

I guess I could go to college, and get a real job instead... but I just don't have a spare 100,000 bucks lying around.

Well, that explains why you don't understand economics.

There are ways to educate yourself, formally and informally, that don't require spending 100,000 on a university education.

Lol, and you actually think that evil businesses will be fazed out by good ones. Lol, have you looked around lately? Evil Business is the standard today.

No, they're just the ones you see on the news. That's why they're news.

I just want things to be fair. I don't understand why a CEO who does absolutely nothing gets paid millions a year while the foundation of the company, the people at the bottom, the people who make everything possible because they come in each day and do horrific back-breaking work ONLY get paid min. wage. It's freaking ridiculous, and I don't know why everyone isn't as pissed off as me...

The CEO is the one making the decisions and taking the risk. People in those positions scratch, claw, and take great risks to be there. That's why I'll never be one. I just don't have the nerve. The incentive to work hard and take risks is the hope that, one day, one can be successful enough to work less and be in a position to give you a job.

 
Lamune_Baba 2009-07-07 07:47:16 PM  
jonny_q: Slave labor is bad and is a different ballgame.

We prefer the term "Visiting Mexican Non-Americans" thank you.

 
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