KarmicDisaster: There will be growth in the Spring.

I think we can get you elected President, Chance.

GoodasGold: Opiate of the Lasses: Exactly. Party's over pretty much. I don't know what the hell people are basing the idea that there's going to be any kind of a recovery on. Where's the money gonna come from?


The MSM falls into further disgrace. Every night they hound on the message that we are in recovery. They are nothing but a mouthpiece for the state and corporate interests. Its non stop: "Happy days are here again. Join your neighbors at the mall, citizen. Get out and shop. Join the fun!". They must think we are maroons.

It isn't just them. It's anyone trying to make money by telling us things we already know. Like newspapers for example, the Seattle Times has been crowing about how the real estate market has finally "stabilized" and all this hooey. It hasn't, not one bit, foreclosures have started spiking again etc. etc. So it's a load of crap. All of the media outlets have been doing this.

Someone somewhere thinks that if you think positively and just don't think about things, that the economy will get better. That it's all about confendence. No one has the heart to tell this person that we're all broke.

Opiate of the Lasses: Phil Moskowitz: In no society should there exist such a thing as a billionaire while people starve and die.

/call me socialist if you want, I don't care

All just call you unsurprisingly uniformed, like most of your fellow socialists. The last person to die unintentionally of starvation in the U.S. was Alexander Supertramp.

Just because you can't obtain everything you want in life without the government taking from someone else to give to you, don't expect the rest of us to support the type of society you desire. That system (Socialism) you want so badly to give you what you can't earn by yourself, btw, was directly responsible for the death by starvation of 50 million people during the last century. It would be nice if you socialistic morans on fark could be bothered enough by constantly being so wrong about history to pick up an actual book one day.

relcec: Opiate of the Lasses: Phil Moskowitz: In no society should there exist such a thing as a billionaire while people starve and die.

/call me socialist if you want, I don't care

AllI'll just call you unsurprisingly uniformed, like most of your fellow socialists. The last person to die unintentionally of starvation in the U.S. was Alexander Supertramp.

Just because you can't obtain everything you want in life without the government taking from someone else to give to you, don't expect the rest of us to support the type of society you desire. That system (Socialism) you want so badly to give you what you can't earn by yourself, btw, was directly responsible for the death by starvation of 50 million people during the last century. It would be nice if you socialistic morans on fark could be bothered enough by constantly being so wrong about history to pick up an actual book one day.

erm...

relcec: Opiate of the Lasses: Phil Moskowitz: In no society should there exist such a thing as a billionaire while people starve and die.

/call me socialist if you want, I don't care

All just call you unsurprisingly uniformed, like most of your fellow socialists. The last person to die unintentionally of starvation in the U.S. was Alexander Supertramp.

Just because you can't obtain everything you want in life without the government taking from someone else to give to you, don't expect the rest of us to support the type of society you desire. That system (Socialism) you want so badly to give you what you can't earn by yourself, btw, was directly responsible for the death by starvation of 50 million people during the last century. It would be nice if you socialistic morans on fark could be bothered enough by constantly being so wrong about history to pick up an actual book one day.

It's funny when people talk about socialism without knowing what it is.

From TFA: "The longest recession since the 1930's"

WTF? Apparently the 22 year old who wrote the article does not remember 1987-1992.

Northern: From TFA: "The longest recession since the 1930's"

WTF? Apparently the 22 year old who wrote the article does not remember 1987-1992.

Mrbogey: They're barely saving it either. The US needs more productivity. Unless people get cracking doing anything productive we'll continue to see a slide.

We're in a phase of our society where people expect things just to be done. The world doesn't work like that.

Uh, you do realize that productivity is at a high...

Productivty 2009Q2 (new window)

Those who are gainfully employed are outputting more per labor cost. Yes, output has dropped, but labor costs have dropped more. That is; more is being done by fewer for less money, the very definition of good productivity. The fact that many employers have seen fit to force this situation through layoffs doesn't sound to me like individuals are just being lazy. It sounds to me like we just have a lot of employers who need fewer employees. It's a HIGH productivity situation out there FORCED by the market conditions (the need to cut costs via downsizing) and the fear by those who remain employed that their job is the next on the block (So they put in more effort, time, etc).

lordargent: Drakuun : Wall street is going to be trading in food stamps soon if they keep this crap up.

I don't see what the problem is, it's over 9000.

/wasn't there a fark headline 3 months ago lamenting that the DJIA had dropped to the low 8000s.

And here it's dropping to the high 9000's.

Come on, seriously?

Oh boy, the richest Americans sliding money around amongst each other means the economy and Wall street is FINE..

...come on, seriously indeed.

Capitalism is doomed to fail. You can argue back and forth about this nuance and that, but in time it will fail. Back before technology people weren't as lazy, that's why you had revolution. At some point the greed of a few will put people who aren't in the uncomfortable position of not being able to afford their technology. Then and only then will this thing we call the American Dream come to an end.

relcec: Opiate of the Lasses: Phil Moskowitz: In no society should there exist such a thing as a billionaire while people starve and die.

/call me socialist if you want, I don't care

All just call you unsurprisingly uniformed, like most of your fellow socialists. The last person to die unintentionally of starvation in the U.S. was Alexander Supertramp.

Just because you can't obtain everything you want in life without the government taking from someone else to give to you, don't expect the rest of us to support the type of society you desire. That system (Socialism) you want so badly to give you what you can't earn by yourself, btw, was directly responsible for the death by starvation of 50 million people during the last century. It would be nice if you socialistic morans on fark could be bothered enough by constantly being so wrong about history to pick up an actual book one day.

See it's people like this who make me more certain the US is doomed. No one spoke of being communist. I did not advocate for any system to give me things I don't have. I grew up in a third world country, went to good US schools on merit scholarships and make a comfortable living as a consumer/bankruptcy attorney. I know the value of working hard. I'm just saying it's dumb here how people try to have it both ways. The whole point of having a society is to avoid the whole Wild West, might makes right, living situation that used to happen 300 years ago. Funny thing is, there are no true capitalists either. What is happening in the US is privatization of profit and socialization of losses. Capitalism without bankruptcy is rigging the game.

When sane people suggest that we put in safeguards to protect the vulnerable many from the amoral few, those few (or their brainwashed flunkies) use a reductio ad absurdum argument to warn against communism. Well how about we take it in the other direction and just say fine, deregulate EVERYTHING. It's every man for himself and we go around shooting the rich farks and taking their stuff? You can't bask in society's protections while undermining its very concept by farking over large swaths of people. An American friend of mine once described the US as a nation of greedy, myopic hypocrites. Societies like that tend to break down. In my lifetime there was a USSR and a Yugoslavia and an East Germany. There is no natural law that says the US must last forever. Especially with its citizens frantically trying to destroy it from the inside.

Crosshair: I doubt you even know what "poor" means.

Dude, I grew up in Jamaica. In 2009, many rural folk (including relatives of mine) still don't even have a concept of plumbing or electricity beyond the few streetlights on the so-called "roads." Don't assume.

Crosshair: Do you know anything about economics? Do you honestly think the rich would stay with those tax rates? Would you stay with those tax rates if you had a high income?

Ah, you're a supply sider. Welp, that's the end of any meaningful discussion. We have a fundamental difference in philosophy. Let me make it clear though: SUPPLY SIDE ECONOMICS IS BULLshiat. Where are all those poor, overtaxed rich people going to go? Libertarian paradise Somalia? Spare me. I can't believe people can make the "Let's tax rich people as little as possible so that they may bless us peons with work, if they feel like it" argument with a straight face. People damn well worked and studied and went to med school and opened businesses when they were making 5 and 6 figures in the past. Now anything less than 7 and 8 figures is unacceptable? Suddenly because your marginal tax rate is gonna go up to something to make the economy sustainable, you're going Galt? Well go ahead, leave. How's that bailout money the banks got working for new lending? People will create new jobs, open new businesses etc to meet a demand. If there is no demand, reducing taxes will just result in people pocketing the savings. Tax and spend is WAY better than borrow and spend. If you are against both of those, you are essentially saying, if you're poor, fark you, you're on your own.

We do agree that govt is corrupt and inefficient, but that's a story for another thread. Suffice it to say that I think the guillotine should be brought back. Anyone found to be engaging in bribery or lying to the public or anything like that, prison for life, or a quick death. Plus revoke corporate personhood and this bullshiat that money = speech. But I digress.

If more government is a bad answer, letting the inmates run the asylum is a worse one. Ultimately nothing will change until the do-anything-for-money attitude of the populace changes, people stop shunning educating themselves, and the laws on the books start being enforced with extreme prejudice.

jjorsett: "crap they don't need" = stuff some douchbags don't approve of me spending my money on. It warms the cockles of my heart that it bugs certain people that I own a 58" plasma TV.

/And a baby seal coat

I have a 108" projection rig. Hope you have more room on that credit card, otherwise, you suck at life.

I would like to assure the stock market that I intend to spend 2500 bucks on shopping between thanksgiving and christmas.

Fecacacophany: Uh, you do realize that productivity is at a high...

I'm referring to aggregate production. If one person has a job in a city of 1000 people and he works 12 hours a day, then the city is in t6rouble because you have 999 people shuffling around with nothing to do and hoping that 1 guy does enough work to support them. Those 999 people need to find something to do. They need to get cracking laboring to create something.

Opiate of the Lasses: Where are all those poor, overtaxed rich people going to go?

Well not California, Detroit, or Massachusetts if current figures are to be believed. Wasn't there a billionaire who fled NY because he paid tens of millions a year? Crunch how much that shifted the tax burden.

The idea you have that rich people aren't mobile is laughable. Rich people are the most mobile with their wealth. They can burn down their house, drive their car into a lake, and start a whole new life on the other side of the world and still have a pretty good life. The people hurt by high marginal rates are those who aren't wealthy but busting their ass to try and become wealthy.

jso2897: relcec: Opiate of the Lasses: Phil Moskowitz: In no society should there exist such a thing as a billionaire while people starve and die.

/call me socialist if you want, I don't care

All just call you unsurprisingly uniformed, like most of your fellow socialists. The last person to die unintentionally of starvation in the U.S. was Alexander Supertramp.

Just because you can't obtain everything you want in life without the government taking from someone else to give to you, don't expect the rest of us to support the type of society you desire. That system (Socialism) you want so badly to give you what you can't earn by yourself, btw, was directly responsible for the death by starvation of 50 million people during the last century. It would be nice if you socialistic morans on fark could be bothered enough by constantly being so wrong about history to pick up an actual book one day.

Calm down and take yer pills, gramps. Soon, you and your selfish breed will be dead, and we won't be troubled with you anymore. You don't need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

You call somebody selfish because they don't want to share with you.

But demanding that others share with you is just as selfish.

You are no better than "gramps", you're just poorer.

Opiate of the Lasses: relcec: Opiate of the Lasses: Phil Moskowitz: In no society should there exist such a thing as a billionaire while people starve and die.

/call me socialist if you want, I don't care

All just call you unsurprisingly uniformed, like most of your fellow socialists. The last person to die unintentionally of starvation in the U.S. was Alexander Supertramp.

Just because you can't obtain everything you want in life without the government taking from someone else to give to you, don't expect the rest of us to support the type of society you desire. That system (Socialism) you want so badly to give you what you can't earn by yourself, btw, was directly responsible for the death by starvation of 50 million people during the last century. It would be nice if you socialistic morans on fark could be bothered enough by constantly being so wrong about history to pick up an actual book one day.

See it's people like this who make me more certain the US is doomed. No one spoke of being communist. I did not advocate for any system to give me things I don't have. I grew up in a third world country, went to good US schools on merit scholarships and make a comfortable living as a consumer/bankruptcy attorney. I know the value of working hard. I'm just saying it's dumb here how people try to have it both ways. The whole point of having a society is to avoid the whole Wild West, might makes right, living situation that used to happen 300 years ago. Funny thing is, there are no true capitalists either. What is happening in the US is privatization of profit and socialization of losses. Capitalism without bankruptcy is rigging the game.

When sane people suggest that we put in safeguards to protect the vulnerable many from the amoral few, those few (or their brainwashed flunkies) use a reductio ad absurdum argument to warn against communism. Well how about we take it in the other direction and just say fine, deregulate EVERYTHING. It's every man for himself and we go around shooting the rich farks and taking their stuff? You can't bask in society's protections while undermining its very concept by farking over large swaths of people. An American friend of mine once described the US as a nation of greedy, myopic hypocrites. Societies like that tend to break down. In my lifetime there was a USSR and a Yugoslavia and an East Germany. There is no natural law that says the US must last forever. Especially with its citizens frantically trying to destroy it from the inside.

Great post, but wasted on Crosshair. Hard to use a logical argument on someone who thinks working at Wal-mart is a good job and doesn't believe in climate change.

/favorited

Truncks1: Opiate of the Lasses: relcec: Opiate of the Lasses: Phil Moskowitz: In no society should there exist such a thing as a billionaire while people starve and die.

/call me socialist if you want, I don't care

All just call you unsurprisingly uniformed, like most of your fellow socialists. The last person to die unintentionally of starvation in the U.S. was Alexander Supertramp.

Just because you can't obtain everything you want in life without the government taking from someone else to give to you, don't expect the rest of us to support the type of society you desire. That system (Socialism) you want so badly to give you what you can't earn by yourself, btw, was directly responsible for the death by starvation of 50 million people during the last century. It would be nice if you socialistic morans on fark could be bothered enough by constantly being so wrong about history to pick up an actual book one day.

See it's people like this who make me more certain the US is doomed. No one spoke of being communist. I did not advocate for any system to give me things I don't have. I grew up in a third world country, went to good US schools on merit scholarships and make a comfortable living as a consumer/bankruptcy attorney. I know the value of working hard. I'm just saying it's dumb here how people try to have it both ways. The whole point of having a society is to avoid the whole Wild West, might makes right, living situation that used to happen 300 years ago. Funny thing is, there are no true capitalists either. What is happening in the US is privatization of profit and socialization of losses. Capitalism without bankruptcy is rigging the game.

When sane people suggest that we put in safeguards to protect the vulnerable many from the amoral few, those few (or their brainwashed flunkies) use a reductio ad absurdum argument to warn against communism. Well how about we take it in the other direction and just say fine, deregulate EVERYTHING. It's every man for himself and we go around shooting the rich farks and taking their stuff? You can't bask in society's protections while undermining its very concept by farking over large swaths of people. An American friend of mine once described the US as a nation of greedy, myopic hypocrites. Societies like that tend to break down. In my lifetime there was a USSR and a Yugoslavia and an East Germany. There is no natural law that says the US must last forever. Especially with its citizens frantically trying to destroy it from the inside.

Great post, but wasted on Crosshair. Hard to use a logical argument on someone who thinks working at Wal-mart is a good job and doesn't believe in climate change.

/favorited

Seconded, clever name AND a punishing victory here. Also favoriting.

cloud_van_dame: Right. The Dow was 9000 at the start of the year.

Um

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/its-over-9000

An-Unnecessarily-Long-Name: Not spending money on crap you don't need is un-American and Obama wont like it!

Right, because it was Obama that told us to go shopping after 9/11.

Fark off, you cock!

Opiate of the Lasses: Crosshair: Who honestly starves in the US? Nobody.

False. One anecdote of a food bank throwing away food in one city does not mean people elsewhere are not starving and dying. Come to inner California sometime.

Crosshair: Life is not fair

True. Does not mean we should cheerily accept constant assrape of the many by the few.

Crosshair: Here is a nasty little secret. Nobody paid those rates. The tax code was full of loopholes at the time that everybody, even those in the middle class, exploited them. The reason they dropped the rate so sharply was because they closed up those holes and had to drop the tax rate as a result.

Partly true. The thing is, they didn't HAVE to do jack shiat. Close the loopholes and leave the rate the same. Your statement reflects a casual acceptance of the fact that the rich own the government. If you want nice things, you have to pay for it. You wanna be a first world super power, then taxes are gonna be high, deal. The problem with America in general nowadays (trying not to be mean but mostly the republicans and libertarians), is that no one gives a flying fark about how the worst-off live, so long as it isn't them. Society should be judged not by how well its richest live, but by how well its poorest live.

Even more funny, those are the people screaming "Lord, Lord!!11!!" at the top of their lungs. I believe Jesus had something to say about that.

cloud_van_dame: sorry, not a gamer

It's not a gaming reference.

Yes, it was 9000 at the start of the year.
And dropped below 6500 around march.
Then went back up to over 9000

Which is why I think it's funny that people (like the submitter) are posting about a small drop like this when it's still well above the low for the year.

I've stopped caring what the Dow does. Up, down, matters not to me. It's just noise in my life that I don't need.

I was gonna post an opinion or two, but Opiate of the Lasses has said it all already with better grace and authority than I could ever muster.

They broke the consumer cycle by overfishing it. You can only loot so much and people can only go into so much debt before the system collapses.

The finance companies took too much from what they had no hand in creating and they stalled out the consumer cycle. The real bitter pill is the bailout money. Instead of leeching the lifeblood of the country, they just get it handed to them.

jfsimpson: Opiate of the Lasses: In no society should there exist such a thing as a billionaire while people starve and die.

I don't think you can ever have a society where people don't starve and die.


Hrmmmm.....well, think about our society in, oh I don't know, three thousand years from now. If they haven't dealt with a way to feed the hungry (who want to be fed), then I think our race probably just isn't smart enough.

GaryPDX: DJIA 9,712.73 -249.85 -2.51%

holy crap.


With all due respect, everybody who knows anything about the markets knows enough not to look at any short term fluctuations in trading.

But feel free to espouse whatever nonsense you're selling today.