Splinshints: seadoo2006: I'm a construction manager for new home construction

I make more money than you, I almost certainly have more saved, I paid off my student loans faster, I work shorter hours, and I've been around a lot longer than you.

Excuse me if I continue to think you're an idiot.

Cool, I'm 24 ... I'm alright with the fact you are doing better than I, because, once again, I'm 24, making high five figures with a profit-sharing end-year bonus, paid off $60k in student loans in two years, no credit card debt, full bennies and health insurance, and I've maxed out my 401k and Roth IRA for the last two years. If you have more saved and work shorter hours, congrats, but for being the age I am, I still think I'm doing better than 9/10 people my age.

seadoo2006: jst3p: seadoo2006: jst3p: seadoo2006: Underemployment is such a bull shiat scare tactic. Nobody is underemployed, only people spending beyond their means and unwilling to make changes in life when their salaries are reduced. If you are barely making enough to pay for your mortgage, that's not underemployment, that's you living somewhere that is too expensive. Even someone on minimum wage should and can be able to afford proper housing, food, and transportation without calling themselves "underemployed."

Look how stupid you are! Bless your heart.

[net4baby.com image 300x300]

I can't afford a yacht ... I'm underemployed!!!!

And he doubles down on his stupidity, let's see how that works out for him.

/not underemployed
//doing pretty well, actually

So, then what is your definition for underemployed, because from everything I've seen, Fox News calls is something different than CNBC, and they call it differently from CNN. "Underemployment" is not a standard of which there is any direct definition, so what is yours? Because I still think it's a bull shiat metric. I'm in new home construction and still doing VERY well and I refuse to believe that anyone is "underemployed". Hell, every retail store and fast food place in the Cleveland area is hiring and yet I still have a cousin biatching he can't find work and that his government bennies are running out. I'm a flaming liberal and it's bull shiat. If you want to work, you can, stop complaining and get to work, even if that means taking $7.35/hour at the BK lounge.

So instead of addressing points others bring up, you split linguistic hairs?

I find your claim of being a "flaming liberal" dubious at best, especially given what you are claiming to be BS.

InfamousBLT: You want to fix the economy, fix underemployment. More people with more free cash means more people spending that free cash means more products being sold means more products being created means more jobs means more people with more free cash etc, etc, etc.
Why this is a difficult concept for anyone to understand is beyond me. We learned that in the 4th grade and we all understood it then. What happened?


We have an economy which is based around consumer spending.... yet we have for decades been depressing the wages of the vast majority of the American workforce, reducing their ability to consume as the economy needs to keep running. It's amazing to me that such a simple fact seems to be beyond the reasoning capabilities of so many of us.

Then fools like him suggest we should consign MORE people to struggling in poverty as the answer... because more people being more poor is supposed to make our economy better for opposite day or something?

It's like some mind-boggling combination of "I gots mine, fark all ya'll" and economic Stockholm Syndrome.

Mad_Radhu: seadoo2006: Nope ... I'm a construction manager for new home construction. Means I meet clients and my Amish trades as early as 6:00AM and work until 8:00 or 9:00 at night. Weekends make great times for client meetings, so my weekends are filled as well. I average about 12-14 hour days during the week and at least 8 hours on the weekends. I make a very nice salary for myself with full bennies and a maxed 401k contribution with profit sharing contributions from my employer and I'm willing to work what it takes to make money for myself.

Shouldn't you be working now instead of Farking?

The wonders of multi-tasking ... I'm doing an estimate and PDF plotting is pretty easy ...

Crotchrocket Slim: seadoo2006: jst3p: seadoo2006: jst3p: seadoo2006: Underemployment is such a bull shiat scare tactic. Nobody is underemployed, only people spending beyond their means and unwilling to make changes in life when their salaries are reduced. If you are barely making enough to pay for your mortgage, that's not underemployment, that's you living somewhere that is too expensive. Even someone on minimum wage should and can be able to afford proper housing, food, and transportation without calling themselves "underemployed."

Look how stupid you are! Bless your heart.

[net4baby.com image 300x300]

I can't afford a yacht ... I'm underemployed!!!!

And he doubles down on his stupidity, let's see how that works out for him.

/not underemployed
//doing pretty well, actually

So, then what is your definition for underemployed, because from everything I've seen, Fox News calls is something different than CNBC, and they call it differently from CNN. "Underemployment" is not a standard of which there is any direct definition, so what is yours? Because I still think it's a bull shiat metric. I'm in new home construction and still doing VERY well and I refuse to believe that anyone is "underemployed". Hell, every retail store and fast food place in the Cleveland area is hiring and yet I still have a cousin biatching he can't find work and that his government bennies are running out. I'm a flaming liberal and it's bull shiat. If you want to work, you can, stop complaining and get to work, even if that means taking $7.35/hour at the BK lounge.

So instead of addressing points others bring up, you split linguistic hairs?

I find your claim of being a "flaming liberal" dubious at best, especially given what you are claiming to be BS.

The bailouts should've gone to the mortgage holders, not the banks directly. Bailouts with the stipulation to be only used to pay down debt influxes the banks with liquidity while giving the average person a HUGE downpayment on their long-term and short-term debt.

Gay marriage should be legal.

I have no problem with universal healthcare (why are we the only first world nation without it?)

I have no problem with subsidized housing, direct cash welfare payments, and I think drug testing for welfare is a ridiculously stupid idea that only exacerbates addiction problems and doesn't to anything to stem them.

I love Obama and hate that he's more of a centrist than I wanted him to be.

I want federal funding for college increased with student loans fully tax deductible.

Where am I NOT liberal, just for shiats and giggles?

Crotchrocket Slim: So instead of addressing points others bring up, you split linguistic hairs?

He aced macroeconomics but doesn't think underemployment exists. The guy is clearly a liar, and possibly trolling.

jst3p: Crotchrocket Slim: So instead of addressing points others bring up, you split linguistic hairs?

He aced macroeconomics but doesn't think underemployment exists. The guy is clearly a liar, and possibly trolling.


At this point I'm definitely thinking troll.

BullBearMS: superdude72: Why is this "scary." For all the fear-mongering, the current rate of inflation is close to 0 percent.

Only because the core inflation numbers ignore the skyrocketing price of food and fuel, yet include the ongoing devaluation of the value of homes from their bubble peak.

There's a good reason for excluding them. The prices of food and fuel are volatile for reasons that have nothing to do with monetary policy.

Yugoboy: The biggest problem is where the extra money goes... to the banks, who are already so awash in it they give each other bonuses that could pay off the mortgages of my entire neighborhood.

Get some of that cash out to us little people in the form of real job creation instead of claiming to be a job creator without backing that up.

Don't know how to actually do that, but anything's better than giving the banks more money with no/few strings attached.

The economy's screwed. Tons of people are to blame, from people who bought more home than they could afford, to people who gave risky loans because they could sell them before the risks became evident. The only people who can fix it, however, are the "1%" because they've got all the money.

But giving the little people money would fix the problem, if the American health 'care' industry has taught anything, there's no money in the cure, only treatment. As long as the right people are making money, nobody will do anything constructive.
See the flash crash, the wrong people lost money so they got a mulligan.

jst3p: Crotchrocket Slim: So instead of addressing points others bring up, you split linguistic hairs?

He aced macroeconomics but doesn't think underemployment exists. The guy is clearly a liar, and possibly trolling.

No, in Macroeconomics, underemployment is defined as:

1) Being forced into working part time (but my argument is, work a second or a third job to make sure you are still working full-time hours)
2) Being overqualified for a job (but guess what, times are tough and you sometimes have to take a worse job to keep yourself afloat. 99 weeks of unemployment bennies while you try and find your pre-recession job wages is just bull shiat.)
3) Underutilization of current employees ... again, with more effective oversight and a salary wage instead of hourly, you have required goals to meet and if it takes your employees 20 hours or 40 hours do complete it, you are still paying them the same. This breeds efficiency and pruning of non-efficient workers.

It's still a bull shiat metric to say the economy isn't doing well. Underemployment is mostly employee based, not employer based, this the argument that certain sections of the economy aren't doing well because of this is just bull shiat. These all exist equally in times of good employment (where #3 happens more often) and bad employment (where number #1 and #2 happens more often). No matter how you term it, it's purely speculative bull crap.

Splinshints: seadoo2006: I work 70-80 hours normally at my job and I'm salaried.

You must have funny hours then.... unless this is your job.

70-80 hours a week at work? Seriously? Do you have any personality or life outside of work?

Let's say 77 hours for easy math, which is 11 hours a day.

8 hours a day for sleep, an hour for commuting (which may be conservative), an hour for lunch/breaks at work...

You're left with 3 hours for showering/personal hygiene/alone time in the bathroom, cooking/cleaning/household chores...

This leaves you with what, an hour of free time a day, two if you're lucky? One decent sleep in on the weekend, and that's you're free time gone for the week. Forget about seeing a movie, going out to eat, heading to the mountains for a day, sexytime with the lady friend.

I couldn't do it.

rustypouch: Splinshints: seadoo2006: I work 70-80 hours normally at my job and I'm salaried.

You must have funny hours then.... unless this is your job.

70-80 hours a week at work? Seriously? Do you have any personality or life outside of work?

Let's say 77 hours for easy math, which is 11 hours a day.

8 hours a day for sleep, an hour for commuting (which may be conservative), an hour for lunch/breaks at work...

You're left with 3 hours for showering/personal hygiene/alone time in the bathroom, cooking/cleaning/household chores...

This leaves you with what, an hour of free time a day, two if you're lucky? One decent sleep in on the weekend, and that's you're free time gone for the week. Forget about seeing a movie, going out to eat, heading to the mountains for a day, sexytime with the lady friend.

I couldn't do it.

There's your problem. I sleep maybe 5 hours max, usually more towards 4.

Typical Day:

6AM, wake up, shower, get ready
7AM, in the office
8-9PM out of the office
9PM-1AM relax with the girlfriend
1AM-6AM, sleep

Weekends are typically more flexible .. sometimes I'll work full days, others I'll only have one meeting each day. Sundays I work 10AM-5PM at our model home.

Goodfella: [www.theadvocateweblog.com image 481x349]

Financial terrorists have infiltrated America's central bank.

Amusingly enough, the Jaynestown Approach would make better policy than handing $$$ straight to those who already have more than enough of it. Money is like water: it only works when it is moving. Money is not like water: it flows up. Conclusion: turkey baster the money in at the bottom and let it flow over allllll the little gears and cogs trying to earn a paycheque.

seadoo2006: jst3p: Crotchrocket Slim: So instead of addressing points others bring up, you split linguistic hairs?

He aced macroeconomics but doesn't think underemployment exists. The guy is clearly a liar, and possibly trolling.

No, in Macroeconomics, underemployment is defined as:

1) Being forced into working part time (but my argument is, work a second or a third job to make sure you are still working full-time hours)
2) Being overqualified for a job (but guess what, times are tough and you sometimes have to take a worse job to keep yourself afloat. 99 weeks of unemployment bennies while you try and find your pre-recession job wages is just bull shiat.)
3) Underutilization of current employees ... again, with more effective oversight and a salary wage instead of hourly, you have required goals to meet and if it takes your employees 20 hours or 40 hours do complete it, you are still paying them the same. This breeds efficiency and pruning of non-efficient workers.

It's still a bull shiat metric to say the economy isn't doing well. Underemployment is mostly employee based, not employer based, this the argument that certain sections of the economy aren't doing well because of this is just bull shiat. These all exist equally in times of good employment (where #3 happens more often) and bad employment (where number #1 and #2 happens more often). No matter how you term it, it's purely speculative bull crap.

Give up dude, they are just jealous of what you have and want someone else to give them shiat so they can continue to be lazy and blame all their woes on "The Man" or "The Rich" instead of taking personal responsibility for their poor choices in life. Ahhh, the power of FARK.

seadoo2006: mongbiohazard: Splinshints: Wrong. 8.5% unemployment isn't actually that terrible. Just because it's not what we're used to historically and not what we'd like ideally doesn't mean it's bad. The enormous wealth gap among workers is a much more disconcerting problem going forward than modest unemployment. You can't keep wringing the bottom 50% for their meager pittances forever.


I agree with most of your post, except this part. Unemployment really isn't at 8.5%. For one thing the feds have been fudging those numbers by refusing to count more and more workers at a faster rate. The labor participation rate has been dropped all the way to 64%, and dropping that rate down has kept the unemployment rate looking better than it should.

For another thing, underemployment is a big problem since the downturn started, and continues to be so. The high number of underemployed also make the unemployment figures look better than they really are.

But I do agree with you that long depressed earnings and the massive wealth and income gaps are a huge problem as well, which only makes the unemployment problem even worse. And underemployment is exacerbating the wage gap issue. I would also argue that those wage problems are crippling our recovery and making our economy more fragile and less resilient to damage.

Underemployment is such a bull shiat scare tactic. Nobody is underemployed, only people spending beyond their means and unwilling to make changes in life when their salaries are reduced. If you are barely making enough to pay for your mortgage, that's not underemployment, that's you living somewhere that is too expensive. Even someone on minimum wage should and can be able to afford proper housing, food, and transportation without calling themselves "underemployed."

That's not what underemployment is; Underemployment is when you are working a job you are overqualified for i.e. a systems administrator with 5 years xp working as a barrista at starbucks.

I believe the phrase you were looking for is 'Living within your means' or possibly even 'fiscal responsibility'

InfamousBLT: seadoo2006: mongbiohazard: Splinshints: Wrong. 8.5% unemployment isn't actually that terrible. Just because it's not what we're used to historically and not what we'd like ideally doesn't mean it's bad. The enormous wealth gap among workers is a much more disconcerting problem going forward than modest unemployment. You can't keep wringing the bottom 50% for their meager pittances forever.


I agree with most of your post, except this part. Unemployment really isn't at 8.5%. For one thing the feds have been fudging those numbers by refusing to count more and more workers at a faster rate. The labor participation rate has been dropped all the way to 64%, and dropping that rate down has kept the unemployment rate looking better than it should.

For another thing, underemployment is a big problem since the downturn started, and continues to be so. The high number of underemployed also make the unemployment figures look better than they really are.

But I do agree with you that long depressed earnings and the massive wealth and income gaps are a huge problem as well, which only makes the unemployment problem even worse. And underemployment is exacerbating the wage gap issue. I would also argue that those wage problems are crippling our recovery and making our economy more fragile and less resilient to damage.

Underemployment is such a bull shiat scare tactic. Nobody is underemployed, only people spending beyond their means and unwilling to make changes in life when their salaries are reduced. If you are barely making enough to pay for your mortgage, that's not underemployment, that's you living somewhere that is too expensive. Even someone on minimum wage should and can be able to afford proper housing, food, and transportation without calling themselves "underemployed."

Really? Lets say you make $8 an hour. Any place paying you that won't work you 40 hours a week because then you're "full time" and they have to give you benefits. So lets say 8 an hour, 35 hours a w ...

But I didn;t see you mention that all this time you are making 8$ an hour that you were looking for another job that pays more maybe cause that falls under bootstrappiness....getting a roomate would fall under bootstrappiness...plus you are in the midwest.....stocking your freezer with 200lbs of venison that you harvested with a .50 cent bullet would fall under bootstrapiness.

/hope that helps
//catch that tiger

seadoo2006: 7AM, in the office
8-9PM out of the office

Yeah, I'll think I'll eat lentils and live in a smaller town. I'll wave as I bicycle by your office.

seadoo2006: jst3p: Crotchrocket Slim: So instead of addressing points others bring up, you split linguistic hairs?

He aced macroeconomics but doesn't think underemployment exists. The guy is clearly a liar, and possibly trolling.

No, in Macroeconomics, underemployment is defined as:

1) Being forced into working part time (but my argument is, work a second or a third job to make sure you are still working full-time hours)
2) Being overqualified for a job (but guess what, times are tough and you sometimes have to take a worse job to keep yourself afloat. 99 weeks of unemployment bennies while you try and find your pre-recession job wages is just bull shiat.)
3) Underutilization of current employees ... again, with more effective oversight and a salary wage instead of hourly, you have required goals to meet and if it takes your employees 20 hours or 40 hours do complete it, you are still paying them the same. This breeds efficiency and pruning of non-efficient workers.

It's still a bull shiat metric to say the economy isn't doing well. Underemployment is mostly employee based, not employer based, this the argument that certain sections of the economy aren't doing well because of this is just bull shiat. These all exist equally in times of good employment (where #3 happens more often) and bad employment (where number #1 and #2 happens more often). No matter how you term it, it's purely speculative bull crap.

You believe that "under employment" is a problem for individuals. You fail to see how it is a problem for the economy as a whole. This is why I have a hard time believing you "aced" macro econ. You don't seem to have the ability to look at this issue from a macro level.

Bob16: painless42: I hope we don't get housing bubble 2.0. Te article says that housing is "weak", but as far as I'm concerned, It's brought real estate prices back to normal in California. A whole generation of people will be able to afford a house now that couldn't have 5 years ago.

Yeah nothing says housing is affordable like a depression.

IMF Declared America To Be In A Depression 2 Weeks After Bush Left Office

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a6aaWZ8ab8yU

We were out of the depression by mid 2009. The article was posted to Fark...it should be common knowledge.

seadoo2006: Underemployment is such a bull shiat scare tactic. Nobody is underemployed, only people spending beyond their means and unwilling to make changes in life when their salaries are reduced. If you are barely making enough to pay for your mortgage, that's not underemployment, that's you living somewhere that is too expensive. Even someone on minimum wage should and can be able to afford proper housing, food, and transportation without calling themselves "underemployed."

Underemployment is not a scare tactic. It is merely a word used to describe an employment situation that is, in some manner, not to the benefit of the employee. Generally, this term is used to describe those individuals that are employed in a position for which they are overqualified or that does not meet their desired working period (part-time versus full-time employment).

And before you begin to discount this, consider a simple example. An individual obtains a legitimate degree in electrical engineering at an accredited university or college. They seek work, but are unable to find employment in a position that is even tangentially related to their field. But they need sustenance, shelter, etc. So they take a position as an office temp at a business that pays $9.00 and hour, but they give him only 20 hours a week - the schedule is chaotic and the hours on any given day are erratic. The work itself is a far cry from the engineering work he is prepared for - he answers phones and re-types letters that come in for transmission to management. Assume that in the field that he trained for, his hour is worth $45.00 an hour. This individual is underemployed. He is engaged in work that does not use the skills he worked to acquire and he is paid well below what an individual with his qualifications would earn in his field.

To say that underemployment is a joke or a myth is asinine. If you are a trained for a technical position, but wait on tables because you cannot find a position that uses that technical knowledge, your skills are being wasted. Thus you are not employed to the full extent of your ability; thus, you are underemployed. It is not simply a function of people appearing self-entitled to certain types of compensation. I am an designated accountant - I would be underemployed if I did not work in a position that used the skills I worked hard to be recognized for.

I doubt this will change your mind, but then again, that is never the reason for such posts on the Internet, is it?

InfamousBLT: Joe Blowme: seadoo2006: jst3p: Crotchrocket Slim: So instead of addressing points others bring up, you split linguistic hairs?

He aced macroeconomics but doesn't think underemployment exists. The guy is clearly a liar, and possibly trolling.

No, in Macroeconomics, underemployment is defined as:

1) Being forced into working part time (but my argument is, work a second or a third job to make sure you are still working full-time hours)
2) Being overqualified for a job (but guess what, times are tough and you sometimes have to take a worse job to keep yourself afloat. 99 weeks of unemployment bennies while you try and find your pre-recession job wages is just bull shiat.)
3) Underutilization of current employees ... again, with more effective oversight and a salary wage instead of hourly, you have required goals to meet and if it takes your employees 20 hours or 40 hours do complete it, you are still paying them the same. This breeds efficiency and pruning of non-efficient workers.

It's still a bull shiat metric to say the economy isn't doing well. Underemployment is mostly employee based, not employer based, this the argument that certain sections of the economy aren't doing well because of this is just bull shiat. These all exist equally in times of good employment (where #3 happens more often) and bad employment (where number #1 and #2 happens more often). No matter how you term it, it's purely speculative bull crap.

Give up dude, they are just jealous of what you have and want someone else to give them shiat so they can continue to be lazy and blame all their woes on "The Man" or "The Rich" instead of taking personal responsibility for their poor choices in life. Ahhh, the power of FARK.

I know you're a troll, but in the interest of full disclosure, I'm salaried, benefits, 401k matching, the whole 9 yards. I make plenty, especially as a student fresh out of college. The best part is I'm not even in my degree field, I just happened to get a lucky break and I ma ...

I'm thinking Joe's not serious. Who complains about lacking the realistic opportunity to better themselves if they aren't committed to the idea of working with that opportunity? Way too many "let them eat cake" statements in here. That seems to be the joke here.
/then again I don't hang out enough in these "srs convo" threads so I don't have the score card maintained to tell me who's trolling vs who believes what they are actually typing

Azmodan Kijur: seadoo2006: Underemployment is such a bull shiat scare tactic. Nobody is underemployed, only people spending beyond their means and unwilling to make changes in life when their salaries are reduced. If you are barely making enough to pay for your mortgage, that's not underemployment, that's you living somewhere that is too expensive. Even someone on minimum wage should and can be able to afford proper housing, food, and transportation without calling themselves "underemployed."

Underemployment is not a scare tactic. It is merely a word used to describe an employment situation that is, in some manner, not to the benefit of the employee. Generally, this term is used to describe those individuals that are employed in a position for which they are overqualified or that does not meet their desired working period (part-time versus full-time employment).

And before you begin to discount this, consider a simple example. An individual obtains a legitimate degree in electrical engineering at an accredited university or college. They seek work, but are unable to find employment in a position that is even tangentially related to their field. But they need sustenance, shelter, etc. So they take a position as an office temp at a business that pays $9.00 and hour, but they give him only 20 hours a week - the schedule is chaotic and the hours on any given day are erratic. The work itself is a far cry from the engineering work he is prepared for - he answers phones and re-types letters that come in for transmission to management. Assume that in the field that he trained for, his hour is worth $45.00 an hour. This individual is underemployed. He is engaged in work that does not use the skills he worked to acquire and he is paid well below what an individual with his qualifications would earn in his field.

To say that underemployment is a joke or a myth is asinine. If you are a trained for a technical position, but wait on tables because you cannot find a position that uses that ...

I have some retirees who work for me for beer and cigar money. One of them did 40 years designing assembly lines for the manufacturing sector earning himself alot of money.

I only pay him 15$ an hour to drive one of my service trucks thats used to fuel the excavators on job sites......is he counted as under employed?

Is there an offical guideline...cause I'm not sure government stats are nuanced like that.


We have one of the largets populations we have ever seen retiring and taking part time jobs just to fend off the boredom of retirement..how does that skew the numbers?

No legitimate economist really expects a QE3, so this is stupid. However, the fed has an inflation target that it really expects to meet for the good of the economy and if it's coming in way under, IT WILL INCREASE THE MONEY SUPPLY AMONG OTHER THINGS. That is what it does. The supreme pisser is that you can't really drop the money out of helicopters, you have to give it to the farking banks because that's the way the system works.

This is all speculator crap. Please stop freaking out.

Giltric:

You've basically answered your own question there. A retiree that is working a part-time job to stave off boredom /= a individual that is just starting out in the work environment. Such an example is relatively meaningless given that the situations of both individuals are inherently different.

That said, the idea of underemployed statistics is to point out the number of individuals that are working part-time, but want full time work as well as those individuals that are employed in a position that they are grossly overqualified for. Yes, there will be inaccuracies in the count - individuals that are working in a position below their skills because they want to or so forth. But one has to remember that such statistics are a matter of providing general indicators for the economy as opposed to counting that there are exactly X number of individuals that are employed below their competence level.

Besides, the man working for beer and cigars is working outside the economy and is not part of the statistic. Not 100% sure about America, but in Canada, doing such is a crime. Tax evasion. ;P

Azmodan Kijur: Besides, the man working for beer and cigars is working outside the economy and is not part of the statistic. Not 100% sure about America, but in Canada, doing such is a crime. Tax evasion. ;P

Wow, it is illegal to spend your paycheck on beer and cigars in Canada? I'm pretty sure that would kick-start a revolution down here.

InfamousBLT: Conservatives don't get this. Demand side economics is where its at.


I know the crazies control the debate... but don't lump me in the same boat as seadoo2006. Some of us DO get it, because it's entirely logical. Logic isn't right or left wing.

We have an economy which depends on consumer spending. Impoverishing consumers means impoverishing our economy. And we've spent many years impoverishing our consumers.

And even aside from that... a nation full of people forced to live according to his myopic view of how everyone else "should" live just so that they can survive is utterly deplorable.

the_geek: superdude72: Why is this "scary." For all the fear-mongering, the current rate of inflation is close to 0 percent.

The current net inflation is near zero but that's because housing is plummeting. Meanwhile most of us are still paying our inflated mortgages at a fixed 30 year rate while the rest of our budget line items are ballooning at an alarming rate.

Stop paying the mortgage, you dolt.

seadoo2006: I'm alright with the fact you are doing better than I

That's not the point. I'm not gloating, I'm pointing out that you have virtually no experience and, as a result, clearly have exactly no idea what you're talking about.

But you enjoy having an argument with the people who have decided to bang their heads on a brick wall. Just be sure to keep in the back of your mind that fact that your opinions are so stubbornly ignorant that they don't actually deserve any type of thoughtful response and are so skewed by blind arrogance that they can be dismissed out-of-hand as being simply and flatly wrong.

mongbiohazard: And even aside from that... a nation full of people forced to live according to his myopic view of how everyone else "should" live just so that they can survive is utterly deplorable.

Don't get too worked up about it. Assuming he's not just lying his off - a big assumption to begin with - he'll almost certainly be poor before he's 40.

Dumb kids like him manage to get a decent job early on by pure luck (or family connections, which is still just luck), attribute it all to their work ethic, convince themselves it'll last forever (because, hey, it's all how hard you work, right?) and lose everything when reality decides its time to deal a devastating blow to their egos.

Nobody every succeeded purely on arrogance and disdain and he won't be an exception. Again, assuming he's not lying his ass off between community college class times.

plewis: The supreme pisser is that you can't really drop the money out of helicopters, you have to give it to the farking banks because that's the way the system works.

Was 'helicopter money' not effectively the upshot of, say, the $400 Bush stimulus checks of 2008 or the Making Work Pay credit or the FICA partial holiday? Adding to the debt is how the Fed 'prints' for the inflation that they want.

Splinshints: mongbiohazard: And even aside from that... a nation full of people forced to live according to his myopic view of how everyone else "should" live just so that they can survive is utterly deplorable.

Don't get too worked up about it. Assuming he's not just lying his off - a big assumption to begin with - he'll almost certainly be poor before he's 40.

Dumb kids like him manage to get a decent job early on by pure luck (or family connections, which is still just luck), attribute it all to their work ethic, convince themselves it'll last forever (because, hey, it's all how hard you work, right?) and lose everything when reality decides its time to deal a devastating blow to their egos.

Nobody every succeeded purely on arrogance and disdain and he won't be an exception. Again, assuming he's not lying his ass off between community college class times.


We have a whole, once proud, political party who derpishly espouse this view. And the other party isn't exactly fighting them on it in action, only in rhetoric. It's troubling.

Wealth and money are different things. Stupid people fail to realize this. Stupid people put stupid people in charge. I'm glad I have massive caches of bullets and canned food as the value of those things is far more durable than green pieces of paper and digital zeros.

JBangworthy: Wealth and money are different things. Stupid people fail to realize this. Stupid people put stupid people in charge. I'm glad I have massive caches of bullets and canned food as the value of those things is far more durable than green pieces of paper and digital zeros.

I'm hoping you don't honestly believe that separates you from "the stupid people", unless you have 50 years worth of each stockpiled inside your Fallout-like bunker with foot-thick steel and concrete walls. And even then...

Crotchrocket Slim: JBangworthy: Wealth and money are different things. Stupid people fail to realize this. Stupid people put stupid people in charge. I'm glad I have massive caches of bullets and canned food as the value of those things is far more durable than green pieces of paper and digital zeros.

I'm hoping you don't honestly believe that separates you from "the stupid people", unless you have 50 years worth of each stockpiled inside your Fallout-like bunker with foot-thick steel and concrete walls. And even then...

You don't have to have enough food to last 50 years... you only have to have enough food to outlast those that didn't prepare so you can eat them.

superdude72: Why is this "scary." For all the fear-mongering, the current rate of inflation is close to 0 percent.

Unfortunately, not so.

1) Check out the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator: http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

Put in 1000 dollars for 2010. Then, click calculate. It tells you how much 1000 dollars is worth in 2011. For the record, it's worth 1037 dollars. That's 37 dollars less your 1000 dollars is now worth. 3.7% That's closer to actual inflation.

2) Check out the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index summary for December 2011: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm

Energy is up 12.6% for the year. Food is up 4.6% for the year. Medical is up 3.5%.

3) The reason inflation is such a danger is because central banks are first and foremost concerned with the health of the banking system. They would absolutely love a healthy bout of inflation because it depreciates the value of the current debt. Current debt - bad loans specifically - is what is overhanging Europe and the US. See http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2011/06/escaping-debt-crisi s

Inflation is nothing but a stealth tax. It benefits debtors and lenders but steals wealth from the rest. The central banks and Wall Street would love a system where everyone lives hand to mouth and are utterly beholden to creditors. It would make them even more powerful and wealthier than their already epic wealth and power.

GanjSmokr: Crotchrocket Slim: JBangworthy: Wealth and money are different things. Stupid people fail to realize this. Stupid people put stupid people in charge. I'm glad I have massive caches of bullets and canned food as the value of those things is far more durable than green pieces of paper and digital zeros.

I'm hoping you don't honestly believe that separates you from "the stupid people", unless you have 50 years worth of each stockpiled inside your Fallout-like bunker with foot-thick steel and concrete walls. And even then...

You don't have to have enough food to last 50 years... you only have to have enough food to outlast those that didn't prepare so you can eat them.

True story: people need to eat even after cannibalizing all the others in their group. Really, how much food do you think you could get from the body of another post-apocalyptic survivor, maybe a week? A month if you made human jerky?

If you don't have several decades worth of food you need to have the means to perpetually grow it on your own at least.

In any case people who think being invested in gold will have a useful investment should society really fall apart are only kidding themselves that gold has value outside of monetary value (well, maybe industrial value too, but without industrial infrastructure, making something useful with it is a BEAST).

domestically generated inflation would be an efficient mechanism for working off the excess debt caused by the housing bubble, allowing consumption, investment, and output to recover to full employment levels.

But aside from all that, it would be worth it just to watch RON PAUL's head explode.

seadoo2006: Nobody is underemploye

Fark you.