Who will win, Obama or McCain?

[El Kabong]

Kirkland I tell you this almost every day but once again you're full of shit.


Today the Dow is UP and OIL is DOWN

[Kirkland Laing]

Kirkland I tell you this almost every day but once again you're full of shit.


Today the Dow is UP and OIL is DOWN

You're wrong about everything as much as I'm right about everything. It's uncanny. It's like you're my defective-brained mini-me. The Dow is down almost 20% from its previous high and at the height of the current bear market will be 30-50% down. Oil is up 72% from this time last year.

It's amazing that so many people are conditioned to see the stock market as indicative of their personal wealth. The median working US household has $20 000 in personal savings, roughly enough to pay for a few nights in hospital for a family member should the family lose its health insurance. In New York, one out of five people needs to be given charitable food donations regularly. But somehow the Dow presses peoples' buttons, it's like they're all millionaire investors or something. The real indicator of wealth is median income, the income Joe 150 Million out of 300 million Americans earns, and that's down slightly from how much he was earning in 1970.

This is why things are so out of whack right now, with so much wealth going to a tiny bunch of people at the top that there isn't enough being spent in the economy, it's all being invested. Until a bigger share of the wealth is given to low/middle income earners, where it gets spent instead of invested (71% of US GDP is consumer spending) then economic growth is going to remain as rubbish as it has so far this century.

[El Kabong]

So you're saying we need some kind of wealth redistribustion? Some sort of Communist solution to our problem That's shocking Kirkland, I never would have guessed something like that would come from you

They have this thing called The Lottery...that gives poor people the chance to be rich and blow millions of dollars.

The problem with you is you compare last year's numbers to this year and even then you would have admitted the numbers were blown up due to what was going on with subprime loans and the housing market.

[Kirkland Laing]

So you're saying we need some kind of wealth redistribustion? Some sort of Communist solution to our problem That's shocking Kirkland, I never would have guessed something like that would come from you

They have this thing called The Lottery...that gives poor people the chance to be rich and blow millions of dollars.

The problem with you is you compare last year's numbers to this year and even then you would have admitted the numbers were blown up due to what was going on with subprime loans and the housing market.

Yes, we definitely need a little bit of wealth distribution. And I want to make sure you really understand why so that, in ten or twenty years when you look back on the 2000s with the benefit of hindsight, you realise that you were wrong again and I was right again. In fact I'd like you to print this post out and keep it in a safe place just so I know for certain that in the future you'll be reminded at least once of my Infallibility.

US economic policy is insane. For 30 years now huge tax cuts for the top 1% have created huge national debt and ongoing deficits that are a drag on the economy. Huge tax increases on low/middle income earners over the same period haven't brought in enough revenue to cver the debt, but have stripped 90% of Americans of most of their excess cash. So for a decade Americans have borrowed against the rising value of their homes to maintain their standard of living -- a trillion dollars a year, or as the total worth of the US is about fifty trillion, effectively a State a year is currently being sold off to foreign creditors to maintain current standards of living. Now that people can't borrow so easily, there's going to be an eventual drop in spending and this will affect economic growth, as 71% of US GDP is consumr spending.

Median wages that are barely higher than they were in 1970, adjusted for inflation. Male wages today are in lower than they were then -- the income of a young man in his 30s is now 12 per cent below that of a man his age three decades ago. So if low/middle income people are all tapped out and their wages aren't going up any, where is the spending/economic growth coming from? The only way to do it is to distribute more of the wealth to the bottom 99% of the population, so that the money is spent in the economy and pinballs around from person to person, business to business, enriching everybody. The good old Keynesian multiplier. Probably the besy way to do this is taxation. The top half or one percent really wouldn't noticea 10 or 20% increase in their taxes, they own half of the country's wealth, they already spend all they want and due to the explosion of wealth to the top that the Bush tax cuts/policies have created most aree earning 5-10 times what they were making even in 2000. And that money is being exported as fast as possible to be invested in emerging economys like China where it makes more money than in the US because of the f'd up economic situation there. It's difficult to be a capitalist country with no capital.

So somehow more of the wealth that the top earners are creaming off has to be spread through the economy for conomic growth to continue to be robust. Whether it's empowering unions again or just tax manipulation it needs to happen.

[El Kabong]

Yes, we definitely need a little bit of wealth distribution.

You are a fucking moron you have made a case AGAINST yourself...you have no understanding of capitalism AT ALL.....I now wonder if you are infact retarded and I'm leaning towards yes....yes you are a retard and I now emplore you to seek help.

[Kirkland Laing]

Yes, we definitely need a little bit of wealth distribution.

You are a fucking moron you have made a case AGAINST yourself...you have no understanding of capitalism AT ALL.....I now wonder if you are infact retarded and I'm leaning towards yes....yes you are a retard and I now emplore you to seek help.

What part of the post don't you understand? Let me know so that I can explain this to you well enough so that it sinks in and thus at some point in the future you're forced to bow to my Infallibility.

[El Kabong]

You may very well be infallible.....but it ain't on this planet brother

[pacfan]

Yes, we definitely need a little bit of wealth distribution.

You are a fucking moron you have made a case AGAINST yourself...you have no understanding of capitalism AT ALL.....I now wonder if you are infact retarded and I'm leaning towards yes....yes you are a retard and I now emplore you to seek help.

What part of the post don't you understand? Let me know so that I can explain this to you well enough so that it sinks in and thus at some point in the future you're forced to bow to my Infallibility.

I ain't no lover of communism, nor am I a lover of capitalism as it stands now. No need to discuss the defects of communism as everyone knows 'em. But what I can say is that the form of capitalism practiced then up to now isn't working in third world country like ours, where people in the neighborhood are dying of Tuberculosis everyday not because the country doesn't have enough money but because the traditional elite businessmen, who has controlled the government ever since, have divided the nations spoils among themselves while leaving the poor perpetually impoverished. And the type of democracy that the westerners planted on us has become an effective tool to keep them in power, because it's a democracy dictated by money which only the elite has, thereby becoming a self-perpetuating tool for them. This is probably the same reason that guys like Chavez has started to become appealing to many Latin-American people. These are the things that many westerners simply don't understand. Most people in the third world are no worse off than those in Cuba. Believe me, I have seen it first hand and am still seeing it, shaking my head in dismay throughout...

...But then, I have no intention of trying to change the minds of westerners' because I know I can't, just as I can never convince the Americans that there is nothing sacred or inalienable about their right to keep and bear arms...