Totally this. Z evidently thinks (or considers) the 99% as poor without realizing he’s one of them. ....Chizzang wrote:Actually,AZGrizFan wrote:
Honest question: Do you attribute the whole ‘99%’er” movement to the poor waking up? Or is there something else to attribute that movement to?
I attribute that to Wall Street .01% ers flipping the global economy into the fire pit
and then telling everybody that legislating oversight of them would totally kill progress
You have no idea how much money I make.kalm wrote:Totally this. Z evidently thinks (or considers) the 99% as poor without realizing he’s one of them. ....Chizzang wrote:
Actually,
I attribute that to Wall Street .01% ers flipping the global economy into the fire pit
and then telling everybody that legislating oversight of them would totally kill progress
The SPE is often used to teach the lesson that our behavior is profoundly affected by the social roles and situations in which we find ourselves. But its deeper, more disturbing implication is that we all have a wellspring of potential sadism lurking within us, waiting to be tapped by circumstance. It has been invoked to explain the massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam War, the Armenian genocide, and the horrors of the Holocaust. And the ultimate symbol of the agony that man helplessly inflicts on his brother is Korpi’s famous breakdown, set off after only 36 hours by the cruelty of his peers.
There’s just one problem: Korpi’s breakdown was a sham.
“Anybody who is a clinician would know that I was faking,” he told me last summer, in the first extensive interview he has granted in years. “If you listen to the tape, it’s not subtle. I’m not that good at acting. I mean, I think I do a fairly good job, but I’m more hysterical than psychotic.”
AZGrizFan wrote:Chizzang wrote:
You entertain me !
a) The CFO's dangling from light posts comment that I made
b) caused you to respond with not all CFO's are crooks
c) that caused me to say impoverishing ones employee base isn't a crime
is not a leap
Being "criminals" isn't really what's going to get CFO's hung in the streets
Taking a $20 million dollar bonus while reducing employee benefits is perfectly legal
and THAT is the kind of behavior that's going to get CFO's dangling from light posts
But hey, not all CFO's are crooks
True statement - irrelevant to the conversation - but true
But I don't take back my "fuckstick" comment. It stands on its own merit.
Grizalltheway wrote:Might as well make this a general "American workers getting rail-roaded" thread.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... a154ad8834
Don’t offer benefits you can’t pay fordbackjon wrote:Grizalltheway wrote:Might as well make this a general "American workers getting rail-roaded" thread.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... a154ad8834
This type of **** should be illegal. This is the actions, that unchecked, lead to revolutions. Yet I bet most of those workers voted for Trump, who screws workers out of paychecks every chance he gets.
Meanwhile, these vultures go on to their next prey, leaving the taxpayers on the hook. Corporate welfare strikes again.
They could have paid for them. They choose to bleed the company dry, pocket the profits, then declare bankruptcy, leaving the Taxpayers on the hook. Not sure why this is so hard to understand, or why anyone would defend these parasitesCID1990 wrote:Don’t offer benefits you can’t pay fordbackjon wrote:
This type of **** should be illegal. This is the actions, that unchecked, lead to revolutions. Yet I bet most of those workers voted for Trump, who screws workers out of paychecks every chance he gets.
Meanwhile, these vultures go on to their next prey, leaving the taxpayers on the hook. Corporate welfare strikes again.
That’s the moral of this story
But at the end of the day this is also why pensions, at least in the private sector, have gone away as quickly as they have. Pensions almost always balloon to be more than the company (or government in the case of public sector pensions) can afford and still stay in business. People retire earlier, live longer, and a mistake by an actuary decades ago can doom a company in the present. I'm not defending the guys like the Sun Capital ones in this story - they truly are corporate raiders who don't really provide much of a service. But the Marsh supermarket chain was destined for bankruptcy for years, and partly because it promised a benefit that it couldn't afford. Even before the Sun Capital folks took over this company was already deep in the red, and especially with regards to its pension benefits. If we're going to cut off the corporate raiders, which I think we might want to do (and we should be able to at least limit what they can take in proportion to the debt they leave for the government to assume), we also need to understand that in some cases businesses will fail earlier and we will still have pension shortfalls in companies that do fail like that. Private equity firms are not always evil, and many do provide a very necessary service by moving viable entities of a company away from the black-hole maw of bankruptcy to a more stable footing, often with another company. This should be less and less of a problem as it's been in the past as we get further away from the time when most private pensions where flipped into 401k's or something else that wasn't a defined benefit, but it's still something that could still be an issue for the next 50 years or so.dbackjon wrote:They could have paid for them. They choose to bleed the company dry, pocket the profits, then declare bankruptcy, leaving the Taxpayers on the hook. Not sure why this is so hard to understand, or why anyone would defend these parasitesCID1990 wrote:
Don’t offer benefits you can’t pay for
That’s the moral of this story
No doubt they would likely fail - but the pensions should be first thing funded, not the last. Especially when the owners get to take tens of millions out. That would limit the impact.GannonFan wrote:But at the end of the day this is also why pensions, at least in the private sector, have gone away as quickly as they have. Pensions almost always balloon to be more than the company (or government in the case of public sector pensions) can afford and still stay in business. People retire earlier, live longer, and a mistake by an actuary decades ago can doom a company in the present. I'm not defending the guys like the Sun Capital ones in this story - they truly are corporate raiders who don't really provide much of a service. But the Marsh supermarket chain was destined for bankruptcy for years, and partly because it promised a benefit that it couldn't afford. Even before the Sun Capital folks took over this company was already deep in the red, and especially with regards to its pension benefits. If we're going to cut off the corporate raiders, which I think we might want to do (and we should be able to at least limit what they can take in proportion to the debt they leave for the government to assume), we also need to understand that in some cases businesses will fail earlier and we will still have pension shortfalls in companies that do fail like that. Private equity firms are not always evil, and many do provide a very necessary service by moving viable entities of a company away from the black-hole maw of bankruptcy to a more stable footing, often with another company. This should be less and less of a problem as it's been in the past as we get further away from the time when most private pensions where flipped into 401k's or something else that wasn't a defined benefit, but it's still something that could still be an issue for the next 50 years or so.dbackjon wrote:
They could have paid for them. They choose to bleed the company dry, pocket the profits, then declare bankruptcy, leaving the Taxpayers on the hook. Not sure why this is so hard to understand, or why anyone would defend these parasites
I think we could argue about who gets paid first - an unstable pension system that was never realistic shouldn't necessarily be the first thing paid in full, IMO, especially if it was a primary factor in the company failing in the first place - but I think a good compromise can be something that limits, significantly, any profit that is made from a failed venture, especially profits made by the small few, and especially taking into account the profits made long before they went for bankruptcy. We pay back shareholders earlier because we don't want to scare off people from investing in the first place - in the larger picture, sending a scare like that into the investing community would be far more devastating to the overall economy.dbackjon wrote:No doubt they would likely fail - but the pensions should be first thing funded, not the last. Especially when the owners get to take tens of millions out. That would limit the impact.GannonFan wrote:
But at the end of the day this is also why pensions, at least in the private sector, have gone away as quickly as they have. Pensions almost always balloon to be more than the company (or government in the case of public sector pensions) can afford and still stay in business. People retire earlier, live longer, and a mistake by an actuary decades ago can doom a company in the present. I'm not defending the guys like the Sun Capital ones in this story - they truly are corporate raiders who don't really provide much of a service. But the Marsh supermarket chain was destined for bankruptcy for years, and partly because it promised a benefit that it couldn't afford. Even before the Sun Capital folks took over this company was already deep in the red, and especially with regards to its pension benefits. If we're going to cut off the corporate raiders, which I think we might want to do (and we should be able to at least limit what they can take in proportion to the debt they leave for the government to assume), we also need to understand that in some cases businesses will fail earlier and we will still have pension shortfalls in companies that do fail like that. Private equity firms are not always evil, and many do provide a very necessary service by moving viable entities of a company away from the black-hole maw of bankruptcy to a more stable footing, often with another company. This should be less and less of a problem as it's been in the past as we get further away from the time when most private pensions where flipped into 401k's or something else that wasn't a defined benefit, but it's still something that could still be an issue for the next 50 years or so.
And you are right, many companies aren't set up to fund pensions properly. Including the Government.
The old Financial sector "Scare Fallacy"GannonFan wrote:I think we could argue about who gets paid first - an unstable pension system that was never realistic shouldn't necessarily be the first thing paid in full, IMO, especially if it was a primary factor in the company failing in the first place - but I think a good compromise can be something that limits, significantly, any profit that is made from a failed venture, especially profits made by the small few, and especially taking into account the profits made long before they went for bankruptcy. We pay back shareholders earlier because we don't want to scare off people from investing in the first place - in the larger picture, sending a scare like that into the investing community would be far more devastating to the overall economy.dbackjon wrote:
No doubt they would likely fail - but the pensions should be first thing funded, not the last. Especially when the owners get to take tens of millions out. That would limit the impact.
And you are right, many companies aren't set up to fund pensions properly. Including the Government.
Speaking “fallacies”...the “declining middle class” is a gigantic one.Chizzang wrote:The old Financial sector "Scare Fallacy"GannonFan wrote:
I think we could argue about who gets paid first - an unstable pension system that was never realistic shouldn't necessarily be the first thing paid in full, IMO, especially if it was a primary factor in the company failing in the first place - but I think a good compromise can be something that limits, significantly, any profit that is made from a failed venture, especially profits made by the small few, and especially taking into account the profits made long before they went for bankruptcy. We pay back shareholders earlier because we don't want to scare off people from investing in the first place - in the larger picture, sending a scare like that into the investing community would be far more devastating to the overall economy.
Don't do anything to frighten the billionaires and hedge fund managers
or they'll crash the Global Economy
This fallacy along with Trickle Down is how we got where we are today
Make sure you benefit the elite wealthy the most and they will give away their money to the middle
don't scare them - they scare easily
And yet here we are
With a declining middle class and home prices off the charts and the rich getting massively rewarded
GannonFan has been on a roll lately
It's weird how consistently incorrect you are on major American data pointsAZGrizFan wrote:Speaking “fallacies”...the “declining middle class” is a gigantic one.Chizzang wrote:
The old Financial sector "Scare Fallacy"
Don't do anything to frighten the billionaires and hedge fund managers
or they'll crash the Global Economy
This fallacy along with Trickle Down is how we got where we are today
Make sure you benefit the elite wealthy the most and they will give away their money to the middle
don't scare them - they scare easily
And yet here we are
With a declining middle class and home prices off the charts and the rich getting massively rewarded
GannonFan has been on a roll lately
Yeah,. It’s shrinking because more are moving to the upper middle and upper classes. Shrinking and ‘declining’ are two markedly different adjectives.Chizzang wrote:It's weird how consistently incorrect you are on major American data pointsAZGrizFan wrote:
Speaking “fallacies”...the “declining middle class” is a gigantic one.
So how about Pew Research... do they count
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/05/ ... tan-areas/
"The shrinking of the middle class at the national level, to the point where it may no longer be the economic majority in the U.S., was documented in an earlier analysis by the Pew Research Center. The changes at the metropolitan level, the subject of this in-depth look at the American middle class, demonstrate that the national trend is the result of widespread declines in localities all around the country...
AZGrizFan wrote:Yeah,. It’s shrinking because more are moving to the upper middle and upper classes. Shrinking and ‘declining’ are two markedly different adjectives.Chizzang wrote:
It's weird how consistently incorrect you are on major American data points
So how about Pew Research... do they count
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/05/ ... tan-areas/
"The shrinking of the middle class at the national level, to the point where it may no longer be the economic majority in the U.S., was documented in an earlier analysis by the Pew Research Center. The changes at the metropolitan level, the subject of this in-depth look at the American middle class, demonstrate that the national trend is the result of widespread declines in localities all around the country...
They talked about median incomes in this week’s podcast. Going off of memory (so these are approximate numbers) the current family median income is $59,000. If it had kept pace with the 1% since the 70’s it would be $86,000. If it had kept pace with productivity it would be well over $100,000.AZGrizFan wrote:Yeah,. It’s shrinking because more are moving to the upper middle and upper classes. Shrinking and ‘declining’ are two markedly different adjectives.Chizzang wrote:
It's weird how consistently incorrect you are on major American data points
So how about Pew Research... do they count
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/05/ ... tan-areas/
"The shrinking of the middle class at the national level, to the point where it may no longer be the economic majority in the U.S., was documented in an earlier analysis by the Pew Research Center. The changes at the metropolitan level, the subject of this in-depth look at the American middle class, demonstrate that the national trend is the result of widespread declines in localities all around the country...
Chizzang wrote:It's weird how consistently incorrect you are on major American data pointsAZGrizFan wrote:
Speaking “fallacies”...the “declining middle class” is a gigantic one.
So how about Pew Research... do they count
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/05/ ... tan-areas/
"The shrinking of the middle class at the national level, to the point where it may no longer be the economic majority in the U.S., was documented in an earlier analysis by the Pew Research Center. The changes at the metropolitan level, the subject of this in-depth look at the American middle class, demonstrate that the national trend is the result of widespread declines in localities all around the country...
Why don't you read the article (and tell us) instead of being lazy...CAA Flagship wrote:Chizzang wrote:
It's weird how consistently incorrect you are on major American data points
So how about Pew Research... do they count
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/05/ ... tan-areas/
"The shrinking of the middle class at the national level, to the point where it may no longer be the economic majority in the U.S., was documented in an earlier analysis by the Pew Research Center. The changes at the metropolitan level, the subject of this in-depth look at the American middle class, demonstrate that the national trend is the result of widespread declines in localities all around the country...
Are they talking about residents of metropolitan areas or jobs in metropolitan areas.
If it is residents, wouldn't the cost of housing have a lot to do with that, not declining middle class jobs?
Nokalm wrote:Why don't you read the article (and tell us) instead of being lazy...CAA Flagship wrote:
Are they talking about residents of metropolitan areas or jobs in metropolitan areas.
If it is residents, wouldn't the cost of housing have a lot to do with that, not declining middle class jobs?
Bingo..!!!kalm wrote:Another stat from the podcast was that in the 70's something like 75% of americans were considered middle class and that number has now fallen below 50%. This was also mentioned in Chizzy's article.
They're all upper class now, duh.Chizzang wrote:Bingo..!!!kalm wrote:Another stat from the podcast was that in the 70's something like 75% of americans were considered middle class and that number has now fallen below 50%. This was also mentioned in Chizzy's article.
Middle class used to comprise over two thirds of american families
Now it's less than half of American families
And otherwise, as long as Flaggy and Z can still dream of someday kicking the ladder down behind them, why should they care?Grizalltheway wrote:They're all upper class now, duh.Chizzang wrote: Bingo..!!!
Middle class used to comprise over two thirds of american families
Now it's less than half of American families
