We are in a Depression. Read on.
 

This article is very long, so I'm not going to post it in its entirety because that may be seen as "spam". Also, I hate it when people post obnoxiously long text. If you wish to read the whole thing please click on the last line of the quote.

That is all.

No.

@Coolie; take the hint, dude.

It's just a news article. I don't understand why all you individuals (and I use that term loosely) keep going into attack mode, foaming at the mouth every time I say something.

GET...OVER...IT....

If you're not going to post on topic then don't post at all.

Get over yourself.

Seriously Coolie, you aren't anyone special and you are completely ineffectual. You write like you're some individualistic idealist but when was the last time you actually did something to fight the man? Your life is a lie.

:lol

I didn't catch that part. :lol

Im beginning to think Coolie is a character.

I just pm'ed him about that. At first I thought he was a real person but now I just think that he is an incredibly elaborate fiction. Or a replicant.

Nope, he's real. You can't make this shit up.

If that would make me look like Rutger Haur then that's fine with me.

I THINK THE AVATAR TELLS US ALL WHOS CHARACTER HE IS

ALSO I heARD RECENTLY THAT We ARE OFFICIALLY OUT OF THE REPRESSION LOL

I think even as grim as things have been economically, calling it a depression is a bit harsh.

During the depression the unemployment rate was much higher than it is now. Comparing it to the 1920s and early 1930s is a bit of an overstatement

If anything, what is going on now more closely mirrors the 1970s economically.

I have to disagree.

Unofficially there is about 25-30% national unemployment in the USA. They always cook the books. People are living in tent cities (Hoovervilles / Obamavilles), people are taking drastic pay cuts, the production base of the USA is completely destroyed by "Free Trade" agreements. Unions are being broken (without unions there is no middle class),

Investment banks (foreign and domestic) have taken trillions of dollars in "bailout" money because of their toxic deriviatives. Other banks are going bust. I believe 20+ banks went under in the last week.

I think its safe to say we are in a full blown world depression. It's effected almost every nation on the globe.

and It's all because of investment houses and their derivative paper which I may add was illegal at one time.

HOW DARE YOU DISAGREE WITH COOLIE!!!!!!

YOU WILL PERISH IN FLAME!!!!!!

Its fine to disagree with others.

It's not fine to troll the forum, snipe at every single post a specific person contributes, grumble, and then post off topic content constantly.

Get over it Flagg. It's just an internet forum. It's OK for people to think differently.

I don't think you know what a middle class is. Or a 'class' in general. The middle class, specifically, is the petty bourgeois; a small business owner or shopkeeper. Someone that employs others but also works alongside them. I'd love to know why you think unions have any effect (not affect this time) on a class existing.

Really? Which ones? That's quite a lot.

I haven't noticed anything here, to be honest. Where I live it's the second worst area for unemployment in the country at about 6% (officially), but I still think it's reasonably low compared to, say, 25% (officially) seen in the US during the 30s.


I think you are mad.

No,

Petty Bourgeois was a term used for the middle class in France during the time of the revolution. That term has no bearing on present day living standards.

Middle class, now, is a class of people who make a reasonable amount of income higher then the poor or lower classes but less the the wealthy class. Here in the USA we have poor people making around 20,000-35,000 dollars a year. Then we have middle class who are making 40-70,000 dollars a year and then we have the upper middle class making 70+ a year. These people are usually diluded and believe they're apart of the power structure when in fact they are the people who get ripped off the most because they have to hide their money in the stock market which usually collapses.

Unions have a very large effect on how classes work because if you're in a good Union and I emphasis GOOD not Corrupt but well managed, you can negotiate higher wages, benefits, and pension plan. You can also have the ability to say NO to more work meaning people the employer has to higher more people, meaning more people in jobs, meaning money in the economy.

Unions = Middle class

Middle class = a healthy national economy


Right now in the states we have a growing poor class, dwindling middle and upper middle class, and a Super rich class that doesn't pay taxes and is attempting to drive down the standard of living for everyone else.


Type in Sheila Colleen Bair - federal deposits and insurance corporation of the treasury.

She shuts down banks every Friday here in the states. sometimes 5, sometime 10, sometimes 20. Every week is more banks closing there doors but GoldManSachs, JPmorgan, citibank and other designated WINNERS get to stay in business with injections of cash from the Federal Reserve.

We already have 25% unemployment. You always have to double the number. We are in a global depression. Look around you. Did you not notice the trillions of dollars being used to bailout banks? did you not notice the tent cities? do you not see how almost every country that has worked with derivatives is in trouble?

It's so blantant.

The middle class during the French Revolution was just the normal bourgeois, actually. But arguing whether the term is still valid today is not worth talking about here and now.

Ah, well, here you are incorrectly attributing class to wealth, rather than ones relation to productive forces, regardless of the type of society. If a worker at a steel mill - part of the working class - wins the lottery for a million dollars, do they suddenly become part of the capitalist class? No. You can't say that class means something different "now", especially when I suspect it's only so it can fit in with your poorly thought out arguments. Perhaps in colloquial terms middle class means how much money you earn, but it's still incorrect.

You said that the non-existence of unions also equals the non-existence of a middle class. Even going on your incorrect assumption that wealth equals class, a middle class can still exist; people can still be wealthy and not belong to a union. As a side note, your thoughts on how unions work are extremely sad.





Seriously, list 20 banks that have been shut this last week. Don't make me go looking for your answers.

Ok, so you have to 'double the number'... alright, well, we are doubling the official unemployment rates, right? So the Official rate of 25% during the depression in the US becomes 50%. If you 'double the numbers' of the official unemployment rate now, is it as high as 50%? If I double the numbers in my country it becomes 10.6%, which is a far cry away from doubled number 50%. Are you sure we should be doubling the numbers? Maybe adding ten and dividing by six then straight on till morning.

I did not notice the bailouts or tent cities. Like I said, there is no depression here.

There are ALWAYS grey areas in every political or economic debate (applicable statement to many of our current threads, incidentally). The economy by some indications is in recovery, by others it is still in decline, and by still others it is stagnant. Well-respected economists don't all agree on this point, so why should we?

The key point, as I see it, for legislators is how to do the greatest good for the greatest number without pissiing off the remainder so much that you lose your job in 2-4 years. Hence the bailout, which incidentally BOTH presidential candidates in 2008 were FOR (which might be the last time R's and D's agreed on anything).

From my viewpoint (admittedly somewhat biased within my own economic situation) the worldwide economy is slowly recovering. It will not attain "before crash" status before the end of next year (wild guess) but gradually people are going back to work.

And note that not once did I denigrate your position, nor did I call into question your sanity, intellect or manhood. This is what "respecting differing points of view" is all about.

I don't believe in the term "working class". Everyone who is not an Investment banker or insurance parasite is "working class". I'm talking about Lower - Middle - and upper middle class.

All of these can be attributed to the living standard of the individual. If you're a steel working or a phone receptionist and both are making 40,000 to 70,000 a year.....Your both middle class.


True,

A very small amount of people can be wealthy without any labor organization. You're correct.

A very, very ,very small amount of people can have all the wealth while the laborers with NO representation can continue to have their living standards slashed.



I can't think for you. You're going to have to be a big boy and do it yourself.


Everyone knows that the government always finds ways to manipulate the unemployment figures. I don't know how old you are....probably very young seeing how feckless you are.....but in big boy land the unemployment numbers are always wrong and "discouraged workers" who don't show up anymore to collect their benefits get taken off the lists for unemployment payments.

Common sense. blatant reality. you have the internet. use it.

Didn't I just say people have different opinions and come to different conclusions and they should be respected?

The bailout didn't save jobs. This is wrong. All the bailout did was give a large amount of money to investment banks for causing the global economic depression.

We bailed out their gambling debt while giving chicken feed to production based manufacturing.

If GoldmanSachs needs 20 billion dollars the checks in the mail.....Ford and GM needed a few million and they had to be dragged through the ringer.

And as you said BOTH Presidents Bush / Obama love the bailouts because that's who they work for. Look at the second to last sentence of the article I posted above.

Don't be fooled by this notion that the bailout actually helped the economy.....all it did was inject capital into zombie banks that are completely insolvent due to their speculative toxic paper (derivatives).

And if people do go back to work it won't be for the same pay, they are slashing our standard of living, imposing austerity measures, and creating new taxes paid to private for-profit interests. Please, I implore you, read the full article.

1.5 QUADRILLION dollars of world wide derivative debts.

stupid dbl post stupid quote thing sry sry