[h8kurdt]

demonyo was talking about “millionaires and billionaires” owning shares to the railroad.

“poorer” is a comparative adjective.

a middle class person is “poorer” than a millionaire but can afford to save and invest.

I've already said what I mean by poor. People living month to month with no ability to having a savings. We also know how the middle class is rapidly getting smaller and smaller.

the mandatory texas retirement savings whatever owns shares. stop trolling.

That's generally what a pension fund does, right? The individual doesn't get to make a choice where the company puts the money though. No trolling going on here. Fact is that shares is something that only the upper classes have to quote from somewhere else "about one-third of families in the lower half of the income scale had stock holdings. In the next 40 percent of the income scale, about 70 percent of households held stocks, while households in the top 10 percent of the income scale had stock ownership rates above 90 percent.". For most people it's a daunting task directly owning their own shares and if they don't have an advisor giving them the right advice. This is why it always baffled me when Trump would go on about how well the stocks were doing. That's nice but for most it doesn't affect them.

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

a business to survive must do anything to save a dollar. because everyone else is trying to syphon those dollars away from them. shoplifters, content pirates, abusiver workers, “the community...” and every ignorant asshole who thinks “they make too much” without ever having tried their hand at it. and then ther is the competition who is trying to do things better, cheaper, faster than you. it’s not a friendly, paternalistic environment. for every success there are a dozen failures.

i never scammed anyone and always paid my contractors and suppliers in full and on time. i had no debt (but maybe i should have).

i did shop for a good deal and sought to work with people i trusted. it’s very hard to find good trustworthy people. customers and employees are greedier than anyone. CORPORATIONS ALWAYS PAID ME IN FULL AND ON TIME. governments were the worst fucking customers. it is a slow and bureucratic process to sell and to get paid for them and my checks took forever. i ended up exhausted.

Very good and well done on doing what businesses should be doing.
However, my problem here is that whilst you state about how you made sure you paid contractors on time etc In pretty much the same breath defend the practices of previously said corporations. You defend Walmart and their ilk even though their practices are the shittiest of the lot. They may have paid you on time but you've got them paying milk farmers less and less, driving farmers (businesses) to bankruptcy just so you can say "hey honey, look how cheap I got this milk! God I wish I could guzzle the cum of everyone at Walmart and their super cheap prices just to show how much I love them". But hey, "I'm alright jack" right?
This also relates back to Trump who consistently fucked over contractors. He was just doing what he could to make a profit so that's ok, right? Or because it's Trump it's NOT ok? I forget where you stand on it.

being an employee everything is handed to you on a plate. here’s your paycheck, every friday. your taxes are done for you, half of your payroll taxes are paid for you, you’re guaranteed a paycheck as long as you work.

So? If you're an employer you gotta do that shit for employees. Cry me a river.

walmart was open 24h when i needed an emergency supply in the middle of a project, or when i was on the road, and yes i was up at 2am trying to fix shit. apple has always been reliable, did not crash in the middle of the night, cost me money but freed up time. i am glad to buy from them. i was also glad to buy from my local expert because his advice was well worth the extra prices, we had a good relationship, he provided a good value.

Miracle how people managed to cope before 24/7 opening times isn't it? But you're detracting from the argument here.

ignorant hippy talk leads to disaster.

So does putting the economy into the hands of ignorant free marketeers.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

I'd say most people here have a healthy suspicion towards corporations and the world of big finance - especially if they've run or worked for a small business, because they'll have more likely come into direct contact with their ruthlessness. Maybe you never ran into any problems when dealing with these big firms while running your business but I worked for one that went under as a direct consequence of their ruthless practices. It's possible to find corporate business practices deeply problematic without buying into the whole anti-capitalist thing.

what is “ruthless” though?

i have friends who used to work at video stores. a bunch of them, actually, due to my predilections ha ha hahaha.

when netflix came around, they were pissed off! netflix was eating their lunch.

did netflix offer the same amount of expertise and deep knowledge of cinema as your local tarantino?

hell the fuck no.

but overall, netflix’s near infinite selection, easy mail delivery, lack of late fees and other conveniences had, overall, the better offer for the general public.

so the video stores went under.

the ones who did this part-time were sad but understood the market had changed.

the ones who did it full time were incensed! and swore off “predatory ruthless” netflix forever. they took it personally. to this day. they’d go to a redbox but refuse netflix.

me, i’ve had to adjust my business model several times because of changing market conditions. just like i wear different clothes in different weather. can’t expect sunny days always. ruthless weather.

speaking of ruthless—one of the stores that closed noticed that their clerks giving away too many freebies/discounts to their friends had greatly accelerated their demise! that was cold...

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

what is “ruthless” though?

as in delaying the payment of outstanding invoices to a small supplier but giving them the opportunity to accept a smaller settlement, knowing they couldn't afford to wait for the full agreed amount.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by h8kurdt

I've already said what I mean by poor. People living month to month with no ability to having a savings. We also know how the middle class is rapidly getting smaller and smaller.

well then we’re talking about 3 different things so STOP TROLLING.

also i disagree hugely about “the shrinking middle class”. the middle class is growing all around the world and billions of people have been lifted from misery, hunger, famine, thanks to the expansion of trade and markets.

this is something inept governments promised they’d do and never did and created poverty instead.

yesterday on reddit i read the story of some chinese woman who in the days of communism received monthly meat rations of 77 grams.

nowadays the average chinese citizen eats 136 grams per day

i’d rather be served by the market than by some idiotic central planner

Originally Posted by h8kurdt

That's generally what a pension fund does, right? The individual doesn't get to make a choice where the company puts the money though. No trolling going on here. Fact is that shares is something that only the upper classes have to quote from somewhere else "about one-third of families in the lower half of the income scale had stock holdings. In the next 40 percent of the income scale, about 70 percent of households held stocks, while households in the top 10 percent of the income scale had stock ownership rates above 90 percent.". For most people it's a daunting task directly owning their own shares and if they don't have an advisor giving them the right advice. This is why it always baffled me when Trump would go on about how well the stocks were doing. That's nice but for most it doesn't affect them.

this is a jumble of concepts.

yes a pension fund manages investments so that it can pay its contributors.

a lot of working class people are participants in said pension funds

therefore they have a stake in the stock and bond and securities market

why is that so difficult to comprehend and why does it to be conflated with “trump”? what a crock of shit. jeezus fucking christ.

—

now pardon me, i have to go stand at the bread line to receive my rations from local party chairman

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

as in delaying the payment of outstanding invoices to a small supplier but giving them the opportunity to accept a smaller settlement, knowing they couldn't afford to wait for the full agreed amount.

oh... a government entity did that to me once

they hired me to do a bunch of work. i gave them a price. we signed on it.

halfway through it and me still waiting for my initial down payment i get a call from the guy i was working with.

they had run down the budget line for my purchase and could i do it for less.

i said okay i can work for less but i have to do a smaller package. i can’t deliver on the initial thing (the initial thing required me to hire a bunch of contractors)

he protested but i tried to explain that i would lose money

i never heard back and was left holding my dick...

this story is not about corporations though. itks about the challenges a business faces. FROM ALL SIDES.

anyway i really have to go to the bread line now and get my rations from party chairman comrade bernie

[Dr. Eugene Felikson]

Nothing wrong with running a business, and yes it is very difficult. The fact that a man like Jeff Bezos started Amazon by selling books in his garage is commendable.

However, when you consider hoarding the nation's resources... when is enough enough? You reach a certain point as a business where certain things are possible for you which others could never dream of. How exactly is someone supposed to compete with Amazon at this point? Amazon can barely keep up with Amazon Prime without pushing their employees to the bone, and even Wal-Mart can do little more than their best to copy Amazon's every move. Then Amazon finds legal loop holes where they end up paying $0 on their income tax? It's fucked man.

Y'know, I used to identify as a Libertarian. A LaVeyan Satanist Libertarian, "survival of the fittest" blow hard. I would preach for people to innovate and find a way to survive or be left in the dust. I'm older now, and understand that life isn't simply so black, and white. I'm far softer now: there's a lot of grey out there, and I feel like people need help. It's the system itself that's fucked, we've had too much of a good thing for too long. If someone like Bernie is fighting to help the little guy, then I feel we should seize the opportunity. Most of his policies will never fly through but if he can make enough changes to help out those in need, to give students some breathing room, give everyone tax-paid health care, protect our environment: we can re-build. Everything is so tense right now. The nation can use a sense of comfort.

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

this story is not about corporations though.

No, but mine was. You asked what I meant by ruthless which I assumed you meant in reference to my point about ruthless corporate practices, so I gave a real world example of one.

[Dr. Eugene Felikson]

What about when automation takes hold? How are people going to find work then? We need to prepare for that, symbols. People are going to need a way to feed themselves, and provide comfort for their families.

[demonrail666]

I don't know if it'll ever be accepted in the US but I can see the Universal Basic Income idea becoming an inevitability in Europe before very long. Personally I think governments need to stop being squeamish about this and look to introducing some version of it at least as soon as possible.

[GravitySlips]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

I don't know if it'll ever be accepted in the US but I can see the Universal Basic Income idea becoming an inevitability in Europe before very long. Personally I think governments need to stop being squeamish about this and look to introducing some version of it at least as soon as possible.

Finland just trialled a two-year UBI scheme (only for 2000 people though) - not sure what the results of it were yet, but there's a site here for more info:
https://www.kela.fi/web/en/basic-inc...ment-2017-2018

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

No, but mine was. You asked what I meant by ruthless which I assumed you meant in reference to my point about ruthless corporate practices, so I gave a real world example of one.

that is a deadbeat customer not a “corporate practice”

deadbeat customers come in many forms, from internet pirates to people who default on their credit cards and the banks has to “settle”. the orange blob was also a consummate deadbeat. sometimes when a good honest business begins to fail they can’t meet their obligations either. shit happens to everyone.

there is a risk when you lend money to anyone. filling a purchase order is an act of lending. it takes trust. this is where credit ratings come handy—you know who is a credit risk.

a customer with good credit usually will have a running account with a business, even get discounts.

a deadbeat might be required to pay upfront in cash.

a business in the habit of stiffing their suppliers is going to run out of suppliers very fast

these things are part and parcel of doing business. this is why there is loss as well as gain. this is what the average uninformed indoctrinated does not understand—they think that “business” is all gain all the time.

the question of getting paid sooner but less, or later but in full, is the reason why lending risk needs to be factored in. sometimes everyone pays on time and you have “excess profits! shame on greed!”. and other times you’ll be robbed.

this is also why there is a trade in business notes. if you’ve ever considered a “money market” account in the bank, it comes from the trade of, among other thing, short-term business debts as financial instruments.

so... i get that your employer was stiffed by a corporate customer but that is not a feature of “corporate practices”.

[Bytor Peltor]

Two reasons the Bookies are probably correct:

TRUMP gains with Blacks, Hispanics and Women

CANDIDATES Embrace Reparations For Slavery

Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor

Bookies: TRUMP A Heavy Favorite In 2020

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

I don't know if it'll ever be accepted in the US but I can see the Universal Basic Income idea becoming an inevitability in Europe before very long. Personally I think governments need to stop being squeamish about this and look to introducing some version of it at least as soon as possible.

here in the US we have Earned Income Credit.

when you make below a certain treshhold, you get PAID taxes instead of paying them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earn...ome_tax_credit

i think it’s a good anti-misery tool. it’s never gonna buy you all the pleasures in life but it prevents some of the worse scenarios.

the ubi idea might work. read the news the other day the finland results were that it does not encourage more work, but it’s not so bad either. would have to look into again but it remains an interesting proposition.

i’m more interested however in UNIVERSAL BASIC CAPITAL. which rather than pay an income would give everybody a stake in the stock market.

i don’t know how that would work or if people would be easily dispossessed of it the same way indians were swindled out of their land allotments in oklahoma.

but in a post-labor era when we’ll start to be replaced by automation and artificial intelligence, it might be a way forward

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

it does not encourage more work,

That's the point.

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

i’m more interested however in UNIVERSAL BASIC CAPITAL. which rather than pay an income would give everybody a stake in the stock market.

Yeah, possibly the worst idea I've heard since ... I dunno ... ever?

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

That's the point.

no that wasn’t. there were several things being tested:

i’ll be a deadbeat customer and copypaste you this short article:

https://www.economist.com/finance-an...ork-incentives

Finland’s basic-income trial did not much affect work incentives

Among the adherents of universal basic income (ubi) are the Italian government, India’s opposition party and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic congresswoman in America. Boosters argue that a minimum income would be a safety-net for people in precarious jobs—eg, those at risk of being displaced by automation. Others see a way of eliminating complex, even corrupt, social-security bureaucracies.

Naysayers, horrified by the potential cost of ubi, fret that state handouts will put recipients off work. Early results from Finland’s basic-income experiment, released on February 8th, suggest that such fears are overdone, but don’t resolve much else.

Researchers randomly chose 2,000 people on the dole to receive for two years a monthly payment of €560 ($634) instead, whether or not they sought or started work. After a year, recipients were no less likely to be working than those on the dole. On average, both groups worked nearly 50 days a year and earned around €4,250.

Some ubi supporters may be disappointed that the scheme did not increase time worked. Unlike other benefits, which are withdrawn as claimants find work and so tend to discourage them from accepting a job offer, the basic income creates no such disincentive, because it is paid even after claimants take up work. But most proponents do not see employment as ubi’s primary goal. They will be cheered by the fact that the participants reported being happier.

There are limits to the lessons from the experiment. The results only assess its first year. Even the trial’s full two-year duration—a time period settled on because of a lack of resources, and ministerial impatience—may not be enough to observe changes to behaviour, says Minna Ylikännö, a researcher on the project. The scheme was also restricted to the unemployed. Other pilots, such as that funded by y Combinator, a startup accelerator, in America, will also shed light on how low earners might respond if they are paid a basic income. Evidence so far is scant. But that has not stopped Italy, which begins its “citizens’ income” scheme—a variant paying €780 a month to those living below the poverty line—in the spring. True believers need no proof

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

Yeah, possibly the worst idea I've heard since ... I dunno ... ever?

seriously? what’s the basis of your judgment?

here’s some stuff to think about

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse...egalitarianism

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lea...le26122852.ece

i have no position on the matter at this point but it’s worth considering since the purported problem of inequality is not one of income but of wealth

[ilduclo]

 

[ilduclo]

Trimp football pal was paying $70 at the "asian spa"

 

[demonrail666]

UBI can be sold any way, on any principle but the only reason governments are starting to consider it is because they face a social disaster as up-coming generations face a future with less and less real job opportunities. It'll be ushered in gradually using different rationales but the ultimate aim is to effectively normalise unemployment.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

UBI can be sold any way, on any principle but the only reason governments are starting to consider it is because they face a social disaster as up-coming generations face a future with less and less real job opportunities. It'll be ushered in gradually using different rationales but the ultimate aim is to effectively normalise unemployment.

the purpose of production is consumption

if we can produce without employment—why not?

we’d get to retire at birth....

we’re all naturally rent seekers. as long as we don’t cheat or steal or manipulate others for it... i’ll take it