Bitch the Rich — Continued
Filed Under Bullshit, Finance | Leave a Comment
(Illustration found here).
The Great American Dream has always been just that, a dream — a vapor made solid and real by fantasy fueled by a desire to be well-to-do, or rich.
Historian James Truslow Adams is credited with coining and embellishing the phrase, ‘American Dream,’ and it’s been a most-vital part of US folklore — it drives everybody to go out and accomplish!
Adams defined the term as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement…It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”
He wrote that tripe in the mid 1930s, when dreamy-naivety was in full bloom in the face of the daily grind of the Great Depression — nowadays we all know Adams was full of shit.
Mitt Romney knows as he blubbered out the GOP reality on NBC‘s Today show yesterday:
You know, I think it’s about envy.
I think it’s about class warfare.
When you have a President encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 per cent versus one percent — and those people who have been most successful will be in the one per cent — you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God.
The American people, I believe in the final analysis, will reject it.(Matt Lauer ‘Today’ host — “Yeah but envy? Are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as “envy,” though?”)
I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like.
But the president has made it part of his campaign rally.
Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street.
It’s a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach and I think it will fail.
Yeah, that’s it, we’re all envious of the fat cats and we really don’t have ‘quiet rooms.’
And according to a new Pew Research poll, also out yesterday, that there is a growing conflict between rich and poor in the US — 66 percent say there’s “very strong,” or “strong,” strife between these two classes based on cash.
Not only have perceptions of class conflict grown more prevalent; so, too, has the belief that these disputes are intense.
According to the new survey, three-in-ten Americans (30 percent) say there are “very strong conflicts” between poor people and rich people.
That is double the proportion that offered a similar view in July 2009 and the largest share expressing this opinion since the question was first asked in 1987.
This whole business didn’t happen overnight, either.
Via Raw Story: A study released in November 2011 found that the rich and poor have grown more isolated from each other over the past 40 years. In 2007, nearly a third of American families — 31 percent — lived in either an affluent neighborhood or a mainly low-income one, up from just 15 percent in 1970, according to the study conducted by Stanford University, and released in partnership with the Russell Sage Foundation and Brown University.
The gap is not just a store for the semi-rich, but a wide divide.
And that hatful of GOP shitheads running for president will keep the divide dividing.
According to an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice (via Think Progress): The share of tax cuts going to the richest one percent of Americans under these plans would range from over a third to almost half. The average tax cuts received by the richest one percent would be up to 270 times as large as the average tax cut received by middle-income Americans.
Patrons of the liquor store where I work (and manage) are mostly way-down on the 99 percent side of the economic poll, pulling out coins to pay for smokes and beer.
In the last few months, there appears an increase in a payment oddity — people are using both credit/debit card and cash to pay for shit on the same transaction, piling up change and then using an ATM card to cover the remainder.
Money at the bottom rungs ain’t easy to come in, but way-easy to go out.
And the whole shebang is getting stressful.
From the LA Times:
On a scale of 1 to 10, residents of eight U.S. metropolitan areas told psychologists they rated their level of stress as 5.2, according to survey results released Wednesday.
That may not sound so terrible — except that these Americans also said their ideal level of stress would be around 3.6.
“Have we reached the point of becoming a chronically stressed nation?” said Michael Ritz, a clinical psychologist in Irvine who serves as the public education coordinator for the California Psychological Assn.
“The data might suggest we’ve reached that point where it just [becomes] a fact of life.”
Or as they say: The ‘new normal.”
(Illustration found here).
“It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it” — George Carlin.
Bitch the Rich
Filed Under Bullshit, Economy, Finance | Leave a Comment
No big deal — Mitt Romney wins the New Hampshire primary and the GOP whore-wagon grinds on to South Carolina, where the pack gathers for a nit-picking contest there on Jan. 21.
The only applaudable event last night was the bottom finish for a couple of dick-Rick-bottom-feeders — Santorum and Perry — and maybe now them smiles will be slapped off their collective faces.
Good riddance to a pile of bad trash.
Way-rich trash, however: Reportedly, Romney spent $17 million since January a year ago to try and win the White House — no matter how one looks at it, that’s a shitload of cash.
And although the 99 percent work their asses off, the 1 percent has all the cash, and has it here in the good-old-most-equal US of A.
(Illustration found here).
Wealth is way unequal and US peoples, even the lowest of the low, are rich compared to the rest of the spinning globe.
From CNNMoney:
So where do these lucky rich people live? As of 2005 — the most recent data available — about half of them, or 29 million lived in the United States, according to calculations by World Bank economist Branko Milanovic in his book “The Haves and the Have-Nots”.
…
“It doesn’t seem right to define as middle class, people who would be on food stamps in the United States,” Milanovic said.
…
The true global middle class, falls far short of owning a home, having a car in a driveway, saving for retirement and sending their kids to college.
In fact, people at the world’s true middle — as defined by median income — live on just $1,225 a year. (And, yes, Milanovic’s numbers are adjusted to account for different costs of living across the globe.)
In the grand scheme of things, even the poorest 5 percent of Americans are better off financially than two thirds of the entire world.
In the US, though, poverty is way-more closer to home: A record 15.4 million suburban residents lived below the poverty line last year, up 11.5% from the year before, according to a Brookings Institution analysis of Census data released Thursday. That’s one-third of the nation’s poor.
And the problem will never go away due to the nasty fact the US is one of the most-unequal countries in the world — the rich play at politics: Income inequality is more severe in the U.S. than it is in nearly all of West Africa, North Africa, Europe, and Asia. We’re on par with some of the world’s most troubled countries, and not far from the perpetual conflict zones of Latin American and Sub-Saharan Africa. Our income gap is also getting worse, having widened both in absolute and relative terms since the 1980s. It’s not a problem that the “Buffett rule” would solve on its own, but at least the U.S. political system is starting to acknowledge how serious things have become.
And the rich assholes elected to national office, what do they do?
Make life harder for the rest of us dumb-asses: Due to Congressional inaction during last month’s tax deliberations, the new year ushered in a tax increase to public transit riders. Currently, commuters who use public transit, commuter buses and van pools may see their annual commuting costs increase by more than $550 based on a bias in the tax code that benefits driving over taking public transit. In addition, the failure to extend the benefit has resulted in a tax liability increase for companies offering the benefit.
And I’d like to close with this from the comments section of the semi-daily, must-read Drumbeat (@ The Oil Drum) that eloquently displays just how f*cked we all are:
The human brain, encased in bone and thoroughly nourished with blood, is the interpreter between itself and all else.
Images and sensations go in and slowly an analog world is built, and possibly with some effort an intellect is born.
The human system cannot truly be separated from its environment from where it derives its building blocks and returns its waste.
It is a product of the environment, the flow of energy and matter.
We have not evolved a tongue that can taste the cesium, strontium, lead and mercury in the air and water, nor olfaction that can sense the CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
Instead we have designed and created technological sensors that can extend our perception.
Unfortunately the results these sensors display are not wired into our limbic systems so as to elicit a panicked response.
We have alarming data, but the alarms are not sounding, we do nothing, because we have no motivation.
There is no pain, no primate fear-invoking stimuli like growling predators, snakes, spiders, and so on.
So we sit and slowly euthanize ourselves and our children in front of our faux reality televisions.
As long as there are no shocks that arouse our evolved fear circuits our civilization will slip quietly into a coma, helped along by little dribbles of propagandist’s morphine, just enough to blunt any perception of our near terminal situation.
So whatever happens in South Carolina won’t make much difference.
Tea Cup Turbulence
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Environment, Finance, Weather | Leave a Comment
Climate change is corrupting Bangladesh tea — the low-lying nation has a great tea growing industry, but the warming temperatures with less rain not only stumps growth, but can alter the flavor.
From Aljazeera English and a tea harvester:
“There is less clouds in the sky than before. Too much sun, which isn’t good for the plants, a lot less rain. How do you expect the plants to grow?”
…
Hundreds of thousands of people depend on the tea sector, but if climate change is responsible for the hotter weather being experienced now, it is just a matter of time before these plantations perhaps disappear altogether.
(Illustration found here).
Although Bangladesh tea picture is rosy right now — The average price of Bangladeshi tea rose 2.1 percent to 159.28 taka ($1.96) per kg from the previous sale, said an official at the National Brokers Limited, the country’s largest tea broking firm — the future isn’t so bright.
A warming world will make dust of leaves and plants.
Via Climate Progress:
The results of studies that try to quantify the effects of climate change on biodiversity loss — which include damage to the micro scale level of subspecies and genetic variation — are perhaps most shocking.
When, however, you focus on the response to climate change at the macro level, the ecosystem level, you get a better understanding of what is one of the major drivers of that biodiversity loss: forced migrations.
And even here, the numbers may be larger than one would expect, as a new assessment by NASA and Caltech published in the journal Climatic Change shows that by 2100 some 40 percent of “major ecological community types” — that is biomes like forest, grassland, tundra — will have switched to a different such state.
According to the same study most of the land on Earth that is not currently desert or under an icecap will undergo at least a 30 percent change in vegetation cover.
Based on IPCC temperature projections for 2100 [which are probably on the conservative side] of 2-4 degrees Celsius warming scientists of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology ran special computer models to calculate the most probable ecosystem responses across the planet.
This average temperature rise is of similar magnitude to the warming that occurred between the Last Glacial Maximum and the onset of the (milder) Holocene — with the big exception that the current warming is happening about 100 times faster — and for ecology that makes a huge difference, the authors stress.
Acceleration of the process is the key.
And not only has the world kicked the climate change can-of-worms on down the dusty road (via 2020), but has failed to even fund the ‘normal’ disasters, making the planet “dangerously unprepared” for future crises.
Earlier this month, the American Geophysical Union at its annual meeting in San Francisco painted a cruel picture of the can of worms.
The problem is bigger, faster and shitty-er.
Via Climate Science:
Four years ago scientists thought the Arctic would not be ice-free in summer before 2100.
Two years ago, the estimate was 2060.
This year, scientists say the ice could be gone by 2030, possibly even 2020.
As Arctic ice melts and temperatures rise, vast stores of methane frozen under the Arctic Ocean are starting to thaw and vent to the atmosphere.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, 20 to 56 times as powerful as carbon dioxide.
Researchers had seen small plumes.
But a recent survey showed, to their shock, large areas of the ocean pocked with continuous, powerful plumes stretching a half-mile or more across.
In the Andes, conventional wisdom held that residents had 20 years to 40 years to find a replacement for the dwindling glaciers serving as key dry-season water reservoirs.
That time is up, reported Michel Baraër, a researcher at McGill University in Montreal.
The era of “peak water” is past, he said, and hundreds of thousands of people living downstream face an immediate future of diminished and more variable flows.
…
“The planet is going through incredible change,” said Jonathan Foley, director of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment.
“Through rapid uses of the environment, we are pushing our planet in extreme ways.”
…
“We are now on a very different planet than anyone has ever seen before,” Foley said.
“All of our predictions are going to be wrong.
We are going to be very, very surprised.”
Of course, not everybody — some can see the future in the tea leaves.
‘I am a fat cat, I’m not ashamed,’
Filed Under Bullshit, Economy, Finance, Work | 1 Comment
(Illustration found here).
In one of the most ironic and laughingly insulting remarks of the political year came yesterday from US Speaker of the House John ‘The Boner’ Boehner: “We’re here. We’re ready to work,” Boehner told reporters on Capitol Hill. “We can resolve these differences … and give the American people a real Christmas present.”
A Boner aide chirped that the GOPers were elected to change the way Washington does business, but instead should have said, ‘giving the business.’
The GOP has been stalling a tax cut for 160 million Americans, as well as extended emergency federal unemployment benefits and the so-called “doc fix,” a delay in significant scheduled pay cuts to Medicare physicians, both of which expire at the end of this month.
Republicans cower the rich, and lie about the poor.
And those rich have their panties in a bind.
In an eye-opening post at Bloomberg, some shit from the rich (h/t The Big Picture):
If successful businesspeople don’t go public to share their stories and talk about their troubles, “they deserve what they’re going to get,” said Marcus, 82, a founding member of Job Creators Alliance, a Dallas-based nonprofit that develops talking points and op-ed pieces aimed at “shaping the national agenda,” according to the group’s website.
He said he isn’t worried that speaking out might make him a target of protesters.
“Who gives a crap about some imbecile?” Marcus said. “Are you kidding me?”
…
The top 1 percent of taxpayers in the U.S. made at least $343,927 in 2009, the last year data is available, according to the Internal Revenue Service.
While average household income increased 62 percent from 1979 through 2007, the top 1 percent’s more than tripled, an October Congressional Budget Office report showed.
As a result, the U.S. had greater income inequality in 2007 than China or Iran, according to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook.
…
Two out of three Americans support raising taxes on households with incomes of at least $250,000, according to a Bloomberg-Washington Post national poll conducted in October.
…
Tom Golisano, billionaire founder of payroll processer Paychex Inc. (PAYX) and a former New York gubernatorial candidate, said in an interview this month that while there are examples of excess, it’s “ridiculous” to blame everyone who is rich.
“If I hear a politician use the term ‘paying your fair share’ one more time, I’m going to vomit,” said Golisano, who turned 70 last month, celebrating the birthday with girlfriend Monica Seles, the former tennis star who won nine Grand Slam singles titles.
Ken Langone, 76, another Home Depot co-founder and chairman of the NYU Langone Medical Center, said he isn’t embarrassed by his success.
“I am a fat cat, I’m not ashamed,” he said last week in a telephone interview from a dressing room in his Upper East Side home.
“If you mean by fat cat that I’ve succeeded, yeah, then I’m a fat cat.
I stand guilty of being a fat cat.”
…
Cooperman, 68, said in an interview that he can’t walk through the dining room of St. Andrews Country Club in Boca Raton, Florida, without being thanked for speaking up.
At least four people expressed their gratitude on Dec. 5 while he was eating an egg-white omelet, he said.
“You’ll get more out of me,” the billionaire said, “if you treat me with respect.”
And one wonders why the US is in such shit-shape.
Oil Spoils the Bright
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Economy, Environment, Finance | 2 Comments
A record — US peoples spent $448 billion on gasoline since the beginning of this year, $100 billion more than 2010, which in turn, puts OPEC on pace to top $1 trillion in net oil exports for the first time, or 29 percent more than last year.
Ain’t that some shit.
Despite the surge, pump prices up here in northern California remained the same — I put $20 worth of gas in the Jeep on Saturday with the cost at $3.89 a gallon for regular, the same as the last time, though, that’s still above the state average of $3.61 a gallon, 27 cents a gallon higher than the 2007 record and 36.9 cents higher than last year.
Why the 20 cents difference, I don’t know.
The national average this past weekend was $3.29, still 31.8 cents higher than last year.
(Illustration found here).
A positive report on the growing confidence among U.S. consumers — at a six-month high — is leading an increase in crude oil prices, which will eventually fuel an increase at the pump.
Oil prices did have a slight hike — from liveoilprices: ICE Brent crude oil futures for January 2012 delivery ended the week’s trading session at $108.88 a barrel on the ICE Futures Exchange, or 0.7 percent higher on the day. Brent oil futures closed last week’s session (Friday 2nd December) at $110.10 a barrel.
And WTI: US Light crude oil futures for January 2012 delivery was trading at $98.66 a barrel, 08.40 GMT this morning in electronic trading on the NYMEX.
And so it goes.
Despite US peoples driving less, down 1 percent since February, oil is up, creating a kind of contradictory situation, according to the Wall Street Journal, of dropping demand vs rising oil prices.
U.S. gasoline demand has dropped to a 12-year low, yet consumers are paying the highest-ever prices for this time of year.
The reason: Rising global oil prices are in the driver’s seat.
The paradox isn’t limited to the gasoline pump. Home-heating oil users will see record-high bills, despite using less fuel, according to an Energy Information Administration forecast.
Diesel fuel prices are up 25 percent from a year earlier at record November levels, fueled by a powerful one-two punch of surging demand both in the U.S. and abroad, the EIA and analysts added.
…
The stuttering U.S. economic recovery, high unemployment and lofty gasoline prices all are cutting deeply into demand for the most widely used petroleum product in the world’s biggest oil consumer.
Gasoline demand in the last four weeks is down 500,000 barrels a day from a year earlier, EIA data show.
…
All the factors seem to be tilted toward those who are selling oil products.
“Everything we’re talking about is good for the oil companies, but not so good for the consumers,” said analyst Dominick Chirichella at the Energy Management Institute.
That ugly 1 percent again.
And just five, short years ago — CNN in November 2006: The Nov. 17 Lundberg Survey of about 5,000 gas stations across the country showed the average price of a gallon of self-serve regular gas was $2.23, a penny lower than the same week a year ago, publisher Trilby Lundberg told CNN. Gas prices had fallen 84 cents in the previous 12 weeks, Lundberg said. The previous survey, taken on Nov. 3, showed the average at $2.18, she said.
Back then, the future was so freakin’ bright, we all had to wear shades — since then…
(Illustration found here).
Have a more-than-mundane Monday.