It was all about Wall Street all along. Apparently, this whole theater of the absurd
was because of the effect going over the so-called fiscal cliff would have on the markets. It really has nothing to do with the deficit, the debt ceiling, poor people and seniors sucking up more than they deserve, too many taxes on the privileged, oh well, yeah a little bit about that. It was how it was going to affect the markets. Imagine if they had pulled off the reduction of taxes for the rich, the chained cpi for seniors on Social Security and the other fingers in the pot maneuvers those Repukes tried. The futures market would have boomed among all the speculation that being able to dip into that last pot of money left, the social programs backed by separate funds from separate taxes just for them, would be available to them. They have already raided the Treasury until there is nothing left, but there is still money to be gotten out there in people's health care and pension money.
This is what the markets would react to. Sure if they pass the bill in the House, it will save the markets somewhat. Of course that's all they cared about. This is why our side was even willing to put our Social Security and Medicare on the auction block, which has zero to do with the deficit. They are all beholden to Wall Street. Damn, it's time to take those corporate markets down brick by brick and in the future to elect law makers who don't have corporate logos tatooed all over them.
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giving 2% now? Wonder how people feel about a meager social security check and $400 from their pension, paid from what they earned for 28 years? Or the 1/3 of the millions of people on SS at 65, worse off yet with no other income. Don't see how or why their outlook intersects with Mi$$ RobMe and others with a $245,000 a week income, or that even in a month or a year.
Those people with stock holdings are a whole 'nother economy, and the rest don't live on their tailings. The rest live on what the people who in fact have most of the wealth today didn't manage to steal. Yet. I say that because the majority of the people with the assets didn't earn them, they took them from those who earned them.
I am guessing the market is not nearly as important as one might think to 47 million on food stamps, the 50,000 families yanked out of their homes this month, the over 10 million families we euphemistically call "working poor". Their fate might seem dependent on people with stock holdings and their earnings, but it's not. That's a set of policy choices made by others, mostly corporations who direct the government to do their bidding, to create laws that funnel money to them.
Or maybe we have different meanings of "our"
makes arrogant and condescending assumptions about people who don't have money.
The OP said "It was all about Wall Street all along" and there are millions of victims of those corrupt, vicious, thieving assholes, for whom the market doesn't mean shit.
Tens of millions of aged people have no retirement other than SS. That's a fact, published every month on the SS web site. 1 in 3 seniors with no other income. Getting worse, too. Part of it comes from the dozens of junk bond firms they now call private equity and others who have seen the American worker as nothing more than a means of generating fees. But the profit from their labor wasn't enough, so now they are coming after their very lives.
We graduated 1.75 million college students last year, and now slightly less than 50% say they can't even get a job. No job, no retirement. The kids who have bonds that are building value belong to Mi$4 RobMe and a few thousands of others. All of the rest share a meager portion of the remainder, virtually meaningless amounts for over 100 million other people.
From your post -
"If you can't afford to save for your retirement, as many young people can't, then you may not realize the importance of it."
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What the fuck did you just say? I hear this arrogant and condescending bullshit from others, but usually the level of educational attainment here prevents it. Guess not today. Damn ignorant of the facts. Do you get your news from planet Earth, or does being mean-spirited just comes naturally?
It's a little late in the year, but here's hint: If a clock sounds and you start hearing chains, just go along peacefully. Even if he does think your name is Ebeneezer.
According to the last BLS survey for November, 26 million people say they need work. The Jolts survey for the quarter says there are 3.4 million jobs available.
How do you propose those for whom there are no jobs to pay their mortgage, feed the children, pay for schooling save money, AND save for retirement?
You REALLY think they don't understand a WHOLE LOT BETTER THAN YOU what is important? You really think it doesn't stare them in the face every morning, in those eyes?
85% of the kids in EVERY school in the system over here on the West side of the city qualifies for free or reduced price meals. That means they live at less than 200% of poverty. 85% of the families in an 8 square mile neighborhood of a modern American city don't even make the median income for a family. Right across the border is Boise, where 50% of ALL families in the WHOLE school system make so little they qualify for free or reduced price food. These aren't big cities where there is 20%or worse unemployment for black folk. These are mostly WHITE neighborhoods, the people who are supposed to be doing better. But many cities are just as bad, scores upon scores of millions of households.
You suggest that people who can't even get sufficient food should have to depend on saving into a retirement plan and if they don't, in your view, it's because they DON'T UNDERSTAND THE IMPORTANCE OF IT? Seriously?
Here's a picture of the job recovery of late -
Millions upon millions of jobs disappeared, and the ones that popped up to replace them pay half or less than the old ones.
How do you propose they save money on that? And for those that do have 401k's, (converted from pensions so as to steal fees/$/money from people's investments and put the burden on the worker, leaving the employer free to steal from their labor), would you please explain the utility of banks paying rating agencies fees to designate the highest tranches of a an MBS as AAA, shuffle the bottom tranches and then designate the top 5th of those homely pieces of shitpaper as AAA? Many pensions are REQUIRED to buy AAA debt, (safe as Uncle Sam, eh?). And when those assets went South, who do you think was on the hook? To begin to make that right (because we are still trying to ease out of it, you know) has cost tens of millions of people the opportunity that would have given them a job, food, education, maybe even retirement. So we rewarded the people that screwed us, who stole the money by abrogating their lending standards for profit, here...
that was 2009.Think of the $BILLIONS of dollars in bonuses at all the largest banks and payoffs to investors outside the country. Not salaries, but bonuses, payoffs for bringing poverty and tragedy to tens of millions of Americans, money that might have been available for retirement had not their friends in government seen fit to reward them. $26 trillion was pledged.How much was pledged to to the over 10 million families called "working poor", or to the increasing numbers of people on food stamps?
Because of their criminal actions, and those of the politicians that do their bidding, we continue to yank families out of their homes to pay for their thievery, 50,000 this month while we file another 100,000 foreclosures. At the same time we are paying $40 billion a month to the wealthy so their mortgage- backed bonds don't lose value.
Where do you propose the over 5 million families that have been thrown out over the past few years save? Banks want you to have an address. And money.
Here ya go, partial excerpts from a report entitled "The Recession's Ongoing Impact on Children"
Economic conditions for children today are similar to those of a year ago—and much worse than they were in 2007. Millions of families with children have not yet regained ground lost during the recession....
...
An estimated 6.3 million children under the age of 18 are living in families with an unemployed parent during an average month of 2012, based on data through the first nine months of the year. While slightly below the 7 million figure for last year, this is still much higher than five years ago, before the recession. Further, 2.8 million of these children are living with a parent who has been looking for work for six months or longer.
...
More than one in seven Americans, or 46.4 million people, are now receiving food stamps (called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP benefits), 20.2 million more than in the first half of 2007.
...
More than 16 million children were poor in 2011, representing a child poverty rate of 22.5 percent, according to data from the American Community Survey. Using state-specific data on unemployment rates and SNAP caseloads, the authors predict that child poverty will remain at a similar level in 2012. In other words, more than one in five children are growing up in families with very low incomes (less than $18,000 for a family of three in 2011).
You want to know who really gives a rat's ass about the money in the market? It's the people with most of the money...
The folks on and below that median $50K line have nearly nothing of the universe of assets, stocks and bonds. over 87% of ALL wealth is held by the people above that, leaving a couple hundred million people to share in the crumbs that are left.
What happens in the "market" for these people is often nothing more than a measure by which they have been screwed.
Go find someone else to tell your story to. I gotta go get the taste out of my mouth.
on ignore and have been for a few years now, so I am in good company
The Graven Image on The Altar of the Church of Free Markets
When this New God demands a Sacrifice,
his Temple Acolytes rush to perform their duties.
[/font]
All Hail the Invisible Hand.
The Invisible Hand will Save us All!
Sorry, Virginia,
but there IS no such thing as "Free Markets".
There is no such thing as "Free Trade",
and there is no Giant Invisible Hand.
The RICH made that shit up
to get MORE MONEY for themselves.
They used smooth talking Con Men to sell it to gullible Americans.
