New York City

[Alexis Jacobi]

You guys are completely out of touch with reality.

The majority of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

Here you are very wrong. Not only am I aware of working-class America’s struggles, I am daily in contact with people and sectors of the population here (S. America) that are in extremely more difficult circumstances.

The cure? Developing an economy. Getting the knowledge to advance. Thinking in different terms. Not expecting others to provide it.

I do not in any way deny the difficulties in the American present, but the advocacy for giving power to government bureaucracy is a bad choice.

[phyllo]

You guys are completely out of touch with reality.

The majority of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

Here you are very wrong. Not only am I aware of working-class America’s struggles, I am daily in contact with people and sectors of the population here (S. America) that are in extremely more difficult circumstances.

The cure? Developing an economy. Getting the knowledge to advance. Thinking in different terms. Not expecting others to provide it.

I do not in any way deny the difficulties in the American present, but the advocacy for giving power to government bureaucracy is a bad choice.

Americans need help with their healthcare costs today, not 50 years from now.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I just passed up an easy $2,300 deck and pergola because the guy pissed me off. Upper-class Indian whose family has made a fortune off those with bad karma who are obligated to be peasants so they can pay their karmic debt.

Well, you did him no harm and you fucked yourself out of a lucrative project. I have a contact who came with limited funds but tons of ambition and will who started with one franchised mailing store … and now has ten.

Americans, sadly, have become weak-willed. They do not understand what “opportunity” means. They will not make the sacrifices to get ahead. And you have to sacrifice a good deal.

One can clearly see that the gentleman and I were sworn enemies divided by party lines. My goal is to reappropriate his undeserved wealth and his goal is to obtain more of it.

Stupid attitude, if you ask me. It would be similar to setting up a Jewish neighbor to be your “sworn enemy” because he worked for 100 times the wealth you did. Better to read a book on wealth-development and set to work. You Promethean can certainly do it.

The man merely takes advantage of what was sitting there on the table.

[promethean75]

No, it's even worse. They aren't living check to check... they're actually living check to credit card to check. So not only do they not have enough money for anything, even after working 40 hrs a week, but they are borrowing on top of that.

Remember how the old landlord factory owners would purposely pay the worker's a low wage so they couldn't afford the rent he charged them, making them need to work longer hours? That doesn't work as well nowadays because of credit cards. What happened was a bigger capitalist found an opportunity to take advantage of all the broke workers by loaning them money to pay the smaller capitalist his rent or for his car that cost thirty thousand dollars and took two days to build, or for his insurance that he's pays for monthly but has never once needed, etc. All these are opportunities for bigger capitalists. The small ones make the kill, and then the big ones move in to get some of the meat.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Americans need help with their healthcare costs today, not 50 years from now.

I do not deny this. And I am aware that 90% of Americans have health issues because they did not take diet, exercise and mental health seriously enough.

These problems tend to compound. Defining what they are is important.

[phyllo]

Americans need help with their healthcare costs today, not 50 years from now.

I do not deny this. And I am aware that 90% of Americans have health issues because they did not take diet, exercise and mental health seriously enough.

These problems tend to compound. Defining what they are is important.

Sure, blame the sick and poor for being sick and poor.

Are you going to advertise your Diet and Exercise Program now?

[Alexis Jacobi]

No, it's even worse. They aren't living check to check... they're actually living check to credit card to check. So not only do they not have enough money for anything, even after working 40 hrs a week, but they are borrowing on top of that.

And I propose to you that when disadvantaged foreigners enter our society they STILL recognize opportunities that do not exist where they came from, and they do not squander the opportunities they see in front of them.

You on the other hand invest in resentment and jealousy. It cones across in everything you write.

Your ideas fuck you over. I would suggest that you stop investing in them. And sign up for The 42-Week Email Course and consider my Matzo Ball Power Diet!

[Alexis Jacobi]

Sure, blame the sick and poor for being sick and poor.

Are you going to advertise your Diet and Exercise Program now?

Yes! See my latest.

Actually what I am “going to do” is present realistic plans about how things can get better.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Sure, blame the sick and poor for being sick and poor.

Are you going to advertise your Diet and Exercise Program now?

I live in a culture of people who are widely “sick and poor”. Their diets are bad, though they have access to healthy produce, and they remain in poverty because they have not been taught how to build wealth.

If you want to be realistic you have to teach people how to turn things around.

Your attitude will do nothing. My attitude will do everything. Your attitude is part of the problem, mine a route to solving it.

Did you not read Subsection 4 and 5 of my Third Book?!?

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU PEOPLE!?!

[phyllo]

Sure, blame the sick and poor for being sick and poor.

Are you going to advertise your Diet and Exercise Program now?

I live in a culture of people who are widely “sick and poor”. Their diets are bad, though they have access to healthy produce, and they remain in poverty because they have not been taught how to build wealth.

If you want to be realistic you have to teach people how to turn things around.

Your attitude will do nothing. My attitude will do everything. Your attitude is part of the problem, mine a route to solving it.

Did you not read Subsection 4 and 5 of my Third Book?!?

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU PEOPLE!?!

Your attitude will help nobody now.

Even if the promotion of better diet, exercise, financial management are positive in the long run, it's essential to solve the problems that people are facing today and tomorrow.

Let's look at the ACA (The Affordable Care Act).

Trump and the GOP have been trying to get rid of it since at least 2015.

Do they have an alternate? No.

Americans' heath insurance premiums are going to go up.

Some Americans will be forced to drop their insurance.

Any solutions today or tomorrow? NO

[promethean75]

"Well, you did him no harm and you fucked yourself out of a lucrative project"

Who needs lucrative projects? Really, it was the county codes that did it. I refuse to put anchor bolts in my pier footings. They're a big pain in the ass and totally unnecessary unless you're building the deck on the San Andreas faultline. And neither will i make my footer holes EXACTLY 16x16x16. I'm gonna dig a fuckin hole about a foot and a half deep, drop the post in there and pour two bags of crete in it. And guess what? That post isn't going to move for a hundred years.

"Americans, sadly, have become weak-willed. They do not understand what “opportunity” means. They will not make the sacrifices to get ahead. And you have to sacrifice a good deal."

I feel like I'm in a 1950s suburban high school social studies class listening to a conservative guest speaker pitch that american dream nonsense.

Anyway, why must one sacrifice to be successful? I mean, a guy just wants an honest job. He doesn't need a brass band. You make the mission to be happy in america like a scene from Alien where a bunch of obnoxious marines are slapping each other, trying to get all psyched up before they enter the old ship and walk into certain death. It's just a job, dude. You're reading too much Ayn Rand, i dunno. You're like one of those 1830s railroad tycoons. He's gotten a whole set of staff, like twenty people, and he's out in the middle of a field standing beside a slightly built Francis wearing what looks like a field and stream fishing vest and sat at a small wooden fold-out table. One this table is a stack of maps and blueprints, a typewriter, a bottle of champagne, and a surveyor's kit.

"Can't you see it, Francis? From horizon to horizon!"

"Indeed, i can, sir."

He pulls a pair of binoculars from a wrinkled leather expedition sack and begins his dictation without warning Francis, who frantically loads paper into the typewriter and tries to catch up. The proposal will be sent to the partners in the morning. Behind them all twenty of his staff just stand there not sure what to do.

Do we want to fly to the moon and make micro chips and cure cancer? Yes. But to do this, we all need not make a mad dash to be the first at the bank and then the business license office. We don't have to race, bro. We can just go there together.

[Walker]

Do they have an alternate? No.

*

Trump said get rid of Obamacare and give the money back to the people so they can provide their own healthcare for themselves.

[promethean75]

The bad news is we may already be too overdramatized. That's a term i invented to describe the phenomena of how people become acclimated to disfunctional societies for so long that through psychic epidemeological conditioning, they evolve to a point of needing to be stressed out busy-bodies to feel normal and be happy. So, even if you did create a relatively utopian super futuristic marxist world economy, everybody wouldn't take to it too well because it would make too much sense and wouldn't be stressful, full of intrigue and scandal, split up into all manner of warring social factions and subcultures, and on the verge of collapse every thirty minutes.

[Immanuel Can]

He thinks socialism is communism.

Actually, Communism is utopian Socialism. So it's one sub-variety of the larger toxicity, but not the only version.

As I would suggest, the chief distinction between the two is that in Communism, the government is supposed (allegedly) to eventually give up all its power and "wither away," voluntarily and spontaneously, resulting in a worker's utopia. But in Socialisms, the government becomes the totality, nobody has freedoms, and the government never yields its power to the proles. It rules perpetually and completely.

There are other distinctions, but this is primary. For Communism, Socialism is a stage...a big one, but not the final one. But for the various Socialisms, such as "Democratic" Socialism, Maoism or Nazism, the State never yields its total control to anybody. It just takes over more and more areas of life, just as the new mayor has said..."nothing to big, nothing too small" for the government to control.

This is what Gary thinks he wants. I can't imagine why he thinks it's going to work out in his favour.

[Gary Childress]

Socialism is NOT totalitarianism.

Wait, don’t fall into the trap of too stark analysis (binary thinking). Take for example what is now being said about the processes of socialism-like impositions in California (my home state).

Socialism (giving power over the government bureaucracy) tends in that direction logically, inevitably. It could be slight or extreme. But the tendency is there.

Why don't you discuss this with Binary Boy. He has the superpower to see everything in black and white.

He thinks socialism is communism.

Well said!