Originally posted by Phil1 Make 3% in dollars and have the value, aka buying power slip 9% isn't moving forward and the happy facers needs less time on the bong. So many have not come close to recovering from 401K and real estate losses. It will be years if at all.
You can thank the government for this.
The last one with a real job please turn out the light.
Not sure I follow - which government and in what way do I thank them, for what?
Do I thank the Republican Tax Cutter Defecit Spenders, or the Democrat Socialist Redistribunist Defecit Spenders?
I'm inclined to thank the Big Businessmen who have succeeded, beyond their dreams, in reframing the political discussion to their terms. Though middle and upper management still is the old command n control game, by and large these days getting things done is a matter of coordinating a variety of vendors rather than employees, in a large corporation. This explicitly squeezes out the old middle income worker from Big Business job growth (and salary increase).
Conservatives, by their nature, find it difficult to see and understand this change in how corporate America works. Therefore, while their intentions may be in the right place, they are fighting for a version of reality from 30 years ago, and their politics are overly influenced by the interests of the big businessmen. And again, constitutionally, this would be difficult for a conservative to see.
Liberals, by their nature, find it difficult to see the momentum or conservatism of corporate life - the amount of change possible via legistlation is over estimated by the typical liberal. Ironically, it's the liberal who might be able to see what big business is doing - as above - but don't have the tools to have a huge effect, and also emotionally tend to lose a big chunk of Americans via this 'foreign, elitist' understanding of what's going on with business.
Although, everyone seems to agree that big business has too much influence, only everyone agrees this influence is mainly warping everyone else's views. And the simplistic, vote em all out and put in all new people, strategy is a) unreasonable because unachievable b) unlikely to really change how things are run for the better - more likely, things will go towards worse, as corporate influence grows.
Throwing aside ideology and partisanship for a moment, if one really listens to what Obama says, one sees he is a centrist, and is willing to take on the problems in a way that pain and gain are shared across all participants. The adverserial method of politics - we all just shout out our own point of view and defend our own interests - in theory results in some form of compromise or balance of interests in government (as it should result in justice done in the courts). Thus the amount of screaming by special interests is a good thing, it means they are feeling the threat - only thing, we shouldn't be so dumb as to give in to whoever has the most bucks to spend on the most emotional advertising.