[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

investment and savings are for people who earn more than their expenses. I support a wife and a retired mom, and a house on one salary, and apart from work-mandate Teachers Retirement System of Texas, I have no real savings other than about $1,000 for emergencies.

ok rob, im glad you have mandated teachers systems retirement because that... makes you indirectly a stock owner haaahaaaahaaaa

yep, that’s where your pension is gonna come from: walmart. amazon. exxon... if they get looted... so does your pension.

it’s a very eleborate system of investments as you can see:

https://www.trs.texas.gov/Pages/inve...framework.aspx

[ilduclo]

have 750K in Roths, 250K in regular IRAs

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by h8kurdt

It takes years of unemployment before anything positive can come out of it. Years of lives being ruined due to lack of work. Jeez, guess you loved Thatcher's closing of the mines "ah, sure something will come up. Don't worry about it"

i dont know anything about thatcher, sorry.

as for the unemployment... it was unemployment in the towns that made the stores unprofitable.

if there are no customers, how do you pay your employees?

you pay them to sell nothing?

Originally Posted by h8kurdt

So you don't think that Walmart should have some responsibility to the towns? This is a company who will happily spend years undercutting on their profits just to shut down local stores to have a monopoly. When they get that monopoly and decide "ah, didn't go as well as we thought it would. Shut down and fuck the town in the ass". This is exactly what you said you hated before. Government subsidised companies able to get a monopoly on towns.

Cold man.

the way i see it walmart provided a service to the town and got paid for said service. people chose walmart’s service over the other offers. nobody got marched there at gunpoint.

now if the town offered incentives for walmart, or asked for things in return then maybe something is due? i don’t know what deal they had. there is none mentioned in those articles. you think walmart should keep the stores open at a loss? their returns barely beat a savings account at this stage.

but as long as there are shoppers there will always be someone to supply them.

e.g., ups is my supermarket now. the driver got a union job and makes more money than me. great benefits too. some day robots will make drivers obsolete, so get ready. but today... ups wins. tomorrow, someone else

[ilduclo]

roths are the best way, pay taxes in, not out. So any gains are untaxed. Use dollar cost averaging if you're scairt, otherwise, find a good stock. The ones that worked in the past for me are BAIDU, FB, V, a couple more, right now I have a lot in BABA, it's down 8% from my buy in price, but I think Chinese stocks are about the most promising out there, YMMV

[Dr. Eugene Felikson]

Are you sure you're not a Libertarian, symbols? Haven't been following the thread, just reading here and there

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Dr. Eugene Felikson

Are you sure you're not a Libertarian, symbols? Haven't been following the thread, just reading here and there

maybe only as an allergic reaction to bolsheviks and junk money printers who want to tell you that there is such thing as a free lunch and they’ll deliver it to you next tuesday

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by ilduclo

So any gains are untaxed.

NOT IF SCHUNK AND BERNIE AND AOC HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT THAT

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by Dr. Eugene Felikson

As someone in his late 20s who has a few years work of an employer marched 401k tucked away, could you elaborate on this? Like how do you figure? Being an actual adult is new to me still

Ty rob

401K's and investment retirement plans are all set up to benefit those whit the most salary and with the most knowledge about stock market and investments. Every employee, no matter how uneducated in investment they are, is expected to pick and choose their stocks, bonds, trusts, and various other options to "invest" their retirement money in the stock market. There are no guarantees, and there is no safety net should your investment broker fuck you over.


My mother's 401K retirement fund from 25 years working at a top-notch cardiologist in Houston lost over 50% of it's funds overnight due to the Enron scandal, money she will never get back.


Unless you can afford to put away 15% of your salary, or at least 15,000 a year. If that is the case then the 401K can work very favorably for you, but it is still putting your hard earned retirement money into a gambling pyramid scheme.



It used to be that large corporations and companies would set up trusts that they would feed money into, and which would get invested for safe returns (NOT stock market, more like government bonds and IRA's) so that long-term employees could draw a pension.


This is the way that America became such a mighty industrial powerhouse, making sure employees were taken care of, loyalty was a given because the company cared enough to look after you (after the unions forced the capitalists hands), all backed up by government regulations. This meant more $$ in employees hands, more spending, and more healthy economy. Now? the $$ goes to the top of the pyramid scheme,a nd to shareholders who are looking for return opn investment, and do not care about the actual health of the companies.


Those regulations were gutted by Reagan and instead of safe pension plans, everyone absorbed those funds to use in paying off dividends and latched onto the 401K model.


The rich making the rules work for the rich.


same old story...

[!@#$%!]

the problem with pensions is that they are a guaranteed return and often end up in a deep fucking hole, paying out much more than they take in

e.g. see:brazil

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by h8kurdt

Jeez, guess you loved Thatcher

These last few pages make me think he'd have probably found her a bit too much of a Lefty for his tastes.

[Skuj]

I don't know what is worse....

Defending Trump or defending WalMart....

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Skuj

I don't know what is worse....

Defending Trump or defending WalMart....

i know

i shop at walmart

$35 purchase i get 2 day free shipping

why even drive?

commerce is glorious

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

That argument's fine if you have a viable alternative up and ready to replace it, but without one I think the social benefits of subsidising a dying enterprise are what ultimately stand between communities that are just about barely holding on and the actual disaster of those abandoned mining towns in the north of England or the rust belt in the US.

o man! this got lost in the shuffle im sorry

so... i dont understand this very well

the rails are hugely profitable you say

and the the government is subsidizing unprofitable rail lines to keep them open for whom?

[The Soup Nazi]

From Demand Progress:

Pop quiz: Who said the following?

"The going price for public office has continued to escalate in recent years, further emphasizing the need for truly effective campaign finance reform... Past events have shown how close we are to a 'bought' nation."¹

Did you guess Bernie Sanders? Elizabeth Warren?

In fact, it was Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a column he wrote before he ran for Senate. Mitch McConnell knew then that unlimited money in politics corrupts our government. He knows it now, and he's working hard to continue it. It’s time to call out his hypocrisy and push our lawmakers to pass real campaign-finance reform.

Demand Progress has launched a counteroffensive to spread the word about H.R.1, the Democrats' ethics and election-reform bill. Click here to donate and send a loud and clear message to politicians: Pass this bill, or pay the political price.

When Sen. McConnell penned his op-ed in 1973, he was chair of the Republican Party in his county in Kentucky. In the column, he called money in politics a "cancer," and said exorbitant spending on elections shows that "the lack of an overall limit on spending is an open invitation for special interests."²

But then he ran for Senate and did a total about-face, not only taking advantage of the system, but also using his position to kill any attempt at campaign-finance reform. He once wrote that he never would have won his Senate seat if there had been limits on what he could raise and spend.

Sen. McConnell knows that if dark money and corporate Super PACs were outlawed, he'd be forced to win over the people of Kentucky on his merits, and he's just not willing to take that chance.³

Unfortunately for Mitch McConnell and his Republican cronies, 77% of Americans believe there should be limits on campaign donations, and 65% want to see Congress write new laws to reduce the role of money in politics.⁴

H.R.1 does just that. Here are just a few ways the sweeping election-reform bill changes how we finance campaigns:⁵

• Support for a constitutional amendment to end Citizens United
• Require Super PACs and dark-money organizations to make their donors public
• Provide a 6 to 1 public-finance match of small donations for candidates for Congress and the White House

Of course, H.R.1 would stop Sen. McConnell from taking unlimited funds from dark-money donors, so he's attacking the election-reform package, launching a smear campaign in the Washington Post, and speaking out against the bill every chance he gets.6

We need to fight back. Demand Progress is driving emails to Congress and running a counteroffensive public campaign to push Congress to pass H.R.1.

Will you donate to help pass H.R.1, the ethics and election-reform package we need to finally stop Mitch McConnell and clean up Washington?

Thanks for standing with us.

Robert Cruickshank,
Demand Progress

DONATE

Sources:
1. Vox, "Mitch McConnell’s dark secret: he used to support campaign finance reform," February 15, 2019
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Pew Research Center, "Most Americans want to limit campaign spending, say big donors have greater political influence," May 8, 2018
5. Vox, "House Democrats officially unveil their first bill in the majority: a sweeping anti-corruption proposal," January 4, 2019
6. The Washington Post, "Mitch McConnell: Behold the Democrat Politician Protection Act," January 17, 2019

PAID FOR BY DEMAND PROGRESS (DemandProgress.org) and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Contributions are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes. Join our online community on Facebook or Twitter.

[demonrail666]

What you have so far is ok but I really think you'll find it a lot easier to carry on once you have the Barthes essay to refer back to.What you have so far is ok but I really think you'll find it a lot easier to carry on once you have the Barthes essay to refer back to.

The unprofitable parts of the rail are subsidised to ensure they stay open cos while there aren't enough people who use it to be economically viable, they're still vital for small villages like the one I live in to remain connected. Take away the railway and these places would basically become ghost towns.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

The unprofitable parts of the rail are subsidised to ensure they stay open cos while there aren't enough people who use it to be economically viable, they're still vital for small villages like the one I live in to remain connected. Take away the railway and these places would basically become ghost towns.

aaaaah....

but what goes on in these towns? they’re just bedroom communities? (wikipedia says the britishism is “dormitory village”, or something)

yes?

[demonrail666]

No, not a dormitory village. it's even smaller than that. According to the census it has a population of 2000, but god knows where most of them are hiding. When I catch the train in the morning there's rarely more than 2 or 3 other people waiting on the platform with me.

It gets a tiny bit busier in the summer when a few tourists come for its medieval history and some quite picturesque parts. But still not enough for any rail firm to consider it even remotely profitable.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

No, not a dormitory village. it's even smaller than that. According to the census it has a population of 2000, but god knows where most of them are hiding. When I catch the train in the morning there's rarely more than 2 or 3 other people waiting on the platform with me.

It gets a tiny bit busier in the summer when a few tourists come for its medieval history and some quite picturesque parts. But still not enough for any rail firm to consider it even remotely profitable.

2 people? o man must be awesome to live there.

but wouldn’t it be cheaper for the government to just... buy you a car and shut down trains?

back in my dc days suburbans would drive to the metro station and ride into town. “park and ride” it’s called.

do you guys have that?

i read today that 75% of ingleses have wheels

[!@#$%!]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an economic illiterate — and that’s a danger to America

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...2e9_story.html

“When this kind of ignorance is driving policymaking in Washington, America is in profound danger. Amazon left New York because Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow democratic socialists created a hostile environment in the city. And if Ocasio-Cortez has her way, Democrats are going to do to the rest of America what they just did to New York.”

[Dr. Eugene Felikson]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

401K's and investment retirement plans are all set up to benefit those whit the most salary and with the most knowledge about stock market and investments. Every employee, no matter how uneducated in investment they are, is expected to pick and choose their stocks, bonds, trusts, and various other options to "invest" their retirement money in the stock market. There are no guarantees, and there is no safety net should your investment broker fuck you over.


My mother's 401K retirement fund from 25 years working at a top-notch cardiologist in Houston lost over 50% of it's funds overnight due to the Enron scandal, money she will never get back.


Unless you can afford to put away 15% of your salary, or at least 15,000 a year. If that is the case then the 401K can work very favorably for you, but it is still putting your hard earned retirement money into a gambling pyramid scheme.



It used to be that large corporations and companies would set up trusts that they would feed money into, and which would get invested for safe returns (NOT stock market, more like government bonds and IRA's) so that long-term employees could draw a pension.


This is the way that America became such a mighty industrial powerhouse, making sure employees were taken care of, loyalty was a given because the company cared enough to look after you (after the unions forced the capitalists hands), all backed up by government regulations. This meant more $$ in employees hands, more spending, and more healthy economy. Now? the $$ goes to the top of the pyramid scheme,a nd to shareholders who are looking for return opn investment, and do not care about the actual health of the companies.


Those regulations were gutted by Reagan and instead of safe pension plans, everyone absorbed those funds to use in paying off dividends and latched onto the 401K model.


The rich making the rules work for the rich.


same old story...

Wow, that's an interesting take. I've never heard of a 401k labeled as a pyramid scheme before. I'll have to do my research, I guess.