Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

[joecct]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

Nice try, kitten.

And by keeping real wages stagnant, they're driving more and more families down and them up. It's not Dems and it's not the GOP, it's the oligarchs who have the money and the power. The politicians are a tool to keep the status quo.

[Kepler]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

Top 1%? According to an OpEd in The New York Times, it is the top 20% that has grown rich at the expense of the lower 80%.

Nice try, kitten.

[FreshFish]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

Top 1%? According to an OpEd in The New York Times, it is the top 20% that has grown rich at the expense of the lower 80%.

Title: Stop Pretending You're Not Rich.

The United States is more calcified by class than Britain, especially toward the top. The big difference is that most of the people on the highest rung in America are in denial about their privilege. The American myth of meritocracy allows them to attribute their position to their brilliance and diligence, rather than to luck or a rigged system....

Beneath a veneer of classlessness, the American class reproduction machine operates with ruthless efficiency. In particular, the upper middle class is solidifying. This favored fifth at the top of the income distribution, with an average annual household income of $200,000, has been separating from the 80 percent below. Collectively, this top fifth has seen a $4 trillion-plus increase in pretax income since 1979, compared to just over $3 trillion for everyone else. Some of those gains went to the top 1 percent. But most went to the 19 percent just beneath them.

The rhetoric of “We are the 99 percent” has in fact been dangerously self-serving, allowing people with healthy six-figure incomes to convince themselves that they are somehow in the same economic boat as ordinary Americans, and that it is just the so-called super rich who are to blame for inequality. [emphasis added]....

Most of the children born into households in the top 20 percent will stay there or drop only as far as the next quintile....

On the one hand, upper-middle-class Americans believe they are operating in a meritocracy (a belief that allows them to feel entitled to their winnings); on the other hand, they constantly engage in antimeritocratic behavior in order to give their own children a leg up....

the upper middle class starts to rig markets in its own favor, to the detriment of others. Take housing, perhaps the most significant example. Exclusionary zoning practices allow the upper middle class to live in enclaves....For the upper middle classes, regardless of their professed political preferences, zoning, wealth, tax deductions and educational opportunity reinforce one another in a virtuous cycle.

Wikipedia puts the top 20% at household incomes of $92,000 and higher.....

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

So, I spent the last week in suburban Oklahoma City. I had to go to a Twin Peaks twice this past week (boss' choice, and then clients' choice - not mine). On one hand, I can see why it exists - the "talent" and food are a marginal step up from Hooters, and so are the prices. On the other hand, I feel places like this exist to give 20 year-old anorexic Millennial girls stuck in sh*tholes like Oklahoma City a place to work.

On the plus side, we all agreed that if more on-site time is required, we're doing it at the client's HQ in LA. Wait, LA is a plus? Fark.

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

So...this is what life in "Basic" Economy is like (and also what it's like mentally, to be the ***** with status, and to be in first class). It's over-the-top and unrealistic in its approach (8 straight days of flying? Really?) - sort of an essayist Super Size Me for air travel - but it details most of our legitimate frustrations with the US air carriers. As far as entertainment value, the author mentions the term "gate lice", as well as demonstrates a classic example of a "DYKWIA" passenger. However, she should be listed on the @PassengerShaming Twitter account for wearing a onesie in public, let alone on a flight. Leave the pajamas at home, ma'am.

Also, this:

Here are some things I’ve done recently: challenged a T.S.A. agent who ordered me to remove a Kleenex from my pocket, sat in the wrong seat on a flight and claimed it was the other person’s fault, told a lost-bag agent that I was about to miss my next flight when it was not true, sat on the floor at a departure gate in order to charge my phone, and, at a low moment, jostled my seatmate’s arm right off our shared armrest while pretending I was doing something else.

Bolded - only ever had to do that in St. Louis, because their airport is stuck in the 90s (they still charge for WiFi! ).

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

Seems like that would be a leading indicator of VERY BAD THINGS.

Or, we have established the amount of time it takes the American consumer to forget everything. It's 10 years.

Sad.

[St. Clown]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

Seems like that would be a leading indicator of VERY BAD THINGS.

Or, we have established the amount of time it takes the American consumer to forget everything. It's 10 years.

It is. This was part of the run-up to what eventually happened with housing. People started defaulting on their mortgages because people who weren't really qualified under traditional, stricter rules, were now taking out larger mortgages than they could afford. There's been talk in DC about loosening mortgage requirements again, and some mortgage companies are excited for it.

When you consider the number of homes being built, the number of baby boomers who'll be dying off soon, and the possibility of another mortgage crisis, it may make 2007 look like just a bump in the road. The question then becomes if the defaults will be hidden, lacking a better term at the moment, within CDS tranches like they were last time.

[Kepler]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

Did anybody not see that coming?

Seems like that would be a leading indicator of VERY BAD THINGS.

Or, we have established the amount of time it takes the American consumer to forget everything. It's 10 years.

[St. Clown]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

Charge offs are on the rise... http://www.businessinsider.com/credi...ds-fall-2017-6

Did anybody not see that coming?

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

Charge offs are on the rise... http://www.businessinsider.com/credi...ds-fall-2017-6

[Kepler]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

Who knows? Maybe one day I'll be your driver!

I'm a Restonian now. Dear Leader tells us to drive ourselves for transclass solidarity.

[joecct]

Yup. I am too risk averse even to use Uber. These things are for the young at heart, and cardiacally speaking I am about 738 years old.

Who knows? Maybe one day I'll be your driver!

[Kepler]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

But you also just bought a whole lot of caveat emptor.

Yup. I am too risk averse even to use Uber. These things are for the young at heart, and cardiacally speaking I am about 738 years old.

[SJHovey]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

Interesting concept

http://info.rentlikeachampion.com/th...acationInsider

It's just more of the same. It's ebay. It's uber. It is the idea of providing a good or service outside of what has been considered the normal "chain" of business.

It's interesting, and it's certainly going to expand into other areas. But it's the wild, wild west out there. You might get a great place to stay. You might even get it dramatically cheaper than staying at a hotel or resort. Just like that uber ride may be a lot cheaper. But you also just bought a whole lot of caveat emptor.

[joecct]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

Interesting concept

http://info.rentlikeachampion.com/th...acationInsider