Offtopic The Pitchforks are coming for the 1%

17 comments

• sharkhunter

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  10 years ago

  Our government also needs to cut back government spending while keeping the economy growing or our debt situation will eventually collapse our currency and destroy everything we worked for. Our politicians have trouble cutting spending. It's like asking LMN to cut back on his drugs and strippers. :)
• jackslash

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  10 years ago

  Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
• IanSmith

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  10 years ago

  “There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution” - Aldous Huxley
• LMN

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  10 years ago

  Sharkhunter Your idea about tying CEO pay to employees is both inane and un-American. Its short sighted and anti-capitalistic to suggest such a structure. Forcing higher pay from the bottom up will do nothing for long term economic growth except hinder small business and make it more difficult to create new jobs.
• Tyres

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  10 years ago

  Says the guy who (supposedly) has had his dream life of hard drugs and an endless money supply given to him by mommy and daddy on a silver platter. I'm guessing in most cases a raging addiction to roxi's and prostitutes will do more to hinder small business growth more than paying your employees a decent living wage. But then you have never had to play by real world rules.
• gawker

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  10 years ago

  It might be a good time to stock up on pitchforks.
• LMN

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  10 years ago

  @tyres My family being wealthy and my upbringing/financial situation has little to do with the point this thread is addressing. Its the same reason why raising minimum wage is a bad idea...in the effort to create better living wages for people on the lower end of the income food chain, it cannibalizes the creation of jobs by making the barrier to entry too high in small business ownership and business expansion. The issue with the job market in this country is also created by the student loan industry. If you want a good paying job you should have to get a degree of higher learning to obtain technical skills warranting the income. Now, though: the market is so overly saturated with degrees because people with average grades who would never be able to afford college are entering thanks to student loans. College should only be obtainable with paid in full tuition or scholarship. That would fix a large part of the job market.
• sharkhunter

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  10 years ago

  I was thinking making CEO pay increases match regular employee pay now might not be practical. For someone making 100 million a year, he could get a 2 million bonus instead of a regular pay increase and his employees would get nothing. As far as paying employees more who do most of the work for the company, Ford who established one of the biggest car companies in the US did it and believe that makes the concept very American. However the 1% would probably prefer to deny and forget about it. Instead of pitchforks, the people are stockpiling ammo. One thing as Americans we need to remember, we are all part of the top 10% of the world I believe when it comes to having global resources. The other problem is that the US does little to keep high paying manufacturing jobs here in the US. Some bean counter comes along and looks at the total labor and equipment cost to make here versus elsewhere and could decide to outsource if costs here look a lot higher.
• jester214

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  10 years ago

  A $2 or 3$ minimum wage increases is not going to shut down business growth, especially at the small business level where it's easy to tie in policies to slow down implementation. At the same time it won't really improve the lives of individuals, a realistic increase is too low to have any significant impact on the small number of people it would affect. It's a political tool to bring in votes. The student loan industry is not the problem with education, people shouldn't be stopped from going to school because of lack of money. The problem is that A. we've created way too many centers of higher education than we really need B. Higher education has turned into a for profit business. These combined have wrecked the value of a college education. There are no barriers to a 4 year degree anymore. As far as CEO's most of them deserve their pay. How can you recruit the best people to such an important job (and retain them) with so little security if you don't offer them high salaries, big bonuses and golden parachutes? Are there exceptions? Sure, but they're not the norm.
• farmerart

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  10 years ago

  Many entrepreneurs building their own companies take very little in salary for themselves, preferring to pump profits back into their businesses for expansion. That is what I did for the 43 years of building my first company. I paid myself just enough salary so that I could contribute the maximum allowed premiums into the Canada Pension Plan (equivalent to Social Security in USA, I believe). I was thinking far enough into the future to allow myself some sort of retirement income. This was not then, and is not now, a rich person's wage. Current maximum employable earnings for Canada Pension Plan purposes are $52,500. At that income level employees contribute $2425.50/yr, an amount matched by an equal contribution from the employer. Contributions at the maximum rate for 40 (or more) years of employment ensure a current pension benefit at age 65 of $1038.33/mo. Successful entrepreneurs most often don't capture their true wealth until the sale of their company. I realized some of my own wealth when I sold part of my company in 1995, allowing me to purchase the first home that I ever owned. I was 46 years old at that time. My big wealth arrived when I sold off the entire company thirteen years later. I lived the life of the big-spending nouveau riche asshole for about two and a half years, bored out of my gourd. Since starting my second company 3+ years ago I have paid myself exactly $0/yr. All but one of my current employees are paid more than that $52,500 salary that I mentioned earlier. I have been a demanding employer for my entire career but I have also been a loyal employer and a generous employer. I have no guilt about enjoying the wealth that I created and I will defend that wealth with vigour and tenacity from any pitchfork-wielding horde.
• IanSmith

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  10 years ago

  @Che. “the end of the world” ? LOL. The article is a load of Gucci socialist dog wank. The likelihood that the populace will get off their fat arse and tear themselves away from the telly or computer screen long enough to waddle off to storm the castles of their masters is nil. From what I saw no one in the States is even slightly uncomfortable much less starving to death.
• Dougster

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  10 years ago

  @art: I don't know much about Canadian tax laws. In the US there is something called an "S-Corp" in which income passes through from the business onto the owners tax forms. Is there a similar thing in Canada?
• Dougster

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  10 years ago

  Article: "What everyone wants to believe is that when things reach a tipping point and go from being merely crappy for the masses to dangerous and socially destabilizing, that we’re somehow going to know about that shift ahead of time. Any student of history knows that’s not the way it happens." Actually, one of the reasons that Communists didn't like mere moderate socialists is that they thought their reforms would just make capitalism too tolerable to the proletariat forever postponing the revolution to a truly optimal society. They wanted to do away with the reformists, let capitalism run unbridle, devolve into feudalism, and, thereby, have given it enough rope to hang itself.
• farmerart

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  10 years ago

  @Dougster, I am not as well versed in tax matters as I should be. After googling S-Corp I can tell you that my company is not organized along those lines. I can't even tell you if that sort of corporate organization exists in Canada. My company is organized as a limited liability company. There are two shareholders. I am the 'talking' 90% shareholder. My young partner owns 10%. For both of us it makes no sense for the company's profits to come to us as individuals. Our individual tax rates are much higher than the corporate rate. I take no salary from the company. My partner takes a relatively modest salary. In any event, this entire discussion is moot. The company is not profitable. The exploration costs of the nat gas play in NWT are rapidly eating up the company's capital. The company has tax loss carry forwards that will ensure that the company is not taxable for many years after the income stream starts.
• deogol

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  10 years ago

  It has been established it only was 10% of the population that was for the American revolutionary war... that's all it took. There are also CIA docs freely available on the internet that if you can get one out of ten gung ho on it, it can happen. Look how fast the arab springs blew up. I also believe that those not to be the chosen 0.01% will turn to crime to get by. This of course will derail any talk of revolt as it would be a "criminal conspiracy" or "terrorism" (as the US government likes to talk about the action in Iraq right now - I think it is a real movement) and there would be no "white knight" representative of the revolution. Only when shit gets so ridiculous, will there be open revolt.
• mikeya02

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  10 years ago

  Remember in 2008, Obama said a private army of 250,000 were needed? That they should be as well armed as the military? What the hell was he talking about?
• DoctorPhil

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  10 years ago

  fuck both the effeminate uber rich bastards AND the thieving lazy assed pay-me-for-nothing scum. John Wayne always has the right answer: [view link]