Budget talks: This is getting nasty

It's getting the 0 percent in the first place. It's advertised, but not so often released.

 

Fair enough, I've bought 2 vehicles at 0% interest and it was never an issue.

 

The premise that the middle class has more of a problem with personal responsibility than other classes is crazy. I think this is something that is more prevalent than it used to be across all socioeconomic classes.

I worked at a newspaper that was part of a large media corporation. One day one of the corporate execs came into our office and told us that the paper would be closed. It wasn't our fault, as journalists, he said, but, "the business model changed." Yet it wasn't an exec that suffered, it was the pool of largely middle class workers.

We hear about companies that bitch about federal taxes and regulation, then beg for a bailout from daddy. Is that a form of personal responsibility?

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/world/middleeast/12israel.html?src=me&ref=general

But these days, the handful of wealthy families who dominate the Israeli economy are assuming a new role: one of the chief targets of the tent-city protesters who have shaken Israel in the past month.

The “tycoons,” as they are known even in Hebrew, are suddenly facing enraged scrutiny as middle-class families complain that a country once viewed as an example of intimate equality today has one of the largest gaps between rich and poor in the industrialized world.

The tent-city protesters, who have shifted the public discourse by demanding affordable housing and other essential goods, issued a document this week calling for a new socioeconomic agenda. Topping their goals: “minimizing social inequalities.”

Now would be a good time to point out the old stat that America's 400 richest families control as much wealth as the entire bottom half of the country.

 

Only problem is, the credit card companies can keep changing the arrangement as they choose. They can decide to hike fees, increase the interest, heck, even charge customers for closing their account (although I don't know if that's since been banned).

People may understand that when they sign on, but when it comes down to keeping the lights on or reading the fine print, they're choosing to keep the lights on.

 

You can thank Uncle Joe Biden for a lot of those laws detrimental to card holders.

 

The American economy depends almost entirely upon people buying what they don't absolutely need. We'd all still be subsistence farmers otherwise.

http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Leisure-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/019280684X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313170249&sr=8-1

 

Nothing like being too big to fail while remaining snuggled next to the magic teats.

Right, Goldman Sucks?

Right, Cross-Eyed Michelle?

 

All of the candidates at last night's GOP debate opposed a hypothetical $1 in tax increases for every $10 in spending cuts. That says a lot about compromise.

 

It bears repeating: The stability of a modern society can be defined by the size and relative well-being of its middle class. If the middle class is growing and thriving, society and political systems, whatever they are, are stable. If the middle class struggles and/or shrinks, that's when people take to the streets.

That is a neutral observation, not a political statement. So one might conclude that regardless of ideology, it's in the best interest of the wealthy to assure a thriving middle class because if society and political systems break down, they stand to have the most to lose.

 

You shut up. I absolutely need this iPad.

 

I count five other political threads at the top of S&N right now. I fear that outburst will get the PTB to shut them all down again, including this one.