'Don't Let Our History Tell of the Collapse of the Middle Class'

[sabrina 1]

ToastyPoptart ?@LollipopCrumbs 1d1 day ago

Don't let our history tell of the collapse of our middle class, vote for Bernie Sanders! #Bernie2016 #feelthebern https://

[WillyT]

1. K & R !!!

[FLson]

2. The middle class could make a big comeback

if it got united, organized, and worked to only do business with folks who subsidized the middle class. Too often middle class folks give their money to rich people and then wonder why they get screwed.

In the day and age of the internet, youtube, and so much else. The middle class could really get in control of things and change things for the better. But so many want to be "exceptional individuals" and suffer their fates it feels like most days. Shop at Walmart and then wonder why so few things are made in America, and why basic necessities are massively overpriced.

[sabrina 1]

4. Good post. They have been given a rare chance now to stand up for themselves.

If they don't take it, things are going to get worse for them. And frankly, it would be hard for me to feel any sympathy for them at that point.

Take it or leave it, but don't whine four years from now when the inevitable happens.

[FLson]

6. Too many folks rely on politicians alone to fix things.

But most politicians are bought out corrupt whores. Real change will only happen when the people accept the state of politics and work with each other to create businesses that better serve the middle and lower classes.

Sadly, I work with the rich on the regular. What they know of and do in communal investing is amazing (i only really started understanding it a few years ago). If it could be made simpler, the middle and lower classes could get a lot done in leaving the status quo of consumer markets that do nothing but ultimately penalize the middle and lower classes.

[aspirant]

3. Negotiations should always start high

Basic classes: Uber Rich, Upper Class, Middle Class and Lower Class (poverty)

Instead of trying to reassemble the middle class, let's try to make every American the upper class. The harder we fight for this the easier the middle class will form

We should be fighting for $40/hour and a 40 hr work week and settling for a 25/hr work week

[sabrina 1]

5. I like your thinking. And in this economy, $40.00 an hour isn't a lot.

There's an old saying: Aim for a star and you might hit a tree!

Seems we don't have leaders who know how to bargain, or who do, and are simply playing us.

[FLson]

7. I deal with the rich on the regular

they'd simply laugh at anyone asking for $40 an hour. Young attorneys can't even get that at most firms nowadays unless they have a family connection (why I'm happily self-employed as a lawyer and still sell insurance).

You want wages to rise, you need more competition from more employers. Till that happens, it's an employer's market and they are bitching and whinning about not being able to find enough good workers but aren't raising wages.

[aspirant]

8. And why do the Uber rich laugh

as they take home millions.

It's only the hopeless, brainwashed folks that aren't looking for ways to turn that around and start laughing back at them as they are forced to redistribute downward.

GO BERNIE

[FLson]

10. I'm Bernie or bust

but he's only one man. He can rock the bully pulpit, even get some progress going. But forceful redistribution is a long ways off. People could organize and put some modicum of heat on, but it doesn't seem like any of that will be happening. When you rely on politicians, you abdicate liberty.

[aspirant]

11. Bernie advocates for a People Revolution

Me and you are only a droplet of humanity within the force that is amassing. Pay attention and contribute in your own way.

[aspirant]

21. "When you rely on politicians, you abdicate liberty"

When we pay taxes are we abdicating liberty?

Who are the one's distributing our tax money?

Are you advocating keeping our tax money and starting worker's co-ops.

Your "Bernie or bust" but you don't think organizing "will be happening"? Something doesn't feel right here.

[FLson]

22. Never said we should not pay taxes.

Starting worker's co-ops and making them mainstream is very progressive. Or are you against common folks owning shares of businesses and instead meekly sucking at the teat of the oligarchs.

Politicians are one small part of democracy. Of the people, by the people, for the people. Does that ring a bell per chance? The people have a duty to help each other and maintain liberty. Being involved consciously, physically, and fiscally in their destiny is one way of doing that.

If you'd like, I can elaborate on my tax beliefs. They are very protectionist mind you and encourage the making of micro and mini interest loans to Americans who create jobs in the U.S. and pay twice the rate of minimum wage. I'm also for getting off of reliance on foreign and commercial food sources and practice that said. I'm also for alternative energy, ending the war drugs, medicare for all as a public option everyone has to pay into but can elect to supplement with private insurance.

Just because I make a good deal of money off of Republicans, doesn't mean I am one.

[aspirant]

26. Tax beliefs and people issues

Just how do you get that done with your statements of lazy Americans, small people and thinking organizing won't " be happening" from the Revolution

"Just because I make a good deal of money off of Republicans, doesn't mean I am one". Doesn't mean you aren't one either.

Second time, do you feel paying taxes is abdicating our liberty since politicians distribute them?

[FLson]

27. No, paying taxes is not abdicating our liberty?

Relying solely on politicians to fix things that once upon a time Americans went and did themselves in the forms of the Civil Rights Movement, the Labor Movement, and so on, is an abdication of liberty. To borrow from Shakespeare, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Most politicians are beholden at the very least or are corrupt. Bernie is one of the few exceptions alongside Elizabeth Warren. So relying on them to actually get stuff done when the average citizen should be organizing and participating, to me is folly.

Sorry you find the concept of getting people to make an effort in their own success, suspicious. And I'm even more sorry you considerate a trait solely in possession of Republicans.

[aspirant]

30. I'm sorry you think Americans are lazy bums

and small insignificant people, how revealing.

"So relying on them to actually get stuff done when the average citizen should be organizing and participating, to me is folly". Obviously you are not part of the Bernie Revolution

[AgingAmerican]

13. If you want wages to rise you unionize

Otherwise it ain't happening.

[FLson]

14. Unionize to do what?

Ask rich people for more money that they'll work on not paying? I'm a lawyer, there's all kinds of legal and ethical ways to prevent unions in small operations. Big operations will eventually get around to it.

The smarter way would be for people to band together and start businesses. I started a construction business last year among the employees. Cut out the owner, took his top guy who was underpaid and got him to get a contractor's license, and got a bunch of investors big and small. Now all the employees are beneficiaries of a Trust that owns the Corp., and two more of the employees are studying to get their licenses. Everyone's wages went up at least twenty percent, and we had our first profit share payout back in September (every three months but we've only been in the solid black since July). Profit share was pro rata, except for the annuity purchase, to contribution and most folks were happy about it.

The employees work harder for their piece of the pie, because they actually get a piece. Ten percent of the profit share went to purchasing a fixed rate guaranteed annuity that will grow the corpus of the Trust so if all the employees quit after twenty years, they'll still be receiving money for years to come afterwards.

[AgingAmerican]

15. Do you know

That every country on earth with a large middle class has strong unions? EVERY SINGLE ONE. Before unions existed, there was no middle class. There were rich people and poor people.

As go unions, so goes the middle class.

Unions came about by force. You force unions on industries. That's how they came about in this and every other country.

[FLson]

16. As the middle class abdicates its duties to self-preservation

so goes the middle class. I hate personal injury law and med mal, but I stay with it because the checks are big and when the small people can't pay my fees, I still manage to get fat checks for rear end collision and brain damaged babies.

Unions are too small in my opinion. If folks got a little less lazy, and a little more ambitious. We could dethrone the oligarchs and rebuild the middle class to the point that making a million a year would be considered middle class.

[AgingAmerican]

17. The middle class self preserves by unionizing

Because without unions there is no middle class.

[FLson]

18. Ok you rely on folks to unionize

I'll focus on trying to get them to take responsibility for their success by starting businesses communally with others, like the rich do.

[AgingAmerican]

19. You do know that

The Democratic party can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time...

[FLson]

20. So can a dog. n/t

[AgingAmerican]

24. ???

lol

[FLson]

25. When people used to tell my grandpa

they could walk and chew bubblegum at the same time (in fairness he'd ask them the question). He'd often take out a piece of Bazooka, hand it to his dog (his beat-up Chow Chow was my favorite, but he had trained many dogs to this over the years), and it'd chew the gum. Not eat it, but actually chew it for a bit and then spit it out. My grandfather would point to the dog and go. Yeah, so can my dog, but that doesn't mean he's not too dumb to eat his own shit.

Nothing here or there, but explaining why I absently replied that.

[aspirant]

28. Nobody cares about your grandpa and his dog that eats "his own shit"

"Why I absently replied that" you were rude and if you think that is an apology, try again.

[FLson]

29. Sopranos is a good show, you should watch it sometime.

[aspirant]

31. Sopranos is over and done, history

just like the bubblegum and shit-eating dog story. Practice your outdated rudeness some where else.

[FLson]

32. I farted. It was rank.

[aspirant]

23. "If folks get a little less lazy"

Oh, like "pull up your bootstraps" I wonder where I heard this before

"Small people" just who would that be, people under 4 ft tall?

[Uncle Joe]

9. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, sabrina.

[AgingAmerican]

12. Once the base is fooled into voting against their own best interest

It's all over at that point

[LWolf]

33. K & R