doclinkin wrote:Now as a lefty kid who grew up on "question authority" buttons and protest marches and watched the Watergate hearings in my hippie co-op daycare
Wait. Your parents worked!!? Don't even tell me you had a phucking dirt bike!!!
and then watched the Hippies become Yuppies in the 'get yours' 80's and protest folk songs become nihilist punk rock --
ok this response aint going to be as fun nor anywhere near as good as the one i lost but my momma, crack head that she was, still taught me that when someone takes the time to write a well articulated response they deserve one in return. Interwebz dropped the first so this one is a forced edit for brevity.
-80s. yes...kinda started there. Radical changes in hollywood and media and fashion in the 80's where wealthy characters were now portrayed sympathetically. Yes, we still cheered for the poor kid daniel larusso to beat up the mean rich karate kids but we still loved like Ali, the rich girl. And we all wanted to ride dirt bikes on the beach! Then John Hughes came along. Pretty in pink. breafast club. Ferris Bueller. A bunch of richs kids who we all liked. Even Rocky Balboa got rich in the 80's. By '88 gordon greco was telling us that greed was good. A punch line, something we were all suppose to hate. But the media and hollywood push was big, thorough, and encompassing. It worked. Americana was changing from a push of humble, quiet, rugged individualism of the 40's, 50's, 60's to a full blown embracing of celebrating wealth.
and americans were relatively wealthier in the 80s so it made sense to promote gluttony and wealth celebration...kinda. Homes were still cheap in the early 80's but wages were peaking for unskilled/ low skilled labor. Here's the odd thing. Larusso's Mom mad about $15-20K in 1982 and the lived in a crappy $500 month apt. and in real life the larusso's would be miserable. machio would not win the karate championship nor would he get the girl like he did in the movie. And of course miyagi had secret hidden wealth that he shared with larusso. A modern fairy tale! But what's odd is that Ali's parents could have bought that pretentious oversized ranch in Encino Hills for as little as $70K in 1979. Larusso's mom would have made aat least $15-20K to live in the shxt hole. Her parent only needed to earn about $40K annually to buy the "mansion." And another $40K to drive the SL. the rolls. The country club. the clothes and general lifestyle. Thats it!! That was the wealth disparity between the 2 families back the. larusso needed 15-20K for their apt and used car and clothes. Ali's parents needed about $80K. About
A $60k difference between working poor and upper 2% back then. Today the larusso's would need to earn about $25K to live in that same crumby apt. But for Ali's parents to buy that house in Encino Hills today they would need to earn over $400K annually. Just for the houwe which is worth $2 million with its 80's appointments and $4 million with some small additions and fully updated.
A miserable $60k in additional income would have afforded the The hunts not only had the much more comfortable lifestyles but also they would have "made" $2-4 million in appreciation just on their home!! The larusso's would he stuck holding their dicks in a tiny living room staring at a dingy off white wall with a TV flickering in the background. Thats is if Miyagi didn't leave him a $10 million car collection and the building itself.
oh the 80's!
From 1970 to 1982 we went from about 7-8 channels on TV to about 30. Including MTV for teenagers and young adults as well as chilrens shows. And they were all in on it. Richie Rich was an actual character and name of a cartoon for young children and he was a good likeable.kid. And there was a show called silver spoons, and ricky schroeder was a likeable kid. Bill Cosby played a wealthy NY doctor. Dynasty. Dallas. Etc. Even MTV was in on it. Rock bands travelled in private planes by night and woke up hungover in their massive swimming pools the next day.
globalism made TV's cheaper and we ended up with 2-3 TVs in every house. Kids were influenced. Teenagers were influenced.
By the mid 80's, Hollywood was all-in on promoting what I'll call
"wealth culture promotion." Hollywood and the liberal left have always been tied together...(but way more today than back then because over time hollywood types, especially talent, realized that they need to be far left or they would not be liked in most cases.) But What was hollywood doing in the 80's? What were they up to portraying wealthy characters sympathetically? We've had wealthy characters before. Usually the wealthy characters were the scrooge, or mommy dearest, Rosebud etc. Very flawed and tragic. Why was hollywood now telling us that the rich and elite were good people?
Here is what I suspect. I think that the wealthy elites that finance hollywood and or ran hollywood had enough. they were tired of hiding their wealth. They were tired of "playing poor." They ran and hid 200 years ago and never stopped running until the 1980's. Multiple European wars and conflicts in the 1800's. @ world wars in the first half of the 1900's with their wealth always on the line. If they ended up in the wrong bank at any point their wealth would be confiscated. They were tired of it. They took full control and flipped the script. 007, Hugh hefner, Don johnson the rich cop in miami that drove a ferarri and had a boat. And the US economy and US military was now strong enough that they could flaunt their wealth out in public and no one would do a damn thing about it. Especially once hollywood began pushing wealthy characters on the american public sympathetically. They were ready to celebrate their wealth and used hollywood, media, and TV to test and prime the american people for what was to come in the 90's and especially the 2000's. We thought we were cheering for Daniel larusso but we were really eyeing the life style of his girlf friend Ali. Their was a Full fledged, full throated, unbridled assault on the humble quiet and confident american character that John wayne played. Or dirty harry. And eventually replaced with debauchery and decadence. I mean by 2005, rock stars were telling us that if you were not driving a Bentley and dumping bottles Crystal Champagne on ground then you weren't having fun!
black lives matter....
is a great concept and should be a great concept. until they allowed the movement to be pitted against the police. Mistake. Antifa got created in here as well...and they just pretty much destroy stuff.
Of course there is an international conspiracy of moneyed interests. Duh. ......... Personally I doubt my ability to influence or affect money on that scale. But Im all for democracy as a concept where the little guy banding together behind an idea can even in a small way steer policy that affects the powerful. Why I also believe in unions even though they of course are also corrupt at times.
death tax. I think its the only way. I've given this a lot of thought and debated this with goldman sachs investment bankers. death tax is the concensus on the realities of a tax that can work as well as acceptable to the american public. But you need number...like $2million or $1million or $10 million. Something where we allow the upper-middle and lower upper class to continue to grow. They are your local leaders. They need to be in on it to sell it to the poor and working poor masses. The poor and working poor masses should be all in on any kind of death tax but might flinch if their local leaders are not supporting it.
Of course there is a Deep State. Stupid to me that things have gotten so jiu jistu twisted that you have Lefty sorts defending the guilds of assassins and covert influence. But spycraft is necessary ugly work and should transcend cable news level of herky jerk news cycle driven belief systems. It should identify the aims of statecraft and attempt to further our best interests in the world. Stateside it should look at dangerous and destabilizing criminality within our borders and blunt or neuter it and lock up bad actors.
Of course the Intelligence community and the Fourth Estate are biased against Trump. He has earned it by attacking them. Chosen powerful enemies. This is what he does. Why you like him. He p1sses people off. Right or wrong.
fair enough observation. But no matter how detestable we've been down this road. Watergate. You watched it on TV as a child. You learned that no political party in power can abuse the massive powers of our DOJ and intelligence to spy on a rival political party, let alone to sway elections or overturn elections. The spying happened. We know this. They spied on the entire trump campaign. Everyone. And collected the date. Then they unmasked many indeviduals. Then questioned many of those individuals based on the data collected while spying on them. keep in mind that just the spying will turn out to be illegal. I mean...like i said. You already watched watergate on TV. YOU CANT SPY ON POLITICAL OPPONENTS. You just cant. Then you definitely cant unmask and question those individuals to catch them in perjury traps so as to "flip" witnesses and jail them. for lying. I mean what happened to trump and his campaign in all of that is so much worse than watergate. And everyone knows it. If trump uses his own bought and paid for oppo research to get FISA's on Booker and Harris in 2020 to dig up dirt so as to destroy them politically the left will literally have convulsions. jake tapper, don lemmon, anderson cooper might have real life heart attacks on set. Thats how bad this. And no one is going to be able to hide behind trump is a meany, we dont like him!
I don't know why Hillary comes up again and again except to deflect inquiry to other failings. I liked her better after reading her 'secret' emails. Brassy, tough, with heart, and still keeping an eye on the underserved.
me too. i liked her more as well. but bottom line. she is globalist.
Yes an increased inheritance tax would mean legacy wealth is not simply sitting untouched and swelling but pours back into public policy in potentially positive ways.
As for Trump. Um. Yeah. I agree he shakes things up.
because he is an outsider. This is something else ive debated as nausuem with the smartest people I know. only an outsider can "fix this mess." Only an outsider will owe the least amount of favors to other DC slime bureaucrats. or have the least amount of dirt on him so as to NOT be blackmailed into the same old "getting along and then going along" with the existing DC slime culture... let alone naive enough to even have the audacity to take on washington. Which makes trump a case study for future outsiders!! We should all be much nicer to him or an outsider will never run for this office ever again. And we need more outsiders!
in the 80's ... I have hated Trump...
you are suppose to hate him (the person). he is a uber wealthy elite hoarder of wealth. We all hate that.
As for his governance.
but you cant hate him here. he is governing in ways to help the middle class regain some small percentage of wealth. More jobs than labor will lead to increased wages. Better and smarter trade deals will be designed to bring back manufacturing jobs and therefore more coporate and personal tax dollars. And lead to the need more more immigration so as to keep up with labor needs.
Tax breaks not for corporations but for mom and pop businesses.
agree. help mom and pop more! But watch yourself! keep in mind that if you are serious about helping mom and pop owned local small businesses, you need to know understand that to give to them is to take from large corporations. Another euphemism for large business is global business aka globalists. Dont second guess yourself, though. This is the right way to look at it. But you just might be a nationalist. Nothing wrong with that BTW!! But it is in direct conflict with being a globalist.
That said, we also need to have competitive corp rates to repatriate overseas global corporate wealth and overseas personal wealth of the elite.
The America of MAGA was not so great for people of color or any difference (gay, foreign, etc) but if you look at the countries greatest explosion of wealth and the middle class,
MAGA can, will, does, and is currently working for everyone.
following WW2 look at the tax code. Millionaires were taxed at a dollar for dollar rate. To whom much is given much is expected.
i have made this point often and in this thread. 90% tax for highest bracket in the entire WW2 era...ramped up from 50 to pay for war efforts. Problem is that this only hurts nouveau riche. The dumb athlete or dumb actor that gets their first gig. the carveouts and loopholes still existed for established wealth. So it didn't work! The point or goal of any good tax plan is to create purpose and motivate individual to produce and consume. You cant tax too much. you cant tax too little. Until they die??
And with a family that has folks from Cambodia and the Carribean and European immigrants fleeing Hitler, it seems to me stupid to slam the door on immigration. Instead we have often renewed ourselves and built our country with the people who have the brass nuts to look at where they were born and want better for themselves and their family. The Drumpf family. Trump knew first gen immigrants in his own family. Even Ivana and Melania came over here to take their hoeing to a more lucrative market. Anyway.
immigration is good. great! it must be intelligent and fair, though. If we were NOT 21 trillion in debt it would not matter. we could probably take in almost anyone from anywhere for a while with little problems. But we are and we do have stagantnt wages in many sectors but mostly unskilled labor. <--Why?? is it fair?? obviously not. We should not over saturate any particular socio economic group with immigrants or they will likely suffer stagnant wages without other policies to protect wage growth. Supply and demand of labor determines wages. Always has. Always will.
......... we are trying to find middle ground or solutions.
absolutely!!! I am. But sometimes compromise is not made in a vacuum. Take civil rights. We dont bestow civil rights upon just 80% of the american people we give it to everyone albeit delayed. Its not something that works with a compromise. Everyone gets it and its not open for discussion or compromose. Other policies are similar. for example, like the wall for immigration and border control. You dont waste money building 80% of the wall. Thats not a smart compromise. We build 100% of the wall and control the borders or we dont build it at all.
like i said, its a full rebuild.
