Capital focus

Intended for constructive conversations. Exhibits of polarizing tribalism will be deleted.
thrifty++
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Capital focus

Post by thrifty++ »

There are quite a few Americans on here I think so I am interested in some American thoughts on these issues. It seems like USA favors people with capital more than any other developed country and possibly even more than South America as well. There are numerous examples of this such as enormous costs of education, insufficient state healthcare, minimal labour rights, 2 weeks annual leave minimum (is that even a lawful minimum or is there no minimum?), insufficient income protection (employment insurance rather than just a no strings attached unemployment benefit), tiny minimum wages (and even less than minimum wage for the most vulnerable workers who have to hustle for tips), insufficient social housing etc the list could go on. Taxes seem to go primarily to defence spending rather than helping people. And I am shocked to hear non resident Americans still have to pay tax in USA when they live overseas. This sort of stuff seems to benefit those with capital at the expense of those without and allows more vulnerable people to be exploited to make the wealthy people more wealthy.

I noticed when I was over in Canada that it seems like Canada (while having greater capital redistribution than USA) unfortunately seems to be influenced by some US policies. This is probably because Canada bounces its social and economic policies off USA and has USA as a comparison. By contrast NZ and Australia bounce of each other and then sometimes bounce off the UK which bounces off Europe and US style policies have little influence here. Example - in Australia employers have been legally obliged to provide 4 weeks minimum annual leave each year for a long time. NZ only had three. Everyone bitched and moaned about this difference until the government caved in and made it 4 weeks minimum here too. We also get 11 days public holidays each year too by the way. Accordingly those with more capital are forced to redistribute some of that back to the labour force rather than extract blood from the stone unrestrained.

While I am only at the early stages of ERE I have to admit I do feel a bit more comfortable than if I was in USA as I dont need to worry as much about covering my own healthcare costs, paying back enormous high interest student loans, or being homeless if things turn sour. It seems like things in USA can be more tough if you were born into a less privileged life. I came from a background of that nature but in NZ have managed to elevate myself into highly paid and productive individual. Im not sure it would have been possible in USA.

With the increasing degree of inequality in USA and the shrinking middle class power I wonder how this is going to long term affect the economic power of USA - if the government does not nourish, look after and grow its middle class is that going to reduce the USA's economic power closer towards non Western countries (eg China/ Russia?)

So I am wondering what do Americans think of this? Is your impression that USA has features as I have described above? Or not? If you think so do you think many of your fellows have an awareness of it? Are you concerned? Why do you think Americans have not raised more of an issue about it to try to change things?

Also do you think that if USA continues on its current path and allows inequality to increase at the rate it is that it will make it hard for ordinary people to achieve ERE?

anomie
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Re: Capital focus

Post by anomie »

Bernie? Bernie Sanders? Is that you?

What you doing on an ERE board?
:) :)

thrifty++
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Re: Capital focus

Post by thrifty++ »

lol. I had to look up who that was.

IlliniDave
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Re: Capital focus

Post by IlliniDave »

The same things that lead to inequality make it easier to achieve ER. ER is a deliberate act to make yourself unequal. If more of what I earn was taken to pay other people's expenses, it would take me longer to reach FI (at least an FI not predicated on the government taking even more money from non-retired persons than they are under the present system to subsidize me).

thrifty++
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Re: Capital focus

Post by thrifty++ »

Im thinking that might depend though on how fortuitous your personal circumstances are. Eg such as if you have quite a bit of capital at your disposal the beginning of ERE or come from family with capital. If you start out your ERE journey by trying to acquire some skills to sell at a decent price by incurring $100k in debt plus interest maybe not so much so. Or if you or someone in your family are hit with health problems in the early point of your ERE journey or you get laid off from your job and struggle to find a new one ...

IlliniDave
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Re: Capital focus

Post by IlliniDave »

thrifty++ wrote:Im thinking that might depend though on how fortuitous your personal circumstances are. Eg such as if you have quite a bit of capital at your disposal the beginning of ERE or come from family with capital. If you start out your ERE journey by trying to acquire some skills to sell at a decent price by incurring $100k in debt plus interest maybe not so much so. Or if you or someone in your family are hit with health problems in the early point of your ERE journey or you get laid off from your job and struggle to find a new one ...
I'm not an ERE-er, just going for ER (I'll be between 52 and 55 when I get there). My overlap with ERE is that I made a switch from being on a generic path to retire comfortably in my mid-late 60s to an intensely focused plan to get out at age 55 or prior fueled by a changeover to a dramatically more frugal and lean approach to life. That epiphany came when I was 48 or so. I do not come from a wealthy family. I worked throughout college to support myself and graduated in debt with a negative net worth. I do expect to have a lot of capital once I retire (at least a lot relative to my needs), all self-made. So I do not fit the caricature of the evil 1%-er stuffing my pockets by engaging in unethical behavior while keeping my boot firmly on the neck of the "poor", applying all the pressure my inherited wealth can muster. Have I been "fortunate"? Maybe, I dunno, but what I do know is that getting where I am has felt like a lot of work and a lot of sacrifice, and the road was littered with bumps and potholes. In the end I just had to outwork the circumstances, one-by-one. Standing around expecting someone else to intervene on my behalf didn't seem like efficient use of my time.

The thing about good fortune is that it primarily exists where preparation and opportunity meet. I spent several decades in preparation. I live in a place that provides a lot of opportunity. The US faces some challenges in the days ahead, but that was true the year I was born, the year I left for college, 15 years ago, and today. There are some things that could be done to make things better for those on the lower end of the scale where I started from. But if they are done in the spirit of vilification of corporations/industry and the "wealthy", they will make things worse, not better. Unfortunately, that is the direction the political winds in the US tend to be blowing right now. The solution that looms is allowing the government to centralize and/or control/regulate an even larger fraction of the economy. That is a slippery slope.

George the original one
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Re: Capital focus

Post by George the original one »

thrifty++ wrote:If you start out your ERE journey by trying to acquire some skills to sell at a decent price by incurring $100k in debt plus interest maybe not so much so.
There are social programs that allow you to go to college debt-free. Though unpopular with many students, joining the military for a few years is one way to pay for college when you have nothing in your pocket.

enigmaT120
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Re: Capital focus

Post by enigmaT120 »

George the original one wrote:There are social programs that allow you to go to college debt-free. Though unpopular with many students, joining the military for a few years is one way to pay for college when you have nothing in your pocket.
Yes! For that matter, if you can stick it out for 20 years you can get ERE that way, in your very early 40s. I know a retired Air Force couple who did that and they weren't even officers.

Sadly the armed forces discriminate against blind people and wouldn't accept me.

thrifty++
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Re: Capital focus

Post by thrifty++ »

IlliniDave wrote: There are some things that could be done to make things better for those on the lower end of the scale where I started from. But if they are done in the spirit of vilification of corporations/industry and the "wealthy", they will make things worse, not better. Unfortunately, that is the direction the political winds in the US tend to be blowing right now. The solution that looms is allowing the government to centralize and/or control/regulate an even larger fraction of the economy. That is a slippery slope.
I agree that changes should not be made in vilification of wealthy factions. But I think there needs to be an awareness of how they benefit from insufficient capital redistribution and those people are not rich just because they are better than everyone else or because they have worked harder. I dont think there is any sort of conspiracy or group evil plan etc in fact I cant stand conspiracy. But rather I think the growing inequality is more cause and effect of the current system and millions of individual players and transactions to benefit only certain groups in society. People will usually act within the boundaries of an existing system in a way that best benefits themselves, it makes sense to do so. Eg many people will buy normal chicken because it is cheaper despite having some awareness of the suffering the chickens experience before getting to the grocery shelves and will choose to cast those thoughts aside to reduce their personal cost in buying the chicken. Some will feel more motivated to pay more for free range chicken because of strong moral convictions but most wont.

I think if there is a move to more government control of the economy in USA that might be a good thing. If it is done in the right way and looks after people more. I have a sense that in USA people have more fear and distrust of government involvement. This is despite that I think in the past USA govt did support its people more and provide greater capital redistribution and that seems to have changed for the worse since the early 80s. I have heard words used such as "big government "big brother" etc. In NZ its interesting we never hear those words when government is being criticised. Rather we hear "nanny state". The language appears to suggest that in NZ culture tends to view government assistance and support to people as irritating and PC whereas some in US might perceive it more as threatening. Quite a different perception.

IlliniDave
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Re: Capital focus

Post by IlliniDave »

thrifty++,

You'll hear "nanny state" around here too. And maybe that's a key difference between NZ and the US: the degree people want to have the government looking out for them. There's even a split in the US on the topic. I don't know much about NZ, but I presume you can elect whatever kind of government there you like, and let them control as much of your life and economy as you like. I think there are good reasons not to blindly trust government here--it's just too large and the bureaucracy too thick to operate efficiency and the government has almost become an organism unto itself. It just isn't capable of efficiently doing the right thing for it's collection of citizens. Many of the individual states are even too large.

I probably should have left that last paragraph out in my prior post and kept to the topic of ER. All I can tell you is I started near the bottom of the scale and have worked my way to a comfortable place with minimal government involvement. I am nothing special. Sure, transactions funnel money away from the buyer towards the seller. The trick is to skip most of those transactions. Americans on the whole are not good at that any more.

thrifty++
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Re: Capital focus

Post by thrifty++ »

IlliniDave wrote:
All I can tell you is I started near the bottom of the scale and have worked my way to a comfortable place with minimal government involvement. I am nothing special. Sure, transactions funnel money away from the buyer towards the seller. The trick is to skip most of those transactions. Americans on the whole are not good at that any more.
Great that you have made it from the bottom of the scale! Me too. Well I don't think I have made it yet but at least I made it to the middle class! Now it's just a matter of focus and I should be ERE in no time. Well a number of years at least. But hopefully I wont be working at all if I don't want to in my 40s at least.

In NZ I have had the luxury of systemic assistance on a few occasions, I made my way in through skills training. The cost wasn't totally prohibitive and there is no interest on my student loan provided I don't leave NZ for more than 6 months. I could also borrow some student loan to help pay living bills while studying which is also at 0% interest. My bills while studying were also paid by service industry jobs that actually paid ok. Minimum wage is reasonably high here. And there is no culture of "minimum wage jobs" in NZ like there is in Canada and USA. I heard that term for the first time when in USA. It's regarded as shameful in NZ to pay minimum wage to staff so extremely few people are paid it, most service jobs are in excess of it. So I got paid $17 an hour to work at a shift manager at a restaurant (this was years ago too now). Labour laws here also protect employees so I was able to take legal action against an employer on one occasion when I was unjustifiably dismissed and lost my income. I also suffered an injury which I had no money to fix and would have prevented me from working for some time and earning an income. This was paid for by the government to fix asap so I could get back up to speed .

I have a sense that given I have come from the bottom of the scale if I was in USA in similar circumstances I would have not had a leg up in each of these sticky situations and having come from a position of zero capital and support would end up stuffed. While I have had a few legs up which were required I am also now highly skilled, educated and productive with a high income and pay lots of tax. I do wonder if I was in USA if instead of where I am now whether I would still be working service jobs, struggling on minimum wage, unable to afford cost prohibitive skills training, and possibly be homeless due to having an accident I could not afford to fix and/or having been dumped out of a job at a vulnerable time.

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Re: Capital focus

Post by jacob »


ether
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Re: Capital focus

Post by ether »

I think a big thing that plays into the issue is decentralization of the USA's government. In a lot of countries the central government writes and enforces laws and the state & local governments implement it. In the USA it's a nightmare to enforce social programs across the country. Good example is the Affordable Care Act. The idea was to expand eligibility of government run healthcare and require health insurance. While the central government was able to require everyone to get healthcare or pay a fine, several state governments were able to avoid expanding eligibility for government run healthcare for the poor. It's pretty hard to expand social programs when states usually have the final say on if the program is expanded.

thrifty++
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Re: Capital focus

Post by thrifty++ »

I read the summary of those books. Interesting. I hope things aren't that set in stone. I'd like to think US citizens have the ability to demand change to the growing inequality. I am just not sure how much awareness Americans have of how poorly USA compares to other countries which I wonder might be a part of the problem. Many Americans I meet who come to NZ see how things are here (which are far from perfect) and start to despise systems in USA and don't want to go back and try to stay here. But if many Americans stay in the USA all the time asides from a brief 2 week holiday each year somewhere else which isn't enough to learn much then there might remain a lack of awareness.

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Re: Capital focus

Post by jacob »

@thrifty - Also add, http://www.amazon.com/American-Nations- ... 0143122029

The thing is that the United States is better interpreted as an empire than as a country. On top of that it is better seen as a collection of nations---similar to the EU---than as a single country.

There are two issues here which shouldn't be confused.

The first one pertains to the last book I recommended above. Namely, that the US is better seen as a collection of nations than as a single country. In that regard, while there are US citizens and people first and foremost describe them as such, there are actually several different kinds of US citizens. A good analogy is the EU. There are also EU citizens, but people in the EU first and foremost share the culture and language or dialect and affiliation and values with those of their nation.

There's one particular distinction between the US and the EU. An American is a US citizen first and a particular nation (e.g. Left Coast California Liberal, Deep South Bible Belt Republican, New England Yankee Stoic, or Southwest Chicano(*)) second. Whereas in Europe, people tend to be Danes, French, Italians, Greek first ... and EU citizens second. This is one point for the US btw. But this only goes as far as external identification.

(*) The Hispanics do kinda comprise their own nation showing substantial resistance to adopting surrounding values (just like any other nation ... but easily distinguishable because they speak Spanish). A lot of posturing politics is made about immigrants, Mexican independence day, having everybody speak English, etc. But consider that a large part of those areas where this nation is dominant is actually former Mexican territory that the US invaded and successfully conquered in 1847. So perhaps this is similar to the Maori in NZ? Or the Palestinians in Israel? Or the Quebecois in Canada? PS: I just googled Chicano and it seems that the term is racist is some places and proud in others (where I live) ... I definitely didn't mean any insult.

My point here is that internally the US comprises nations that are effectively different countries(**). California (coastal) is a very very different place than the Appalachian (say West Virginia) in terms of attitude, values, etc. Which again is very different from the western states. You may have picked up some referrals to "those damn Californians ruining things when they move here" on the forum. If not see Riggerjack's posts ;-) To wit, California and Kentucky are a lot more different than e.g. Denmark and Sweden.

(**) Which most foreigners don't realize because they only ever visit one part of the US and never really get to live in different "nations". Personally, I've lived on the Left Coast, the Upper Bible Belt, and Yankee Nation, so I have some idea...

To wit, "The Left Coast" (which is exactly what it means ... an area stretching from CA, OR, and WA encompassing the coastal parts .. maybe a couple of hundred miles in from the Pacific Ocean) is the closest to Bernie Sanders style values... which you also find in Scandinavia minus the Law of Jante. The idea that more government regulation allows people to be express their individualism. Left Coast liberalism is somewhat allied to New England values in that both believe that "government is good, so more government is better". However, those values are not represented is very much of the rest of the US. Some areas like the "Wild West" (all the arid stuff with the big skies) and the Appalachian will take individualism albeit moderated with very conservative values any day. IOW "you should be free to die of incompetence but here are some typically religious edicts you must follow to avoid that". In those areas, government is positively bad no matter what it does.

Which gets me to my second point... the imperial interpretation. Namely that the US is a de facto empire. Much more so than the EU empire, the Russian Empire, and the Chinese Empire. (What's interesting is that lately, this year, the latter two has begun to openly challenge the American Empire. Watch this space!!).

From an imperial perspective, the American nations (e.g. Left Coast, New England Yankees, Deep South, Midwest, Chicano...) are run by a bunch of very rich oligarchs (show me a congressman with a networth below 1M) centering around Washington DC and NYC. The US functions like any empire. If the US also ultimately also fails as any empire before it, what it should pay attention to is that failure happens after a series of successive breakdowns in internal cohesion. This cohesion is actually fairly well measured by those standards in which the US is falling behind individual countries. E.g. functional education, Gini index, etc. For anyone who likes the empire, this is not a promising sign.

thrifty++
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Re: Capital focus

Post by thrifty++ »

jacob wrote:
From an imperial perspective, the American nations (e.g. Left Coast, New England Yankees, Deep South, Midwest, ...) are run by a bunch of very rich oligarchs (show me a congressman with a networth below 1M) centering around Washington DC and NYC. The US functions like any empire. If the US also ultimately also fails as any empire before it, what it should pay attention to is that failure happens after a series of successive breakdowns in internal cohesion. This cohesion is actually fairly well measured by those standards in which the US is falling behind individual countries. E.g. functional education, Gini index, etc. For anyone who likes the empire, this is not a promising sign.
Yes that's exactly what freaks me out. And why I give a shit even though I don't live in USA nor desire to at the moment. The USA is the leader of the Western world and maintains global stability. If it does not sort its shit out by looking after its own people better then it may enter an economic decline. Another power may then need to take over. Despite Europe being the most powerful world economy I don't see it being as much of an empire as the USA The individual countries are too culturally different and fragmented to combine as one economic unit. The only other countries powerful enough to take over would be China or Russia and those countries are horrendously corrupt so that would be a disaster. Alternatively the USA could become as corrupt as those countries which would be equally as bad. From what I understand the USA use to look after its own people much better prior to the 80s and have much more of a welfare state. Hopefully there can be some resurgence of that.

Campitor
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Re: Capital focus

Post by Campitor »

The welfare state will bankrupt the country - it's not sustainable. The cost of entitlements programs is too high. We could eliminate the military and all other services and we would still need to borrow horribly to keep the entitlement programs running. Nice graphical representation of our debt: http://demonocracy.info/infographics/us ... _debt.html .

Our educational standards and GINI index scores might be a bit skewed as a result of the waves of immigrants that arrive daily. Spend a day in a public school and you will meet a lot of students that can't read, write, or do basic math. Some of it is a result of social economic conditions native to the country of new arrivals (i.e., no schools for poor people in South America or not an option because the kids need to work). And when you have waves and waves of new immigrants with no marketable skills it impacts the GINI index unfavorably.

thrifty++
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Re: Capital focus

Post by thrifty++ »

Campitor wrote:The welfare state will bankrupt the country - it's not sustainable. The cost of entitlements programs is too high. We could eliminate the military and all other services and we would still need to borrow horribly to keep the entitlement programs running. Nice graphical representation of our debt: http://demonocracy.info/infographics/us ... _debt.html .

Our educational standards and GINI index scores might be a bit skewed as a result of the waves of immigrants that arrive daily. Spend a day in a public school and you will meet a lot of students that can't read, write, or do basic math. Some of it is a result of social economic conditions native to the country of new arrivals (i.e., no schools for poor people in South America or not an option because the kids need to work). And when you have waves and waves of new immigrants with no marketable skills it impacts the GINI index unfavorably.
Do you think USA gets more immigrants than other developed countries though? I thought it was the hardest to get into of all - lottery greencard aside. Even people with Canadian passports like me aren't allowed there more than 6 months.

Its looks like there is a bit of a nasty debt problem. Why though. I guess USA has to spend lots on military. That sucks for USA citizens. I guess NZ and Canada have the luxury of spending next to nothing on military. But still, what else. Maybe there needs to be higher tax at the top end for the enormous amount of ridiculously wealthy people to ease the governments burden of that debt. I am interested to know what laws and policies exist in USA to help out people without capital to reduce the effect of "trickle up" economics which is sucking the wealth off the people at the bottom and funneling it up to those at the top? I might be ignorant about my perceptions of USA policies. Its only what I hear from most Americans I meet in NZ and how they describe it (and usually with spite). What policies are in place to redistribute capital? I have given examples of how bad I think things are at the beginning of this post. So what are good examples?

Campitor
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Re: Capital focus

Post by Campitor »

thrifty++ wrote: Do you think USA gets more immigrants than other developed countries though? I thought it was the hardest to get into of all - lottery greencard aside. Even people with Canadian passports like me aren't allowed there more than 6 months.
Yes we get more immigrants that other developed countries and no one comes looking for you when you overstay your welcome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... population
thrifty++ wrote: Its looks like there is a bit of a nasty debt problem. Why though. I guess USA has to spend lots on military. That sucks for USA citizens. I guess NZ and Canada have the luxury of spending next to nothing on military. But still, what else. Maybe there needs to be higher tax at the top end for the enormous amount of ridiculously wealthy people to ease the governments burden of that debt.
2014 budget numbers: Military spending was 699.4 billion (19%), Social Security was 724.9 billion (20%), and Medicare/Medicaid 834.9 billion (23%). We spend less on military than Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare but even if we spent 0% on military we would still have a budget deficit. And Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare are mandatory and can't be touched without a change to the law. We could cut everything and spend money only on Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid and would still need to borrow money to fund these programs.
thrifty++ wrote: I am interested to know what laws and policies exist in USA to help out people without capital to reduce the effect of "trickle up" economics which is sucking the wealth off the people at the bottom and funneling it up to those at the top? I might be ignorant about my perceptions of USA policies. Its only what I hear from most Americans I meet in NZ and how they describe it (and usually with spite). What policies are in place to redistribute capital? I have given examples of how bad I think things are at the beginning of this post. So what are good examples?
Social Programs is what is used to redistribute capital - the list is too big to list but here is a wikipedia link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_pr ... ted_States .

Everyone in the US would love to have NZ type programs but don't want to pay the taxes to fund it. I get 5 week of vacation a year but I'm a long term employee - you start off with just 2 weeks and it increases after 5 years to 3 weeks, etc. Not all companies can afford to give 3+ weeks of vacation; they would just hire more people but at a lesser wage to fill the gap.

You can't compare the business culture of the USA to NZ when our GDP dwarfs the NZ GDP. GDP matters because it provides opportunities for generating wealth that can bypass mandates and allow for the offshoring of wealth and industry. Forcing companies to adopt certain business practices or pay scales could have unintended consequences. Retailers are testing automated fast food kiosks in case minimum wage increases are implemented: http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/22/technol ... ood-robot/

The only thing I blame the rich for is how they convince the poor and middle-class consumers to spend their money so willingly on stupidities. Over priced movies, smart phones, designer clothes, amusement parks, expensive SUVs with sucky gas mileage, etc. etc., ad-nauseum. If people practiced ERE they could move out of poverty easily. Jacob lives on $7000.00 yearly - minimum wage pays $6.26 after tax ($7.25 before taxes) which means you can earn a take home pay of $13,020.80. $13,020.80 - $7,000.00 = $6020.80 in yearly savings.

I was once a minimum wage rat and I was able to move up - and I was married with a newborn son at the time - still married to the same wife with 2 kids which I put through college. And did I mention I was the only bread winner at the time? I found an apartment for only $500 bucks ( the landlord knew I was a handyman and reduced my rent in return for fixing leaks/defrosting frozen pipes/painting apartments). We ate rice, beans, potatoes, etc - all the cheap stuff but it was filling and nutritious. I had a car but I left it at home and took public transportation everywhere or I biked/walked. The bonus was being thinner than most americans which meant getting stupidly discounted clothes because no one could fit in it. I was frugal before it was popular. Money = power. Why would anyone cede their power so easily?

The poor don't need more money from the rich - they need to wake up from the consumer fantasy dream. There are so many ways to move up in the USA that it's staggering. It's embarrassing that so many people think they can't do it. By the way, I lived downstairs from some Vietnamese people during my $500 apartment stint. I had to go upstairs to replace a faucet and noted there was no furniture, only bags and mattresses on the floor. There were like 15 people living in a 2 bedroom apartment- they were all family. They worked minimum wage jobs (cooks mostly) but they were super polite and super quiet - great neighbors. Before I moved away (hard work and a pay increase meant I could move closer to work and a much better apartment) the Vietnamese folks purchased their own 3 story apartment building and opened a small grocery store.

thrifty++
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Re: Capital focus

Post by thrifty++ »

The USA doesn't receive more than other developed nations as a percentage. Only as a quantum. But it has a bigger population to absorb immigrants. NZ has a far bigger immigrant percentage than USA.

It looks like the USA then maybe does provide some support to its people. It just hasn't seemed to have been the message I receive from Americans who I talk to here.

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