Maybe this iz wut we need?
POSTED BY: JO753
UPDATED: Wednesday, September 20, 2023 17:52
VIEWED: 19328
PAGE 9 of 16
Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:
If poverty wuz suddenly eliminated from the world its game over in less than 20 yirz.
Poverty or no, it's not going to change anything. Half of the population doesn't think there's anything wrong and will die choking on smog telling themselves there's nothing wrong.
No one should have to stay in poverty so we can get 10 more years out of our ecosystems.
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Quote:Once upon a time, in an old post, I actually looked up and calculated the CO2 emissions across the globe. IF the USA and Canada were to reduce CO2 emissions to that of the EU (roughly half of today's) we could still retain (actually, improve) our standard of living and there would be enough energy leftover to raise the standard of living of the poorest nations in the world to something like Cuba or Costa Rica. Not lavish, but not terrible.
If poverty wuz suddenly eliminated from the world its game over in less than 20 yirz.
But that would require that every national leadership be laser-focused on improving EVERYONE's standard of living .... not consigning a significant swath of people to grinding poverty ... while still maintaining energy efficiency and improving sustainability. We would then be on a glide path to lower populations and better ecological health.
Our problems are political, economic, and cultural, not technological. I believe it's the parasitical elite who are preventing us from reaching the solutions that we need.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.
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Quote:
What we have instead is people being forced into the ever increasing competition of the Roman arena of war of all against all. Where you have highly skilled people competing for low paying jobs, for example. And people being shunted into non-productive "non-essential" make-work, to scramble as best they can to keep afloat.
Quote:Capitalism for the masses. "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
This right here is about half of the reason I've decided to opt out of the rat race. If I'm going to bust my ass and lend my perfectionist skills to make somebody else look good (and make money for them), then I'm going to do it as little as possible.
Sadly, almost all people by birth or circumstance have no other choice but to play the losing end. The western-dominated world is a company town. It determines the jobs, pays the wages, and fixes the prices you pay.
So I hope there's enough mental charity going around everywhere to understand we have this common problem, that can only ultimately be solved in common.
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Quote:
If poverty wuz suddenly eliminated from the world its game over in less than 20 yirz.
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Once upon a time, in an old post, I actually looked up and calculated the CO2 emissions across the globe. IF the USA and Canada were to reduce CO2 emissions to that of the EU (roughly half of today's) we could still retain (actually, improve) our standard of living and there would be enough energy leftover to raise the standard of living of the poorest nations in the world to something like Cuba or Costa Rica. Not lavish, but not terrible.
But that would require that every national leadership be laser-focused on improving EVERYONE's standard of living .... not consigning a significant swath of people to grinding poverty ... while still maintaining energy efficiency and improving sustainability. We would then be on a glide path to lower populations and better ecological health.
Our problems are political, economic, and cultural ... I believe it's the parasitical elite who are preventing us from reaching the solutions that we need.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:Quote:
What we have instead is people being forced into the ever increasing competition of the Roman arena of war of all against all. Where you have highly skilled people competing for low paying jobs, for example. And people being shunted into non-productive "non-essential" make-work, to scramble as best they can to keep afloat.Quote:Capitalism for the masses. "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
This right here is about half of the reason I've decided to opt out of the rat race. If I'm going to bust my ass and lend my perfectionist skills to make somebody else look good (and make money for them), then I'm going to do it as little as possible.
I like that. I really like that.
Quote:
Sadly, almost all people by birth or circumstance have no other choice but to play the losing end. The western-dominated world is a company town. It determines the jobs, pays the wages, and fixes the prices you pay.
This is true, but you can limit the amount you need to play by being a lot wiser with how you spend your after tax dollars. I don't mean you, specifically... I mean people in general and particularly those in the Western Town.
Simply refuse to be a consumer. That's half the game right there, and the only half that you have any control over.
Quote:
So I hope there's enough mental charity going around everywhere to understand we have this common problem, that can only ultimately be solved in common.
I can't imagine that would ever be the case, but here's to hoping.
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A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.
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Quote:I was thinking more globally and inclusively. The women and children who live on the dumps in the Philippines have no choice but to work HARD every single day just to have a chance to survive another day. They don't get to sit back and decide how much they'll participate today. And there are people who don't have the smarts to have a bigger perspective, or the physical capabilities to make it happen, or both. And most people simply aren't in a position to set themselves up like you did with your good job, because they never had that one springboard.
This is true, but you can limit the amount you need to play by being a lot wiser with how you spend your after tax dollars.
So being independent, or close enough to it - for the moment anyway - isn't an option for most, looking globally at the western-dominated world.
Someone said something to me many decades ago and it revolutionized my perspective. They said in effect - your good western life is only possible BECAUSE people are poor elsewhere.
The same is true today, except the US chickens have come home to roost. We don't have too many other places left to dominate and exploit. So tptb are cannibalizing the US, too.
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I did make a point to specify those living in "Western Town". Obviously the kid who makes your shoes who works 12 hour days for a dollar doesn't have many choices. A lot of people living here do though, and that's not just those in the upper middle class either.
Even if I had a mortgage now, my living expenses would be under $12k per year. My salesman buddy told me last year he spends quite a bit more in a month than I do in a year... But he's got 2 kids, one he's paying child support for, a huge house that could fit 8 people when there are only 3 living there and a stay at home wife who has an "Amazon addiction", in his words. About a month after he told me that, he stopped by one day to show me his new car that cost more than my house did.
And that's an extreme example of over consuming. The last two jobs I had were minimum wage and only a few dollars above it. I couldn't believe how many people smoked premium cigarettes that cost more than an hours worth of their time and ate fast food every night. Some of them even bought a cup of coffee from McDonalds or Dunkin Donuts before they came in. By the time they went home, they'd already spent 3/8ths to 1/2 of the money they made that night just to get through the night.
Roll your own. Brown bag the lunch. Bring a pot of coffee with you in a travel thermos. You've just saved $4,000 to $6,000 per year.
But yeah. I've been saying for years we're running out of third world countries to exploit and the only way the show keeps running as is, is if we figure out how to colonize other inhabited planets or dimensions for cheap labor.
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A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM: I'm always happy to find areas of agreement, but if you won't discuss your opinions I suppose we'll never find out.
I'm happy to discuss wen I hav the time. But I dont hav a bunch theze dayz, so cant waste any churning debunks.
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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
The real solution: https://fundrazr.com/71jIY1?ref=ab_f9ZUS0
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Quote:IIRC that was in your reply, not your original post, after I said I was thinking more globally and inclusively.
I did make a point to specify those living in "Western Town".
Quote:That kind of makes me think of Geezer ... or was it CC, I get the 2 confused in my memory a times ... who said the problem of eating fast food could be solved by going to the grocery store (on a bus, in a 'food desert'), buying rice and beans in bulk and cooking every day (when you're working 2 or more jobs), and shopping the sales to put in your freezer (that you bought with your non-existent extra cash). Not everyone lives by themselves, for themselves. Not everyone has the time, energy, tools, or skills, to implement handy 'fixes'. Not everyone lives in virtually zero-cost housing. I'm not arguing that people don't make poor choices. They absolutely do. Even ** I **, miserly as I am, know I could probably trim my budget at least 30% if I tried. I'm just saying your example doesn't fit the vast majority of people even here, in the good ol' USA, who're struggling economically.
Roll your own. Brown bag the lunch. Bring a pot of coffee with you in a travel thermos. You've just saved $4,000 to $6,000 per year.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:Quote:IIRC that was in your reply, not your original post, after I said I was thinking more globally and inclusively.
I did make a point to specify those living in "Western Town".
It didn't need to be in my original post. I don't expect people to to read minds or foretell where a conversation will end up going, and I expect the same courtesy from them as well.
Quote:
Roll your own. Brown bag the lunch. Bring a pot of coffee with you in a travel thermos. You've just saved $4,000 to $6,000 per year.
Quote:
That kind of makes me think of Geezer ... or was it CC, I get the 2 confused in my memory a times ... who said the problem of eating fast food could be solved by going to the grocery store (on a bus, in a 'food desert'), buying rice and beans in bulk and cooking every day (when you're working 2 or more jobs), and shopping the sales to put in your freezer (that you bought with your non-existent extra cash). Not everyone lives by themselves, for themselves. Not everyone has the time, energy, tools, or skills, to implement handy 'fixes'. Not everyone lives in virtually zero-cost housing. I'm not arguing that people don't make poor choices. They absolutely do. Even ** I **, miserly as I am, know I could probably trim my budget at least 30% if I tried. I'm just saying your example doesn't fit the vast majority of people even here, in the good ol' USA, who're struggling economically.
Rolling your own cigarettes if you smoke is the easiest and cheapest thing to do. I know you don't smoke, personally, but work a night shift at a retail store and you'd quickly learn that you're in the vast minority.
A can of coffee at Aldi is 5 bucks. A good thermos is around $30.
Where I live, a pack of Newports is $8.00 (cheap around here compared to many other places nationally). A cup of coffee at McDonalds is $1.50. If you smoked one pack per day, Rolling your own cigarettes for the day and making your own coffee would save $3,000, and you'd have an entire pot of coffee compared to only a single cup for the day.
If you smoked 2 packs in a day, you've just saved $5,475.
This is all after tax/ss/medicare is taken out. It's the biggest raise you're ever going to see in a life of thankless retail work.
That almost immediately takes care of your "non-existant cash" problem, and can get the ball rolling to buy food in bulk.
If you don't smoke, you're spending money on other bullshit like Cable TV. Cut the cord. Don't buy a new iPhone every two years because of peer pressure. Paying $100 a month for a phone plan? Get US Mobile and reduce it to $25 a month for the same thing (They use Verizon towers and will even mail you 2 sim cards and let you test it out for 2 weeks before they start billing you, contract free). Pay less than $3 a month for a Magic Jack phone. Figure it out.
My example used the poorest of the poor, Kiki. People you probably don't ever associate with. People who by all rights shouldn't even be smoking premium cigarettes and buying restaurant coffee with how little they make. (A lot of those people at KMart, I walked through the steps to get on food stamps because they didn't even know they'd qualify for them).
I'm the one guy there who could afford to do it if he wanted to, but I don't, and that's why I'm the one guy there who could afford to if he wanted to.
I'm not the model for how everybody else should live. NOT because I've already set myself up right, but because I wouldn't expect anybody else to go without so many things for so long and be miserly to the point of borderline-insanity just to get there. But almost everybody here living in the US has a lot more wiggle room than they think they do, even in this shit economy.
They just need to ask themselves if they are going to allow their bad habits and addictions that
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