This is why John Edwards sucks

callen wrote:

I have no problems with salaries..and the government can't get involved in free market economics........but all pay taxes.

And the best way to remedy this is by insituting a fair tax.

jlew24asu wrote:

they shouldnt recieve untaxed pay. but I dont want to government to be able to CAP their pay either.

and I also have a problem with governments requiring companies to enroll employees in retirement plans.

what I do agree with however, is government forcing companies to honor pension commitments.

so we are in total agreement.......ON THIS anyway.

Q: How do I lower CEO pay?
A: Stop paying their insane salaries. CEOs don't print money. They get it from us. Don't buy their products. Don't invest in their organizations. Share your choices and the motivations for them with anyone who will listen. But don't pretend for a minute you have a right to prevent others from making different choices. Don't pretend that your definitions of "need" or "enough" are objective measures, lest their subjective realities get turned on you.

Q: How do I protect my retirement?
A: Take ownership of that retirement. Don't push the responsibility of it onto another person or organization and then be surprised when they screw you over. Neither your company nor your government has the same incentive as you do to help you retire comfortably, nor does anyone owe you that retirement. Save and invest your money in your own retirement vehicles. Forgo "employer matching" with strings attached and demand from your employer a comparable raise instead. Learn about compound interest. Discover ways to invest before taxation. Try to understand why the one dollar saved in 1968 has now turned into $15, but is only really worth $2.57.

Q: Why do corporations run our country?
A: Because you let them. You put nearly unlimited power into the hands of a few hundred people, put all those people in a few buildings in the same town, demanded that they serve a mushy and undefinable concept known as "the common good", and now you're surprised when they serve someone else's definition of that concept? Shame on you. You've created this game of influence peddling and you still worship it when it helps you and ignore the fundamentals of its nature when it hurts you. Examine your philosophies and think about what can be done with them in the hands of those with different values than your own.

High paid CEO's are evil. Would I mind if a CEO who thought he was worth $100 million a year died in a car crash? No. These people are greedy freaks who do not earn their pay. That Exxon CEO who retired with like $400 million should be shot.

bootlegger10 wrote:

High paid CEO's are evil. Would I mind if a CEO who thought he was worth $100 million a year died in a car crash? No. These people are greedy freaks who do not earn their pay. That Exxon CEO who retired with like $400 million should be shot.

I truely hope that you are just kidding.

GTFLYGIRL wrote:

I truly believe there can be a capitalistic financial system and a socialistic social system. Together. In usinson. Like lovers.

that's exactly what i was gonna say, but you said it first. DAMN YOU!!!

Is Selfish Capitalism Driving Us Mad?

By Oliver James, Comment Is Free
http://www.alternet.org/story/72496/

By far the most significant consequence of "selfish capitalism" (Thatch/Blatcherism) has been a startling increase in the incidence of mental illness in both children and adults since the 1970s. As I report in my book, The Selfish Capitalist -- Origins of Affluenza, World Health Organization and nationally representative studies in the United States, Britain and Australia, reveal that it almost doubled between the early 80s and the turn of the century. These increases are very unlikely to be due to greater preparedness to acknowledge distress -- the psychobabbling therapy culture was already established.

Add to this the astonishing fact that citizens of Selfish Capitalist, English-speaking nations (which tend to be one and the same) are twice as likely to suffer mental illness as those from mainland western Europe, which is largely Unselfish Capitalist in its political economy. An average 23% of Americans, Britons, Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians suffered in the last 12 months, but only 11.5% of Germans, Italians, French, Belgians, Spaniards and Dutch. The message could not be clearer. Selfish Capitalism, much more than genes, is extremely bad for your mental health. But why is it so toxic?

Readers of this newspaper will need little reminding that Selfish Capitalism has massively increased the wealth of the wealthy, robbing the average earner to give to the rich. There was no "trickle-down effect" after all.

The real wage of the average English-speaking person has remained the same - or, in the case of the US, decreased - since the 1970s. By more than halving the taxes of the richest and transferring the burden to the general population, Margaret Thatcher reinstated the rich's capital wealth after three postwar decades in which they had steadily become poorer.

Although I risk you glazing over at these statistics, it's worth remembering that the top 1% of British earners have doubled their share of the national income since 1982, from 6.5% to 13%, FTSE 100 chief executives now earning 133 times more than the average wage (against 20 times in 1980); and under Brown's chancellorship the richest 0.3% nobbled over half of all liquid assets (cash, instantly accessible income), increasing their share by 79% during the last five years.

In itself, this economic inequality does not cause mental illness. WHO studies show that some very inequitable developing nations, like Nigeria and China, also have the lowest prevalence of mental illness. Furthermore, inequity may be much greater in the English-speaking world today, but it is far less than it was at the end of the 19th century. While we have no way of knowing for sure, it is very possible that mental illness was nowhere near as widespread in, for instance, the US or Britain of that time.

What does the damage is the combination of inequality with the widespread relative materialism of Affluenza - placing a high value on money, possessions, appearances and fame when you already have enough income to meet your fundamental psychological needs. Survival materialism is healthy. If you need money for medicine or to buy a house, becoming very concerned about getting them does not make you mentally ill.

But Selfish Capitalism stokes up relative materialism: unrealistic aspirations and the expectation that they can be fulfilled. It does so to stimulate consumerism in order to increase profits and promote short-term economic growth. Indeed, I maintain that high levels of mental illness are essential to Selfish Capitalism, because needy, miserable people make greedy consumers and can be more easily suckered into perfectionist, competitive workaholism.

With overstimulated aspirations and expectations, the entrepreneurial fantasy society fosters the delusion that anyone can be Alan Sugar or Bill Gates, never mind that the actual likelihood of this occurring has diminished since the 1970s. A Briton turning 20 in 1978 was more likely than one doing so in 1990 to achieve upward mobility through education. Nonetheless, in the Big Brother/ It Could Be You society, great swaths of the population believe they can become rich and famous, and that it is highly desirable. This is most damaging of all - the ideology that material affluence is the key to fulfillment and open to anyone willing to work hard enough. If you don't succeed, there is only one person to blame - never mind that it couldn't be clearer that it's the system's fault, not yours.

Depressed or anxious, you work ever harder. Or maybe you collapse and join the sickness benefit queue, leaving it to people shipped in to do the low-paid jobs that society has taught you are too demeaning - let alone the unpaid ones, like looking after children or elderly parents, which are beneath contempt in the Nouveau labor liturgy.

There is much tearing of hair across the media and advocacy of nose-pegging on these pages of the "grin and bear it" variety. In fact, there is an alternative. We desperately need -- and before long, I predict we will get -- a passionate, charismatic, probably female leader who advocates the Unselfish Capitalism of our neighbors. The pitch is simple. Not only would reduced consumerism and greater equality make us more ecologically sustainable, it would halve the prevalence of mental illness within a generation.

Oliver James is the author of They f*** you up. His new book, Affluenza - How to be successful and stay sane, is now available.

"Indeed, I maintain that high levels of mental illness are essential to Selfish Capitalism, because needy, miserable people make greedy consumers and can be more easily suckered into perfectionist, competitive workaholism."

call it whatever you want, i think this is true.

farfromglorified wrote:

Why do you think it's true?

WHY do i think needy, miserable people make greedy consumers and can be more easily suckered into perfectionist, competitive workaholism? because i can see it happening all around me. can't you?

here's a particularly true excerpt:

"This is most damaging of all - the ideology that material affluence is the key to fulfillment and open to anyone willing to work hard enough. If you don't succeed, there is only one person to blame - never mind that it couldn't be clearer that it's the system's fault, not yours.

Depressed or anxious, you work ever harder. Or maybe you collapse and join the sickness benefit queue, leaving it to people shipped in to do the low-paid jobs that society has taught you are too demeaning - let alone the unpaid ones, like looking after children or elderly parents, which are beneath contempt in the Nouveau labor liturgy."


i think our current brand of capitalism makes for an unhealthy society. it places greed over compassion, which never leads to a good place.

sweetpotato wrote:

WHY do i think needy, miserable people make greedy consumers and can be more easily suckered into perfectionist, competitive workaholism? because i can see it happening all around me. can't you?

I certainly see many perfectionists and workaholics around me. I also see people who are content with who they are and who don't work much. Yet both operate in the same economic system.

Once upon a time, people "saw" the sun revolving around the Earth. The opposite was actually true, and it took someone to explain why the sun rises and sets everyday at a level deeper than what they "see". They used science and reason and logic, something the article you used was largely devoid of.

here's a particularly true excerpt:

"This is most damaging of all - the ideology that material affluence is the key to fulfillment and open to anyone willing to work hard enough. If you don't succeed, there is only one person to blame - never mind that it couldn't be clearer that it's the system's fault, not yours.

Depressed or anxious, you work ever harder. Or maybe you collapse and join the sickness benefit queue, leaving it to people shipped in to do the low-paid jobs that society has taught you are too demeaning - let alone the unpaid ones, like looking after children or elderly parents, which are beneath contempt in the Nouveau labor liturgy."

Why is that "true"? What science supports it? What comprehensive study or unassailable logic demonstrates that "truth"?

i think our current brand of capitalism makes for an unhealthy society. it places greed over compassion, which never leads to a good place.

What is "it"? Capitalism? Capitalism doesn't place greed over compassion, by default. Capitalism places some of the values of individuals over others, all based on the standards and virtues of the individuals involved. If your society is comprised of mostly the greedy, then certainly greed will be placed over compassion. Conversely, if your society is comprised of mostly the compassionate, then compassion will be given a higher precedence.

I find it incredibly ironic that the concept of "greed" is so often raised by people like John Edwards, his own immense wealth notwithstanding. Edwards and his ilk, while invoking the "perils of greed", demand from others free healthcare, free jobs, free retirements, free money, all without committing to provide anything in return. Yet they pretend that the faceless "them" at whom they toss nothing but vitriol hold a monopoly on greed. Is not the definition of greed the demand for something greater than the value you wish to provide in return? Is not the logic of the "greedy CEO" hallmarked by payments greater than his or her worth? Then what is that which Edwards stands for? "Compassion"??? What a mockery people like that make of language and morality.

If you dislike our "current brand of capitalism", I completely support your right to separate yourself from it. You have no obligation, in my mind, to serve any function of American capitalism, if you do not wish to do so. But to pretend that you dislike the current brand of capitalism in this country, being so marked by coersion and force, when all your really dislike is the position you hold within it and when all you really desire is to apply that same coersion and force on your own chosen targets, is to be contradictory and, in my opinion, no better than those you call your enemy.