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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On July 06 2017 02:53 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 02:50 LegalLord wrote:On July 06 2017 02:43 a_flayer wrote:On July 06 2017 02:38 KwarK wrote:On July 06 2017 02:35 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:31 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:25 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:15 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:02 Plansix wrote:
Why Summer Jobs Don't Pay
Why can't kids today just work their way through college the way earlier generations did?
The answer to that question isn't psychology. It's math. A summer job just doesn't have the purchasing power it used to, especially when you compare it with the cost of college.
Let's take the example of a working-class student at a four-year public university who's getting no help from Mom and Dad. In 1981-'82, the average full cost to attend was $2,870. That's for tuition, fees and room and board.
The maximum Pell Grant award back then for free tuition help from the government was $1,800. That leaves our hypothetical student on the hook for just about $1,000. Add in a little pocket money, too — say $35 a week. That makes an extra $1,820 for the year on top of the $1,000 tuition shortfall.
Now, $3.35 an hour was the minimum wage back then. So, making $2,870 meant working 842 hours. That's 16 hours a week year-round — a decent part-time job. It's also about nine hours a day for three straight months — a full-time, seven-day-a-week summer job. Or, more likely, a combination of both. In short: not impossible. Far from it.
For today's public university student, though, the numbers have all changed in the wrong direction.
For the school year that just ended, the total of tuition, fees and room and board for in-state students at four-year public universities was $20,090. The maximum Pell Grant didn't keep pace with that: It was $5,815. That left our hypothetical student on the hook for $14,275.
A student would now have to work 37 hours a week, every week of the year, at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, to get by. Research shows that when college students work more than 20 hours a week, their studies suffer. If they're working full time, many will take longer to finish and end up paying even more.
To cover today's costs with a low-skilled summer job? Over 90 days, a student would need to work 21.9 hours a day.
Of course, you could seek work in a city with a higher minimum wage like Washington, D.C. ($12.50, as of July 1) or Seattle, where it's $13 an hour, on its way to $15 (but there, low-wage workers may have lost out on annual income).
Rents tend to be higher in those places, too.
Plus side: If you're working that much, you may not need to pay rent because you're hardly sleeping.
No wonder students are borrowing so much these days.
SourceIn America, where you pay more for garbage. But everyone tells you it is worth the money. But in the 1980s we could pay for college on 16 hours of work a week year round. Shit like this is why I have such a disdain for modern liberals and the Democratic Party (I also hate the conservatives and the Republican party, but that should be obvious). College is getting to the point where less and less people can afford it and they keep trying to tell us bullshit like "it's not possible" or "try again in a few years." It pisses me off because I lived in a pretty poor town and most of my friends couldn't afford any halfway decent college and got stuck working in chemical plants where they breathe in hundreds of carcinogens each day or had to take on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to be able to even go to college. I went to a private school out of state for a few months and ended up dropping out because it was so fucking expensive and I couldn't bear to put my family in debt because of the ridiculous rates they were charging. I know that's private schools and they can charge whatever they want, so that doesn't apply, but even when in-state tuition at a public university runs you over $20k a year, something has to change, and it sure as shit didn't help that our governor decided to deregulate the tuition costs Why not both parties since both of them did this? The rising price of college has been a problem for decades and both parties ignored it. They decided that unlimited, uncapped student loans that cannot be discharged was a good idea. And now we have an entire entrenched industry that is based on enriching themselves off of these loans. At any point they could have updated the student loan system to address these problems, but they ignored it. It's more that we all know the Republicans don't have the best interests of the average working-class person in mind, but the Democrats try to sell themselves as friends of the working class , but when someone who actually champions serious reforms that the working class needs to be able to survive, the entire Democratic Party establishment comes out against him. I saw this personally since I was involved in my county's Democratic Party organization and everyone, myself included, that said they supported Bernie Sanders, the heads either laughed at us or started excluding us from things because we weren't blindly following Hillary The democratic party is filled with baby boomers who are still high on the idea they are the greatest generation. They can change over time if people stay involved. The fact that the party laughed when plasmidghost spoke doesn't necessarily prove that the party is out of touch. We need more information before we can really judge. Are you being satirical? The Democrats have barely won any election in about a decade... I think we all underestimate just how meaningful it was that beneath the surface of Obama heading up a shitty obstructionist government, the Republicans were winning because they were just genuinely that unpopular. It took me until the very end to see the depths of how scummy and undesirable the Democratic rank-and-file was. I suppose it took longer than it should have because Obama had an impressive "nothing really changed but things are somehow better" aura with every talk of his. From the NYT today: Show nested quote +‘‘Liberal’’ has long been a dirty word to the American political right. It may be shortened, in the parlance of the Limbaugh Belt, to ‘‘libs,’’ or expanded to the offensive portmanteau ‘‘libtards.’’ But its target is always clear. For the people who use these epithets, liberals are, basically, everyone who leans to the left: big-spending Democrats with their unisex bathrooms and elaborate coffee. This is still how polls classify people, placing them on a neat spectrum from ‘‘extremely conservative’’ to ‘‘extremely liberal.’’
Over the last few years, though — and especially 2016 — there has been a surge of the opposite phenomenon: Now the political left is expressing its hatred of liberals, too. For the committed leftist, the ‘‘liberal’’ is a weak-minded, market-friendly centrist, wonky and technocratic and condescending to the working class. The liberal is pious about diversity but ready to abandon any belief at the slightest drop in poll numbers — a person who is, as the folk singer Phil Ochs once said, ‘‘10 degrees to the left of center in good times, 10 degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.’’ The anonymous Twitter account ‘‘liberalism.txt’’ is a relentless stream of images and retweets that supposedly illustrate this liberal vacuousness: say, the chief executive of Patagonia’s being hailed as a leader of ‘‘corporate resistance to Trump,’’ or Chelsea Clinton’s accusing Steve Bannon of ‘‘fat shaming’’ Sean Spicer.
This shift in terminology can be confusing, both politically and generationally — as when baby boomers describe fervent supporters of Bernie Sanders as ‘‘very liberal,’’ unaware that young Sandersistas might find this vomit-inducing. It can also create common ground. Last year, the young (and left-leaning) writer Emmett Rensin published a widely read piece on Vox deriding liberals for their ‘‘smug style’’; soon enough, one longtime adept of the right, National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru, was expressing his partial approval, writing in Bloomberg View that what contemporary liberalism lacked most was humility. Here was a perspective common to both sides of the old spectrum: that liberals suffered from a serene, self-ratifying belief in their own reasonableness, and that it would spell their inevitable defeat.
When it comes to diagnosing liberalism, both left and right focus on this same set of debilitating traits: arrogance, hypocrisy, pusillanimity, the insulated superiority of what, in 1969, a New York mayoral candidate called the ‘‘limousine liberal.’’ In other words, the features they use to distinguish liberals aren’t policies so much as attitudes. The profane hosts of the popular podcast ‘‘Chapo Trap House,’’ prime originators of the left’s liberal-bashing, spend a good deal of airtime making fun of liberal cultural life, with one common target being fervor for the musical ‘‘Hamilton.’’ ‘‘Nothing has represented them more: a hagiographical musical where they can pretend to be intersectional and pretend to be multicultural,’’ said Felix Biederman, a co-host, on the second episode of the show. ‘‘They have no policy. They’re all cultural signifiers.’’
To be a ‘‘liberal,’’ in this account, is in some sense to be a fake. It’s to shroud an ambiguous, even reactionary agenda under a superficial commitment to social justice and moderate, incremental change. American liberalism was once associated with something far more robust, with immoderate presidents and spectacular waves of legislation like Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Today’s liberals stand accused of forsaking the clarity and ambition of even that flawed legacy. To call someone a liberal now, in other words, is often to denounce him or her as having abandoned liberalism.
Liberal-bashing on social media has reached a kind of apogee, but its targets have not yet produced much real defense of the ideology. This means the word ‘‘liberal’’ is, for the moment, almost entirely one of abuse. It is hard to think of an American politician who has embraced it, even going back two or three generations. If liberalism is dead, then, it’s a strange sort of demise: Here is an ideology that has many accused sympathizers, but no champions, no defenders. Source.
I think that has a lot to do with the modern day definition of "liberal" being more akin to "neoliberal" than "Enlightenment era derived liberal values." The former is particularly prominent in this corner of the woods and deserves all the scorn it receives.
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So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was the overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories.
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On July 06 2017 03:02 LegalLord wrote:
I think that has a lot to do with the modern day definition of "liberal" being more akin to "neoliberal" than "Enlightenment era derived liberal values." The former is particularly prominent in this corner of the woods and deserves all the scorn it receives.
Classical liberalism in America seems to have been lumped in with libertarianism and thrown to the anarchists.
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On July 06 2017 03:00 plasmidghost wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 02:53 xDaunt wrote:On July 06 2017 02:50 LegalLord wrote:On July 06 2017 02:43 a_flayer wrote:On July 06 2017 02:38 KwarK wrote:On July 06 2017 02:35 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:31 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:25 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:15 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:02 Plansix wrote:[quote] SourceIn America, where you pay more for garbage. But everyone tells you it is worth the money. But in the 1980s we could pay for college on 16 hours of work a week year round. Shit like this is why I have such a disdain for modern liberals and the Democratic Party (I also hate the conservatives and the Republican party, but that should be obvious). College is getting to the point where less and less people can afford it and they keep trying to tell us bullshit like "it's not possible" or "try again in a few years." It pisses me off because I lived in a pretty poor town and most of my friends couldn't afford any halfway decent college and got stuck working in chemical plants where they breathe in hundreds of carcinogens each day or had to take on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to be able to even go to college. I went to a private school out of state for a few months and ended up dropping out because it was so fucking expensive and I couldn't bear to put my family in debt because of the ridiculous rates they were charging. I know that's private schools and they can charge whatever they want, so that doesn't apply, but even when in-state tuition at a public university runs you over $20k a year, something has to change, and it sure as shit didn't help that our governor decided to deregulate the tuition costs Why not both parties since both of them did this? The rising price of college has been a problem for decades and both parties ignored it. They decided that unlimited, uncapped student loans that cannot be discharged was a good idea. And now we have an entire entrenched industry that is based on enriching themselves off of these loans. At any point they could have updated the student loan system to address these problems, but they ignored it. It's more that we all know the Republicans don't have the best interests of the average working-class person in mind, but the Democrats try to sell themselves as friends of the working class , but when someone who actually champions serious reforms that the working class needs to be able to survive, the entire Democratic Party establishment comes out against him. I saw this personally since I was involved in my county's Democratic Party organization and everyone, myself included, that said they supported Bernie Sanders, the heads either laughed at us or started excluding us from things because we weren't blindly following Hillary The democratic party is filled with baby boomers who are still high on the idea they are the greatest generation. They can change over time if people stay involved. The fact that the party laughed when plasmidghost spoke doesn't necessarily prove that the party is out of touch. We need more information before we can really judge. Are you being satirical? The Democrats have barely won any election in about a decade... I think we all underestimate just how meaningful it was that beneath the surface of Obama heading up a shitty obstructionist government, the Republicans were winning because they were just genuinely that unpopular. It took me until the very end to see the depths of how scummy and undesirable the Democratic rank-and-file was. I suppose it took longer than it should have because Obama had an impressive "nothing really changed but things are somehow better" aura with every talk of his. From the NYT today: ‘‘Liberal’’ has long been a dirty word to the American political right. It may be shortened, in the parlance of the Limbaugh Belt, to ‘‘libs,’’ or expanded to the offensive portmanteau ‘‘libtards.’’ But its target is always clear. For the people who use these epithets, liberals are, basically, everyone who leans to the left: big-spending Democrats with their unisex bathrooms and elaborate coffee. This is still how polls classify people, placing them on a neat spectrum from ‘‘extremely conservative’’ to ‘‘extremely liberal.’’
Over the last few years, though — and especially 2016 — there has been a surge of the opposite phenomenon: Now the political left is expressing its hatred of liberals, too. For the committed leftist, the ‘‘liberal’’ is a weak-minded, market-friendly centrist, wonky and technocratic and condescending to the working class. The liberal is pious about diversity but ready to abandon any belief at the slightest drop in poll numbers — a person who is, as the folk singer Phil Ochs once said, ‘‘10 degrees to the left of center in good times, 10 degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.’’ The anonymous Twitter account ‘‘liberalism.txt’’ is a relentless stream of images and retweets that supposedly illustrate this liberal vacuousness: say, the chief executive of Patagonia’s being hailed as a leader of ‘‘corporate resistance to Trump,’’ or Chelsea Clinton’s accusing Steve Bannon of ‘‘fat shaming’’ Sean Spicer.
This shift in terminology can be confusing, both politically and generationally — as when baby boomers describe fervent supporters of Bernie Sanders as ‘‘very liberal,’’ unaware that young Sandersistas might find this vomit-inducing. It can also create common ground. Last year, the young (and left-leaning) writer Emmett Rensin published a widely read piece on Vox deriding liberals for their ‘‘smug style’’; soon enough, one longtime adept of the right, National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru, was expressing his partial approval, writing in Bloomberg View that what contemporary liberalism lacked most was humility. Here was a perspective common to both sides of the old spectrum: that liberals suffered from a serene, self-ratifying belief in their own reasonableness, and that it would spell their inevitable defeat.
When it comes to diagnosing liberalism, both left and right focus on this same set of debilitating traits: arrogance, hypocrisy, pusillanimity, the insulated superiority of what, in 1969, a New York mayoral candidate called the ‘‘limousine liberal.’’ In other words, the features they use to distinguish liberals aren’t policies so much as attitudes. The profane hosts of the popular podcast ‘‘Chapo Trap House,’’ prime originators of the left’s liberal-bashing, spend a good deal of airtime making fun of liberal cultural life, with one common target being fervor for the musical ‘‘Hamilton.’’ ‘‘Nothing has represented them more: a hagiographical musical where they can pretend to be intersectional and pretend to be multicultural,’’ said Felix Biederman, a co-host, on the second episode of the show. ‘‘They have no policy. They’re all cultural signifiers.’’
To be a ‘‘liberal,’’ in this account, is in some sense to be a fake. It’s to shroud an ambiguous, even reactionary agenda under a superficial commitment to social justice and moderate, incremental change. American liberalism was once associated with something far more robust, with immoderate presidents and spectacular waves of legislation like Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Today’s liberals stand accused of forsaking the clarity and ambition of even that flawed legacy. To call someone a liberal now, in other words, is often to denounce him or her as having abandoned liberalism.
Liberal-bashing on social media has reached a kind of apogee, but its targets have not yet produced much real defense of the ideology. This means the word ‘‘liberal’’ is, for the moment, almost entirely one of abuse. It is hard to think of an American politician who has embraced it, even going back two or three generations. If liberalism is dead, then, it’s a strange sort of demise: Here is an ideology that has many accused sympathizers, but no champions, no defenders. Source. That NYTimes article is pretty much spot-on, and people like KwarK who wonder why I hate them so much, all they have to do is read this article to see why
The article is on point, but I wouldn’t heap the blame at Kwark’s feet. What we are seeing in left leaning politics is the clash between those who didn’t have to fight for anything and people realizing they will need for fight for everything. The problem is the former raised the latter and didn’t(and couldn’t) teach them how to fight. And none of us know what the fight looks like.
I bring up history a lot, but people should read about the riots during the civil rights movement. If even one of those riots happened in modern day America, half the left would die from asphyxiation due to clutching their pearls.
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On July 06 2017 03:08 xDaunt wrote:
So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was the overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories.
Wow this is one of the most stereotypical like Republican/"I got mine" attitude I've ever seen in this thread.
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United States42694 Posts
I don't see the issue with classical liberalism at all. A functioning free market economy that provides a strong foundation for people from all backgrounds to compete on an even basis through the provision of healthcare, education, housing and so forth for all without discrimination on the basis of sex, race, sexual preference etc. Seems pretty much ideal to me.
The problem is that in America you can't join the political right without pledging allegiance to the anti-science anti-gay agenda and even the free market economics is little more than crony capitalism. Meanwhile the centre left comes under fire for not being extreme enough, as if that's some kind of failing.
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On July 06 2017 03:08 xDaunt wrote:
So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories.
My wife did housing advocacy for years. It is how we meet. Financial literacy courses were their most popular service and they were always booked. They could never get funding to run more of them. There is no place in the modern education system to teach people about financial literacy. You either learn it on your own or learn the hard way.
On July 06 2017 03:12 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 03:08 xDaunt wrote:
So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was the overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories. Wow this is one of the most stereotypical like Republican/"I got mine" attitude I've ever seen in this thread.
That is a little harsh. When I worked in probation, I was shocked how little people knew about banks. Knowledge I took for granted was just denied to them because they were poor and their parents didn’t teach them.
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On July 06 2017 03:12 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 03:08 xDaunt wrote:
So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was the overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories. Wow this is one of the most stereotypical like Republican/"I got mine" attitude I've ever seen in this thread.
How is this a "I got mine post?" I'm not saying "fuck those people." I've only identified a big problem.
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United States42694 Posts
On July 06 2017 03:12 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 03:08 xDaunt wrote:
So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was the overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories. Wow this is one of the most stereotypical like Republican/"I got mine" attitude I've ever seen in this thread.
He's not wrong. It's not about politics (economic illiteracy crosses party lines), it's a cultural problem. The average American is just not equipped to live in America and a lot of programs designed to help them fail to see that the problem isn't the lack of tools, it's the user.
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On July 06 2017 03:15 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 03:12 Logo wrote:On July 06 2017 03:08 xDaunt wrote:
So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was the overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories. Wow this is one of the most stereotypical like Republican/"I got mine" attitude I've ever seen in this thread. How is this a "I got mine post?" I'm not saying "fuck those people." I've only identified a big problem.
You're grouping 40% of the US into a group based on your limited anecdotal evidence in one region of the country.
On July 06 2017 03:17 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 03:12 Logo wrote:On July 06 2017 03:08 xDaunt wrote:
So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was the overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories. Wow this is one of the most stereotypical like Republican/"I got mine" attitude I've ever seen in this thread. He's not wrong. It's not about politics (economic illiteracy crosses party lines), it's a cultural problem. The average American is just not equipped to live in America and a lot of programs designed to help them fail to see that the problem isn't the lack of tools, it's the user.
He's not wrong about a problem for some people, but it's a gross over generalization designed to foster the problem back onto the people struggling to buy a house rather than acknowledge the multitude of problems and different circumstances.
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On July 06 2017 03:18 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 03:15 xDaunt wrote:On July 06 2017 03:12 Logo wrote:On July 06 2017 03:08 xDaunt wrote:
So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was the overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories. Wow this is one of the most stereotypical like Republican/"I got mine" attitude I've ever seen in this thread. How is this a "I got mine post?" I'm not saying "fuck those people." I've only identified a big problem. You're grouping 40% of the US into a group based on your limited anecdotal evidence in one region of the country. Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 03:17 KwarK wrote:On July 06 2017 03:12 Logo wrote:On July 06 2017 03:08 xDaunt wrote:
So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was the overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories. Wow this is one of the most stereotypical like Republican/"I got mine" attitude I've ever seen in this thread. He's not wrong. It's not about politics (economic illiteracy crosses party lines), it's a cultural problem. The average American is just not equipped to live in America and a lot of programs designed to help them fail to see that the problem isn't the lack of tools, it's the user. He's not wrong about a problem for some people, but it's a gross over generalization designed to foster the problem back onto the people struggling to buy a house rather than acknowledge the multitude of problems and different circumstances.
You are being to harsh. He is just commenting on firsthand experience with a problem we know exist.
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On July 06 2017 03:18 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 03:15 xDaunt wrote:On July 06 2017 03:12 Logo wrote:On July 06 2017 03:08 xDaunt wrote:
So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was the overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories. Wow this is one of the most stereotypical like Republican/"I got mine" attitude I've ever seen in this thread. How is this a "I got mine post?" I'm not saying "fuck those people." I've only identified a big problem. You're grouping 40% of the US into a group based on your limited anecdotal evidence in one region of the country. Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 03:17 KwarK wrote:On July 06 2017 03:12 Logo wrote:On July 06 2017 03:08 xDaunt wrote:
So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was the overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories. Wow this is one of the most stereotypical like Republican/"I got mine" attitude I've ever seen in this thread. He's not wrong. It's not about politics (economic illiteracy crosses party lines), it's a cultural problem. The average American is just not equipped to live in America and a lot of programs designed to help them fail to see that the problem isn't the lack of tools, it's the user. He's not wrong about a problem for some people, but it's a gross over generalization designed to foster the problem back onto the people struggling to buy a house rather than acknowledge the multitude of problems and different circumstances.
So your solution to the problem is to ignore it? Or is it merely to whine and bitch? Let's get real.
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On July 06 2017 03:22 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 03:18 Logo wrote:On July 06 2017 03:15 xDaunt wrote:On July 06 2017 03:12 Logo wrote:On July 06 2017 03:08 xDaunt wrote:
So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was the overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories. Wow this is one of the most stereotypical like Republican/"I got mine" attitude I've ever seen in this thread. How is this a "I got mine post?" I'm not saying "fuck those people." I've only identified a big problem. You're grouping 40% of the US into a group based on your limited anecdotal evidence in one region of the country. On July 06 2017 03:17 KwarK wrote:On July 06 2017 03:12 Logo wrote:On July 06 2017 03:08 xDaunt wrote:
So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was the overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories. Wow this is one of the most stereotypical like Republican/"I got mine" attitude I've ever seen in this thread. He's not wrong. It's not about politics (economic illiteracy crosses party lines), it's a cultural problem. The average American is just not equipped to live in America and a lot of programs designed to help them fail to see that the problem isn't the lack of tools, it's the user. He's not wrong about a problem for some people, but it's a gross over generalization designed to foster the problem back onto the people struggling to buy a house rather than acknowledge the multitude of problems and different circumstances. So your solution to the problem is to ignore it? Or is it merely to whine and bitch? Let's get real.
My solution is to not act like all people who don't own a home are all financially illiterate and recognize there's plenty of areas where there are other significant problems in relation to people getting homes.
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On July 06 2017 03:23 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 03:22 xDaunt wrote:On July 06 2017 03:18 Logo wrote:On July 06 2017 03:15 xDaunt wrote:On July 06 2017 03:12 Logo wrote:On July 06 2017 03:08 xDaunt wrote:
So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was the overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories. Wow this is one of the most stereotypical like Republican/"I got mine" attitude I've ever seen in this thread. How is this a "I got mine post?" I'm not saying "fuck those people." I've only identified a big problem. You're grouping 40% of the US into a group based on your limited anecdotal evidence in one region of the country. On July 06 2017 03:17 KwarK wrote:On July 06 2017 03:12 Logo wrote:On July 06 2017 03:08 xDaunt wrote:
So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was the overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories. Wow this is one of the most stereotypical like Republican/"I got mine" attitude I've ever seen in this thread. He's not wrong. It's not about politics (economic illiteracy crosses party lines), it's a cultural problem. The average American is just not equipped to live in America and a lot of programs designed to help them fail to see that the problem isn't the lack of tools, it's the user. He's not wrong about a problem for some people, but it's a gross over generalization designed to foster the problem back onto the people struggling to buy a house rather than acknowledge the multitude of problems and different circumstances. So your solution to the problem is to ignore it? Or is it merely to whine and bitch? Let's get real. My solution is to not act like all people who don't own a home are all financially illiterate and recognize there's plenty of areas where there are other significant problems in relation to people getting homes.
I really do not think he was doing that. He was just pointing out another issue that leads to problems with home owning.
I don't think he is dismissing anything but just pointing out that there are a lot of moving parts to what is really fucking over people trying to buy homes for the first time
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On July 06 2017 03:13 KwarK wrote:
I don't see the issue with classical liberalism at all. A functioning free market economy that provides a strong foundation for people from all backgrounds to compete on an even basis through the provision of healthcare, education, housing and so forth for all without discrimination on the basis of sex, race, sexual preference etc. Seems pretty much ideal to me.
The problem is that in America you can't join the political right without pledging allegiance to the anti-science anti-gay agenda and even the free market economics is little more than crony capitalism. Meanwhile the centre left comes under fire for not being extreme enough, as if that's some kind of failing.
This is the same political left that subsidizes wind and solar power so heavily that other forms of renewable energy can't compete?
Or that threatened a boycott of an entire corporation because one executive says something off the clock?
Or, in the case of California, boycotts specific states whose social legislative agendas it disagrees with?
Or that in many states across many professions makes union membership effectively mandatory?
And that's before taking into account the "liberal religion" argument, which argues that American liberals have founded an atheist religion with all the accoutrements thereof and are trying to establish themselves as the official government religion by selectively using the establishment clause against other religions.
It seems like the Democratic party uses Enlightenment ideals only by coincidence.
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On July 06 2017 03:00 plasmidghost wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 02:53 xDaunt wrote:On July 06 2017 02:50 LegalLord wrote:On July 06 2017 02:43 a_flayer wrote:On July 06 2017 02:38 KwarK wrote:On July 06 2017 02:35 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:31 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:25 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:15 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:02 Plansix wrote:[quote] SourceIn America, where you pay more for garbage. But everyone tells you it is worth the money. But in the 1980s we could pay for college on 16 hours of work a week year round. Shit like this is why I have such a disdain for modern liberals and the Democratic Party (I also hate the conservatives and the Republican party, but that should be obvious). College is getting to the point where less and less people can afford it and they keep trying to tell us bullshit like "it's not possible" or "try again in a few years." It pisses me off because I lived in a pretty poor town and most of my friends couldn't afford any halfway decent college and got stuck working in chemical plants where they breathe in hundreds of carcinogens each day or had to take on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to be able to even go to college. I went to a private school out of state for a few months and ended up dropping out because it was so fucking expensive and I couldn't bear to put my family in debt because of the ridiculous rates they were charging. I know that's private schools and they can charge whatever they want, so that doesn't apply, but even when in-state tuition at a public university runs you over $20k a year, something has to change, and it sure as shit didn't help that our governor decided to deregulate the tuition costs Why not both parties since both of them did this? The rising price of college has been a problem for decades and both parties ignored it. They decided that unlimited, uncapped student loans that cannot be discharged was a good idea. And now we have an entire entrenched industry that is based on enriching themselves off of these loans. At any point they could have updated the student loan system to address these problems, but they ignored it. It's more that we all know the Republicans don't have the best interests of the average working-class person in mind, but the Democrats try to sell themselves as friends of the working class , but when someone who actually champions serious reforms that the working class needs to be able to survive, the entire Democratic Party establishment comes out against him. I saw this personally since I was involved in my county's Democratic Party organization and everyone, myself included, that said they supported Bernie Sanders, the heads either laughed at us or started excluding us from things because we weren't blindly following Hillary The democratic party is filled with baby boomers who are still high on the idea they are the greatest generation. They can change over time if people stay involved. The fact that the party laughed when plasmidghost spoke doesn't necessarily prove that the party is out of touch. We need more information before we can really judge. Are you being satirical? The Democrats have barely won any election in about a decade... I think we all underestimate just how meaningful it was that beneath the surface of Obama heading up a shitty obstructionist government, the Republicans were winning because they were just genuinely that unpopular. It took me until the very end to see the depths of how scummy and undesirable the Democratic rank-and-file was. I suppose it took longer than it should have because Obama had an impressive "nothing really changed but things are somehow better" aura with every talk of his. From the NYT today: ‘‘Liberal’’ has long been a dirty word to the American political right. It may be shortened, in the parlance of the Limbaugh Belt, to ‘‘libs,’’ or expanded to the offensive portmanteau ‘‘libtards.’’ But its target is always clear. For the people who use these epithets, liberals are, basically, everyone who leans to the left: big-spending Democrats with their unisex bathrooms and elaborate coffee. This is still how polls classify people, placing them on a neat spectrum from ‘‘extremely conservative’’ to ‘‘extremely liberal.’’
Over the last few years, though — and especially 2016 — there has been a surge of the opposite phenomenon: Now the political left is expressing its hatred of liberals, too. For the committed leftist, the ‘‘liberal’’ is a weak-minded, market-friendly centrist, wonky and technocratic and condescending to the working class. The liberal is pious about diversity but ready to abandon any belief at the slightest drop in poll numbers — a person who is, as the folk singer Phil Ochs once said, ‘‘10 degrees to the left of center in good times, 10 degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.’’ The anonymous Twitter account ‘‘liberalism.txt’’ is a relentless stream of images and retweets that supposedly illustrate this liberal vacuousness: say, the chief executive of Patagonia’s being hailed as a leader of ‘‘corporate resistance to Trump,’’ or Chelsea Clinton’s accusing Steve Bannon of ‘‘fat shaming’’ Sean Spicer.
This shift in terminology can be confusing, both politically and generationally — as when baby boomers describe fervent supporters of Bernie Sanders as ‘‘very liberal,’’ unaware that young Sandersistas might find this vomit-inducing. It can also create common ground. Last year, the young (and left-leaning) writer Emmett Rensin published a widely read piece on Vox deriding liberals for their ‘‘smug style’’; soon enough, one longtime adept of the right, National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru, was expressing his partial approval, writing in Bloomberg View that what contemporary liberalism lacked most was humility. Here was a perspective common to both sides of the old spectrum: that liberals suffered from a serene, self-ratifying belief in their own reasonableness, and that it would spell their inevitable defeat.
When it comes to diagnosing liberalism, both left and right focus on this same set of debilitating traits: arrogance, hypocrisy, pusillanimity, the insulated superiority of what, in 1969, a New York mayoral candidate called the ‘‘limousine liberal.’’ In other words, the features they use to distinguish liberals aren’t policies so much as attitudes. The profane hosts of the popular podcast ‘‘Chapo Trap House,’’ prime originators of the left’s liberal-bashing, spend a good deal of airtime making fun of liberal cultural life, with one common target being fervor for the musical ‘‘Hamilton.’’ ‘‘Nothing has represented them more: a hagiographical musical where they can pretend to be intersectional and pretend to be multicultural,’’ said Felix Biederman, a co-host, on the second episode of the show. ‘‘They have no policy. They’re all cultural signifiers.’’
To be a ‘‘liberal,’’ in this account, is in some sense to be a fake. It’s to shroud an ambiguous, even reactionary agenda under a superficial commitment to social justice and moderate, incremental change. American liberalism was once associated with something far more robust, with immoderate presidents and spectacular waves of legislation like Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Today’s liberals stand accused of forsaking the clarity and ambition of even that flawed legacy. To call someone a liberal now, in other words, is often to denounce him or her as having abandoned liberalism.
Liberal-bashing on social media has reached a kind of apogee, but its targets have not yet produced much real defense of the ideology. This means the word ‘‘liberal’’ is, for the moment, almost entirely one of abuse. It is hard to think of an American politician who has embraced it, even going back two or three generations. If liberalism is dead, then, it’s a strange sort of demise: Here is an ideology that has many accused sympathizers, but no champions, no defenders. Source. That NYTimes article is pretty much spot-on, and people like KwarK who wonder why I hate them so much, all they have to do is read this article to see why You hate people who don't broadly exist? It's not possible that vast swathes of people do truly beleive in scoial justice, equality of opportunity, to believe that sexism and racism should have no place in society? Do you not beleive the same? It's hard to understand as a non-American that kind of attitude you have.
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On July 06 2017 03:23 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 03:22 xDaunt wrote:On July 06 2017 03:18 Logo wrote:On July 06 2017 03:15 xDaunt wrote:On July 06 2017 03:12 Logo wrote:On July 06 2017 03:08 xDaunt wrote:
So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was the overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories. Wow this is one of the most stereotypical like Republican/"I got mine" attitude I've ever seen in this thread. How is this a "I got mine post?" I'm not saying "fuck those people." I've only identified a big problem. You're grouping 40% of the US into a group based on your limited anecdotal evidence in one region of the country. On July 06 2017 03:17 KwarK wrote:On July 06 2017 03:12 Logo wrote:On July 06 2017 03:08 xDaunt wrote:
So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was the overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories. Wow this is one of the most stereotypical like Republican/"I got mine" attitude I've ever seen in this thread. He's not wrong. It's not about politics (economic illiteracy crosses party lines), it's a cultural problem. The average American is just not equipped to live in America and a lot of programs designed to help them fail to see that the problem isn't the lack of tools, it's the user. He's not wrong about a problem for some people, but it's a gross over generalization designed to foster the problem back onto the people struggling to buy a house rather than acknowledge the multitude of problems and different circumstances. So your solution to the problem is to ignore it? Or is it merely to whine and bitch? Let's get real. My solution is to not act like all people who don't own a home are all financially illiterate and recognize there's plenty of areas where there are other significant problems in relation to people getting homes.
And where exactly did I say that "all" of them are financially illiterate? I very clearly said "a majority." Don't get your panties in a bunch over phantom posts.
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United States42694 Posts
It's a systemic cultural problem. There is an obsession within America with people defining their own outcomes through their own efforts and ability. The problem is that for a very significant number of Americans the absolute last thing they want is for their outcome to be linked to their ability. What they really want is a comfortable and predictable track that leads them to a pretty alright outcome without ever needing any kind of initiative or talent on their part. They want to graduate highschool, get a job with the big employer in their town, buy a house, buy a truck, work a few decades and retire.
The American that Americans want to design America around doesn't look like most Americans I've met. As far as I can tell, I'm the American that Americans want. And I can afford a down payment after less than 3 years working in the country on a modest income.
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On July 06 2017 03:27 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 03:23 Logo wrote:On July 06 2017 03:22 xDaunt wrote:On July 06 2017 03:18 Logo wrote:On July 06 2017 03:15 xDaunt wrote:On July 06 2017 03:12 Logo wrote:On July 06 2017 03:08 xDaunt wrote:
So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was the overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories. Wow this is one of the most stereotypical like Republican/"I got mine" attitude I've ever seen in this thread. How is this a "I got mine post?" I'm not saying "fuck those people." I've only identified a big problem. You're grouping 40% of the US into a group based on your limited anecdotal evidence in one region of the country. On July 06 2017 03:17 KwarK wrote:On July 06 2017 03:12 Logo wrote:On July 06 2017 03:08 xDaunt wrote:
So I made the transition into becoming "the man" this summer, and now own a rental property. When I put the property on the market, I got a really good look at exactly who the people are who don't own homes. What shocked me the most was the overall financial illiteracy of these people. The majority simply doesn't understand money, credit, and the proper use of debt. Getting a decent income is besides the point in these cases.
Don't get me wrong, most markets (especially any remotely desirable ones) suck right now for homebuyers. But there are programs out there that provide substantial down-payment assistance to buyers as long as they have decent credit. The problem is that too many people are so financially illiterate that they end up completely fucking their credit histories. Wow this is one of the most stereotypical like Republican/"I got mine" attitude I've ever seen in this thread. He's not wrong. It's not about politics (economic illiteracy crosses party lines), it's a cultural problem. The average American is just not equipped to live in America and a lot of programs designed to help them fail to see that the problem isn't the lack of tools, it's the user. He's not wrong about a problem for some people, but it's a gross over generalization designed to foster the problem back onto the people struggling to buy a house rather than acknowledge the multitude of problems and different circumstances. So your solution to the problem is to ignore it? Or is it merely to whine and bitch? Let's get real. My solution is to not act like all people who don't own a home are all financially illiterate and recognize there's plenty of areas where there are other significant problems in relation to people getting homes. And where exactly did I say that "all" of them are financially illiterate? I very clearly said "a majority." Don't get your panties in a bunch over phantom posts.
What's the difference between majority and all when you're just making something up based on a small anecdote with no backing anyways?
If I were making the comments the same way as you are the majority of people not buying a house would be doing so for completely different reasons.
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On July 06 2017 03:26 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2017 03:00 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:53 xDaunt wrote:On July 06 2017 02:50 LegalLord wrote:On July 06 2017 02:43 a_flayer wrote:On July 06 2017 02:38 KwarK wrote:On July 06 2017 02:35 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:31 plasmidghost wrote:On July 06 2017 02:25 Plansix wrote:On July 06 2017 02:15 plasmidghost wrote:
[quote]
Shit like this is why I have such a disdain for modern liberals and the Democratic Party (I also hate the conservatives and the Republican party, but that should be obvious). College is getting to the point where less and less people can afford it and they keep trying to tell us bullshit like "it's not possible" or "try again in a few years." It pisses me off because I lived in a pretty poor town and most of my friends couldn't afford any halfway decent college and got stuck working in chemical plants where they breathe in hundreds of carcinogens each day or had to take on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to be able to even go to college. I went to a private school out of state for a few months and ended up dropping out because it was so fucking expensive and I couldn't bear to put my family in debt because of the ridiculous rates they were charging. I know that's private schools and they can charge whatever they want, so that doesn't apply, but even when in-state tuition at a public university runs you over $20k a year, something has to change, and it sure as shit didn't help that our governor decided to deregulate the tuition costs Why not both parties since both of them did this? The rising price of college has been a problem for decades and both parties ignored it. They decided that unlimited, uncapped student loans that cannot be discharged was a good idea. And now we have an entire entrenched industry that is based on enriching themselves off of these loans. At any point they could have updated the student loan system to address these problems, but they ignored it. It's more that we all know the Republicans don't have the best interests of the average working-class person in mind, but the Democrats try to sell themselves as friends of the working class , but when someone who actually champions serious reforms that the working class needs to be able to survive, the entire Democratic Party establishment comes out against him. I saw this personally since I was involved in my county's Democratic Party organization and everyone, myself included, that said they supported Bernie Sanders, the heads either laughed at us or started excluding us from things because we weren't blindly following Hillary The democratic party is filled with baby boomers who are still high on the idea they are the greatest generation. They can change over time if people stay involved. The fact that the party laughed when plasmidghost spoke doesn't necessarily prove that the party is out of touch. We need more information before we can really judge. Are you being satirical? The Democrats have barely won any election in about a decade... I think we all underestimate just how meaningful it was that beneath the surface of Obama heading up a shitty obstructionist government, the Republicans were winning because they were just genuinely that unpopular. It took me until the very end to see the depths of how scummy and undesirable the Democratic rank-and-file was. I suppose it took longer than it should have because Obama had an impressive "nothing really changed but things are somehow better" aura with every talk of his. From the NYT today: ‘‘Liberal’’ has long been a dirty word to the American political right. It may be shortened, in the parlance of the Limbaugh Belt, to ‘‘libs,’’ or expanded to the offensive portmanteau ‘‘libtards.’’ But its target is always clear. For the people who use these epithets, liberals are, basically, everyone who leans to the left: big-spending Democrats with their unisex bathrooms and elaborate coffee. This is still how polls classify people, placing them on a neat spectrum from ‘‘extremely conservative’’ to ‘‘extremely liberal.’’
Over the last few years, though — and especially 2016 — there has been a surge of the opposite phenomenon: Now the political left is expressing its hatred of liberals, too. For the committed leftist, the ‘‘liberal’’ is a weak-minded, market-friendly centrist, wonky and technocratic and condescending to the working class. The liberal is pious about diversity but ready to abandon any belief at the slightest drop in poll numbers — a person who is, as the folk singer Phil Ochs once said, ‘‘10 degrees to the left of center in good times, 10 degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.’’ The anonymous Twitter account ‘‘liberalism.txt’’ is a relentless stream of images and retweets that supposedly illustrate this liberal vacuousness: say, the chief executive of Patagonia’s being hailed as a leader of ‘‘corporate resistance to Trump,’’ or Chelsea Clinton’s accusing Steve Bannon of ‘‘fat shaming’’ Sean Spicer.
This shift in terminology can be confusing, both politically and generationally — as when baby boomers describe fervent supporters of Bernie Sanders as ‘‘very liberal,’’ unaware that young Sandersistas might find this vomit-inducing. It can also create common ground. Last year, the young (and left-leaning) writer Emmett Rensin published a widely read piece on Vox deriding liberals for their ‘‘smug style’’; soon enough, one longtime adept of the right, National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru, was expressing his partial approval, writing in Bloomberg View that what contemporary liberalism lacked most was humility. Here was a perspective common to both sides of the old spectrum: that liberals suffered from a serene, self-ratifying belief in their own reasonableness, and that it would spell their inevitable defeat.
When it comes to diagnosing liberalism, both left and right focus on this same set of debilitating traits: arrogance, hypocrisy, pusillanimity, the insulated superiority of what, in 1969, a New York mayoral candidate called the ‘‘limousine liberal.’’ In other words, the features they use to distinguish liberals aren’t policies so much as attitudes. The profane hosts of the popular podcast ‘‘Chapo Trap House,’’ prime originators of the left’s liberal-bashing, spend a good deal of airtime making fun of liberal cultural life, with one common target being fervor for the musical ‘‘Hamilton.’’ ‘‘Nothing has represented them more: a hagiographical musical where they can pretend to be intersectional and pretend to be multicultural,’’ said Felix Biederman, a co-host, on the second episode of the show. ‘‘They have no policy. They’re all cultural signifiers.’’
To be a ‘‘liberal,’’ in this account, is in some sense to be a fake. It’s to shroud an ambiguous, even reactionary agenda under a superficial commitment to social justice and moderate, incremental change. American liberalism was once associated with something far more robust, with immoderate presidents and spectacular waves of legislation like Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Today’s liberals stand accused of forsaking the clarity and ambition of even that flawed legacy. To call someone a liberal now, in other words, is often to denounce him or her as having abandoned liberalism.
Liberal-bashing on social media has reached a kind of apogee, but its targets have not yet produced much real defense of the ideology. This means the word ‘‘liberal’’ is, for the moment, almost entirely one of abuse. It is hard to think of an American politician who has embraced it, even going back two or three generations. If liberalism is dead, then, it’s a strange sort of demise: Here is an ideology that has many accused sympathizers, but no champions, no defenders. Source. That NYTimes article is pretty much spot-on, and people like KwarK who wonder why I hate them so much, all they have to do is read this article to see why You hate people who don't broadly exist? It's not possible that vast swathes of people do truly beleive in scoial justice, equality of opportunity, to believe that sexism and racism should have no place in society? Do you not beleive the same? It's hard to understand as a non-American that kind of attitude you have.
My issue with those people is that even though they say they want to do these things, they do absolutely nothing to resolve any problems and when people try to do something about them, the reaction is always the same: "You're not doing it the right way," "You're too violent," "You need to wait longer for people to change." Fuck that
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EPT
