The American Dream is fucking dead.

[Necromunchkin]

"Yeah you wanna go out because it's rainin' and blowin', you can't go out because your roots are showin'... dye 'em BLACK!"

 

[lizard]

It's as simple as this. If you work hard, strive to thrive in academics, are a self driven highly motivated individual, then opportunity will be knocking on your door.

.

 

[lizard]

I've also met a lot of spoiled rich brats that have never done shit their entire life and are handed the world on a silver platter.

There are 18 billionaire families right now spending obscene amounts of money trying to end estate taxes so their idle paris hiltons can become american royalty in perpetuity. You wanna talk about wastes of space, start at the top as well as the bottom. Every day I see people work hard at stupid jobs in an effort to better their lot in life and for most people its a crapshoot. Alot comes down to capitalizing on opportunity and perhaps more important, recognizing an opportunity as such.

very, very illuminating
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Eighteen_families_paying_millions_to_kill_0426.html

 

[dorian gray]

that study hardly sounds credible. sample size: 4000 children? wow, what a cross-section of a country with a pop of 250,000,000.
the study claims x% of poor stay poor and y% of rich stay rich but doesnt offer any other insight.

that said, i find myself conditionally agreeing with jerry here (without all the rhetoric). ill add this: poor people should really focus on giving their second or even third generation a more full life than they have. assuming one can go from rags to riches in one generation is stupid. my parents were poor and my wife's single-mother was on welfare but they all worked hard so that we could do a little better - and we do - and so that our one child will have even more opportunity. not to toot my own horn, im just giving an example.


last thing: the same media sources that are browbeating the rich and pandering to the poor and middle class are the same ones that force-feed rampant greed and materialism on a grand scale. while theres nothing wrong with trying to become financially successful, maybe life would be a little less stressful if people didnt feel the need to spend 50% of their income on shit like transportation devices.

 

[lizard]

while theres nothing wrong with trying to become financially successful, maybe life would be a little less stressful if people didnt feel the need to spend 50% of their income on shit like transportation devices.

< Nad's buddy

 

[dorian gray]

haha or electronic gadgets that become obsolete when they leave the store or any number of things that i see people purchasing that i know they cant afford

 

[lizard]

you know what cracks me up, is seeing dudes at bus stops on cell phones, or in hip hop fashions. I worked with a guy who had and I shit you not at least 30-40 leather jackets, with all the hip cool rad hip hop shit and slogans and brand names on them. Is there anything stupider than paying some company for their product, and being a walking billboard for them? I was about to point out my own rampant hypocricy

cause I'm wearing a unida shirt here at work but

a) Unida doesn't exist any more, and
b) I would want to be pimping hard for my favourite bands, as opposed to a commercial product of some corporation

 

[dorian gray]

word

 

[lurch70]

Job Fair For Katrina Evacuees Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 14:53:04 -0400


This past weekend FEMA and the City of Austin, along with the Texas
Workforce Commission setup a job training/hiring/interview/job fair for
all the Katrina FEMA evacuees in the Austin area to be held at the ACC
campus on Webberville Road in East Austin. Several of the evacuees said they had
no transportation to get from the apartment complexes.

So the city of Austin/FEMA/TWC set up transportation for each of them
to ensure they would be able to partake of the benefit of job searching.
The transportation consisted of nine buses and vans, to run from four
locations in Round Rock, and five locations in Austin, in continuing shuttles
back an forth to the campus to ensure that the hundreds of people looking for
jobs would be transported in comfort. The vehicles were brought to their
residences; drivers knocked on the doors; and every effort was made.

At the end of the day, the nine vans and buses transported a total of
one person.

Not one person per bus - one person total.

At the end of the day, none of the Katrina Evacuees applied for any of
the jobs.

Not one person took employment - NONE total.

The bill to FEMA was $7800.

And yet they still get on TV claiming that the United States
Government
"OWES THEM", I say we don't owe them anything and if anything, they OWE
us -
the Tax Payers that are "WORKING PEOPLE", they owe what they have been
mooching off of the Tax Payers for almost a year now. It is obvious
that
they don't intend to work as long as they can sponge off of the system.
It is time to cut them loose and tell them the free ride is over !

 

[Mormagil]

 

[grazim]

that study hardly sounds credible. sample size: 4000 children? wow, what a cross-section of a country with a pop of 250,000,000.

4000 is definitely enough, provided they are randomly selected. Check out some sample size formulas for proof of this. What automatically calls the study's credibility into question is the fact that it's funded by a damn think-tank.

I think the intended point of this study is not that it's hard as fuck to go from rags to riches. Everyone already knows this. The point is that it's becoming significantly harder to move upwards in the United States compared to most other wealthy countries. What we don't know is why...

This debunks the myth of America as the land of opportunity, but it doesn't tell us what to do to fix it.

I definitely agree that handouts are not the way to fix this. Instead, it'd be a pretty damn good idea to figure out what alterations we need to make to the system in order preserve this country's social mobility and middle class. America has always had pride in its competitiveness... Why shouldn't we compete with the rest of the world in this, too?

ast thing: the same media sources that are browbeating the rich and pandering to the poor and middle class are the same ones that force-feed rampant greed and materialism on a grand scale. while theres nothing wrong with trying to become financially successful, maybe life would be a little less stressful if people didnt feel the need to spend 50% of their income on shit like transportation devices.

Words of truth.

FEMA evacuee news

That's pretty disgusting.

 

[lizard]

okay all, unwind thy bunched panties, snopes says that katrina story is fake.
http://www.snopes.com/katrina/politics/jobfair.asp

 

[Mormagil]

but it's true at its core: the poor are lazy and stupid, and therefore deserve to be poor.

 

[cthulufhtagn]

I haven't said a person born in Harlem from Nubian bearers would have the same opportunities outright as a person being born from a high pedigree. All I have stated is that if you work hard, you can overcome the short stick life has thrown in your lap. You obviously thought this way at one time, then went down a beatnik path. So who do you blame now? George Bush and his bureaucracy. A society that produces the greatest number of successful people, lies on the shoulders of the individual. Unless you're some commie fuck who expects equality to be given across the board at the moment of conception. I'm hopeless? No friend that's where you're wrong. I'm filled with hope. That hope is in my self. The hope I had in society died years ago. You on the other hand, put all your hope and faith in a bleeding heart peer system. Where aslong as there's one person starving on a city street, the system has failed. The system hasn't failed, the individual has failed. You're a fucking fool, continue to get hopped up on your over the kitchen counter pharmaceuticals, you waste of space.

do you have like a random phrase generator that comes up with this garbage?

 

[Mormagil]

thanks for quoting that

 

[lizard]

today I had to take the office van off base to gas it up and run it through the car wash in prep for our visiting VIPs next week. Some bearded momo crackhead tried to bum a buck off me

 

[Mormagil]

if you weren't too far off base you should have radioed the hidden snipers

 

[lizard]

I held up my govt badge and he must have thought I was some kind of cop because he turned and walked away in the other direction

 

[cthulufhtagn]

It's funny how fast liberal folks will bash right-wing people for eating up anything they are fed, yet they eat up bullshit like this article. Sheesh.

yea this article is very much stating the obvious...the underlying message that some of us take issue with is just the continuing fantasy that america is the land of opportunity where anything is possible and why should we care about the poor because hey, it's america, if they'd get their lazy asses to work everything would be a-ok.

some days i want to stab some of you so badly, god it would be so worth it.

(not you tully)

 

[lizard]

hooray for the dregs!!
this pic makes me laugh so hard.