511–520 of 898 posts
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> the richest 10% of America owns 86% of its stocks I don't buy that, as a much larger percentage of stock ownership is pension plans, where ordinary people indirectly own stock.
>pension plans, is that still thing for the average american?
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It's the classic Trump small loan of a million dollars scenario. Sure not many are as lucky as Trump was. But even t hese examples of blue collar success have a bunch of luck in them. Not everyone can start a machine shop with their dad, or own or even operate a taco restaurant. You need to be at the right place, the right moment, have the right amount of money and or the right equipment, interests and skills. And on…
For the common person it's a lottery just to be allowed to work at Taco Bell and do what the Taco Bell handbook tells you? And then, once you become a manager to save your pennies until you have a down payment on your own store? Gimme a break man.
https://www.lendingtree.com/business/small/how-to-finance-a-...
I think that would be out of reach for many if not most Taco Bell managers. Presumably it would be even harder in parts of the United States with higher costs of living.
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How many people do you think working the counter FT at Taco Smell can save enough money to afford their own franchise location? > The cost of opening a new Taco Bell restaurant is between $1.2 million and $2.6 million. Taco Bell also charges a $45,000 franchise fee, an ongoing royalty fee equal to 5.5% of gross sales, and a marketing fee equal to 4.25% of gross sales. https://www.businessinsider.com/what-it-costs-to-…
I expect about 0% of people to go from the bottom level position at Taco Bell directly to owning one. But I'm sure you're smart enough to have known that. So why did you feel it would be useful to frame the scenario in such a disingenuous way?
1. I read tinco's comment to state (paraphrasing): "it is difficult to start a business, and for the common person it is a game of chance." Which, I absolutely agree with when I measure it against my life experiences/knowledge.
2. You replied with two questions, also paraphrasing: "It's a lottery to work at Taco Bell?", and, "And assuming you do work at Taco Bell, that you would become a manager who could save up to own their own store?"
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Given that scope of the conversation, I assumed you were positing that someone could seriously start working at a Taco Bell, start saving their money, and then some day afford their own franchise location.
The first question of 2 is an absolute possibility, ie: it is not a lottery to work at Taco Bell and it would be silly to assume otherwise. That may have confused me leading into the second question, asked rhetorically, as something that you deemed possible. This is to say, "A person could absolutely work at Taco Bell, and they could also save to own their own some day."
The "Gimme a break man" in reply to someone saying something that I deem 100% rational (#1) with two rhetorical questions that seem to paint the situations that they posit as rational possibilities confuses the crap out of me.
Simply put: You submitted two arguments, seemingly painted as possible realities, in an adversarial way to something I saw as a rational and relevant statement. I fired back thinking you thought that was possible because there's not much context to figure otherwise.
If I confused your comment I apologize.
Quick Edit: When I posted this reply I saw another person, harimau777, answering similar to myself with another credible source (also with a much higher caliber quality of language - I'm goof sometimes). What I'm trying to say is I'm not the only one who took your statements this way.
Jim Crammer also talks how Stock market is built from big companies like Walmart, Amazon etc which don't get negatively impacted by COVID (they do even better). It's the small businesses (which aren't public on stock market) which are suffering:
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Buying stocks has never been more democratic. Anyone with $100 can buy stocks. No brokerage fees, and fractional shares are now common. We also just passed what in hindsight will likely be seen as a historic buying opportunity.
Inequality is huge, just because you can buy 0.0000001% of IBM doesn't make that fair/democratic.
Sounds fair to me.
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Strip the wealthy if their wealth and most will probably become wealthy again. If you don’t call it intelligence what would you call it.
> most will probably become wealthy again. Source?
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There is a difference between being forward-looking and being able to predict the future. Nobody thought the American economy was going to shut down, until it became clear that was going to happen. That was when we hit the circuit breakers.
Arguably the actual economic outcome has been worse than most people would have predicted back during those crazy days in March. The US's management of the pandemic has been worse than most of us could have predicted. And yet stocks are up.
Regardless, the factors you mention are only two of the many factors that affects the value of stocks. The reason that causes a crash isn't necessarily the inverse of the reason it may go back up.
Poor management of the pandemic isn't necessarily a reason for stocks to drop, either. The market doesn't care about public health any more than it affects profits.
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I feel like there is a decade of guillotines in the future that they are either not seeing or are looking way past. But then I've always been cynical about the growing divide between the uber-wealthy and the other 99% of this country.
Guillotines might have worked well in the past, but with modern weapons and technology, you can use a much smaller portion of the population to suppress a much larger portion of the population. You can pay 10% of the population well enough that they support the top 0.01%, and the top 10% can pay the next 20% to 30% well enough or provide a sufficient probability to move up (or illusion) that they are incentivized to…
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I was already worried about what might happen with this election, but the pandemic is likely to make things worse. My wife and I have been discussing logistics to get somewhere safer in the event of different scenarios, but at the end... it's just difficult to predict what might happen and where.
The US has certainly endured worse in the past and came through strongly. Neither the coronavirus nor Trump are anywhere close to an existential threat for this country.
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Seems very difficult to evade location and transaction tracking, both which governments have very easy access to, but the rank and file do not.
That’s assuming a French Revolution style uprising, which is probably unrealistic. What is very realistic, however, is an increase in “lone wolf” terrorist attacks targeted at rich and/or powerful people. You don’t need a thousand people rolling a guillotine down the street when one person with an off-the-shelf drone could inflict just as much damage. Sure the police would find them quick, but one thing the American…