I feel bad for a lot of the people. I can just imagine how sad it would be to be taking on debt because of being afraid one's spouse would leave if they knew the truth about the family's finances, and how much that says about the rest of their relationship.
On the other hand, then it talks about $350 haircuts and I get my eyes all stuck rolling.
Forced to fly learjets? My heart pumps purple piss for you.
This was the sentence that sounded most foreign to me: "They fear their kids won't get invited to the right birthday parties."
What of the plight of the Second Homeless?
Never have I been more thankful not to be conspicuously wealthy.
I can just imagine how sad it would be to be taking on debt because of being afraid one's spouse would leave if they knew the truth about the family's finances, and how much that says about the rest of their relationship.
Yeah, that got me, too. Even the good times must have sucked.
then it talks about $350 haircuts and I get my eyes all stuck rolling.
$350 highlights. The haircut is a steal at $150.
Have you no pity for those without naturally golden locks?
Even nutritionists and personal trainers notice a problem.
For gods' sakes, people, will no one think of the personal trainers?
Ed McMahon may be foreclosed.
I took this from the WSJ rather than Calculated Risk. If you go to CR, there are some snarky and funny comments. An 85-yr-old with a broken neck losing his home may not be funny, but we are talking $10s to $100s millions of dollars in wealth/income not so long ago. I don't know how to feel.
How is it that you learn of an article that was on the NYT most-emailed list days ago from the Banderlog? You must have strange reading habits.
How is it that you learn of an article that was on the NYT most-emailed list days ago from the Banderlog? You must have strange reading habits.
I was wondering the same thing.
If we're reading the economic tea leaves based on NYT articles, I nominate this:
Some of the nation's biggest banks have closed their doors to students at community colleges, for-profit universities and other less competitive institutions...
[...] The practice suggests that if the credit crisis and the ensuing turmoil in the student loan business persist, some of the nation's neediest students will be hurt the most. The difficulty borrowing may deter them from attending school or prompt them to take a semester off. When they get student loans, they will wind up with less attractive terms and may run a greater risk of default if they have to switch lenders in the middle of their college years.[...]
Tuition and loan amounts can be quite small at community colleges. But these institutions, which are a stepping stone to other educational programs or to better jobs, often draw students from the lower rungs of the economic ladder. More than 6.2 million of the nation's 14.8 million undergraduates -- over 40 percent -- attend community colleges. According to the most recent data from the College Board, about a third of their graduates took out loans, a majority of them federally guaranteed.
(And does this mean the economy really is in the tank?)
Yes.
That's actually a fascinating article. Weight gain due to financial stress, huh? Stressed marriages? Health issues? Go figure! (Hey, vindication in what one already knew is a great thing. I don't suppose we could turn this around to an understanding on the part of the wealthy of the need for a more equitable distribution of income society-wide?)
I don't suppose we could turn this around to an understanding on the part of the wealthy of the need for a more equitable distribution of income society-wide?
Since that would also involve them having less money, I doubt it.
14: Yeah, I heard an NPR story about that a few days ago, and was gravely depressed. I would love to see these events have a levelling effect, but it's not going to work that way: rather, there will be more hoarding of resources, greater disparity.
To the hog farm with them.
And they have to get there by Cessna, the fuckers.
95% of the student loans are guaranteed. There's no excuse.
21: As I heard it, the loan companies still don't like it, they don't like it. Loans to people statistically shown to be more at risk of default; trouble selling off the loans in such a case. Don't like it at all, they don't.
There's no excuse.
Not profitable enough! Read the article. Argh. (Not at you, Cala, the banks.)
(I'm sorry; I'm feeling upset because I heard a story today about a woman who tried to register her son for school and was turned away due to a bogus ID requirement. She was so intimidated by how she was treated that she waited until the next year -- now -- to try again. And she got the same response, from the same clerk. Thank God she now knows more people locally and can find an advocate. But man, when people take it upon themselves to deny others access to free public education....arrrrrrggghh.)
I've been avoiding reading that article because of the eye-sticking thing Cala mentioned in 1.
14,15,16:Y'all gotta have faith and hope, people, can't go all negative or the revolution will never come.
The hurting has only started. We work together and play nice for a while, but come December, we don't work for the Party, we kick it in the ass.
Tim Duy from Thoma's
The risk is that guaranteeing against a 1970's repeat requires accepting a lower standard of living for the many Americans who have already seen virtually no gains since 2000, and this will become increasingly politically unpalatable in the months ahead. I am at a loss to see the expenditure switching policies that smoothly redistribute income (profits to wages) with out boosting aggregate demand in an environment that is already potentially inflationary.
The plan apparently is a horrible price spiral while keeping wages flat, and apparently Paul Krugman, Thoma, and most "liberal" economists are ok fine with that. Tim Duy talks of dreaded social unrest. I am getting very very restive.
And also avoiding the article Witt quotes because I haven't wanted to upset myself.
I haven't wanted to upset myself.
I find this works extremely well with TV and radio. For some reason I'm much less successful at it in print.
Oh Veblen, would that you were with us now. You would likely be drunk, or sleeping with someone's wife, but that would be by the by.
Works fine with TV. Radio, not so much.
Interested in Climate Change?
Peter Dorman at Econospeak shows how Democrats are in the way.
Here is Dorman's five essential principles for cap-and-trade. Democrats apparently call them DOA.
Don't let the perfect -- or you, bob -- be the enemy of the good.
28: Or translating Norse sagas. Or all three.
31:Sorry, Tim, I ain't seeing that much that is even good. I think we are approaching (#14 above) unbearable.
14:Witt left this paragraph out.
Some loan companies have exited the student loan business entirely, viewing it as unprofitable in the current environment. By splitting out community colleges and less-selective four-year institutions, some remaining lenders seem to be breaking the marketplace into tiers. Students attending elite, expensive, public and private four-year universities can expect loans to remain plentiful. The banks generally say these loans are bigger, more profitable and less risky, in part perhaps because the banks expect the universities' graduates to earn more.
While you are sending out good thoughts for the less fortunate, send some evil thoughts the Red Wings way.
Boo Detroit! You must fail in all sports as you do in life!
Tim Duy talks of dreaded social unrest. I am getting very very restive.
Bob, I'll tell you what's happening around me right now: people are becoming more cooperative, in their efforts at financial belt-tightening. We're doing more phone-calling and arranging with friends and acquaintances to share skills and resources. A friend was over today to use my roommate's grinder to sharpen the blades on his mower. Actually it was the head farmer for our local coop farm (it's a big frickin' trailer mower thing that you trail around behind you in a field, would have cost a penny or two to have sharpened professionally).
Time to pull in resources, closer to home, I think. Matt the farmer brought us some onions which we planted, and two pints of strawberries. That's the way.
The for-profit universities tend to be fraudulent, with a few exceptions. It shouldn't have been the banks who made the call, however, and I think that some of them are legit.
Bob, your mix of performance-art crap and actually interesting stuff has deteriorated so far that no one's listening. It's just too much work.
Power's out as far as I can see; they've even closed the schools for tomorrow. I hate Washington weather.
44: spend the day swimming in the WWII memorial!
Or eating delicious, if cold, Native American food at the museum!
42:John when your pathetic attempts to ingratiate yourself with your intellectual betters failed, you tried to become their doorman or stooge. Now you are just their jester.
I stopped listening to you years ago, but you still seem to imagine there is some kind of bond or admiration.
I thought I was the jester?! God fucking dammit.
It would have been nice if the Wings had had at least some kind of challenge this postseason.
12 shots to 1 in the third. Jesus.
My heart is broken, Bob. I actually thought that we were communicating up until six months or so ago, but so it goes.
You mix your interesting stuff in with goddawful bullshit and blame us for not listening. Your labile self-expression destroys the possibility of any real point. I used to be very fond of the good Bob, but that other guy is too much of a pain in the ass.
i think i'm starting to see now why you all kinda were hostile to bob, what tempers
i never tried Native American food or flew by sessna, it could be interesting experiences to try
last yr my friend's nephew suggested me to try jumping with a parashute, he is i think a member of the US team iirc, i so wanted to go but couldn't, had to do something that day, can't recall now what it was
Props to the Pens for standing tall in the face of hockey awesomeness.
50:46 is just a response-in-kind to 42, read. I rarely start these personal fights.
42 I suspect was a response to 34. Stooge John realized the bolded text hit too close to home in this crowd.
Where is that Ian Welsh article? I have changed as the blogosphere has changed. It used be an independent, honest forum. Now it only serves.
I don't serve.
Be the change you want to see in the blogosphere, bob. Start a blog of your own.
Jesus Christ, Bob. 42 was a response to your utterly bullshit, opportunistic accusation yesterday that everyone, including me, who celebrated the demise of the Hummer was indifferent or hostile to labor and that's all there was to it. I haven't forgiven you for that. Why should I?
34 was a perfectly fine post that I might have made myself, except that this issue has been pretty well covered by others. The decreasing affordability of education is a pet theme of mine.
And in fact, the for-profit schools are mostly fraudulent and should have been shut down long ago.
50:46 is just a response-in-kind to 42, read. I rarely start these personal fights.
42 I suspect was a response to 34.
I taught a CLE today on this very subject:
"He Who Cast the First Stone Probably Didn't"
1. We always think that we are responding to something done by someone else.
2. Since we perceive our own pain more than we perceive the pain that we inflict upon others, we tend to respond with more force than was inflicted upon us.
55:Interesting timing
This thread didn't devolve into troll-baiting until you started John. I have watched you go after people for years. It is your vice, you have admitted enjoying it.
But the "performance art" allusion shows you're sucking ogged this time. He's the guy who bans, huh.
Bob what if you're already banned, but don't even know it?
What a mindfuck.
Bob I was mad yesterday and said so then, and I stayed mad today and I said so again. I do like troll-baiting but I've never thought of you as a troll. But I'm really sick of a lot of shit you do.
People should click through to the Econospeak link Bob posted.
Emerson v. McManus: Clash of the Titans
Darn it.
I could have used Bob and John as an example today. Instead, I used the very different example of an old married couple.
Even if Bob and John get divorced, will, they don't need your services.
At least I got to enjoy a Pittsburgh win tonight, featuring an excellent start by young Zach Duke.
I can't believe how close the Pens came in the final seconds. Jeez.
But serious credit to my fellow citizens for staying for the presentation of the Cup - incredibly classy and respectful.
Holy Shit:
Clinton to End Bid and Endorse Obama
Cover of the NYT, right now.
Sorry if this is elsewhere on the site; I don't think so.
Lieberman-Warner is a complete clusterfuck at this point. It was widely known to be a clusterfuck months ago, it was never even supposed to aim near the kind of targets we need to be hitting to maintain a livable planet, and it's only gotten worse since its introduction. By now it's so larded up with industry giveaways and subsidies that it would be worse to see it pass than to see it fail and wait for next year, when we might have a slightly better political climate. The worst part of all of this, though, is that a climate bill coming out next year probably wouldn't be much better - Democrats are seeing global warming the same way they see health care, tax policy, and the budget process, as a bureaucratic issue where various compromises are hammered out across party lines in exchange for pork and buyoffs. And nobody quite grasps the fact that that's not how global warming works. There are real tipping points, and there are real deadlines, and if we miss them we're simply fucked. Creating legislation that gets us part of the way there isn't just a weak bill - it accomplishes nothing, because it misses the target we desperately need to reach in order to stop a global catastrophe. Worse, it gives people the impression that we're making progress when we're not doing so. This isn't "making the perfect the enemy of the good." This is facing simple reality. If we don't get greenhouse gases below 450 or 350 ppm within a fairly short period of time, the world is going to be irrevocably changed, and we can't waste time with half-measures that were never designed to get us there.
Perhaps my favorite part of the game was when a mini-fight broke out behind goal, next to the glass, and you could see a woman just screaming up against the glass.
I think this article is part of a secret initiative funded by right-wing zillionaires to make being rich seem sucky, when it is in fact lots of fun. They also finance all movies and TV shows involving heartwarming poor people giving life lessons to the inihibited and repressed wealthy.
Clinton to End Bid and Endorse Obama
Super delegates to the rescue.
Just when the Acheans were about to get their horse within the walls of Troy, Osgood made a terrific play and Hossa couldn't quite bend the puck in. Game over. The gods, including Lord Stanley, smiled on the Wings.
70: No, party leaders, especially Pelos, to the rescuei. Pelosi, I suppose, is a superduperdelegate -- so you're right, too. But my point is that the party higher-ups have been saying for over a month that this would be over with the last primary. And so it is.
I'm actually inclined to be just a tiny bit sympathetic to the people in the article. The marriage fear thing in particular seemed totally capable of going either way. Sure, that might be an unhealthy marriage, but just because he's afraid his wife will lose him because he's been downgraded from multimillionaire to mere millionaire doesn't mean she actually would. You don't have to have an unhealthy marriage to worry that a serious loss of money will endanger it, you just have to have an entirely normal, albeit maybe a bit immature, sense of insecurity. That could totally be (say) me or Ogged or teo, if we somehow found a job that paid about $4 million a year but required a lot of social networking.
I would never say this if I couldn't trust everyone else here to express the justified contempt for the no-longer-quite-as-superrich and their courtiers in the media, but others are obviously picking up the slack.
"Rescuei" is a new coinage of mine. It's open source. So have at it.
Also, I grew up with someone whose parents pretended to be wealthy in order to maintain their social status. The ruse, which really was all-encompassing, eventually destroyed their family. It was a horrible, horrible thing.
67: What I've read repeatedly - and granted, from all the usual suspects - is that Bush will veto whatever gets passed this year, and that there's not 67 votes to override. So all that matters is that something credible be passed this session, so that next year something more ambitious/adequate can and will be signed into law.
That said, I think your critique is about right - while there's a significant chunk of Dems who "get" climate change, they're a minority; the chunk of Dems necessary to get to a majority are amenable to doing something, but only insofar as they get pork/favors/whatever to do it.
If Gore were Pres., he'd (presumably) use all his capital to get a bill that was right, whatever the horse-trading necessary. There's not a lot of evidence that Obama is willing to use all his capital on this issue*, and so we could very well end up at a number that's simply too high, even if not by very much.
Is there anyone in a position of power who cares and is knowledgeable about this issue? Some senior Senator, or someone who has Pelosi's ear?
It would be nice if this weren't one of 3 do-or-die issues facing the Dems in January (Iraq and the Constitution being the others). I think that we can win on Iraq and probably one other issue, but, practically speaking, not on all 3. And that's setting aside UHC, where I agree with Krugman's description of UHC as a virtuous circle, one that builds Dem power and the trust in gov't necessary for progressive achievements. But I just can't see Obama getting to all 4 of these things in 4 years, let alone winning on all 4.
We are so fucking fucked.
* Emphasize "all his capital" - whatever his position, it's clearly not his raison d'etre, and that's probably what's necessary
73: To broaden that a bit, I suspect that a very large percentage of the overpaid striver class could be worthy objects of pity, if only one could get past the revulsion.
You don't have to have an unhealthy marriage to worry that a serious loss of money will endanger it, you just have to have an entirely normal, albeit maybe a bit immature, sense of insecurity.
To be clear, the fact that I thought the marriage was sad made them more an object of sympathy for me, not less. And it was just the anxiety over what would happen; it was actively deciding the best option was to take on debt rather than tell his wife about the finances.
Part of it is that it seems very alien to me to keep something like that secret, but part of it is that it would seem like that kind of stress at work would be something one would want to be able to confide in one's spouse, and it must be so lonely to feel, rightly or wrongly, that one can't share that.
Yeah...no, I can't get past the part where they're greedy shitheads.
Some of you are falling for the conspiracy to paint having money as an unpleasant experience. Believe me, they're all fine. They get to confide in their mistresses or lovers anyway, who they're supporting on the side.
My Mom knows of a couple who rented an entire one-bedroom apartment for their dog, since their preferred condo didn't allow pets. This is in Manhattan.
80: Dunno. I haven't run into a whole lot of rich people with whom I'd want to trade places. A decent supply of money is a useful thing to have, but a gross excess tends to warp relationships and values pretty badly.
Yeah, NPH, but if you had the money, things would be different.
Or anyway, if I did.
I'd rather have money than not, but 'make one dollar spend a dollar five' is never happy-making.
82: Yeah, I'd be willing to experiment.
a gross excess tends to warp relationships and values pretty badly.
Mom has talked about many examples of this as well, some of which are hinted at in 80.
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Guys, Maher Shalal Hash Baz is one of the best bands in the world.
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Yeah, NPH, but if you had the money, things would be different.
I do have basically a trust fund, and the extravagantly rich family (on one side) to go with it. I think of that money as being earmarked for my children's college fund, and hardly ever think about it. I live on a modest salary.
87: My enormously rich friends who have managed to live happy lives have adopted almost exactly this strategy: they pretend not to have a lot of money. On the other hand, granite countertops and stainless steel appliances are nice. And I wouldn't mind have servants, truth be told.
George Washington, we can't suck up to you if you won't reveal who you are.
Aren't all Americans George Washington's children, in a sense?
I have family money, of course, from the original land grant. But I shan't touch that unless grandmama determines I've left the path of dissolution and sloth.
"The poor rich are not like you and me."
"Yeah. They have more money."
I have family money, of course, from the original land grant.
Bad news: the squatters were granted ownership.
They get to confide in their mistresses or lovers anyway, who they're supporting on the side.
You discuss this in you manifesto, don't you? "PGD" is a pretty thin pseudonym, Karl.
My understanding is that some heirs and heiresses might be OK, though always with blindspots, but that self-made successes tend to be so focussed on business and careers that they're often unpleasant to be around, and at best demand a lot of favors and deference. Of course, my sociopathic multi-millionaire ex-brother-in-law skews my sample.
65: At least I got to enjoy a Pittsburgh win tonight, featuring an excellent start by young Zach Duke.
Yes, a nice game*, and played at a brisk enough pace so there was time to get home and watch another period of insane hockey domination by the Red Wings. (My son tells me it was more evenly matched for the first 2 periods.)
I can't believe how close the Pens came in the final seconds. Jeez.
Indeed, if they pulled a 2nd great escape in a row it would have been something. (Despite how well Fleury played in the series, maybe they should have pulled their goalie randomly during the game.)
*During which I learned that the texting-to-scoreboard-message moderator apparently rejects benign but obscure messages. My daughter and her friends were pleased to get "Never Gonna Give You Up" through, but apparently in April someone actually sang it on the jumbotron at PNC.
It stands to reason that those who truly pull themselves up by their bootstraps might be unwilling to see institutional factors who would have kept most people down in their situation.
On the other hand, perhaps it is self-flattery to believe that their unique mojo yanked them out, and so they would feel compassion towards the untalented masses.
Vaguely related to 97, I cannot believe that in the midst of an article on the racial significance of Obama's victory we have to have a quote from Ward Connerly.
Further evidence that the reflexive dogma of "balance" in news stories is insane.
Remember the time when ogged had to add a lame pseudo-comment to get to comment 100 to make a lame pseudo-joke about Kobe?
Nah, me neither.