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Originally posted by JO753:
Its getting there!

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by second:
Republicans largely ignore moral stain of child poverty

Imagine you have some neighbors in a mansion down the road who pamper one child with a credit card, the best private school and a Tesla.

The parents treat most of their other kids decently but not lavishly — and then you discover that the family consigns one child to an unheated, vermin-infested room in the basement, denying her dental care and often leaving her without food...

But that’s us. That household, writ large, is America and our moral stain of child poverty.

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You can't eliminate poverty by "giving" people money. All that does is create dependency on aid. You can only create wealth by having a robust economy in which everyone who can work has a meaningful job at living wages...

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SECOND: Originally posted by second:
Republicans largely ignore moral stain of child poverty

Imagine you have some neighbors in a mansion down the road who pamper one child with a credit card, the best private school and a Tesla.

The parents treat most of their other kids decently but not lavishly — and then you discover that the family consigns one child to an unheated, vermin-infested room in the basement, denying her dental care and often leaving her without food...

But that’s us. That household, writ large, is America and our moral stain of child poverty.

SIGNY: You can't eliminate poverty by "giving" people money. All that does is create dependency on aid. You can only create wealth by having a robust economy in which everyone who can work has a meaningful job at living wages...

JO: In a few decadez there wont be any jobz,

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JO:... so we shoud be tranzitioning to sum other way uv getting money to peepl now.

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JO: But thats not the worst problem. It seemz that giving them money or making them work for it, or doing niether, they will still plop out babyz without regard to their financial situation. So in thoze same few decadez there will still be way too many peepl for the ecosystem to support.

I woc Steve Wilcos. The main subject uv the show iz bad parents. Even wen its a cheating show, they usually hav too many kidz. A typical mom haz 5 and her cheating babydaddy haz kidz with 5 other wimin. And thoze are the 'funny' showz.

More than haf are about abuzed children.

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JO... Wut happenz wen there are so many peepl that its impossible for any guvrment to keep a lid on this sort uv crap? There are plenty uv useless guvrments now where child abuse must be rampant. And with the GoPs and their idiotic 'small guvrment' ideaz doing nothing but lokking themselvez in power, they are likely to sekseed in defunding all the DCFS eventually.

The human rase iz working on transforming the planet into Hell.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

Oh, I'm trying to figure out how 'Splooj Munkey' fits into shows about baby-daddies. It seems like a 'Splooj Munkey' wouldn't have all that many babies because of being a 'Splooj Munkey', which is a generally solitary activity.

Maybe JO can explain his answer because it seems like he's saying he doesn't know anybody who's anything other than a 'Splooj Munkey' and he doesn't know many people anyway ... which means he doesn't know people like the ones he sees on TV.

Is that what he's trying to say?

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Originally posted by JO753:
I agree with most uv wut you rote, Sig.

Capitalizm needz to be on a very short leesh. Peepl need to be able to think for themselvz. We need to looz at least 3/4 uv the population and stay at that level.

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I disagree about the authentisity uv the show. I no there are Screen Actorz Gild rulez about pay, wich acounts for sum uv the motivation for theze low lifes to air their dirty laundry on national TV, but that duznt preclude their storyz from being true.

A big motiv to go on Wilcos iz to get free lie detector tests.

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Occasionalyy the gests hav alredy paid around 500$ to a local lie detector gy but usually get a different rezult from Dan Ribacoff. https://www.danribacoff.com/

Its a serious show. They hav expozed murdererz, pedofilez, abuzerz, rezulting in many prizon sentensez. Theyv also exonerated many accuzed peepl.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:


So ... HEY JO!!!

What were you trying to say?

You DO know a lot of people like those on TV, or you DON'T?

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Originally posted by SIGNYM: JO, I've scanned your website and if my POV and your POV were Venn diagrams we would prolly overlap 70pct.

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Wilcos?

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SIGNYM: JO, I've scanned your website and if my POV and your POV were Venn diagrams we would prolly overlap 70pct.

JO: Probably 85, 90% ! More than you can admit.

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SIGNY: Wilcos?

JO: Thats where that Youtube iz from. Herez hiz Youtube channel:
Link removed to improve format
(Sorry, the link iz to hiz Youtube home paje, not a video. Haken really needz to update the HTML here. I dont no how to fix that, so just c&p it)
Just woc a few duzen uv thoze. Try not to think too hard about it if you are prone to depression.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
To be fair though, realists are much more likely to suffer from depression. They're also more likely to have higher intelligence than others as well.

It's usually not stupid people that kill themselves on purpose.


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A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Certainly not when meritocracy ...

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Certainly not when meritocracy ...

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That's raciss.

At least, according to BLM.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

deleted ... will completely post later

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So, KIKI ... and WISHY, REAVERBOT, SECONDRATE, etec ... you will not find me saying that we have a true meritocracy. Prejudice still exists, both "in favor of" and "against" any group that you care to point to, whether it's whites, blacks, Asians, women, men, etc.

However, simply ARGUING for a meritocracy is considered "racist".

Also, I'm aware that meritocracy would not be so stringent if there were simply MORE JOBS overall. Hiring would not be focused on winnowing to the top 2 of 200 applicants if the job pool was larger.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:
What we have instead is people being forced into the ever increasing competition of the Roman arena of war of all against all. Where you have highly skilled people competing for low paying jobs, for example. And people being shunted into non-productive "non-essential" make-work, to scramble as best they can to keep afloat.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
OK, picked a couple of videos to watch. The one about "Who is the father" is one of the ones you're referring to?

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

Unlike most species, in times of resource stress, humans RAISE their birthrate instead of lowering it. And when times are good, humans lower their birthrate - and that's called the 'demographic transition'....

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Originally posted by JO753:

If poverty wuz suddenly eliminated from the world its game over in less than 20 yirz.

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If poverty wuz suddenly eliminated from the world its game over in less than 20 yirz.

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What we have instead is people being forced into the ever increasing competition of the Roman arena of war of all against all. Where you have highly skilled people competing for low paying jobs, for example. And people being shunted into non-productive "non-essential" make-work, to scramble as best they can to keep afloat.

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This right here is about half of the reason I've decided to opt out of the rat race. If I'm going to bust my ass and lend my perfectionist skills to make somebody else look good (and make money for them), then I'm going to do it as little as possible.

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If poverty wuz suddenly eliminated from the world its game over in less than 20 yirz.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Once upon a time, in an old post, I actually looked up and calculated the CO2 emissions across the globe. IF the USA and Canada were to reduce CO2 emissions to that of the EU (roughly half of today's) we could still retain (actually, improve) our standard of living and there would be enough energy leftover to raise the standard of living of the poorest nations in the world to something like Cuba or Costa Rica. Not lavish, but not terrible.
But that would require that every national leadership be laser-focused on improving EVERYONE's standard of living .... not consigning a significant swath of people to grinding poverty ... while still maintaining energy efficiency and improving sustainability. We would then be on a glide path to lower populations and better ecological health.
Our problems are political, economic, and cultural ... I believe it's the parasitical elite who are preventing us from reaching the solutions that we need.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

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What we have instead is people being forced into the ever increasing competition of the Roman arena of war of all against all. Where you have highly skilled people competing for low paying jobs, for example. And people being shunted into non-productive "non-essential" make-work, to scramble as best they can to keep afloat.

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This right here is about half of the reason I've decided to opt out of the rat race. If I'm going to bust my ass and lend my perfectionist skills to make somebody else look good (and make money for them), then I'm going to do it as little as possible.

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Capitalism for the masses. "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

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I like that. I really like that.

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Sadly, almost all people by birth or circumstance have no other choice but to play the losing end. The western-dominated world is a company town. It determines the jobs, pays the wages, and fixes the prices you pay.

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This is true, but you can limit the amount you need to play by being a lot wiser with how you spend your after tax dollars. I don't mean you, specifically... I mean people in general and particularly those in the Western Town.

Simply refuse to be a consumer. That's half the game right there, and the only half that you have any control over.

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So I hope there's enough mental charity going around everywhere to understand we have this common problem, that can only ultimately be solved in common.

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This is true, but you can limit the amount you need to play by being a lot wiser with how you spend your after tax dollars.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM: I'm always happy to find areas of agreement, but if you won't discuss your opinions I suppose we'll never find out.

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I did make a point to specify those living in "Western Town".

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Roll your own. Brown bag the lunch. Bring a pot of coffee with you in a travel thermos. You've just saved $4,000 to $6,000 per year.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

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I did make a point to specify those living in "Western Town".

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IIRC that was in your reply, not your original post, after I said I was thinking more globally and inclusively.

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That kind of makes me think of Geezer ... or was it CC, I get the 2 confused in my memory a times ... who said the problem of eating fast food could be solved by going to the grocery store (on a bus, in a 'food desert'), buying rice and beans in bulk and cooking every day (when you're working 2 or more jobs), and shopping the sales to put in your freezer (that you bought with your non-existent extra cash). Not everyone lives by themselves, for themselves. Not everyone has the time, energy, tools, or skills, to implement handy 'fixes'. Not everyone lives in virtually zero-cost housing. I'm not arguing that people don't make poor choices. They absolutely do. Even ** I **, miserly as I am, know I could probably trim my budget at least 30% if I tried. I'm just saying your example doesn't fit the vast majority of people even here, in the good ol' USA, who're struggling economically.

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6 - I did make a point to specify those living in "Western Town".

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k - IIRC that was in your reply, not your original post, after I said I was thinking more globally and inclusively.

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6 - It didn't need to be in my original post. I don't expect people to to read minds or foretell where a conversation will end up going, and I expect the same courtesy from them as well.

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6 - Roll your own. Brown bag the lunch. Bring a pot of coffee with you in a travel thermos. You've just saved $4,000 to $6,000 per year.

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k - That kind of makes me think of Geezer ... or was it CC, I get the 2 confused in my memory a times ... who said the problem of eating fast food could be solved by going to the grocery store (on a bus, in a 'food desert'), buying rice and beans in bulk and cooking every day (when you're working 2 or more jobs), and shopping the sales to put in your freezer (that you bought with your non-existent extra cash). Not everyone lives by themselves, for themselves. Not everyone has the time, energy, tools, or skills, to implement handy 'fixes'. Not everyone lives in virtually zero-cost housing. I'm not arguing that people don't make poor choices. They absolutely do. Even ** I **, miserly as I am, know I could probably trim my budget at least 30% if I tried. I'm just saying your example doesn't fit the vast majority of people even here, in the good ol' USA, who're struggling economically.

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6 - Rolling your own cigarettes if you smoke is the easiest and cheapest thing to do. I know you don't smoke, personally, but work a night shift at a retail store and you'd quickly learn that you're in the vast minority.

A can of coffee at Aldi is 5 bucks. A good thermos is around $30.

Where I live, a pack of Newports is $8.00 (cheap around here compared to many other places nationally). A cup of coffee at McDonalds is $1.50. If you smoked one pack per day, Rolling your own cigarettes for the day and making your own coffee would save $3,000, and you'd have an entire pot of coffee compared to only a single cup for the day.

If you smoked 2 packs in a day, you've just saved $5,475.

This is all after tax/ss/medicare is taken out. It's the biggest raise you're ever going to see in a life of thankless retail work.

That almost immediately takes care of your "non-existant cash" problem, and can get the ball rolling to buy food in bulk.


If you don't smoke, you're spending money on other bullshit like Cable TV. Cut the cord. Don't buy a new iPhone every two years because of peer pressure. Paying $100 a month for a phone plan? Get US Mobile and reduce it to $25 a month for the same thing (They use Verizon towers and will even mail you 2 sim cards and let you test it out for 2 weeks before they start billing you, contract free). Pay less than $3 a month for a Magic Jack phone. Figure it out.



My example used the poorest of the poor, Kiki. People you probably don't ever associate with. People who by all rights shouldn't even be smoking premium cigarettes and buying restaurant coffee with how little they make. (A lot of those people at KMart, I walked through the steps to get on food stamps because they didn't even know they'd qualify for them).

I'm the one guy there who could afford to do it if he wanted to, but I don't, and that's why I'm the one guy there who could afford to if he wanted to.

I'm not the model for how everybody else should live. NOT because I've already set myself up right, but because I wouldn't expect anybody else to go without so many things for so long and be miserly to the point of borderline-insanity just to get there. But almost everybody here living in the US has a lot more wiggle room than they think they do, even in this shit economy.

They just need to ask themselves if they are going to allow their bad habits and addictions that are in their control contribute to their status as a virtual slave or not.

Me to anybody I've ever worked overnights with: "Hey... You wanna be lazy and wonder why nothing in your life ever improves? That's perfectly fine if worrying about money is how you like to spend your free time. Just don't come bitching to me about your situation or how little we get paid when I already told you how you can get yourself out of it.

Especially not when we're on break and you've got a Newport hanging out of your mouth."




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A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

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6 - I did make a point to specify those living in "Western Town".

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k - IIRC that was in your reply, not your original post, after I said I was thinking more globally and inclusively.

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6 - It didn't need to be in my original post. I don't expect people to to read minds or foretell where a conversation will end up going, and I expect the same courtesy from them as well.

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Well, I clarified my thoughts by explaining I was thinking more globally and inclusively, to discuss the topic. So ... where's the problem? We're discussing things ...

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The problem comes in the flow of the conversation. Or YDRC.

You brought it up first in reply to my "original post" (which wasn't really original in the flow either, but the first time you wrote back about it when I was talking to Sigs).

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

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What we have instead is people being forced into the ever increasing competition of the Roman arena of war of all against all. Where you have highly skilled people competing for low paying jobs, for example. And people being shunted into non-productive "non-essential" make-work, to scramble as best they can to keep afloat.

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This right here is about half of the reason I've decided to opt out of the rat race. If I'm going to bust my ass and lend my perfectionist skills to make somebody else look good (and make money for them), then I'm going to do it as little as possible.

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Capitalism for the masses. "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

Sadly, almost all people by birth or circumstance have no other choice but to play the losing end. The western-dominated world is a company town. It determines the jobs, pays the wages, and fixes the prices you pay.

So I hope there's enough mental charity going around everywhere to understand we have this common problem, that can only ultimately be solved in common.

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Since I wasn't originally talking about everyone in the country, let alone the world (I was only talking about myself when you quoted that and replied), my reply went as follows:

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This is true, but you can limit the amount you need to play by being a lot wiser with how you spend your after tax dollars. I don't mean you, specifically... I mean people in general and particularly those in the Western Town.

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So far, so good...

But then you brought it up again:

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I was thinking more globally and inclusively. The women and children who live on the dumps in the Philippines have no choice but to work HARD every single day just to have a chance to survive another day. They don't get to sit back and decide how much they'll participate today...

So being independent, or close enough to it - for the moment anyway - isn't an option for most, looking globally at the western-dominated world.

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Dude. I know. I got your drift. I already addressed it.





For brevity, I'm going to remove the rest of our post history on this now and just focus on your reply.

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Ok - doing the math -
one cup of coffee @ 1.50/ day is 547.50 a year

half a pack of cigarettes @ 4.00/ day is 1460.00 a year
obviously a pack a day @ 8.00/ day is 2920.00 a year

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Yup. My numbers are smaller than that though because rolling your own still isn't free, and neither is cheap coffee made at home. You're also going to need a $50 rolling machine and a $25 coffee pot if you're one of the few people in America that don't already have one in their house.

Don't forget that you're nearly breaching $5,500 a year if you smoke two packs a day. Also don't forget that I live in one of the cheapest areas to buy them too. I honestly wouldn't even want to know what a pack of cigarettes cost in L.A. or San Fransisco. Last time I heard they're $15 in the city of Chicago.

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Cable TV where I live is a necessity if you want to watch TV at all, because the signal doesn't go over the hills. And I know a lot of rural areas aren't w/in TV signal range.

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It's actually not. If you're already wasting money on a smartphone, You can use cell phone service as a wi-fi hotspot, and there are plenty of free streaming services out there like Pluto TV and imdbTV... and Kodi if you don't mind bending the rules a bit. (and with 5G plans coming out and even being made available to economy tier services like US Mobile and Consumer Cellular, it shouldn't be long until unlimited data is reasonably priced).

If you ditch the smart phone and only keep a $30/mo unlimited talk and text (which I HIGHLY recommend), you can get a very cheap Internet Only cable service. Chances are that in and of itself it will come with a limited free streaming service of its own, on top of your ability to easily stream free services like Pluto TV and imdbTV at whim. (If you didn't know, Pluto TV IS free basic cable... it's totally legit and advertised on TV. It boggles my mind how it's free and that the cable companies allow it, but here we are).

Brenda still goes to the library to rent movies and TV shows (I assume for free). This is also still an option. My old man did that all the time for us when he'd have us after the divorce.

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I'd say generally, if you have kids, you'll have TV service because you need to keep them busy if you're doing things at home and can't amuse them/ oversee them /keep them busy 100%.

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See above.

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"My example used the poorest of the poor, Kiki. People you probably don't ever associate with." HOW THE EFF WOULD ** YOU ** KNOW, JACK? Do you really think I don't have relatives and friends in that position?

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Okay. So maybe you have people that at least say they're in that position. People like to whine. Especially to somebody who will listen to them. Even more so if you're the type always doing favors for them and rarely ever getting them paid back too.

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"But almost everybody here living in the US has a lot more wiggle room than they think they do, even in this shit economy." Not the people that I've seen. They work hard at many jobs. They drive shit cars that a seem to always bonk out on them every month or 2. They get 'consumer cellular' and don't have a landline, using a phone even older than mine. They don't smoke or drink, and make coffee at home. They diligently shop the sales for groceries. And so on. Maybe you know a lot of young(er) fools, but the people I know who are struggling financially are doing their absolute best to manage.

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You're just talking about older fools who were once younger fools. People who did a bunch of dumb shit with money all their lives and really have no incentive at all to try to stop being consumers at this point. People who actually lived in a GREAT economy when they were younger fools relative to what we've got right here and now.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt though, if these are people you know living in California. The tax situation out there is bonkers even in comparison to Illinois. It's a wonder anybody in California has any money at all.

And half of the people I've worked with overnights at my last two jobs were older than I am... Some of them even quite a bit older. No teenagers at all, and only a few 20-somethings in the mix. We're all doing the jobs that kids used to do when I was a kid.


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A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

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k - What we have instead is people being forced into the ever increasing competition of the Roman arena of war of all against all.

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J - This right here is about half of the reason I've decided to opt out of the rat race. If I'm going to bust my ass and lend my perfectionist skills to make somebody else look good (and make money for them), then I'm going to do it as little as possible.

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k - Capitalism for the masses. "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
Sadly, almost all people by birth or circumstance have no other choice but to play the losing end. The western-dominated world is a company town. It determines the jobs, pays the wages, and fixes the prices you pay.

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J - Simply refuse to be a consumer (in the Western Town).

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k - I was thinking more globally and inclusively. The women and children who live on the dumps in the Philippines have no choice but to work HARD every single day just to have a chance to survive another day. They don't get to sit back and decide how much they'll participate today.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:



We seem to be in 2 different conversations: me constantly addressing the general and global, and you talking about yourself as an example.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:
which you directed towards yourself

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What we have instead is people being forced into the ever increasing competition of the Roman arena of war of all against all. Where you have highly skilled people competing for low paying jobs, for example. And people being shunted into non-productive "non-essential" make-work, to scramble as best they can to keep afloat.

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Sadly, almost all people by birth or circumstance have no other choice but to play the losing end. The western-dominated world (ie the many countries around the world dominated by western capitalism) is a company town. It determines the jobs, pays the wages, and fixes the prices you pay.

So I hope there's enough mental charity going around everywhere (ie around the globe) to understand we have this common problem, that can only ultimately be solved in common.

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