When do you consider someone "wealthy" or "rich"?

[Seattle]

I guess that's a novel concept.

 

[iceaura]

The end result is to make it so that it's not economically feasible to invest and take care of yourself. You might as well just do nothing and let the government take care of yourself.

This isn't good public policy except on Sciforums where the prevailing argument is that everyone is poor, can't save or invest and therefore we need to tax those who did invest which is similar to arguing that it makes sense to kill the goose that laid the gold

We can worry about that planet if we ever find it.

Meanwhile, the dramatic restructuring of the US tax system and corporate regulation under Reagan (killing the New Deal goose that laid the golden eggs) has resulted in a forty year economic stagnation and loss of prosperity among the lower 1/2 - 2/3 of the US economy. The sudden imposition of rapidly inflating housing, medical, and educational costs on that fraction - which partly due to its unexpected (by the respectable majority) nature and onset turned into debt - settled the hash, and we are now facing the predicted economic progression toward the basic setup enjoyed by Paraguay and similar (Gore Vidal's assessment, decades ago).

In my neighborhood billboard ads for house loans no money down, an increasing number of one-eyed cars, and a large population of young folks who bought the for-profit "competitive" "we train you for a job" college pitch and are now piling up debt and moving in with their parents (this is Republican country - Michelle Bachmann's power center, Trump voters dominant, a housing stock full of mobile and manufactured houses with wood stoves and not a single large tree left on their 5 acre lots.).

 

[Seattle]

We can worry about that planet if we ever find it.

Meanwhile, the dramatic restructuring of the US tax system and corporate regulation under Reagan (killing the New Deal goose that laid the golden eggs) has resulted in a forty year economic stagnation and loss of prosperity among the lower 1/2 - 2/3 of the US economy. The sudden imposition of rapidly inflating housing, medical, and educational costs on that fraction - which partly due to its unexpected (by the respectable majority) nature and onset turned into debt - settled the hash, and we are now facing the predicted economic progression toward the basic setup enjoyed by Paraguay and similar (Gore Vidal's assessment, decades ago).

In my neighborhood billboard ads for house loans no money down, an increasing number of one-eyed cars, and a large population of young folks who bought the for-profit "competitive" "we train you for a job" college pitch and are now piling up debt and moving in with their parents (this is Republican country - Michelle Bachmann's power center, Trump voters dominant, a housing stock full of mobile and manufactured houses with wood stoves and not a single large tree left on their 5 acre lots.).

I think I would move if I were you.

I'm puzzled by one thing. You mentioned once that the majority of people/voters felt the way you do and it was just those in Washington who were out of touch.

Obviously the Republicans don't agree with you and you post that you don't like the Democrats either and that they are too conservative. How can you not agree with the Democrats or the Republicans and yet you feel that most people agree with you? That doesn't really add up does it?

I agree that the Republicans don't have much to offer and the Democrats aren't particularly innovative lately but it's hard to argue that this isn't what most people want because this is what most people keep voting for.

I do, of course, disagree with the degree with which you've described most people as helpless victims too stupid to stay out of debt and out of mama's basement. I also disagree (not entirely of course) with all of the white males on here who are sure that white males are the source of everyone's most pressing problems. Or even how those with greater assets (not talking at Gates level) only got there though some great advantage.

Most more common level "wealth" is just a state of mind. Some people are more disciplined and those probably found an affordable way to finance college, aren't living with their parents and just adapted better than others. Even some of the people posting your type of views admit that they are doing fine.

Neighborhoods are full of those people. For every person who are as you've described them, there are others with the same backgrounds who aren't such victims. I think your part of the country may be unduly clouding your judgement in this regard.

You don't have to be completely wrong to not be substantially right and I think that is the case.

 

[iceaura]

Obviously the Republicans don't agree with you and you post that you don't like the Democrats either and that they are too conservative. How can you not agree with the Democrats or the Republicans and yet you feel that most people agree with you?

As far as I can recall, everything you have ever posted on this forum in reply to me that appeared after the word "obviously" has been factual error. Everything.

I agree that the Republicans don't have much to offer and the Democrats aren't particularly innovative lately but it's hard to argue that this isn't what most people want because this is what most people keep voting for.

It's very easy to argue that this isn't what most people want. All you have to do is ask them what they want, carefully and without biasing their answer, and argue that what they tell you they want does resemble or reflect what they want. The people in my political category have been doing that for a long time - the record of the results has been consistent for more than forty years now.

Most Americans want universal basic health care at First World standards for half the cost of the current rationed and incomplete Second World standard the US currently provides, for example. Most Americans who found out about Paul Wellstone's health insurance plan preferred it to every other setup proposed for the US, and that preference hasn't changed much since. Most Americans wanted the US to avoid launching full scale war on Iraq unless Iraq was an immediate and serious military or terrorist threat to the US.

As far as what they vote for - most people who voted voted for Hilary Clinton to be President in 2016, most people who voted voted for Al Gore to be President in 2000, most people who voted recently (2018, 2020) in Wisconsin voted for Democrats to represent them in the State legislature, and so forth.
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-d...the-day-wisconsin-gerrymandering-was-awesome/

And even that falls far short of indicating the scale of the difference between what US governments at all scales have been and done and what most citizens have wanted them to be and do since 1980.

I do, of course, disagree with the degree with which you've described most people as helpless victims too stupid to stay out of debt and out of mama's basem

You are disagreeing with your own fantasy world. I don't live in it. The world I describe is the one measured and recorded by those interested in physical reality. This one: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-ta...or-the-first-time-since-the-great-depression/
If you insist on describing those people as helpless and stupid that's your description, not mine.

Most more common level "wealth" is just a state of mind

So the free market capitalist argues that private property is just a state of mind.

That ought to make raising taxes on the wealthy less of a battle - we can easily avoid levying taxes on a state of mind.

 

[Seattle]

As far as I can recall, everything you have ever posted on this forum in reply to me that appeared after the word "obviously" has been factual error. Everything.

It's very easy to argue that this isn't what most people want. All you have to do is ask them what they want, carefully and without biasing their answer, and argue that what they tell you they want does resemble or reflect what they want. The people in my political category have been doing that for a long time - the record of the results has been consistent for more than forty years now.

Most Americans want universal basic health care at First World standards for half the cost of the current rationed and incomplete Second World standard the US currently provides, for example. Most Americans who found out about Paul Wellstone's health insurance plan preferred it to every other setup proposed for the US, and that preference hasn't changed much since. Most Americans wanted the US to avoid launching full scale war on Iraq unless Iraq was an immediate and serious military or terrorist threat to the US.

As far as what they vote for - most people who voted voted for Hilary Clinton to be President in 2016, most people who voted voted for Al Gore to be President in 2000, most people who voted recently (2018, 2020) in Wisconsin voted for Democrats to represent them in the State legislature, and so forth.
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-d...the-day-wisconsin-gerrymandering-was-awesome/

And even that falls far short of indicating the scale of the difference between what US governments at all scales have been and done and what most citizens have wanted them to be and do since 1980.

You are disagreeing with your own fantasy world. I don't live in it. The world I describe is the one measured and recorded by those interested in physical reality. This one: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-ta...or-the-first-time-since-the-great-depression/
If you insist on describing those people as helpless and stupid that's your description, not mine.

So the free market capitalist argues that private property is just a state of mind.

That ought to make raising taxes on the wealthy less of a battle - we can easily avoid levying taxes on a state of mind.

Yes, I'm aware of your style of arguing. Just claim that the other side is wrong, that you don't hold that view, you didn't say that.

It's a weak non-response to the question at hand.

No one said or implied that millennials don't live with their parents at higher numbers than past generations. Past generations would have too much self-respect to do that. The Pew study says that males do this a higher rates than females. Is that because females make more money or is it just that they have more self-respect?

Raising taxes on the wealthy, is that all you have in your basket of solutions? The accumulation of assets is a state of mind. You either live within your means or you don't. You either delay self-gratification or you don't. You either get an education or you don't.

Whatever problems you see in life as holding you back, you can always look around and see someone else facing those same problems that has made better decisions and that has not let it hold them back.

It's much better to deal with problems rather than to blame someone else. Your approach isn't helping anyone or you wouldn't be complaining about the same things for 40 years. Jessie Jackson has taken that approach as well. It isn't working.

How was your weekend?

 

[iceaura]

Raising taxes on the wealthy, is that all you have in your basket of solutions?

If I didn't know better, I'd be encouraged by the admission that there's a problem.
I know better - you're just bullshitting again.

Whatever problems you see in life as holding you back, you can always look around and see someone else facing those same problems that has made better decisions and that has not let it hold them back.

Changing the subject is not going to bail you out. This business about wealth being a state of mind is too fat a target.

It's much better to deal with problems rather than to blame someone else.

So why are you insisting on blaming people who aren't even at fault?

Your approach isn't helping anyone or you wouldn't be complaining about the same things for 40 years.

The number of American wingnuts who apparently have no idea who has been governing their country, or what they've been up to for the past forty years, is kind of startling.

The accumulation of assets is a state of mind.

Lots of you guys have been looking hard for some ways to bury the Republican Crash of 2008 - that's a pretty good one. Congratulations.

Meanwhile, if wealth is a state of mind there's no problem raising taxes on the wealthy - great, let's do it. We'll just leave their state of mind alone - we don't that to pay the bills, and we don't want to get it on our shoes.

 

[Seattle]

Is focusing on 2008 kind of like still talking about Bengasi? If you are living in your parents basement focusing on 2008 isn't helpful. Get a job, move out of the basement, quit playing video games, save some money and get on with life. Simples.

If someone doesn't have as much money as they would like, yes, it is largely their fault. Wealth isn't a right. It's not guaranteed.

I'm guessing (yes, I know, I'm always wrong) that you aren't in the group that you are always talking about. You have a "woman of the house" and therefore a house. It has appreciated, right? You have assets. You probably have put some money in the stock market. That has appreciated, right? You have "wealth". If you can do it, so can others.

 

[iceaura]

Is focusing on 2008 kind of like still talking about Bengasi?

Nope.
Clinton's Benghazi was essentially fictional, and without consequence, and quite small. The city itself is not fictional, but not much more significant.

We are still living in the aftermath or debris of the Crash of 2008 - a large event with global consequences, orders of magnitude more significant for the world economy than the entire history of the city of Benghazi and every event in it for the past thousand years - focusing on its current effects is necessary for understanding what happened yesterday.

If someone doesn't have as much money as they would like, yes, it is largely their fault.

Silly.
The Crash of 2008 was not the fault of its victims - not even the white ones.

I'm guessing (yes, I know, I'm always wrong) that you aren't in the group that you are always talking about. You have a "woman of the house" and therefore a house. It has appreciated, right? You have assets.

. It's like watching someone try to pin the tail on the donkey when they have wandered into the next room - where there is no donkey, and the folks are trying to play Charades.
But even allowing for comedy - what "group" am I "always talking about"?

If you can do it, so can others.

I couldn't, these days, do what I did. The US economy has been too badly damaged, along with its government as a country.

Wealth isn't a right. It's not guaranteed.

So taxing it is no problem. Good to know.

 

[Seattle]

Nope.
Clinton's Benghazi was essentially fictional, and without consequence, and quite small. The city itself is not fictional, but not much more significant.

We are still living in the aftermath or debris of the Crash of 2008 - a large event with global consequences, orders of magnitude more significant for the world economy than the entire history of the city of Benghazi and every event in it for the past thousand years - focusing on its current effects is necessary for understanding what happened yesterday.

Silly.
The Crash of 2008 was not the fault of its victims - not even the white ones.
. It's like watching someone try to pin the tail on the donkey when they have wandered into the next room - where there is no donkey, and the folks are trying to play Charades.
But even allowing for comedy - what "group" am I "always talking about"?

I couldn't, these days, do what I did. The US economy has been too badly damaged, along with its government as a country.

So taxing it is no problem. Good to know.

You keep saying that "taxing it is not problem" even though that's not something to be inferring from my comments.

Why could you not do now what you did then...2008? That's ridiculous. I know you're not this simple. Just rigid?

 

[iceaura]

You keep saying that "taxing it is not problem" even though that's not something to be inferring from my comments.

I inferred it easily and directly from your comments.

Why could you not do now what you did then...2008? That's ridiculous.

You will never learn to not post like that. It's apparently a form of OCD.

I did recommend flipping a coin - you could have been posting irrelevancies from ignorance and still been correct in your assertions or assumptions as much as half the time, given clear assertions, instead of none of it. From the hole you have dug by now (not one correct guess, out of hundreds) you would have to post for weeks without error to get to 50%.

Meanwhile, there are of course plenty of things directly bearing on financial prosperity many white people could still do in 2008 they mostly or particularly can't do twenty more years of Reaganomics later. What you find "ridiculous" is (as so often before in your posts) simply everyday life for a plurality - even a majority - of Americans.

Prudently rent a two bedroom apartment on one median wage job in most US cities, for example. Attend night school classes at a local land grant University on the savings from that job, rather than accumulating debt. Safely take health symptoms of unknown or sudden significance to a doctor they know, and without first thoroughly researching the exact financial obligations they would incur for each of the several choices of medical care they face. Discuss their finances with a banking or investment professional who is legally obligated to advise them in their best interests rather than the advisor's own. Budget accurately and reliably for conceiving, bearing, and raising children in the near future.

And so forth.

 

[Seattle]

I inferred it easily and directly from your comments.
You will never learn to not post like that. It's apparently a form of OCD.

I did recommend flipping a coin - you could have been posting irrelevancies from ignorance and still been correct in your assertions or assumptions as much as half the time, given clear assertions, instead of none of it. From the hole you have dug by now (not one correct guess, out of hundreds) you would have to post for weeks without error to get to 50%.

Meanwhile, there are of course plenty of things directly bearing on financial prosperity many white people could still do in 2008 they mostly or particularly can't do twenty more years of Reaganomics later. What you find "ridiculous" is (as so often before in your posts) simply everyday life for a plurality - even a majority - of Americans.

Prudently rent a two bedroom apartment on one median wage job in most US cities, for example. Attend night school classes at a local land grant University on the savings from that job, rather than accumulating debt. Safely take health symptoms of unknown or sudden significance to a doctor they know, and without first thoroughly researching the exact financial obligations they would incur for each of the several choices of medical care they face. Discuss their finances with a banking or investment professional who is legally obligated to advise them in their best interests rather than the advisor's own. Budget accurately and reliably for conceiving, bearing, and raising children in the near future.

And so forth.

How about prudently renting a two bedroom apartment based on two people earning the median wage? The apartment complexes seem to be full so it doesn't seem to be the problem that you suggest.

You don't need to be advised by a banking or investment profession if you can read and learn.

You should probably spend less time worrying about how many of my guesses are accurate and more time actually addressing the issues raised. Now is not the time to go all Tiassa on me...focus.

You managed to get through 2008. So have most other people.

 

[pjdude1219]

As far as I can recall, everything you have ever posted on this forum in reply to me that appeared after the word "obviously" has been factual error. Everything.

It's very easy to argue that this isn't what most people want. All you have to do is ask them what they want, carefully and without biasing their answer, and argue that what they tell you they want does resemble or reflect what they want. The people in my political category have been doing that for a long time - the record of the results has been consistent for more than forty years now.

Most Americans want universal basic health care at First World standards for half the cost of the current rationed and incomplete Second World standard the US currently provides, for example. Most Americans who found out about Paul Wellstone's health insurance plan preferred it to every other setup proposed for the US, and that preference hasn't changed much since. Most Americans wanted the US to avoid launching full scale war on Iraq unless Iraq was an immediate and serious military or terrorist threat to the US.

As far as what they vote for - most people who voted voted for Hilary Clinton to be President in 2016, most people who voted voted for Al Gore to be President in 2000, most people who voted recently (2018, 2020) in Wisconsin voted for Democrats to represent them in the State legislature, and so forth.
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-d...the-day-wisconsin-gerrymandering-was-awesome/

And even that falls far short of indicating the scale of the difference between what US governments at all scales have been and done and what most citizens have wanted them to be and do since 1980.

You are disagreeing with your own fantasy world. I don't live in it. The world I describe is the one measured and recorded by those interested in physical reality. This one: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-ta...or-the-first-time-since-the-great-depression/
If you insist on describing those people as helpless and stupid that's your description, not mine.

So the free market capitalist argues that private property is just a state of mind.

That ought to make raising taxes on the wealthy less of a battle - we can easily avoid levying taxes on a state of mind.

you ever notice he likes to project his abject hatred and contempt for the poor onto others?

 

[Seattle]

you ever notice he likes to project his abject hatred and contempt for the poor onto others?

I've noticed that. He isn't as good natured and well-balanced as you guys. He must not be as fulfilled in his personal life and he's probably jealous of you guys too, especially your sense of humor.

Maybe you can win him over with charm and your persuasive nature? In any event, you're content in life and that's all that really matters don't you agree?

Let's just let him project although it's sad really.

 

[pjdude1219]

Is focusing on 2008 kind of like still talking about Bengasi? If you are living in your parents basement focusing on 2008 isn't helpful. Get a job, move out of the basement, quit playing video games, save some money and get on with life. Simples.

again please explain in your delusional fantasy world how is one supposed to save money when the basic financial requirements to have basic needs met, ie no luxuries, cost more than a certain percentage of the population makes. before you continue to arrogantly lecture people perhaps you should learn something first.

If someone doesn't have as much money as they would like, yes, it is largely their fault. Wealth isn't a right. It's not guaranteed.

so its poor peoples fault rich assholes have suppressed wages for the last 40 years? you are like the domestic abuser who blames those you beat.
the poor aren't lazy. they are victims of system designed to extract the value of their labor for an economic aristocracy. there is not a job store where you pick out the job you want that.

 

[pjdude1219]

I've noticed that. He isn't as good natured and well-balanced as you guys. He must not be as fulfilled in his personal life and he's probably jealous of you guys too, especially your sense of humor.

Maybe you can win him over with charm and your persuasive nature? In any event, you're content in life and that's all that really matters don't you agree?

Let's just let him project although it's sad really.

im talking about you, you sociopathic hobgoblin. ice doesn't hate the poor. you on the other hand clearly do. or is this your usually trolling. because quite frankly given the moral bankruptcy of your delusional argument you are a troll, an asshole, or just stupid. you don't know anything about economics or basic human decency. i bet you are the type to stiff your server because of the kitchens screwup.

 

[Seattle]

im talking about you, you sociopathic hobgoblin. ice doesn't hate the poor. you on the other hand clearly do. or is this your usually trolling. because quite frankly given the moral bankruptcy of your delusional argument you are a troll, an asshole, or just stupid. you don't know anything about economics or basic human decency. i bet you are the type to stiff your server because of the kitchens screwup.

I realize that you are talking about me, Einstein.

Yes, I always tip the waitress even when the service isn't great because being a waitress, cashier, any job dealing with the public is a tough job. I have even been a cashier for a short period of time. I have worked in construction for a short period of time.

You on the other hand appear to be overly emotional, probably not that bright, a little out of your element in the modern world.

If you want to talk about people who aren't doing well, talk about specific cases and we may agree in some cases and we won't agree in other cases.

If someone wants to be "rich", that's not something that anyone is guaranteed. That is something that requires a focus and quite frankly it isn't a worthy goal. It's something that generally comes about though focusing on something else that is more productive.

Most people are doing alright. Those that aren't are generally in one of two categories. Those who are unfortunate from a medical standpoint, a few who just aren't capable of much and society does need to provide for those. It can do much better I'm sure for those cases.

The other category is mainly what I've commented on. Those who got a degree, paid too much or took on too much debt and are complaining about it. Those who don't have a degree and are complaining because they don't have a degree. Those who can work, are capable but are complaining about how wages haven't increased enough or who complain about "boomers" or some political party or how things use to be.

It's not that the world is perfect and that there is no validity to any issue they bring up. It's just that there have always been difficulties for every generation even though the specific difficulties vary from generation to generation. People succeed (whatever that means) in every generation and some people don't do as well in every generation. This has always been the case.

You on the other hand appear to be just an ill-informed and rude denizen of a backwater forum. Perhaps you can do better?

 

[iceaura]

How about prudently renting a two bedroom apartment based on two people earning the median wage?

That is still possible, at least for a few more years.
It's poverty, compared with pre-Reagan America, but as you keep pointing out: in the US wealth is not guaranteed - not even if paid for. The days of being able to rely on a decent job and disciplined life as the support of a nuclear family are long gone. Even the minimal personal wealth of a modern industrial society - like access to First World medical care in the cities and crowds industry requires - is something most Americans need decades to acquire and good luck to maintain (2/3 of all Americans with health insurance - not the uninsured, the insured, the prudent and employed and comparatively prosperous - are down to zero net worth within two years of being diagnosed with cancer other than outpatient surgically removable skin cancer. Apparently - given current prevalences and related data - about a third of all Americans will be diagnosed with such cancer - so more than 20% of those Americans who hold good jobs and pay their bills and so forth, prosperous and prudent Americans, will die broke, with negative net worth, from that factor alone).

You don't need to be advised by a banking or investment profession if you can read and learn.

So?

You should probably spend less time worrying about how many of my guesses are accurate and more time actually addressing the issues raised.

The inaccuracy and persistence of your guesswork raise the only serious issues raised by your posts - say:
1) Why you guys spend so much time doing that. Is there some kind of overall plan here? Is something grand and significant going to happen if you manage to guess my line of work, domestic circumstances, economic class, etc (one can't help but wonder if a correct guess that was forced on you by a year-long process of elimination via bad guesses would have the benefits you expect anyway)
2) Why even the Americans among you cannot make better guesses.

You're getting beat by coin flips, in the face of hundreds of posts from me full of clues. It's as if your reason has somehow been put in the service of blocking comprehension, deflecting information, hiding the world from you and vice versa.

That draws my attention. That pattern is far more interesting than the latest fortune cookie goof from a misread paragraph in an Introduction to Economics textbook, or the currently on-round talking point from the American Enterprise's media feed and framing.

An explanation might even account for the weirdly meaningless posts, the ones that seem to have been posted in the wrong thread or even the wrong forum, like this:

You managed to get through 2008. So have most other people.

If it were just you individually one could write it off as a symptom, but it's pretty much all of you guys - the pattern is dominant.

Let's ignore the fish barrel stuff, the "getting through 2008" target fattening (like the rapid and unprecedented US rise in what the stats followers label "deaths of despair" following the Crash - Reaganomics having set up the first generation of US citizens who apparently will not on average live longer than their parents. Or the recent and vaguely described decline in average US male adult height - which may have reversed even more recently under the statistical influence of the increased death rate and its demographic focus)

See, it's odd but interesting: wealthy upper class Americans, as a group, piled up a lot more transferred wealth via the Republican Party's invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Republican Party's manner of rebuilding after Katrina in 2005, and the Second Republican Economic Crash of 2008. For the wealthy in America there was no Crash, no death or murder in foreign war, no salvaging alligator-feasted corpses of drowned relatives after the levee broke. And they were for the most part not even prosecuted, let alone jailed and made liable for reparations. Nor were their profits from those disasters they enabled and promoted confiscated from them and returned to their victims by a government defending its citizenry. Angelo Mozila never spent a day in prison, and by all appearances will die a free and very wealthy man. So an overall description of the US economy from 2000 into 2020 would be that of a successful robbery/swindle, a long con with muscle behind it and the cops on the take - like a photo negative of the capers featured in the plots of Ocean's Eleven, The Sting, etc - in which something like a trillion dollars of wealth changed hands from poor to rich under cryptic and coercive circumstances that if made public and proved in court would be classified as felony crimes.

Which is quite a benefit to be obtained via a "state of mind".

 

[Seattle]

That is still possible, at least for a few more years.
It's poverty, compared with pre-Reagan America, but as you keep pointing out: in the US wealth is not guaranteed - not even if paid for. The days of being able to rely on a decent job and disciplined life as the support of a nuclear family are long gone. Even the minimal personal wealth of a modern industrial society - like access to First World medical care in the cities and crowds industry requires - is something most Americans need decades to acquire and good luck to maintain (2/3 of all Americans with health insurance - not the uninsured, the insured, the prudent and employed and comparatively prosperous - are down to zero net worth within two years of being diagnosed with cancer other than outpatient surgically removable skin cancer. Apparently - given current prevalences and related data - about a third of all Americans will be diagnosed with such cancer - so more than 20% of those Americans who hold good jobs and pay their bills and so forth, prosperous and prudent Americans, will die broke, with negative net worth, from that factor alone).

So?

The inaccuracy and persistence of your guesswork raise the only serious issues raised by your posts - say:
1) Why you guys spend so much time doing that. Is there some kind of overall plan here? Is something grand and significant going to happen if you manage to guess my line of work, domestic circumstances, economic class, etc (one can't help but wonder if a correct guess that was forced on you by a year-long process of elimination via bad guesses would have the benefits you expect anyway)
2) Why even the Americans among you cannot make better guesses.

You're getting beat by coin flips, in the face of hundreds of posts from me full of clues. It's as if your reason has somehow been put in the service of blocking comprehension, deflecting information, hiding the world from you and vice versa.

That draws my attention. That pattern is far more interesting than the latest fortune cookie goof from a misread paragraph in an Introduction to Economics textbook, or the currently on-round talking point from the American Enterprise's media feed and framing.

An explanation might even account for the weirdly meaningless posts, the ones that seem to have been posted in the wrong thread or even the wrong forum, like this:

If it were just you individually one could write it off as a symptom, but it's pretty much all of you guys - the pattern is dominant.

Let's ignore the fish barrel stuff, the "getting through 2008" target fattening (like the rapid and unprecedented US rise in what the stats followers label "deaths of despair" following the Crash - Reaganomics having set up the first generation of US citizens who apparently will not on average live longer than their parents. Or the recent and vaguely described decline in average US male adult height - which may have reversed even more recently under the statistical influence of the increased death rate and its demographic focus)

See, it's odd but interesting: wealthy upper class Americans, as a group, piled up a lot more transferred wealth via the Republican Party's invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Republican Party's manner of rebuilding after Katrina in 2005, and the Second Republican Economic Crash of 2008. For the wealthy in America there was no Crash, no death or murder in foreign war, no salvaging alligator-feasted corpses of drowned relatives after the levee broke. And they were for the most part not even prosecuted, let alone jailed and made liable for reparations. Nor were their profits from those disasters they enabled and promoted confiscated from them and returned to their victims by a government defending its citizenry. Angelo Mozila never spent a day in prison, and by all appearances will die a free and very wealthy man. So an overall description of the US economy from 2000 into 2020 would be that of a successful robbery/swindle, a long con with muscle behind it and the cops on the take - like a photo negative of the capers featured in the plots of Ocean's Eleven, The Sting, etc - in which something like a trillion dollars of wealth changed hands from poor to rich under cryptic and coercive circumstances that if made public and proved in court would be classified as felony crimes.

Which is quite a benefit to be obtained via a "state of mind".

Yet, none of those things have affected you either. If you are capable of concern for others, what makes you think that those having a little more money than you aren't just as concerned?

 

[iceaura]

Yet, none of those things have affected you either.

OCD.
There are medications you can take.
(Why would anyone guess that the inflation of health care costs, the inability of the median job to support a family, or the odds of being diagnosed with a serious cancer, would not have affected a given American?)

If you are capable of concern for others, what makes you think that those having a little more money than you aren't just as concerned?

I haven't been posting in whatever thread that came from.

Meanwhile, this "wealth is a state of mind" bs shows signs of being crippling. Is everyone on board with the observation that a transfer of wealth from the lower classes to the upper class is not the same as the transfer of a state of mind? That an attempt to use one's state of mind as collateral for a business loan is unlikely to be successful?