Hoarders

[TalkingDog]

[edgineered]

1. The concept of the american dream warrants discussion, is this OP not

consistent with what is taught to us from the earliest stages? The land of opportunity for riches, freedom to become the tyrant you strive to be, etc is a 1% dream.

In what ways could updating the meaning of the american dream to be a dream of the 99% be possible?

[obxhead]

2. I don't feel that way.

I want most of the traditional "American dream."

A decent home (rented or owned, doesn't matter), quality food on the table, quality accessible health care, reliable transportation, a couple weeks a year to myself to vacation as I please, and a living wage to cover all of those things.

I really don't need to be the 1% with two G4 jets in the driveway. I just want to live comfortably and not pay with my life to achieve just 10% of that life.

The dream doesn't have to change, the 1% just have to share a tiny bit so we can achieve it.

[SomethingFishy]

4. It's not even that they need to "share" it's that they need to

start paying a living wage.

I'm like you, not looking to get rich, not looking for gold plated faucets on my yacht. I'd just like to make enough money to take care of my family, have a bit extra for emergencies and maybe take a vacation once in awhile. As it is I work 70-80 hours a week (when I can get work) and still don't make enough.

[obxhead]

5. The sickest part is

if they would just pay that living wage the 1% would become so rich in the process that they would look like paupers today.

Money trickles up, not down.

[Beartracks]

8. Right. Since when did the "American Dream" involve a mansion and yacht?

That's an over-glorified fantasy version of the American Dream -- that we'll all be millionaires if we just "work hard enough." Rather, the reality is that the American Dream is as you describe it above: a solidly middle class life where our needs are met through the results of our hard work, our families are healthy, our government (of/for/by people) protects and serves us to ensure that these things are possible, and we have money and time left to focus on the things that really make life worth living -- that is, we don't just work and work and work, and we don't just break even, but we actually have resources left to invest in the pursuit of our personal happiness. If some people want to go beyond that level of success, that's great and many probably would, but the definition of the Dream itself is not, and should not be, penthouses, limos, mansions, yachts, and Cuban cigars. Just like Barbie is an unrealistic "ideal" of womanhood, that kind of version of the American Dream is an unrealistic "ideal" of success.

We're not millionaires just waiting to happen. We're Americans just waiting to get our Dream back.

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[indepat]

17. And government does not need to lavish welfare on the 1% in the form of tax relief, as in the case

of Mittens paying 15% on a $20 million annual income, and GE paying little, if any, Federal income taxes because of loopholes et al. This is the travesty, the disgrace, the misfeasance of office by our elected official who betray we the people.

[TahitiNut]

3. The "American Dream" I was taught ....

Last edited Wed Apr 4, 2012, 10:30 PM - Edit history (1)

... was (1) self-governance in a nation where all are equal under the law and (2) having the opportunity to enjoy the fruits (sweet or sour) of one's own labor, without ceding the lion's share to some lord or owner.

It's the "kings" that want you to believe that everyone wants to be a "king." The "politics of envy." It's bullshit.

My maternal grandparents immigrated to the United States in the early 20th century, when the vast majority of the world was still governed by monarchies. The monarchies are going, but the sense of entitled privilege of a 'ruling class' is still embedded in the right wing. Blame Disney. And "business" schools.

Examples are legion, but I'll offer just one. The NBA players went on strike for 53% of the net income resulting from their labors. The "owners" objected. The players effectively won. Millionaires (the 1%) in organized labor. Yet the average worker in an S&P500 corporation gets less than 30% of the value of their labor. Too bad. If they were millionaires, they'd do better, I guess.

[grantcart]

18. Absolutely not.

The original dream was to become rich so that you could then have the freedom to contribute to the community. For our founding fathers living in an Age of Reason and discovery the highest dream was to get enough wealth so that you could then devote your life to study and in most cases die penniless like Jefferson and others.

Benjamin Franklin, for example became the most famous person on the planet when he discovered electricity and invented the Lightning Rod. He purposely refused a patent so that it could be made cheaply and distributed quickly to reduce fires in growing communities with lots of wooden structures closer and closer together.

Take Teddy Roosevelt's father, for example. During the Civil War he was one of the richest men in America as he was the 5th largest landowner on Manhatten. He observed living conditions at the Army camps and realized that men were drinking up their wages within a few days of payday and families were starving back home. He invented an allotment system (that is still used by the military today) that allowed pay to be split so that soldiers could take a few dollars in the field and send the bulk of it directly back to the family back home. He then spent the rest of the war going to the camps and signing up soldiers to the plan. Given that morale in the Army was plummeting as more and more soldiers were getting letters from home about the desperate conditions that there families were in, Roosevelt's actions had a dramatic impact on morale and might have actually saved the Union Army.

Of course Teddy's father made one other great contribution, forging a spirit of reform and service in Teddy Roosevelt who, among other things, brought us a progressive income tax.

The idea that the American Dream was for acquiring huge amounts of largesse for personal gain is a very recent change in how the elites perceived themselves here.

[Flying Squirrel]

6. Not a valid comparison

While I agree with the sentiment, money is universally recognized as something of value which most people would like to have for the things it can be exchanged for. Whereas a house full of newspapers or cats is not something most people would wish to have. The sickness here has surprisingly little to do with Greed, (since the greed has been largely satisfied by the time they try to squeeze even more out of us) - it has more to do with that other deadly sin, Lust. Lust in this case being not about sex but Power. Hoarding has nothing to do with greed either, of course, it has to do with an irrational fear of loss. So in this sense the two could be compared - both have this irrational fear, but with one it`s loss of something tangible while with the other it`s power. Those in power make some outlandish claims in order to retain that power, failing to recognize that when one attempts to justify something or "makee it right," it is because at some level they know it`s actually wrong.

[mojowork_n]

10. There might be a larger umbrella covering both points of view.

As in, while *most* people don't value old newspapers so much that they fill their living space with them,
and *most* people don't enjoy the company of dozens of felines.... some do.

Similarly, while most of us (99.9%) are untroubled and unfazed by the sheer gravitational force -- constantly
drawing more assets towards its own center -- of a really, really, really large pile of wealth, for a select few that
astronomical physical PULL is a life-affecting issue.

Either way, what may have begun innocently enough, with a small pile of accumulated good reads or a couple or
three kitties (or consider the early, start-up/entrepreneur years of Ebeneezer Scrooge's business career), it all turns
into something resembling the Sorcerer's Apprentice. ....I once had the misfortune of spending a couple or three days
with someone who was both a hoarder and a miser. "Annie" was only hours from a sheriff's eviction. No one
in her family, none of her kids, none of her other 'friends' would help her pack up all those valuable THINGS filling
the attic, both floors and basement. So it was me and two Mexican-(not quite legally)-American gentlemen hired
off the street for ten dollars an hour packing semi-priceless paintings, sculptures, carvings and other objets d'art
into stacks of plastic totes. Every one of those THINGS had a value (known to the last penny) but there was no
oxygen in the house. It was stifling in that place, with the collective weight of all those valuable assets pushing the
air from everyone's lungs. With the clock ticking down and the Sheriff due to arrive within hours -- and big piles of
stuff still unpacked -- it was like waiting for Death. The inevitable moment when a normal person would figure out,
"no, you can't take it with you, maybe there are just a few other things making life worth living" but that never
happened. It was 3 in the morning but I had to leave, with "Annie" working the phone, planning to move into a much
nicer place in a few weeks. By herself. It was a steal of a deal, the new house, but I never saw the miser again so
I don't know how it all turned out.

[Mopar151]

7. So, what kind of country do you want to live in?

Do you want to be king of a toxic wasteland, with broken bridges and ruined roads, roaming marauders and criminal cops, bad food and poison liquor?
Or would you like to be a prosperous squire of a land with fertile fields and beautiful forests, with top shelf police/fire/EMS minutes away, good, safe, tasty food, roads maintained by craftsmen and bridges of strength and beauty, your neighbor's good wine, and knowing that anyone who needs a helping hand will get it?

[Beartracks]

9. Speaking of hoarders...

One of my shirts at Zazzle: http://bit.ly/Hags65 !



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[Swagman]

11. money is useful...but the love of money...

a sin.

..and I want to know that lady with a trailer full of cats !

[chervilant]

12. Capitalism works?

Consider this, from Marshall Sahlins (Stone Age Economics):

The market-industrial system institutes scarcity, in a manner completely unparalleled and to a degree nowhere else approximated. Where production and distribution are arranged through the behavior of prices, and all livelihoods depend on getting and spending, insufficiency of material means becomes the explicit, calculable starting point of all economic activity. ... Consumption is a double tragedy: what begins in inadequacy will end in deprivation.

(emphasis mine)

We humans are manifesting a level of mental disease that is both frightening and corrosive. Far too many of us are in react mode, driven by inchoate fears and resentments. Far too many of us are willing to pollute our spirits with negativity, eagerly engaging in name-calling and other forms of vilification. Far too many of us are willing to glorify violence or resort to violence, often just for entertainment or personal gratification.

We seldom acknowledge the import of overpopulation, but Calhoun's research with rats has proven that when a critical level of overpopulation occurs, the outcome isn't pretty. With rats, abnormal sexual behavior, hyperaggression, eating their young, and increased mortality are a few of the problems that occurred. With humans, well...isn't it past time we acknowledge that our species has passed a critical tipping point?

When I was younger (and naive) I thought our species was in its adolescence--obsessed with sex, drugs, and all other forms of self-gratification, especially as regards our economic behaviors. However, I've come to understand that overpopulation is a macro-level manifestation of our species' hedonism. Regardless of how much energy we devote to denying the ravages of overpopulation, they are writ large by our increasingly sophisticated, increasingly corrosive socio-cultural and technological constructs--the very same constructs we use to remain in denial, and to externalize responsibility for our collective hubris.

Bearing this in mind, I feel overwhelmed with disappointment about the choices we (as a collective) have been making, because we seem to be moving inexorably back into 'balance' on a planetary scale. When it's time for Gaia to roll over and scrape us off her backside, the inevitable consequences of our hedonistic overpopulation and denial of personal responsibility promise to be extreme.

[Initech]

13. Greed = one of the original seven deadly sins.

And these oil billionaires and millionaire CEOs are the greediest people who've ever lived.

[Yavin4]

14. The top 1% Are Not Motivated by Money

They are sociopaths, and they're motivated by seeing human suffering. Think about it. If they were indeed motivated by money, then they would have quit once they hit $10 million or $50 million or even $100 million. Once they hit a certain number, they would just naturally stop.

Those that keep on going to $1 billion or more do so because they want to see poverty.

Take the Koch brothers for example. They're both multi-billionaires. Why should they care if a teacher in Wisc. is part of a union and has collective bargaining? That teacher has no effect on their personal net worth. The only reason is that they're sociopaths, and they want to see that teacher suffer.

[Uncle Joe]

15. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, TalkingDog.

[lupinella]

16. K&R n/t