The New Slavery: Millions of Americans Chained By Debt

http://newspundit.net/americainchains.html ^ | 4/4/2005 | Roger Jolly

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Different card, but still Citibank or did they sell you to another bank?

Interesting tag line, do you really believe that?

They sold me to another bank.

Having worked in the pharmaceutical industry for umpteen years I firmly believe that the first and foremost purpose of the controlled substance laws is to empower the government to grant drug monopolies.

The company I once worked for is the only legal manufacture of bulk narcotics (codeine, morphine, fentanyl, etc.) in the country. All other companies that manufacture dosage form narcotics get their bulk raw material from this company.

In the mid-eighties to the early nineties this company quadrupled prices every year because (A) they are a monopoly and (B) they are a monopoly.

The entire medical cost crisis can be laid at the feet of the controlled substance laws.

[HamiltonJay]

Wait a minute! In one post you're extolling the virtues of living below ones means, and in the next, you're the vulture ready to scoop up the foreclosed homes of The Clueless?

Exactly, living below ones means gives one the ability to capitalize on opportunities when they present themselves.

[HamiltonJay]

Any investor paying over retail, is some idiot from Cali or some other inflated market being stupid, which I do know is happening in AZ etc..... Trust me, be patient, you will find a deal in EVERY SINGLE MARKET OUT THERE! The important thing is to have MONEY and be patient.

[SengirV]

What is it like to be perfect?

[Huck]

Why so negative?

[SengirV]

All I was trying to get across in this whole discussion is that things aren't as rosey for people just getting out of school. That is all. I know that salaries have now way increased in ratio to housing prices in MANY areas around the country. Yet the old farts here are trying to call me crazy and how everything is just as it always was. It is not. But you can't make people listen if they don't want to hear.

[Huck]

It's not easy. But everyone has challenges. The kind of thinking you are entertaining, in my opinion, makes it even harder. If you look for reasons to fail, you'll find them. Much better to tell yourself it's easier now. That any fool with half a brain can do it. There's plenty of idiots who can handle it. Hell, I'm an idiot, and at the moment (knock wood), I'm kicking it. And I swear sometimes I'm not even trying. It can't be that tough. It might seem tough, but there's got to be a way.

[SengirV]

I forgot to add one thing in my last summary post to you. Some jobs just aren't to be found in cheaper areas of the nation. If you are a techie, you will most likely be VERY uneremplyeed in a unfulfilled job if you go to a place where decent houses and neightborhoods are to be found cheap.

I'm in the same boat as you(being an idiot) and I have managed. But then I started out of college a while ago. I couldn't imagine staring a $500K+ single family house in the face with zippy in my pockets. But then again, I didn't have to.

[jb6]

Simply put, we're being robbed of all we've worked for, because our government wants us to be poor, hungry, and docile, dependant upon them for our existence, and in fear of them for our lives.

Poor and hungary has never a docile made. As Adam Smith wrote: Power corrupts, absolutel poverty corrupts absolutely.

Fat and lazy with a disposable income don't start revolutions, poor and hungry do.

[jb6]

This year's quota is being raised by 20,000.

[jb6]

Credit was also tighter and for the less educated, jobs paid more.

[jb6]

I haven't finished paying off my first college debt and I'm in grad business school because the tech market died out around here and with R&D moving overseas, the writing is on the wall. Should have stayed in the Army.

[Huck]

Some jobs just aren't to be found in cheaper areas of the nation. If you are a techie, you will most likely be VERY uneremplyeed in a unfulfilled job if you go to a place where decent houses and neightborhoods are to be found cheap.

The way I see it, even in the places where the jobs are more plentiful, you ought not take it for granted that they'll always be there, or that they'll want you. Maybe it's because I didn't go to college, and sort of view my career as a big fluke, an improvisation, that I look at it that way. Know what I mean? I know people who live as if they will always make the money they are making now. I'm too paranoid for that.

But ppl are always telling you why you can't do something. I still say it's a bad way of thinking.

[biblewonk]

You no longer work to achieve a better life for yourselves and your children. You work to keep a roof over your head, and you pray that you don't lose it.

This is a joke. I hope no one is buying into this pap. We have it better now than anyone has ever had it.

[newgeezer]

We have it better now than anyone has ever had it.

Sure we do. But, there's no denying that millions of folks are playing fast and loose under mountains of debt. You know, the paycheck-to-paycheck people who make minimum payments on their credit cards.

[IamConservative]

Something here to be learned about the "responsibility of freedom." We are made slaves, literally and figuratively, by way of our own permission.

[kjam22]

The problem with today's 20 year olds, they spend as if they've been working for 30 years. It's their own fault if they get themselves into debt.

Today's 20 year olds expect to move out of mom & dad's house and into the same standard of living. It's not a reality for most.

[OKSooner]

Didn't check the link. The excerpt has some truth in it, even if it is a little shrill...

[biblewonk]

Sure we do. But, there's no denying that millions of folks are playing fast and loose under mountains of debt. You know, the paycheck-to-paycheck people who make minimum payments on their credit cards.

I would call that stupid. Living from paycheck to paycheck, no matter how big they become and even when your wife is working, is just really dumb. And I see it all the time.

[MissAmericanPie]

How many times does it have to be said that V. Fox let the cat out of the bag when he revealed the globalist plan for the USofA. Let me quote him, "Mexico, Canada, and the USofA WILL fall under one trade umbrella with AMERICAN WAGES DROPPING TO MEET MEXICO'S RISING WAGES.

The man was not talking out of the top of his sombrero, he meant it. It has been discussed, agreed upon, and is in action as we type. This is why Bush does nothing about border security, this is why Bush calls patriotic Americans going to the border to document this invasion and alert the border patrol, "vigilantes".

Bush wants more illegal immigration not less, and we pick up the tab in taxes, services, education, welfare, medical, and loss of wage levels, while the price at the grocery stores just keep on rising.