Is the American Dream Dead?

#101
#101
Ihatethebuckeyes said:
So it's the banks fault that people are making stupid decisions?
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Absolutely they shoulder part, if not the majority, of the blame.

They employed a scientific, effective marketing campaign to convince a lot of people to make bad decisions. And they took the risk (and should pay the consequences). And they used a healthy dose of deceit as well.

It's not just dumb luck that all this happened over the last 10 years. It was a crisis precipitated by another contradiction of Capitalist accumulation, employing the effective tools of marketing, directed at the only class which had not taken out loans before - the poor - and convinced them to overleverage (and convincing middle income / more educated folks to overleverage wasn't that hard either.)
 
#102
#102
This last page demonstrates a rather ridiculous parroting of some rather ridiculous though processes.

We say it is the people who took out these loans who are to blame, and yet, there was a banking institution - whose business is to insure it doesn't make bad loans signing off on all of it.

And then we ignore the amount of effective marketing, the targeting, and the deceit employed to convince people it was alright to do something which they had never done in the past after New Deal regulation.

Of course, Clinton removed that New Deal regulation, and the results were completely predictable. S&L was just the dress rehearsal under Reagan. Taking away Glass-Steagal empowered the Welfare-Dads.

Pretty thorough absolute failure on everybody's part to connect the dots. It's always nice to see the champions of "responsibility" defending the institutions when they shirk theirs. If I didn't know better, I'd say all of you would be a Welfare Dad if given half the chance. :clapping:
 
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#103
#103
utgibbs said:
This last page demonstrates a rather ridiculous parroting of some rather ridiculous though processes.

We say it is the people who took out these loans who are to blame, and yet, there was a banking institution - whose business is to insure it doesn't make bad loans signing off on all of it.

And then we ignore the amount of effective marketing, the targeting, and the deceit employed to convince people it was alright to do something which they had never done in the past after New Deal regulation.

Of course, Clinton removed that New Deal regulation, and the results were completely predictable. S&L was just the dress rehearsal under Reagan. Taking away Glass-Steagal empowered the Welfare-Dads.

Pretty thorough absolute failure on everybody's part to connect the dots. It's always nice to see the champions of "responsibility" defending the institutions when they shirk theirs. If I didn't know better, I'd say all of you would be a Welfare Dad if given half the chance. :clapping:
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More (Americans) than jobs. More hunger than food. More people than room to put them (thanks to a let 'em in, give 'em a job, give 'em food stamps, schooling, and health care policy). Which we pay for btw. A ridiculous and incredibly expensive prison system where so-called "mind altering" drugs warrant more time (and thus money) than life altering rapes and murders. Which we pay for btw. Soldiers go to war, then come back and get treated like crap. Fatherless children abound. Marriage is a joke. The true brilliance of Outsourcing. Healthcare has become more astronomical than an astronaut.
Yes VN, the status of America and thus the American Dream is about as healthy as an Aids patient. No Magic.
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#104
#104
PimpVol said:
More (Americans) than jobs. More hunger than food. More people than room to put them (thanks to a let 'em in, give 'em a job, give 'em food stamps, schooling, and health care policy). Which we pay for btw. A ridiculous and incredibly expensive prison system where so-called "mind altering" drugs warrant more time (and thus money) than life altering rapes and murders. Which we pay for btw. Soldiers go to war, then come back and get treated like crap. Fatherless children abound. Marriage is a joke. The true brilliance of Outsourcing. Healthcare has become more astronomical than an astronaut.
Yes VN, the status of America and thus the American Dream is about as healthy as an Aids patient. No Magic.
Posted via VolNation Mobile
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Great post. Nothing better symbolizes the Welfare-Dads better than the private prison industry. We have more prisoners than China. It is a damn, dirty joke, and, of course, racially biased.
 
#105
#105
utgibbs said:
This last page demonstrates a rather ridiculous parroting of some rather ridiculous though processes.

We say it is the people who took out these loans who are to blame, and yet, there was a banking institution - whose business is to insure it doesn't make bad loans signing off on all of it.

And then we ignore the amount of effective marketing, the targeting, and the deceit employed to convince people it was alright to do something which they had never done in the past after New Deal regulation.

Of course, Clinton removed that New Deal regulation, and the results were completely predictable. S&L was just the dress rehearsal under Reagan. Taking away Glass-Steagal empowered the Welfare-Dads.

Pretty thorough absolute failure on everybody's part to connect the dots. It's always nice to see the champions of "responsibility" defending the institutions when they shirk theirs. If I didn't know better, I'd say all of you would be a Welfare Dad if given half the chance. :clapping:
Click to expand...

Gibbs, I've studied and taught marketing for nearly 20 years. Your view of marketing is quite skewed and attributes way too much power and evil intent to it.

Further, I don't think you'll find anyone that doesn't put some of the blame on banks as well.
 
#106
#106
PimpVol said:
More (Americans) than jobs. More hunger than food. More people than room to put them (thanks to a let 'em in, give 'em a job, give 'em food stamps, schooling, and health care policy). Which we pay for btw. A ridiculous and incredibly expensive prison system where so-called "mind altering" drugs warrant more time (and thus money) than life altering rapes and murders. Which we pay for btw. Soldiers go to war, then come back and get treated like crap. Fatherless children abound. Marriage is a joke. The true brilliance of Outsourcing. Healthcare has become more astronomical than an astronaut.
Yes VN, the status of America and thus the American Dream is about as healthy as an Aids patient. No Magic.
Posted via VolNation Mobile
Click to expand...

Astronauts are astronomical?
 
#107
#107
utgibbs said:
Great post. Nothing better symbolizes the Welfare-Dads better than the private prison industry. We have more prisoners than China. It is a damn, dirty joke, and, of course, racially biased.
Click to expand...

first Cuba has a better healthcare system than the US, and now you're claiming that the justice system in China is more humane and is more focused on rehab than incarceration.

right. Can you send us a post card from this dream world you live in. Those of us who actually live and work in the real world find you amusing.
 
#108
#108
MG1968 said:
first Cuba has a better healthcare system than the US, and now you're claiming that the justice system in China is more humane and is more focused on rehab than incarceration.

right. Can you send us a post card from this dream world you live in. Those of us who actually live and work in the real world find you amusing.
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Here is the real world coming down on you with the atomic elbow, MG. Here is the 800lbs gorilla throwing you way out of the duck blind:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.12253738.html

Even if you include the 300,000 Chinese petty criminals (and political activists) in the "re-education for labor" administrative detention, China is 400,000 prisoners short of the US. The US not only holds the lead in prisoners, but in the length of time incarcerated.

That's the real world.

It ain't what you don't know that get's you in trouble; it's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
 
#109
#109
volinbham said:
Gibbs, I've studied and taught marketing for nearly 20 years. Your view of marketing is quite skewed and attributes way too much power and evil intent to it.

Further, I don't think you'll find anyone that doesn't put some of the blame on banks as well.
Click to expand...

I'm interested in learning how my view is skewed. It has a lot of power, I should think, or else this "super-efficient" private sector is going to be wasting a lot of money tonight:

A Sneak Peek: The Best Super Bowl Commercials You'll See Today - Livingston, NJ Patch

And, with the cost of a 30-second ad during the game averaging about $3 million, you can bet you're going to see some pretty riveting stuff.
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I should think it is also grounded in good science. Am I wrong?

I'm glad the banks are also responsible. Especially since, it was their duty, and their entire freakin' business model to turn away "idiots."
 
#111
#111
utgibbs said:
Absolutely they shoulder part, if not the majority, of the blame.

They employed a scientific, effective marketing campaign to convince a lot of people to make bad decisions. And they took the risk (and should pay the consequences). And they used a healthy dose of deceit as well.

It's not just dumb luck that all this happened over the last 10 years. It was a crisis precipitated by another contradiction of Capitalist accumulation, employing the effective tools of marketing, directed at the only class which had not taken out loans before - the poor - and convinced them to overleverage (and convincing middle income / more educated folks to overleverage wasn't that hard either.)
Click to expand...

Show me the marketing campaign that got people to go way over their heads into situations they could not afford. Also this aim at people who had never owned before was provided by government regulation.

The bundling of bad loans is also a completely seperate issue. It has nothing to do with the over leveraging of home buyers. The bundling would not have ever been able to happen if Fannie/Freddie regualtion had not been changed.
 
#112
#112
Community Redevelopment Reinvestment Act law in 1977 never happens none of this crap ever happens. Just a fact.
 
#114
#114
VOLatile said:
Can't totally blame the stupidity of a society on the people that try to make a quick buck off of that stupidity.
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I'm not following, to be honest.

The banks have a business model not to give bad loans. That is exactly what they must do to be a business. They have a long history of procedures, algorithms, and background qualifications which they formerly used to make sure the "stupid society" when they came to ask for money, was turned away.

Yet, in the last 15 years, these same institutions have, for starters, been extending tens of thousands of dollars of credit to college enrollees.

Let's just start there. And then you want to tell me who is stupid and who is not marketing to an impressionable, high risk group?

The problem is, they didn't make a fast buck. Some creamed off the top, and richly, sure. But they went bankrupt and threatened to take the whole system down. (In hindsight, maybe a good thing?) And, actually, the rot is yet to be cut out.

I'm all for biyotch slapping conspicuous consumerism back to the Stone Age, and certainly would love to see society a lot more disciplined about expenditures. But in ranking stupidity banks > society in this case.
 
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#116
#116
utgibbs said:
I'm interested in learning how my view is skewed. It has a lot of power, I should think, or else this "super-efficient" private sector is going to be wasting a lot of money tonight:

A Sneak Peek: The Best Super Bowl Commercials You'll See Today - Livingston, NJ Patch



I should think it is also grounded in good science. Am I wrong?

I'm glad the banks are also responsible. Especially since, it was their duty, and their entire freakin' business model to turn away "idiots."
Click to expand...

Yes it is grounded in science but it doesn't turn people into consuming zombies.

You continually have a dim view of the individual; easily manipulated, controlled and in constant need of protection. They need to be saved from themselves by the enlightened leaders?
 
#117
#117
utgibbs said:
I'm not following, to be honest.

The banks have a business model not to give bad loans. That is exactly what they must do to be a business. They have a long history of procedures, algorithms, and background qualifications which they formerly used to make sure the "stupid society" when they came to ask for money, was turned away.

Yet, in the last 15 years, these same institutions have, for starters, been extending tens of thousands of dollars of credit to college enrollees.

Let's just start there. And then you want to tell me who is stupid and who is not marketing to an impressionable, high risk group?

The problem is, they didn't make a fast buck. Some creamed off the top, and richly, sure. But they went bankrupt and threatened to take the whole system down. (In hindsight, maybe a good thing?) And, actually, the rot is yet to be cut out.

I'm all for biyotch slapping conspicuous consumerism back to the Stone Age, and certainly would love to see society a lot more disciplined about expenditures. But in ranking stupidity banks > society in this case.
Click to expand...

if they are in business to not make bad loans why did they "market" to people that would be bad borrowers? does not compute.
 
#118
#118
utgibbs said:
I
The banks have a business model not to give bad loans. That is exactly what they must do to be a business. They have a long history of procedures, algorithms, and background qualifications which they formerly used to make sure the "stupid society" when they came to ask for money, was turned away.

Yet, in the last 15 years, these same institutions have, for starters, been extending tens of thousands of dollars of credit to college enrollees.

Let's just start there. And then you want to tell me who is stupid and who is not marketing to an impressionable, high risk group?
Click to expand...

1. The procedures/algorithms were impacted by government programs designed to specifically encourage home ownership beyond that which the market would justify. The enlightened government incentivized bad loans. (interesting how those well-intentioned programs have unintended consequences)

2. In conjunction, the banks and the borrowing society was lulled into a fall sense of asset appreciation. They weren't bad loans given assumptions that both parties were operating under. The assumptions turned out to be wrong.

3. College students are not a high risk group. Of any group, they are the group most likely to see an appreciable increase in their financial situation in the near future.

4. I don't think society is stupid nor were the banks - the rapid asset appreciation resulted in rational behavior if one assumed such appreciation would continue. Blaming the flawed assumption on "marketing" or the banks is just way off. History is replete with people overestimating the upside and underestimating the downside.

5. It's telling you continue to speak of individuals as "society" and draw clear lines of distinction in power between them and "the banks". I'll say it again, you certainly take a dim view of individuals and their abilities to think for themselves.
 
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#119
#119
volinbham said:
1. The procedures/algorithms were impacted by government programs designed to specifically encourage home ownership beyond that which the market would justify. The enlightened government incentivized bad loans. (interesting how those well-intentioned programs have unintended consequences)

2. In conjunction, the banks and the borrowing society was lulled into a fall sense of asset appreciation. They weren't bad loans given assumptions that both parties were operating under. The assumptions turned out to be wrong.

3. College students are not a high risk group. Of any group, they are the group most likely to see an appreciable increase in their financial situation in the near future.

4. I don't think society is stupid nor were the banks - the rapid asset appreciation resulted in rational behavior if one assumed such appreciation would continue. Blaming the flawed assumption on "marketing" or the banks is just way off. History is replete with people overestimating the upside and underestimating the downside.

5. It's telling you continue to speak of individuals as "society" and draw clear lines of distinction in power between them and "the banks". I'll say it again, you certainly take a dim view of individuals and their abilities to think for themselves.
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This may be the best post I've ever read in the politics forum. Spot on in every aspect.

:good!:
 
#120
#120
Summatim:

Every man has a right to life; and this means that he has also a right to make a comfortable living. He may by sloth or crime decline to exercise that right; but it may not be denied him. Though this right is increasingly disappearing, hope still remains, and a glimmer of the AD lives on.
 
#121
#121
Electric Orange said:
Summatim:

Every man has a right to life; and this means that he has also a right to make a comfortable living. He may by sloth or crime decline to exercise that right; but it may not be denied him. Though this right is increasingly disappearing, hope still remains, and a glimmer of the AD lives on.
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I would modify that and say has a right to pursue a comfortable living. I would say embodied in the AD is the notion that if you work hard that this pursuit will payoff. However, I don't believe it is guaranteed (e.g. you have a right to a particular type of living).

It also depends on ownership/private property and Capitalism. (as embodied in the AD).
 
#122
#122
Electric Orange said:
Summatim:

Every man has a right to life; and this means that he has also a right to make a comfortable living. He may by sloth or crime decline to exercise that right; but it may not be denied him. Though this right is increasingly disappearing, hope still remains, and a glimmer of the AD lives on.
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man has the right to the opportunity. Beyond that there is no guarantee

the right is not disappearing it's that fewer choose to take advantage of it. Big difference
 
#123
#123
utvolpj said:
man has the right to the opportunity. Beyond that there is no guarantee

the right is not disappearing it's that fewer choose to take advantage of it. Big difference
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The right is disappearing. We just disagree here. It's been disappearing ever since the early 20th century.
 
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