America

Want to rant about something? Or see me go on about something stupid? This is the place.
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Wesley
GOD
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America

Post by Wesley »

America today is like a Hollywood movie set or Disneyland style amusement park. Hooray! All fun and frivolity! Um, yeah, but no.

In the fancy resort towns and tourist areas everything looks nice. At the country clubs and gated communities full of million dollar houses everything is beautiful. But if you walk "back stage" into the small towns full of normal people, you get a very different story. Dirty streets, crumbling roads, people not working, industries that have closed and moved away, leaving no possibility for the residents to earn a living.... America is the land of opportunity, but it is getting harder to find and hold on to these opportunities.

Let me tell you a story. During the Great Depression, you know what business stayed open when all the banks closed and people lost everything they had? Movie theaters. The perfect form of escapist entertainment. For a nickel, people could spend an hour or two in the warmth and quiet, while escaping to the world of bandits and heroes and jungle adventures and time machines.

Less than a generation after the Great Depression, a minimum wage was established. This was for several reasons. One is that the very thing that caused the Depression was factory owners and oil barons and steel tycoons were making their money by treating their workers like slaves. Making men and women and children work seven days a week for pennies, simply because there was no other work. At the same time, the money shifters and stock holders were playing dice with working people's nest egg. They were buying and selling stocks based on speculation rather than actual growth, and when a few of these bets turned out bad, it caused a chain reaction that led to banks having to foreclose on loans and cancel investments. Mom and pop lost the farm.

So, once the minimum wage was established, hard working people could actually afford to feed their families and maintain a house. And go to the movies. Minimum wage was 25 cents an hour. Guess how much a ticket for a movie cost around this time? About twenty cents. Perfect! An hour or two of hard work would pay for an hour or two of relaxation and entertainment! As recently as 1990 ticket prices were 2 bucks for the cheap show, 4.50 for the evening show. A small popcorn and soda came to $3.69 with tax. Minimum wage back then had just been raised to $4.10. Interesting. So a couple of hours of hard work would still pay for a couple of hours of entertainment.

Now if you go to the movies, there are no more cheap shows. Tickets average 9 bucks, and a small soda pop and popcorn are six bucks each. Minimum wage is still 7.25 and has not gone up in a generation. Now, a couple hours of hard work will get you a ticket, but no snacks. This is just one example of inflation growing faster than wages.

Oh, and once again the stock pushers are playing with speculation rather than actual growth. It caused the housing crash in 2008, and they are still at it. Right now we have an economy that is every bit as volatile as it was in 1929 just before the Great Depression. President Dump is passing out more money to rich people, and insisting that the rest of us eat shazam! and like it. If several laws and policies are not changed, this will not end well.

I have to go do my part time job, but I will ruminate on this and maybe add more when I get back.
"Work hard, be humble and stay positive."

~ Donnie Yen ~
Clarence
Game Destroyer
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Re: America

Post by Clarence »

Reading this while doing overtime today

Hey you don't sneak food into movies? Up your game

We got that movie shazam! on lock. The wife has a scene credit card she pays off each months that gives us free movies. As for snacks we sneak that stuff in in her treat purse. A big fat old purse who's sole existence is to sneak food into theaters

We own thrift movie goin
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bella
the two timer
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Re: America

Post by bella »

There is no money to pay teachers a reasonable wage, pay workers during a shutdown or money for an affordable health care but yet there is enough money to build a gigantic wall.
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Wesley
GOD
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Location: Harrisburg, PA
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Re: America

Post by Wesley »

And wage war for oil across the world, and interfere with the government in Venezuela....
"Work hard, be humble and stay positive."

~ Donnie Yen ~
bella
the two timer
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Joined: Mon Jun 29, 2009 2:01 am
Location: The Temple Bar

Re: America

Post by bella »

I strongly dislike how the behaviour of some inflated baboons shape the image of a nation. Seems politics these days reveal the ugly sides in some people. Whatever happened to sanity and reason?
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