Requiem for Detroit

[Aussie Steve]

I watched the above documentry on SBS last night. The show took a tour through many of the derelict factories, government buildings, and burned out houses that are in abundance...what a disaster... so much wealth and prosperity lost due mainly to greed, and stupidity...reminds me of the mid to late 70's in the UK...same thing... massive decline of industry and closures left right and centre.

A grim reminder of what happens when huge companies refuse to listen to what their consumers want, government interference when its not needed and none when it is, and general greed and corruption from so many supposedly trustworthy opportunists. I think the global economy has been a fantastic failure.

One positive from all this misery is cottage industry making a comeback. Wonder if the whole world is heading the same way?

[Motorcycle Forum]

[Drifter]

It is pretty sad. I caught a clip not to long ago on huge feril dog packs roaming around the neighborhoods. The footage was depressing. Huge empty neighborhoods with some houses having large trees growing through the floor and roof. It must have been a long process getting to that point. The rich just keep on getting richer while the poor are getting a little harder to ignore.

[inspiron]

To be honest, the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer. I'm watching this process in miniature in my company right now...

We are a consulting company, so "billable" hours are the measure of all things. A junior consultant is expected to work 89% billable hours. As a manager, I have work 74% billable, with 26% of my time for internal activities. When it comes time to divide up the bonus, the managing director gets 6 times as much as the junior consultants, even though it's the JCs who bring in the most profit!

A junior consultant will bring in about 2.5 times his or her salary each month - billing more than CHF 20000 per month while costing the company about CHF 8000 (including salary, taxes, insurance and other costs).

As middle management, I bring in only about 20% above my actual costs. I get three times as much bonus as a junior consultant, earn almost double their salary every month.

Our "CFO", who is a pay scale above me, is pure cost - he has billed nothing this year, and has done no sales work. But he still gets 50% more bonus than I do, and 5 times as much as a junior consultant.

In other words, the higher you get in the organization, the less you have to do and still get much more money for doing it.

[buster]

Oh I know it is all very frustrating, it would appear that economies are in the hands of those least able/trustworthy to deal with them.

As for the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, well that is because the rich are doing what the rich have always done and the poor are still doing what the poor have always done. The change can only start with the person in the mirror.

[inspiron]

As for the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, well that is because the rich are doing what the rich have always done and the poor are still doing what the poor have always done. The change can only start with the person in the mirror.

That's true, buster - those who have money and power do everything in their power to keep it and gain more at the expense of those who have less. But even the government has given up - it seems to be easier to get $100 from a million people than to get $1 million from 100 people, even if those people can afford it.

[Aussie Steve]

Nail on the head Jim also those at the top continue to rake in obscene salaries even though the companies they work for are losing money...where the hell did performance related renumeration go?...some of these losers would end up paying the company to stay employed!

[inspiron]

Performance-related renumeration? Like the banks that give their "top performing" employees huge bonuses, paid with bail-out money that was intended to keep the bank in business after they were sucked into the crisis which these "top performers" helped created?

[Aussie Steve]

Shocking how they get away with it...nobody with authority seems to care...grab as much as you can and sod everyone else seems to be the way today ... presidents and prime ministers well they are just puppets for big business interests...they wouldn't get a look in if they didn't tow the line... don't suppose the masses will do anything what with Occupy Wall St ending the way it did....money sure talks not much different here in Aus either

[300winmag]

I am 32 with no kids and in all honesty I don't know if I want to bring a kid into a world like this, When he's my age the world will be a complete and utter disaster with poverty and famine EVERYWHERE.
The first 1/4 of his life might be good but if he doesn't become a millionaire/billionaire he's screwed. By the time the US government starts world war 3(cause that's all the US government is good for) and or civil war breaks out I will be coming up on my expiry date and I don't mind going out in a blaze of glory but not my family. When you bring in over population, lack of resources, cultural differences, religion and greed.... 50 years max my brothers. We are done. Tis the reason governments all over the world are slowly disarming civilians, they know its coming, we know its coming but what can you do till it gets here... On another note this is a great movie Food Inc. Shows the true nature of corporate greed and a peak of how far it has taken over the government.

This is weird...

The US gov strives to kill as many people in other countries as possible(USUALLY for oil mind you) which WILL lead to WW3. In the big picture its the survival of the fittest and unfortunately due to corporate greed you need oil to survive.... so they say... which has been proven wrong 6 million times but hey I'm not a billionaire so who am I right?

The Canadian gov has such a lack of back bone we actually roll out the mat for terrorists, change EVERYTHING about our country as to not offend people, like this... we cannot say Merry Christmas here anymore. It's happy holidays! It's not a Christmas tree anymore, its a holiday tree. No Christmas lights, there holiday lights. I tell ya I could go on for hours about this bullsh$t.

[inspiron]

My company Christmas ... er, holiday party was held on Friday evening. Part of the event was a walking tour through the Christmas markets in Basel with a tour guide who had studied religion and philosophy. During the tour, he mentioned that just about everything we claim to "know" about Christmas is wrong.

Some of his questions were pretty mind-blowing - like why do we celebrate Christmas with a pine tree? There are no pine trees in the middle east (Egypt, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, etc.) where all of the bible stories took place. (The answer is that it goes back to a tradition in the middle ages in Germany - for the first 1500-some years of Christianity, they didn't celebrate Christmas with a tree).

Why does "Santa" have so many names, including "Saint Nick"? This is due to Martin Luthor and the Protestant reformation - part of Luthor's philosophy was to eliminate a lot of the "holy saints" from Christianity and return the focus to the trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). The "Saint Nikolas" day (December 6th) is still celebrated in parts of Europe - it was on Saint Nikolas day that children received gifts. Luthor knew he would have trouble convincing people about his philosophy if children didn't get gifts anymore, so he simply moved the gift-giving day to the next holiday - the celebration of light (4 days after the winter solstice - December 25th).

There was plenty more information on this evening - but the summary was that "Christmas" has nothing to do with Christianity. The traditions go back to northern Europe in the middle ages, where the Germanic tribes celebrated the winter solstice and the hardest 2 weeks of the year (from December 21st thru January 6th) before the days became noticably longer and the people could begin to look forward to the coming Spring...

If some of the people who run around screaming about religious freedom and getting offended when you don't bow to their beliefs would actually use a couple of their brain cells and do some research into what they are screaming about, the would would be a whole lot more peaceful (because all of the idiots would be off in a library somewhere!)

[Hopper]

Retired a couple of years ago because the company wanted me to train people in India to take my friends' jobs, told them 'no thank you' and I am retiring. If the OWS people want to really make a difference they would be camping out in front of Congress, the White House, Federal reserve, and the union headquarters (the true 1%'s).

[otdriver]

To be honest, the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer. I'm watching this process in miniature in my company right now...

We are a consulting company, so "billable" hours are the measure of all things. A junior consultant is expected to work 89% billable hours. As a manager, I have work 74% billable, with 26% of my time for internal activities. When it comes time to divide up the bonus, the managing director gets 6 times as much as the junior consultants, even though it's the JCs who bring in the most profit!

A junior consultant will bring in about 2.5 times his or her salary each month - billing more than CHF 20000 per month while costing the company about CHF 8000 (including salary, taxes, insurance and other costs).

As middle management, I bring in only about 20% above my actual costs. I get three times as much bonus as a junior consultant, earn almost double their salary every month.

Our "CFO", who is a pay scale above me, is pure cost - he has billed nothing this year, and has done no sales work. But he still gets 50% more bonus than I do, and 5 times as much as a junior consultant.

In other words, the higher you get in the organization, the less you have to do and still get much more money for doing it.

Sen Bernie Sanders hits the nail on the head.

[omegajim]

Detroit, if I had to pick a town were there was some kind of post apocalyptic living, I would film it there.

and in the business news some fund "MF" something or nother just went under and nobody can find the billions of dollars that just magically disappeared.

As for the banks that went under, the gov't and the banks convinced each other that lower and lower earning people deserved to own a house, and now we'll be paying for that one for quite some time.

[AfterDarker]

I think you'll find there are plenty of pine trees in the middle east. Take a look at the Lebanese flag.


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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=-33.628730,151.326699

[buster]

I think you'll find there are plenty of pine trees in the middle east. Take a look at the Lebanese flag.

That'll be a Cedar then...