The only people who make it more than a few days are dropouts (who have few other options for work anyway) who are young, very fit, and male. And because that’s the demographic, they spend all their money on booze (drinking age is 19) and whatever else. It’s not a way out of poverty.

But, chin up! Soon you will be back up on the saddle, with a smile on your face while you screw over the little guy!

that depicts the quintessential Wall Street fat cat standing arrogantly in front of torn headlines telling the story of bailouts, tax breaks and bonuses while the rest of us are asked to sacrifice. This one iconic image I found on artist Michael D’Antuono’s site, symbolizes our government’s servitude to limitless corporate greed.

Am I whining and bitching because I’m no longer on the gravy train? No way…

I am grateful however that I continued to live like I was earning the same amount  and used the extra money instead to buy my own condo and a few toys like my computers, my wife’s bachelor’s degree and the like.

My income has crashed and I am living off of disability, I used to have bigger credit card bills than I now have as gross income, but they were business expenses and I don’t need more crap in my life anyway.

For home economics, they could use some lessons in:
• the cost/benefit of Kraft Dinner®™, or
• how to use Hamburger Helper®™ despite not having hamburger this week ’cause the food stamps ran out, or
• how to survive by eating track rabbits, aka warf rats, because there’s plenty of good eating on those, or
• how to skin a dog, cat, raccoon, porcupine, skunk or other suburban  critters, or
• preparing squab on a barbecue, or   
• the simpler pleasures of primates, such as picking fleas out of each other’s hair,  or
• how to fry-up insects in chili paste for some nutritious meals.

For shop/survival, they could use lessons in:
• finding and maintaining shopping trolleys/carts, or
• making your shelter watertight despite the rain coming off the bridge abutment, or
• the joys of sleeping under the stars, despite the roadway noise, or
• what to do when confronting a large hostile animal and how to make sure you get your social insurance card back when you’re released.

There’s no more new money to pay for your incarceration.

The 12,400 billionaires don’t care, they have their own police force patrolling their owned towns in remote places.

The 1%ers millionaires aren’t going to make a difficult decision like spending money on themselves, like new cars or shiny toys or a trophy slut, as opposed to spending money on building new prisons, filling them with people and the costs of maintenance and staffing of these prisons.

The 99%ers are now having to do without protection as it is. Defense of the homeland now consists of the Fence between the US and Mexico and some inane froth perpetrated by DHS’s TSA on a shrinking number of weary business travelers.

We’ve become a government
• OF the thousandaires (the 99%, that would be me and thee,)
• BY the millionaires (the 1%, that would be the extremely insular privileged overlords and bosses,)
• FOR the billionaires (the 12,400 individuals identified by the IRS as the people who count (though they don’t really count as they hire some thousandaires to run machines to do that.)

How is this different than the political situation that led to the founding of the United States?

It ISN’T really.

Now the millionaires are getting caught in the undertow of cash as it rushes from our shores, and they’re whining?

Try surviving being poor, suckers…

Basically, for most people, gluttony and excess is generally just what people above you have in the chain.

Because our parents didn’t buy shit that we didn’t need.

Damn straight, if you’ll forgive the phrase.  My trailer-park youth was not devoid of love and fun and occasional travel (albeit entirely by car, in a 1974 Renault 12 station wagon that made 83 horsepower and had a black vinyl interior with no air conditioning, so the off-season July trip to Death Valley wasn’t as fun as we’d hoped, but that’s beside the point), but I learned a good lesson from a former girlfriend from Vermont.  Her family traveled a lot, once traveling from Vermont to Ohio and back on bicycles when she was nine years old, and taking occasional trips to Europe and Asia.  I asked her if she’d grown up kinda, well, rich. She said no, they never had much money, but travel was a beloved priority for them, so they went without pretty much every other luxury you could imagine just so they could get out and see some of the world for a week or two every year or two.

I think a lot of grace can be achieved through prioritizing, and for being grateful for what advantages one possesses.  Losing perspective is to be avoided whenever possible.

Peter called the meltdown, chapter and verse, and was ridiculed for it by the ‘experts’ who facilitated the debacle (and who are now in charge of fixing the mess they made).  I highly recommend looking up some of his appearances on finance TV and before senate and congressional hearings.

Rich people make a lot of money.  Wealthy people sign their checks.
Rich people cheat on their taxes.  Wealthy people rewrite the tax code.
Rich people buy luxury goods.  Wealthy people buy senators.
Anyone can work hard, get lucky, and get rich.
Wealthy doesn’t care about money- it’s about the power that money buys.

Rich people didn’t destroy our economy, they just drove the getaway car and got caught holding the empty bag.  They’re not blameless by any stretch of the imagination, but they’re not the masterminds who planned the thing or the muscle who pulled the trigger. 

Not defending them per se, but there’s bigger fish to fry.

Poor people are lucky duckies to have so few hardships.

Until then, I’m having trouble looking past the fact that even after his bonuses are being cut, he’s still making an order of magnitude more than me a year and is complaining about it.

Also, I’m permanently disabled (car accident) and get about $1,035 a month. I do just fine. My partner is a Master Electrician, he made $46,— in 2011 to my $12,420. But he complains he’s not doing well financially because he was used to (spending all of) nearly $52,— during his previous 2007-2010 yearly earnings. He’s actually thinking about getting a second job. Problem is, we live together, I know exactly how much it costs for basic needs to live where we do. Yet we can not talk about his finances, ever. 

Strange how people  can get used to spending money, not saving it.  These parents children have a right to be upset and not being able to continue living the lifestyle they are used to. It’s the parents job to mainstream them into the wicked worldly ways of the 99%. 

Basically, they have to learn how NOT to do something, that’s the issue. 

How do I tell my children that they have to go to a public school now? HORRORS!

Yeah, they have to tighten their belts like the rest of us are used to having to do, and that’s never fun. But to play the victim of hardship is just hilarious.

I have no sympathy, and I would backhand someone foolish and hubristic enough to whine about this sort of money trouble without a second thought (and I’m a pacifist!). If the Occupy movement hadn’t started the class war on the public stage, I’d have called this article as being a troll or from The Onion.