Pedro Martínez: Exactly. And a one time purchase of an item where you save 80% means nothing. Here in the US, if a store actually was selling an item that was 80% less than what the big store was selling it for, they'd match that price. Some big stores will match plus 10%. People want to save money and that's why places like Walmart in the US are so huge.

Artful Dodger: As for chain stores, you almost ALWAYS save money shopping there. Overhead doesn't matter when you sell in bulk. That's why so many mom and pop's have gone out of business. It's tough to compete with a huge store.

Exactly. If I got 80% off on each purchase I make “by avoiding a chain of stores and going to a local shop”, the chain stores would soon go bankrupt.

(V): um, the writer said that he DOESN'T follow with the kooks that call Obama a Commie. That wasn't even a point in his article. Do you Brits even read for context???

(V): You're still buying products from major corporations. Can't be avoided. And it's faulty reasoning to overgeneralize when your trying to make a point. Not all businesses try to rip people off. Fact is, most don't.

As for chain stores, you almost ALWAYS save money shopping there. Overhead doesn't matter when you sell in bulk. That's why so many mom and pop's have gone out of business. It's tough to compete with a huge store.

What these days is a Commie?

Got to love American paranoia!!

Artful Dodger: .. pretty good when I goto smaller unchained stores. I got 80% off recently by avoiding a chain of stores and going to a local shop and getting a deal.

Some goods are inherently cheaper by the small independents not having to spend millions on advertising.

My analysis is based on real events in the UK.

"Regulating is one thing. Over regulating another."

If we could trust the men in suits fine.... but as the banks have shown that left as they were with less regulation, businesses the bigger they are will break such regulation due to lack of accountability.

America's Whining CEO
Keith Edwards




So how fast would it take a board of directors of any fortune 500 company, forced by angry stockholders, to dump a CEO that did nothing but whine, make excuses, and blame everyone else but himself for his poor job performance and lack of results?

Based on lofty platitudes and hope and change, America hired Barack Obama as their CEO almost three years ago, on the promise that he could turn around the staggering economy.


Well, that hasn't happened, and the economy has actually gotten worse.

And what does America's CEO have to say to the stockholders for his poor job performance?

It's not my fault. It's the weather, it's Europe, it's the Arab Spring, it's Wall Street, it's the greedy rich, it's low revenue, it's an unbalanced approach, it's the oil companies, it's the banks, it's mortgage companies, it's credit card companies, it's ATM machines, it's unemployment benefit limits, it's all those wars, it's right to work states, it's global warming, it's the debt ceiling debate, it's oil speculators, it's the internal combustion engine, it's Republicans, it's incandescent light bulbs, it's low emission standards, it's the Tea Party, it's Rush Limbaugh, it's FOX News, it's - it's - it's - it's time for another vacation and a couple of rounds of golf.

And there you have it, America's top CEO's list or reasons for his failed policies and dismal job performance. Makes you proud to be an American doesn't it?

Obama is such and incompetent loser. An ignoramus of monumental proportions.

August 16, 2011
Obama to carmakers: Stop making so many products that people want!
Rick Moran




I don't truck with those who call Obama a commie, but by saying completely off the wall, totally ignorant stuff like this, he reminds me of factory managers in the old Soviet Union who would deliberately slow production on products that were popular because it created too much paperwork for them.

The Hill:


The country's automakers should ditch their focus on SUVs and trucks in favor of smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles, President Obama said Monday.

"You can't just make money on SUVs and trucks," Obama said during a town hall forum in Cannon Falls, Minn. "There is a place for SUVs and trucks, but as gas prices keep on going up, you have got to understand the market. People are going to try to save money."

Obama has positioned the revival and reshaping of the auto industry as a major part of his administration's push to improve the economy and create jobs.

A man with zero business experience is telling carmakers that they've got to "understand the market?" The closest Obama ever got to a business was when he was picketing them back in his community organizing days.

"Understanding the market" means making products that people want to buy. People want to buy SUV's and nice, big, shiny, awesome American trucks - at least as long as they can afford to fill them up.

And guess what? If gas prices get to high, Americans will then start buying smaller cars that use fuel more economically. That the president doesn't "understand the market" is a given. Why he is lecturing auto makers about how to make money is the real mystery.

(V): Stop buying products from corporations and see how far that gets you.

Your analisis is faulty.

Regulating is one thing. Over regulating another.

Artful Dodger: So's capitalism. A free market ends up with monopolies who endeavour to rip off everyone. Or as we have seen recently in the UK, unable to live upto their contractual obligations or don't care if as a result their cost cutting leads to abuse.

While money creation for stock prices and shareholders is the highest priority, accountability be damned... that's why our governments need to regulate.

English society have been there for years. As Theodore Dalrymple, the physician turned social commentator and editor of The New English Review writes.


"The ferocious criminality exhibited by an uncomfortably large section of the English population during the current riots has not surprised me in the least. I have been writing about it, in its slightly less acute manifestations, for the past 20 years. To have spotted it required no great perspicacity on my part; rather, it took a peculiar cowardly blindness, one regularly displayed by the British intelligentsia and political class, not to see it and not to realize its significance. There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind, or a politician his policy."

Übergeek 바둑이: No. Socialism has failed. Nice try tho.

Artful Dodger: Oh, btw. I'm regularly amazed seeing jobless mopes driving fat cars and such. But you have to admit, it fits perfectly in a capitalistic system.

Übergeek 바둑이: I can I give you a notion of the silent anarchy, the spirited fight against injustice, the revolution of gestures, the wipe out with intelligence and the since ever better arguments. That's a philosophic work. No baseball bats involved. The fight goes on since when? 5000 years? Our generation can make significant steps forward, and we have to. The world is at the edge of being destroyed.

Übergeek 바둑이: It does, indeed.
In '91 it was the people defending Jelzin and Gorbachev from being putched. At this point the russians wanted to maintain the soviet union, but wanted a democratic elected and strong president. The sovietunion was struck in a economic immobility, and the people absolutely wanted, needed a change. Through the time, people went out to the street, to be tanked down. From weirdos in marxist disguise.

gogul:

All econnomies in the wrold today are planned, or to be more accurate: managed. Since the end of the Great Depression all governments have instituted central banks that effectively manage and plan the economy. There are strict controls over interest rates, treasury bill and other bond tendering, money eupply, etc. During the Cold War capitalist countries criticized the centrally planned system of the Soviet Union, but never admitted to effectively doing the same through their central banks. A good example was this last week in which Ben Bernanke said that the USa would not raise its interest rates for the next two years. They have already "planned" to "stimulate the economy" with low interest rates. It is funny that the failure of the american economy today is similar to the failure of the Soviet economy. Back in the 1980s the Soviet Union borrowed too much money and was not able to pay back its loans. Does that sound similar to the USA (and most capitalist economies) today?

Übergeek 바둑이: funnily Switzerland was among the first countries with agriculture planned economy. And it worked.




google for "Prager Frühling 1968"

gogul:

The Soviet collapse had little to do with the people. If anything, there was no revolution there. There were no masses storming the Kremlin. The Soviet Union failed because the economy was bad. Russia (and most of the other republics) depended on the sale of commodities (oil, gas, metals, minerals, etc.) In the 1980s there was massive deflation in commodity prices and that lead to a collapse of the Soviet economy. Today Russia is better, because the prices of oil, gas, metals and other commodities are so high. In the end, the Russian people didn't really fight to end communism. It was not even a popular uprising. It wa an economic failure, nothing more.

By the way, it's not capitalism that won over a soviet failure. It was the peoples lionhearted courage, not the terror organization CIA in the chicken background. Hungary, Poland 1956. Czechoslovakia 1968, they tore down the wall, not reagan, not kohl, it was the "wir sind das volk". That's something completely different. Capitalism is seductive to some with a affinity to immorality, but it's a total outdated attitude.

Übergeek 바둑이: Right wing is far from bourgeois, not even share holding cravat fashion is. This neoconservative experiment was supposed to be the start of the end of history, like the capitalist victory over communism. We bourgeois need to destroy capitalism too, obviously. But "real" Americans don't care about 9.1% jobless rate, why should one look after losers. Americans are not into christians values, they are brute.

Artful Dodger: this is so wrong.

Artful Dodger:

> It doesn’t look like socialism panned out the way they promised you, eh? Shocker.

Could it be perhaps that what failed is not socialism, but capitalism? After all. the UK is a capitalist country. Capitalism has tried to sell consumerism as a cure for the ills of the world. To paraphrase "leading" economists, if a nations consumption is increased, so is its economic output. The riots in the UK are a failure of consumerism. Fast food, cheap trashy disposables, electronic trinkets and pseudofashion are not substitutes for a beleif system, and they do not provide an outlet for social discontent. Bourgeois right wing "experts" will now appoint themselves as arbiters of what is good and bad. Yet in their traditional right wing hatred of the working class these men will blame "lack of morality" and "socialism" for what in essence is a failure of capitalism. This si the same failure that makes young men take firearms, walk into a school and shoot their classmates. This is the morality of television and video games. We don't see these "experts" say anything about how governments have done everything in their power to let youth be exposed to violence, pornography and the glorification of crime in the name of "freedom of expression" and allowing media companies their right to "free enterprise", even if it means poisoning the minds of our world's youth. Profits for video game makers, TV and movie producers, pornographers and media barons are more important than educating youth and curtailing the destructive, violent and mysogynistic indoctrination of our children.

So what is to blame, socialism, or the capitalist "free enterprise" that allows the degradation of our youth in the name of profit?

Artful Dodger: love it,,,, agree with that utterly and completely...

"Britain’s “working class youth”? Don’t you have to “work” to be “working class”? It doesn’t look like socialism panned out the way they promised you, eh? Shocker.

Word to the BBC: How about we call these “working class youths” something more like “non-working, government-sponging entitlement mooks”?How’s that? I think that’s probably a better name for these bellicose nabobs on the government dole."

Doug Giles

(V): They bite me all the time.

Vikings: what?

(V): choosing your career is and therefore your financial situation is

Vikings: ... Plight... is being happy a plight??

I think you've missed much of my meaning.

(V): you prove my point again, people choose their plight in life, and these are the the people that are whining about the rich, their choice

Bernice: Maybe Australia could do another £10 deal and let them emigrate.

Vikings: Nope. Some people do find though money is not the only richness (Jesus for example) ... like the guys who are just happy doing a job that brings them great satisfaction as it what they want to do.

"and by making excuses like I cant do school, I'm not talking about the mentally challenged"

.. Only mentally challenged can't do school!!?? I find that somewhat lacking in depth.

"Either brick layers or dry wallers (which ever you are talking about) can easily make $100,000 a year, I know examples of both that do"

Yes I know people who do as well.. but you said.... "person choosed to get a simple blue collar job"... These jobs might not be "noble" but they are essential to our modern world.

Artful Dodger: Ahh a graphic novel.... but I have to be careful in saying that. Comics and the like can be quite a cult thing.

"Plus my big mean dogs would take a bite out of their crime. "

unlikely.

Bernice: gotta love it!!!

hahahahaha....spotted on Facebook earlier today....

Dear England, now who is full of convicts, regards Australia...

and the person who wrote that is english and has been in australia for 40 odd years, and goes home to england every year on holiday for 3 months.

Either brick layers or dry wallers (which ever you are talking about) can easily make $100,000 a year, I know examples of both that do

(V): when is it right
I would still rather be armed when faced with someone looking to do me or my loved ones harm.Being undermatched doesn't seem like a scenario that would provide more safety.You too might reconsider as you're being requested to squeal like a in the back room of a shop by the bad guy

(V): Thanks, you proved my point, I am talking about thinking like a rich person by figuring out how to make money, and you are talking about thinking like a poor person does by describing how a labor job is so noble that someone should give them more, and by making excuses like I cant do school, I'm not talking about the mentally challenged

Bernice: Or violence is the language of people with a severe lack of vocabulary skills.

This in our paper this morning -

They are all members of a powerless underclass which believes violence is the only thing they have to resort to. As Martin Luther King said, a riot is the language of the unheard.

Then there's always this:

(V): I'd have more clips for their friends too. Plus my big mean dogs would take a bite out of their crime.

(V): Nope. I don't watch tv shows. Only Fox news.

Artful Dodger: You've been watching to much TV....

"I'd empty my gun on them with no questions asked."

N' if their friend is just around the corner... you lose... they duck, you miss... you lose.

The Col: .... but then a shooting war in a 99p store just don't seem right.

(V): I'm not so sure that is true. Either way, who would want to play the guessing game with some thug? Not me. I don't own a gun and probably never will. But if someone comes into the home of someone trained to use a gun, it's not going to go down well for the bad guy.

IF I did own a gun, and someone broke into my house, and I saw that they had a gun, I'd empty my gun on them with no questions asked.

When police shoot an armed suspect, they shoot many many times. That's because unless they are dead, a wounded person can still shoot. So they shoot to kill. That's the way to do it.

(V): the assailant is probably less likely to choose the store equiped with firearm protection

Artful Dodger: ... It could also mean the assailant takes up a threat of violence to killing... it could mean the assailant runs off...

...... No guns ... less risk of death... imho a better chance for any quick minded defender to have the upper hand and drive off any burglars.

(V): You don't need a gun until you need it. I don't need a gun normally. But when confronted with a home invasion, it could mean the difference.