Old people, is their more BS with our institutions than in the past???

[Hobie]

I'll be 30 in days and maybe it's because I'm getting older, but I'm always getting fucked by some institution.

It seems like every big business or big gov't entity is out to fuck you and it's upon your shoulders to unfuck whatever situation it is.

Got another notice that I'm a member of a class action lawsuit in the mail today(at least that's money, but also a sign my bank fucked me, which they did, I closed the account, fuck 'em, anyways, sign of the times?), trying to get NTTA to stop billing me for a car I no longer own with plates different than when I had the car, and paypal just stole $65 from me again over the weekend.

Not too long ago I changed the address on my license and renewed it. It took 6 mos. to get my license. For awhile I had a temporary, HAND WRITTEN, license. Despite being 29 I still get carded here and there. That hand written shit doesn't fly. OH HEY IMMIGRANT BEER SELLER, HERES A HAND WRITTEN NOTE FROM MY MOM, GIMME BEER!!! - you no can has beer!!!

Banks double charging, some other guy on my credit report, getting some erroneous bill for shit you didn't do, it's always some bullshit and I have to waste my time straightening it out.


I see these ignorant assholes in ex-dps crown vics with 26" rims and a giant STARBURST logo on the side and I used to think they were idiots, but maybe they are onto something. You think the guy driving the donk stresses over errors on his credit report or some bill in the mail for something he didn't do. You think that guy gives a fuck if his 401k took a 40% hit in the crash. Doubt it.

I think I know what the guy who first said "ignorance is bliss" was getting at. Does this shit just come with age?

It's always something and I'm sick of it. It makes me want to buy some piece of shit car, don't get insurance, take the plates off, make my own fake paperplate, and drive around not giving a fuck. Get a check from the gov't, sell weed for extra income, drink beer on a weekday, play video games all day, and just quit participating in "society."

[sc281]

I'll be 30 in days and maybe it's because I'm getting older, but I'm always getting fucked by some institution.

It seems like every big business or big gov't entity is out to fuck you and it's upon your shoulders to unfuck whatever situation it is.

Got another notice that I'm a member of a class action lawsuit in the mail today(at least that's money, but also a sign my bank fucked me, which they did, I closed the account, fuck 'em, anyways, sign of the times?), trying to get NTTA to stop billing me for a car I no longer own with plates different than when I had the car, and paypal just stole $65 from me again over the weekend.

Not too long ago I changed the address on my license and renewed it. It took 6 mos. to get my license. For awhile I had a temporary, HAND WRITTEN, license. Despite being 29 I still get carded here and there. That hand written shit doesn't fly. OH HEY IMMIGRANT BEER SELLER, HERES A HAND WRITTEN NOTE FROM MY MOM, GIMME BEER!!! - you no can has beer!!!

Banks double charging, some other guy on my credit report, getting some erroneous bill for shit you didn't do, it's always some bullshit and I have to waste my time straightening it out.


I see these ignorant assholes in ex-dps crown vics with 26" rims and a giant STARBURST logo on the side and I used to think they were idiots, but maybe they are onto something. You think the guy driving the donk stresses over errors on his credit report or some bill in the mail for something he didn't do. You think that guy gives a fuck if his 401k took a 40% hit in the crash. Doubt it.

I think I know what the guy who first said "ignorance is bliss" was getting at. Does this shit just come with age?

It's always something and I'm sick of it. It makes me want to buy some piece of shit car, don't get insurance, take the plates off, make my own fake paperplate, and drive around not giving a fuck. Get a check from the gov't,, drink beer on a weekday, play video games all day, and just quit participating in "society."

A-F'ing-MEN!! Minus the whole drug dealer part if it.

[LANTIRN]

I concure. I've spent the last 3 years since I have been out of the military getting fucked by one institution or another. First the State of Texas, then the company I worked for overseas, then the Saudi government, then the US government, then when I bought my house, then the IRS, now insurance because my wife was broadsided by some fat bitch last week.

I expected it going to Saudi to work, but not everything else.

[Hobie]

Call ntta for an hour, get through, put on hold 10 minutes, disconnected, call back, get through on the 2nd try and the guy verifies with the DPS the car is not mine and cancelled the bill.

This is the shit I'm talking about. I sell a car months ago, drop the car from my tolltag, remove the sticker from the windshield. I still have a tolltag in my current DD.

Car gets registered to someone else, license plate changes, yet I get the bill, and have to waste my time to call and straighten it out. Makes me wonder if they just send bills to both parties hoping we both just pay it.

[Broncojohnny]

We don't manufacture anything in this country anymore, it is a service based economy. The easiest way to make money when you offer a service, banking is a great example, is to fuck your customers out of every dime you possibly can.

Things have been like this for at least a decade, you are just noticing because you are getting older and paying more attention.

[GhostTX]

We don't manufacture anything in this country anymore, it is a service based economy. The easiest way to make money when you offer a service, banking is a great example, is to fuck your customers out of every dime you possibly can.

Things have been like this for at least a decade, you are just noticing because you are getting older and paying more attention.

And on that note:

If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.

It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?

Every state in America today except for two—Indiana and Wisconsin—has more government workers on the payroll than people manufacturing industrial goods. Consider California, which has the highest budget deficit in the history of the states. The not-so Golden State now has an incredible 2.4 million government employees—twice as many as people at work in manufacturing. New Jersey has just under two-and-a-half as many government employees as manufacturers. Florida's ratio is more than 3 to 1. So is New York's.

Even Michigan, at one time the auto capital of the world, and Pennsylvania, once the steel capital, have more government bureaucrats than people making things. The leaders in government hiring are Wyoming and New Mexico, which have hired more than six government workers for every manufacturing worker.

Now it is certainly true that many states have not typically been home to traditional manufacturing operations. Iowa and Nebraska are farm states, for example. But in those states, there are at least five times more government workers than farmers. West Virginia is the mining capital of the world, yet it has at least three times more government workers than miners. New York is the financial capital of the world—at least for now. That sector employs roughly 670,000 New Yorkers. That's less than half of the state's 1.48 million government employees.

Don't expect a reversal of this trend anytime soon. Surveys of college graduates are finding that more and more of our top minds want to work for the government. Why? Because in recent years only government agencies have been hiring, and because the offer of near lifetime security is highly valued in these times of economic turbulence. When 23-year-olds aren't willing to take career risks, we have a real problem on our hands. Sadly, we could end up with a generation of Americans who want to work at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The employment trends described here are explained in part by hugely beneficial productivity improvements in such traditional industries as farming, manufacturing, financial services and telecommunications. These produce far more output per worker than in the past. The typical farmer, for example, is today at least three times more productive than in 1950.

Where are the productivity gains in government? Consider a core function of state and local governments: schools. Over the period 1970-2005, school spending per pupil, adjusted for inflation, doubled, while standardized achievement test scores were flat. Over roughly that same time period, public-school employment doubled per student, according to a study by researchers at the University of Washington. That is what economists call negative productivity.

But education is an industry where we measure performance backwards: We gauge school performance not by outputs, but by inputs. If quality falls, we say we didn't pay teachers enough or we need smaller class sizes or newer schools. If education had undergone the same productivity revolution that manufacturing has, we would have half as many educators, smaller school budgets, and higher graduation rates and test scores.

The same is true of almost all other government services. Mass transit spends more and more every year and yet a much smaller share of Americans use trains and buses today than in past decades. One way that private companies spur productivity is by firing underperforming employees and rewarding excellence. In government employment, tenure for teachers and near lifetime employment for other civil servants shields workers from this basic system of reward and punishment. It is a system that breeds mediocrity, which is what we've gotten.

Most reasonable steps to restrain public-sector employment costs are smothered by the unions. Study after study has shown that states and cities could shave 20% to 40% off the cost of many services—fire fighting, public transportation, garbage collection, administrative functions, even prison operations—through competitive contracting to private providers. But unions have blocked many of those efforts. Public employees maintain that they are underpaid relative to equally qualified private-sector workers, yet they are deathly afraid of competitive bidding for government services.

President Obama says we have to retool our economy to "win the future." The only way to do that is to grow the economy that makes things, not the sector that takes things.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704050204576219073867182108.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

[Vertnut]

This might fit: "If you're not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you're still a liberal at 30, you have no brain". I was never a lib, but at 30, I really woke up.

[okiebullitt]

I often read this forum for shits and giggles, sometimes I agree with whats posted and sometimes I don't. In this instance I fucking concur to a ridiculous degree.

I was visiting family this past weekend and my piece of shit step-brother is complaining about not having anything and looks at me and says 'like you would understand'. All I could say its not my fault I went to school for 10 years, got 3 degrees, and pay more in taxes than you make in a year.

It pisses me off that he sits around and thinks someone owes him something because people have more than he does. And I see this more and more everywhere I look. Its ridiculous. I work my ass off 50+ hours a week so his kids can have free health insurance and he wants to complain about not having anything.

Its a fucking shame for those of us that want to make something of ourselves while countless others sit around and do shit but continue to exist off of others hard work. Like the OP said, sometimes I think it would be easier to just to cash in my chips and do nothing.

[The King]

If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.

It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?

Every state in America today except for two—Indiana and Wisconsin—has more government workers on the payroll than people manufacturing industrial goods. Consider California, which has the highest budget deficit in the history of the states. The not-so Golden State now has an incredible 2.4 million government employees—twice as many as people at work in manufacturing. New Jersey has just under two-and-a-half as many government employees as manufacturers. Florida's ratio is more than 3 to 1. So is New York's.

Even Michigan, at one time the auto capital of the world, and Pennsylvania, once the steel capital, have more government bureaucrats than people making things. The leaders in government hiring are Wyoming and New Mexico, which have hired more than six government workers for every manufacturing worker.

Now it is certainly true that many states have not typically been home to traditional manufacturing operations. Iowa and Nebraska are farm states, for example. But in those states, there are at least five times more government workers than farmers. West Virginia is the mining capital of the world, yet it has at least three times more government workers than miners. New York is the financial capital of the world—at least for now. That sector employs roughly 670,000 New Yorkers. That's less than half of the state's 1.48 million government employees.

Don't expect a reversal of this trend anytime soon. Surveys of college graduates are finding that more and more of our top minds want to work for the government. Why? Because in recent years only government agencies have been hiring, and because the offer of near lifetime security is highly valued in these times of economic turbulence. When 23-year-olds aren't willing to take career risks, we have a real problem on our hands. Sadly, we could end up with a generation of Americans who want to work at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The employment trends described here are explained in part by hugely beneficial productivity improvements in such traditional industries as farming, manufacturing, financial services and telecommunications. These produce far more output per worker than in the past. The typical farmer, for example, is today at least three times more productive than in 1950.

Where are the productivity gains in government? Consider a core function of state and local governments: schools. Over the period 1970-2005, school spending per pupil, adjusted for inflation, doubled, while standardized achievement test scores were flat. Over roughly that same time period, public-school employment doubled per student, according to a study by researchers at the University of Washington. That is what economists call negative productivity.

But education is an industry where we measure performance backwards: We gauge school performance not by outputs, but by inputs. If quality falls, we say we didn't pay teachers enough or we need smaller class sizes or newer schools. If education had undergone the same productivity revolution that manufacturing has, we would have half as many educators, smaller school budgets, and higher graduation rates and test scores.

The same is true of almost all other government services. Mass transit spends more and more every year and yet a much smaller share of Americans use trains and buses today than in past decades. One way that private companies spur productivity is by firing underperforming employees and rewarding excellence. In government employment, tenure for teachers and near lifetime employment for other civil servants shields workers from this basic system of reward and punishment. It is a system that breeds mediocrity, which is what we've gotten.

Most reasonable steps to restrain public-sector employment costs are smothered by the unions. Study after study has shown that states and cities could shave 20% to 40% off the cost of many services—fire fighting, public transportation, garbage collection, administrative functions, even prison operations—through competitive contracting to private providers. But unions have blocked many of those efforts. Public employees maintain that they are underpaid relative to equally qualified private-sector workers, yet they are deathly afraid of competitive bidding for government services.

President Obama says we have to retool our economy to "win the future." The only way to do that is to grow the economy that makes things, not the sector that takes things.

Note that many of the public sector employees in 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000 were paid considerably less than equivalent private sector employees, at least non-union public sector employees that is. They conciously traded higher up-front pay back then for what today are better benefits and job security than that offered in the private sector. Turns out they were the smart ones, at least in the eyes of the sour grapes crowd.

[Hobie]

And on that note:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...pinion_LEADTop

Union membership in 1980 was ~35% of the workforce. Today union members are ~7% of the workforce.

I don't think unions are as big of a problem as we're lead to believe.

How many manufacturing jobs have we outsourced to slave labor sweat shops in India, Taiwan, China, and US territories in the South Pacific. Did gov't employment drastically increase while manufacturing relatively stayed the same, of course not. We sent jobs off and the gov't also increased in size and scope. During the previous administration alone we added two huge new bureaucracies. So much for my party being the one for smaller gov't and fiscal responsibility.

Which is another interesting point. In a sense we've outsourced the recession. It is hitting the US hard, but it's really kicking China in the dick. I've got a friend from college that travels around the world for work and he's taken a bunch of pictures in China of blocks and blocks of abandoned factories. It looks like Detroit except there is some official who will imprison you for being too nosy. How far are we from that too???

Personally I think that in the interest of ever increasing profits giant corporations are trying to force the US worker to compete with third world slave labor and sooner or later we will make a return to the era of the Robber Baron.

This is the twilight of the middle class's golden era. Our story will be the opposite of the one our grand parents told. Instead of talking about depression era hard times we will explain how easy we had it once and how we threw it all away.

How once you could go to school, work hard so we could afford to buy a home, have TWO cars, multiple tvs, computers, cell phones, invest for retirement, save for a college fund, and have access to health care all at the same time! In the end we ruined it because we were distracted by American Idol, TMZ, reality tv, Kim Kardashian, and OMG facebook! It was too late by the time we paid attention it was all gone and once again the American worker owed his soul to the company store.

I hope I'm wrong.

[Broncojohnny]

I often read this forum for shits and giggles, sometimes I agree with whats posted and sometimes I don't. In this instance I fucking concur to a ridiculous degree.

I was visiting family this past weekend and my piece of shit step-brother is complaining about not having anything and looks at me and says 'like you would understand'. All I could say its not my fault I went to school for 10 years, got 3 degrees, and pay more in taxes than you make in a year.

It pisses me off that he sits around and thinks someone owes him something because people have more than he does. And I see this more and more everywhere I look. Its ridiculous. I work my ass off 50+ hours a week so his kids can have free health insurance and he wants to complain about not having anything.

Its a fucking shame for those of us that want to make something of ourselves while countless others sit around and do shit but continue to exist off of others hard work. Like the OP said, sometimes I think it would be easier to just to cash in my chips and do nothing.

What do you expect? From his point of view the money that pays for his children just rains down from the sky. The money that is in your pocket does the same in his eyes. We have raised generations of people who cash government checks.

What I want to know is how many people are on the government teet? I mean not only the employees, the retirees, but also the welfare recipients, the wards of the state, people in prisons and the old people. I think it would be shocking to add that up. EDIT: And don't forget the people who have a job but get a check in the mail at the end of the year because "they don't make enough" but can't stop fucking.

[Hobie]

What do you expect? From his point of view the money that pays for his children just rains down from the sky. The money that is in your pocket does the same in his eyes. We have raised generations of people who cash government checks.

What I want to know is how many people are on the government teet? I mean not only the employees, the retirees, but also the welfare recipients, the wards of the state, people in prisons and the old people. I think it would be shocking to add that up. EDIT: And don't forget the people who have a job but get a check in the mail at the end of the year because "they don't make enough" but can't stop fucking.

Shit, how many people on the lower end of the economic scale period are "tax negative" - I know when I was younger I would get a check back for more than I paid in. I always found that strange.

I have to explain to peers all the time that the gov't doesn't have any money and can't give it to person B without first taking it from person A. College educated people too - blows my mind.

[GhostTX]

I have to explain to peers all the time that the gov't doesn't have any money and can't give it to person B without first taking it from person A. College educated people too - blows my mind.

Liberal mindset that the government makes all the money...we just "borrow" it when we get our salaries...

[KBScobravert]

we need to back to privitizing government functions.

Want a letter delivered, pay UPS/FedEx/a jackass on horse
Want a Disaster Relief, hire a private company to come fix your shit
Want free health care, go to Mexico...won't be free but it will be cheaper, you should get what you pay for.


Not to change the topic but when we went to war in Afghanistan/Iraq the Government and the military got smart for a just a brief second. They said hey, we can hire civilians to augment our troops and provide life support services, food, water, electricity. If we pay a E1 to fix generators his entire deployment it would cost us money in training, he can't be deployed for longer than a certain amount of time, then we have uniforms and equipment, his free medical and dental, if he gets hurt we have to pay him for life, omg what if he retires after 20yrs then we have to pay him for life. Hire civilians to go over there who don't need to be trained, clothed, given free medical or dental outside of life-limb-eyesight, can't draw a check if he trips and sprains his ankle or gets an infection that will never go away, he can't retire, oh but he can spend more than 15 months out there and we will have more power over the civilian than we do the E-1.

My employer employs over 20,000 civilians in Aghanistan. If we were not here the military would have to have that many plus some rotating out every 6-12 months here providing these services. Can you imagine what congress and the American people would say if we went from having 70,000 troops here to 90,000+. What that cost of war climb. I make a good wage. Most of my employees get paid by the hour and it is about the same as if they were doing the same job in the States. The key is they just work 84 hours a week. We are not rolling in the dough so we are not overpaid. If I was over paid I would have been home years ago.

Point is someone got smart for once in the big government and said lets let the private sector bid for this work and see what we get. It is cheaper in the long run.

Now just run the rest of the country this way and all will be right with the world.

[Broncojohnny]

Shit, how many people on the lower end of the economic scale period are "tax negative" - I know when I was younger I would get a check back for more than I paid in. I always found that strange.

I have to explain to peers all the time that the gov't doesn't have any money and can't give it to person B without first taking it from person A. College educated people too - blows my mind.

I have been thinking about it and I am developing a strange goal of having no income at all while making a shit ton of tax free income. You can do this by taking about a million dollars and investing it all in municipal bonds or bond funds that pay tax free interest. On a million you could make 70-80K a year at current rates. You could even have a little bit of regular income, say $20K from something like regular stock dividends and that would be countered by your personal exemptions and deductions. At the end of the day you could be living very well and be poor in the eyes of the IRS. You could probably get a fat check from the IRS at the end of the year too, which would be more tax free income! lol