On 8/5/2013 2:41 AM, scott wrote:
>> But, hell, even I can't afford to buy "best", and I have fewer bills,
>> and slightly better pay that like 90% of the people in the country. That
>> is a **major** problem.
>
> Isn't that you just being too greedy? I don't expect to be able to
> afford the best of everything unless I'm a football star or win the
> lottery or something.
>
Ok.. How about, "Better than the cheapest crap no the market"? Forget 
best, just not the same stuff that the guy two doors down has a better 
chance of buying, on food stamps, than I do when, supposedly, having a 
"decent paycheck".

Seriously, I don't think you are getting my point. If most of the 
population can't afford to buy "better", then there is no incentive to 
anyone to sell "better", which leads to no incentive to pay enough, so 
people can buy the "better" product, which... and around and around we 
go. There is a reason that, in the US, you have to pay for every single 
"service" on a cell phone, to the order of $50 a month, when most of 
that stuff is free in the places they *actually* manufacture, test, and 
perfect the latest model of the phones, and its not because it somehow 
"costs more" to run a US cell network, than on in Taiwan, or someplace 
like that. Its because they know that they can squeeze every dime they 
can out of you, and either you pay for the phone, or a get a cheap assed 
one, which isn't as good, and pay for it upfront besides, and even if 
people know they getting screwed, there isn't any "alternative" source 
to go to, to get anything better.

So, they stack the deck, no matter the product. Either they make it 
cheaper than hell, then don't pay you anything, so you can't buy 
anything else, or, if its someone you need, like a car, or a cell phone, 
or anything else that is a "necessity", they charge you every time you 
so much as look at it, for *everything*, then make the lame excuse that, 
somehow, its "too expensive" to do otherwise. When someone else controls 
all of the roads, you don't have any choice but to pay **someone's** 
toll. And, if all of them are charging higher than needed prices, to 
line their own pockets, then, a few miles down the road, buying your 
goods, for less than they are worth (i.e., paying you sub-par wages), 
who exactly are you going to complain to about the tolls, or what they 
pay you, the people they paid millions in campaign contributions, to elect?

There is a reason why the Rethuglicans in the US are trying to undermine 
worker rights, and unions. Its because less than 10% of the money anyone 
else runs on comes from corporations. The other 90%, for Democrats, 
comes from unions. For other groups, it comes from their own pockets, or 
private donations, at a trickle. With a 10:1 ratio of money coming in, 
in favor of those people that support low wages, or no minimum, 
exporting jobs, secret Caiman Island accounts, and so on, who is going 
to either lower prices to a sane level, raise low income wages, or 
actually call for the people on top to make "sane" amounts of money, 
instead of shoveling everything they can legally get their hands on into 
their pockets, and then hiding the pockets?

And, you think we fix this by taking a budget of roughly $1300 a month, 
where like all but a few bucks of that goes to insurance, rent, food, 
heating, etc., to buy a $20 item, from a slightly less insane company, 
instead of a $10 one, from Walmart... Yeah, that has worked "so well", 
so far, given the huge amount of extra, left over, income everyone has, 
at the end of every month...

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