Swine Flu visits Long Island City

And people are hoarding gold in the ‘hood to afford Dutch Kills…

http://gothamist.com/2009/04/30/employee_steals_12_million_in_gold.php

The less bankers the better.

I’m sick of paying their crazy bonuses with my tax dollars!

#3, what an insensitive thing to say. This person is someone’s son/daughter, mother father. Furthermore, the top 20 percent of income earners pay 80 percent of all taxes collected by the government. so I think its probably more accurate to say that the bankers are tired of paying for your health care, roads, schools and retirement.

How can anyone have the gall to offer weepy defenses of corporate welfare banker thieves right now in the midst of the calamity they perpetrated? It’s kind of like saying right after the fall of Berlin that the Gestapo were just regular hardworking guys doing their jobs. My recommendation to any bankers out their who feel the need to explain themselves: have a little shame and shut your pieholes! You’re lucky you have Obama and Geitner protecting your sorry asses because you should all be in the clink with Madoff.

#5 and #8 is a banker.

Everybody stop your bitching because no one knows if the person that has the swine flu is a banker, a mail room worker or an admin. In all likelihood the infected person is not a banker because Citigroup keeps all their top earners in Manhattan. So calm down and lets remember that this person is a human first and not a profession.

Maybe I have a skewed idea of what “middle class” is. What does this make teachers and firemen and the rest of us? Yes the cost of living is high but we seem to make rent and not live in squalor.

So I went to that article.

“The average monthly rent in New York is $2,801″

What does that mean, though? How many bedrooms? I don’t know anyone paying that much for an apartment unless they have several roommates, even in expensive neighborhoods like LIC and Greenpoint.

Also, it talks about New Yorkers having longer commutes than a lot of other cities, but we also don’t need to own a car, so that actually lowers the cost of living.

I don’t know… to me making $100,000 is pretty unfathomable and would seem quite affluent, even in New York, unless you had several kids or other additional expenses. Say you got another roommate or a spouse making the same amount of money, you’d be living very well off in my book. I guess I just don’t have much sympathy for the argument that someone making six figures is just getting by and middle class … nobody I know makes anywhere near that and we all get by, pay our bills, and still have a little left over for fun.

There is no standard definition of middle class. An overwhelming majority (over 90%) of Americans say they are “middle class” or “upper-middle class” or “working class” in polls. Hardly anybody considers themselves “lower class” or “upper class” in America although they most certainly exist. Paying your bills and having a little left over for fun is not the definition of middle class. At least not in my book. There are plenty of people with TVs, cars, decent accomodations who are one disaster (layoff, health care emergency, etc.) away from being flat broke.

Middle class is difficult to define by income alone, because it also connotes a style of life, a set of values and tastes, a level of education and a class of occupation. Personally to me middle class is someone who owns a home or has the prospect or abilty to becoming a homeowner. They must make a decent wage and they should enjoy a modicum of economic stability. The last point is the most critical. Middle class means having enough money coming in—and on reserve— that you can pay your bills every month, have health insurance, regularly eat a meal out, own a home computer or laptop with Internet access, afford to live in a safe neighborhood, send your kids to a quality public school or day care and take a vacation overseas at least once a year.

Salaries here tend to be somewhat higher for professionals than those in other parts of the country, but as pointed out in the article a New Yorker would have to make $123,322 a year to have the same standard of living as someone making $50,000 in Houston.

Put away your pitchfork. Everyone making more money than you is not a villian. Not every 6 figure salary is earned by some fat cat living high off the hog. There are a lot of normal everyday people making this kind of money who still go to bed worrying about making ends meet. Yes, it’s easy to lay out a scenario where they are living with 3 other roomates, have family member to baby sit for free, sell the car, don’t take a vacation, eat out cat food or whatever, but is that what we should be striving for? Is that the new American dream? Is that what parents want for their chidren?

Well, maybe I am impoverished, becuase I live month-to-month with anything left over paying off debt. Would have to move into my parents’ basement or couch-surf if I had a major disaster. Owning a house is a distant prospect. Ugh. Maybe hardly anyone is really “middle class.”

No thanks #20. I’ll pay my taxes as I always do, but its still America and I have a right to complain about it. I have no desire to live a life where if I’m missing one paycheck I’d be homeless. I also do not care to place myself or my family in a unsafe environment just to save a buck. I also don’t think that grown men with families should be sharing apartements as may have been the case in college. This is not disrespectful to those that may be forced to make these decisions on a daily basis, but only to say that we shouldn’t be striving to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator.

Instead of begrudging those that may be doing slightly better, why not focus on the real issue of the working poor in this nation. Why is it that so many in this country live check to check? I’d submit that the answer to that question is not because some guy on Wall Street makes a million dollars, but due to larger society issues that no one likes to talk about. It much easier to blame some faceless fat cat as the source of all of your problems.

The top 20% should pay 80% in taxes (or more). I don’t know why anti-tax libertarians trump out that figure out all the time. When the richest 1% of all Americans earn 21% of the country’s income, you can expect them to fund a larger percentage of the overall tax bill. The bottom 50% of earners in the country earn only 12% of the income.

In terms of wealth, we have a system where the top 10% owns 71% of the wealth, and the bottom 40% own less than 1% of the wealth. When you look at the numbers this way, it would be crazy if the top 20% DIDN’T pay 80% of the taxes.

The progressive taxation system we have now works fairly well. And it’ll work better once the Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans roll back…

In communist Russia, . . .

#24, your view of the “proper” role of government is vastly different than mine. My view of the “proper” role of government includes a social safety net, universal healthcare, progressive taxation, etc.

You bring up communist Russia, but conveniently ignore the socialist Scandinavian countries with extremely high rates of taxation but also far higher standards of living than the US, better quality of life, far less crime, better education, etc.

Hell, even purebred capitalists like Henry Ford understood how powerful wealth redistribution could be.

24 states: “.. the only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which business is conducted.”

Actually there is no such statement whatsoever in the Preamble to The Constitution. I quote herewith:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Certainly seems more in line with a social agenda than it does a platform for supply side theory.

don’t forget the bailouts.

So many people keep advising others to move from this neighborhood to some other, often one that’s very far away. I just wonder who you are, to offer such counsel, given that you have such a prepossessing sense of Belonging, which seems to be a projection of some sort, forgive my freaking subjectivity, sir, but it’s less than persuasive. Maybe you pick Montana or Wyoming because that’s where you came from? No, of course not. You don’t know jack about those places either, so I think. But don’t let me silence you and your wish that others might find happiness somewhere else. I know that I would be happier to know that I was geographically separated from the likes of you.

So beautifully put by Townie. Thanks, Sir/Ma’m!

…and a joke about how that one guy always tells hipsters to move to Michigan.

Hey Townie, I know we’ve had our differences, but your post was on the money, and your response (#38) to the response to you, sounds like it should be a classic.

Have you ever noticed that those defending the actions of the ones that caused these financial problems, sound like they want to stifle (or even crush) the middle and working class? They don’t stop to realize that all of these fortunes were made (legally, illegally, or just plain wrong), on the backs of the middle and working class folk.

By the way,we don’t have a free market here. It’s more like a free form economy and a free for all market, with anything goes. Yea, let those in control of the money, make their own rules. This is what you end up with.

Why should upper and middle management be allowed to make millions of dollars in salary, when they are incapable of controlling their own companies? Maybe there should be stockholders associations, or something on that order. That way the majority of the stockholders, truly will have a say. Millions to the execs for doing poorly, means millions no going to the stockholders. It’s highway robbery, I tell ya.

As far as goes the comment: “.. the only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which business is conducted.”; He is basically saying that it must be government by big business and for big business. Of course the proof is on “K” street. That’s where you go to try to get the best government for your company, that money can buy.

Charlie.