21
POPSThe American Dream delusion Chances of you being well-off are, at best, one in twenty; of being wealthy, one in a hundred. Yet nearly half of us think we will be. That's what keeps those hamster wheels spinning.
21
POPSThe weakening of Rome...similarities to the U.S. today This description of the years preceeding the fall of Rome reminds me a lot of the culture of the United States these days. The pride, hard work, humility and dedication of generation's past seems gone. We watch shows like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Biggest Loser, Dancing with the Stars and don't want to be bothered by real issues, real concerns, real challenges. We drive SUVs that eat up tremendous amounts of gas, despite knowing the political and environmental side effects of doing so. And our smartest go straight to wall street to manage hedge funds that get in and out of stocks with indifference...without any output or benefit to the world other than to squeeze money out of the system (more money that actually exists it turns out). I hope that we are somehow strong and honest enough to recognize the errors of our ways and get so that we can someday get back to better days.
20
POPS12 Weirdest Things Ever Insured Whiskey company Cutty Sark was offering a $1.5 million prize for capturing the mythical Scottish lake inhabitant, the Loch Ness Monster, alive. They then took out home insurance against paying this prize, just in case someone actually did capture it alive. During the 1930s, then 13 year old Harvey Lowe insured his hands for $150,000, which was a large sum of money at the time. Harvey was the Yo-Yo World Champion of that era, having been playing since he was 12. He is still yo-yoing and filling up his current account to this day.
17
POPSIs It Now a Crime to Be Poor? The City Council in Grand Junction, Colo., has been considering a ban on begging, and at the end of June, Tempe, Ariz., carried out a four-day crackdown on the indigent. How do you know when someone is indigent? As a Las Vegas statute puts it, “An indigent person is a person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive” public assistance. By far the most reliable way to be criminalized by poverty is to have the wrong-color skin. There’s no minimum age for being sucked into what the Children’s Defense Fund calls “the cradle-to-prison pipeline.” Leonardo Vilchis of the Union de Vecinos, a community organization in Los Angeles, suspects that “poor people have become a source of revenue” for recession-starved cities, and that the police can always find a violation leading to a fine. The safety net, or what’s left of it, has been transformed into a dragnet.
12
POPSMicrosoft Millionaire: Why I Should Pay More Taxes He wants to rescind the tax breaks given to the wealthy to help the U.S.!? I’ll bet he’ll be banned from the country club and a place at the round table now. The Bush-era tax cuts gave $700 billion in breaks over eight years to those with annual incomes more than $200,000. The U. S. borrowed money to make these tax cuts possible, even as our schools, infrastructure, research institutions and social services were in need of new investments. “Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized and healthy society. Those of us who have disproportionately benefited from public investments have a responsibility to pay back our society so that others can have similar opportunities.” I like this guy. He says “it is just and fair that our generation make comparable investments in our future to ensure that America continues to offer our children and grandchildren the same kind of opportunities it offered me.”
11
POPSMillionaire brings 700 poor people to inauguration Rooms at Marriott on parade route, clothes for people's ball. Chosen from around the nation, including people who sacrificed to house others after Katrina, kids from a Southside Chicago school who'd never been out of their neighborhood. "If I can follow in the footsteps he took ..." A great story!
10
POPSUs Indians can be quite confounding sometimes Largely lost in this euphoria is the sense that in the real Mumbai Jamal Malik wouldn't have come within five miles of a TV game show. Of course the film was fantasy, but the fantasy had an ugly core that Indians are blind to. Jamal would not have survived his torture in a real Mumbai police station.
9
POPSThe Nouveau Poor Have Reached Numbers Too Large to Ignore "Talking about a revolution ... hey, hey ... you know." Remember when *you* were a poor hippie with a mattress on a floor somewhere? Welcome to the Future Past. The thing is, it was a lot of fun, then. No burdens, no mortgage, no car and lots of time to do just what you want ... or do nothing at all. Why shouldn't it be again? The Nouveau Poor will have to live a much more planet-friendly lifestyle, too, outside the Matrix economy.
9
POPSMillionaire punishes snooty staff with burgers at a 5-star seriously such people really need to be taught a lesson. I recall people in the more fortunate part of Bombay, India complaining about their Internet not working when half the city was submerged for 3 days due to a terrible deluge. as a safety precaution those areas did not receive electricity. So while people waded, sat afloat beds without electricity, living off bread and biscuits, there were those who complained their Internet connections were giving trouble. Disgusting.
9
POPSHow rich bastards like me rip off taxpayers for millions of dollars No one should build so close to an ocean." But I built anyway. Why? As my eager-for-the-business architect said, "Why not? If the ocean destroys your house, the government will pay for a new one." What? Why would the government do that? Why would it encourage people to build in such risky places? That would be insane. But the architect was right. If the ocean took my house, Uncle Sam would pay to replace it under the National Flood Insurance Program. Since private insurers weren’t dumb enough to sell cheap insurance to people who built on the edges of oceans or rivers, Congress decided the government should step in and do it. So if the ocean ate what I built, I could rebuild and rebuild again and again -- there was no limit to the number of claims on the same property in the same location -- up to a maximum of $250,000 per house per flood. And you taxpayers would pay for it.
8
POPSChain of Fools tax your property, tax your clothes, tax your food, tax your water, tax your electricity, tax your gasoline, tax your income, tax your savings, tax your capital, tax your internet access, tax your phone, tax the very breath you exhale?
Most Pops
see Most Pops
Clips
Pops
Comments
Tags
6
Print
Save
Turn on live update