The Wealth Gap Widens...

Wealth gap

You know Ed that response just shows how narrow minded your thought and analysis processes are . War, fire, theft, murder are obviously how you believe people think that all phrases and words have the same meaning in all circumstances. Read some books prior to showing your lack of knowledge.
A sad reflection on someone who is supposedly intelligent, enough of this bs for me, discussing with a closed minded individual is just pure time wasting.

I must correct Ed, there are today 49 million living under the poverty line, receiving help from the society with food and more...

But I think when the whole thread now turns to ad hominem attacks on each other, we better refrain from posting unless there is something of substance to add. Not just what you think of each other...

Cap, you seemed to miss or at least ignored the lesson of your grandfather taking care of his mother and 3 sisters. Why did he do that? Why didn't he just throw them out on the street and tell them they were not his responsibility? As for your friend who is scamming the system, not the type of person I associate with much less call friend. Honesty is important to me. If you feel this behavior should be stopped, why didn't you turn him in? He's a crook. He broke the law. He is part of the problem, and belongs in jail. He is also not your average guy collecting unemployment.
Not sure what the point was in the electrician story other than that there are incompetent and dishonest workers and companies in every field, and the construction trades are ripe with them. You also noted that you do painting and electrical work on homes. Unusual combination of licenses, but good for you.
About firefighters and EMTs getting paid to do this, in many areas of the country these are volunteer positions. Regardless, those emergency service workers were not paid to enter the twin towers, same as a soldier is not paid to lay his body on a grenade. He always have the option of saying 'I'm not paid to die'. Where does the line get drawn about where you help and where you don't. It's OK to expect someone to risk or even give up their life to save you, but not for you to take money from your pocket to help another?
So the answer to your question, "Should I feel sorry for my neighbor if we get hit by a hurricane and he had no foresight to have food and bottled water in his house?????????????" is a resounding YES, and you should feel ashamed for not thinking so. As for the bank rates, maybe you missed where ARMs shot up, or that credit cards now can reach 30% and more or that once your credit is damaged your only hope for a loan is a PayDay loan at well over 100% interest. I know, it's their choice if they're desperate enough to borrow money at those rates.

Permits

What is the grandson of an italian Millionaire doing driving boats around when other less fortunate immigrants could be doing that work.

Now that you are also a painter, again taking work away from the many very good painters looking for work around town, does that mean you are also licensed and insured for that work.

and as for completing electrical work, what did the electrical permit say and was that signed off. Again was it hard getting that license and insurance or did you go to the general contractor school which still does not cover you doing electrical permitted work.

....and when you bought that home you knew (or should have) that you had to pay probably 2% of the purchase price per year in taxes and they, the big bad government, would be dividing that up to pay for garbage pick-up as well as schools and paying for my kids education.

If you travel around the country you will see utter devastation in the job market, factory after factory closing down and hard working people put out of work. Would you expect 10,000 families to move from Detroit to Fort Lauderdale.

Not everybody bought $600,000 on a $50,000 salary. Alot of those folk on $50,000 did find it easier to get a mortgage and bought a $150,000 home that they could not keep once they lost their jobs.

We live in a surreal world in South Florida where just about every scam artist has a home.

PS. just about every cop, fire fighter and EMT that I know have jobs on the side and it turned out that the electrician who finally came to finish the wiring on my pool was a firefighter who did that 3 or 4 days a week to get a pension. How many cops do you know who retire in their 40's with a nice fat pension

Why don't we just have the same municipalities who pay the incredible pensions for cops, firefighters, school teachers and government workers also pay pensions for my small business staff. I know my staff would really like to retire young with a pension of more than 1/2 their salary and increasing every year! Oh ... We don't have the money? No ***t ... That's because it's my staffs taxes and my corporate profits that pay for all these insane muni pensions and benefits!

Where I live, 70% of the cops retire on disability. Can you say "criminal scam".

WE are the 50% of this country who are NOT on the dole and NOT employed by the government BUT paying for it ALL!

Actually I think you've seen excellent examples of exactly how wide the gap is. Should give many on both sides much to think about.

Wealth gap

One of the reasons for the wealth gap !!!!!!!!

WE WAS BRUNG UP PROPER !!

"And we never had a whole Mars bar until 1993"!!!

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE
1940's, 50's, and 60's
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank Sherry while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos...
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, bread and dripping, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.
Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds , KFC, Subway or Nandos.
Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on a Sunday, somehow we didn't starve to death!
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Gobstoppers and Bubble Gum.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter,milk from the cow,and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O..K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii , X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY ,
no video/dvd films, or colour TV
no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no
Lawsuits from these accidents.

Only girls had pierced ears!

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time....

We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays,

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!
Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet because we didn't need to keep up with the Jones's!

Not everyone made the rugby/football/cricket/netball team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting into the team was based on
MERIT

Our teachers used to hit us with canes and gym shoes and throw the blackboard rubber at us if they thought we weren't concentrating .
We can string sentences together and spell and have proper conversations because of a good, solid three R's education.
Our parents would tell us to ask a stranger to help us cross the road.
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law!

Our parents didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla'

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO
DEAL WITH IT ALL !


And YOU are one of them!
CONGRATULATIONS!
You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.
And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.
PS -The big type is because your eyes are not too good at your age anymore

F___kin' - A, dennis!

(To our non-primarily-English speaking members, that means I concur most wholeheartedly)

Also concur most wholeheartedly (but would have phrased it Loren's way since I'm a New Yawka).
BTW, Capt.J,

Today that would amount to several hundred thousand dollars at least. Not a bad leg up to get on the world. Were it not for him you'd have faced a massive student loan as you started adult life. It's nice when people help us even when we've done nothing to deserve it. Bet it made him feel good to do it as well.

Dennis

So Dennis when did you move from England to BC or Florida, how many folk on here have heard of "Gobstoppers, cricket (not a Canadian sport I would have to guess), fish & chips, soft drink and go-karts out of old prams.

CaptJ, I thought you were experienced and now you tell us you only came into this business in '99, missed out 2 years and yet.....

Next time you want to buy a condo PM me, I bought a few pre construction and sold them probably to you and was not hurt by the crash.

Why are you upset about your property taxes, you knew 2% of the purchase price goes on them and trust me most teachers are broke and yet they put their hands in their own pockets to buy supplies and regularly pay for lunches for kids who's parents forgot to send the lunch money.

You could always have a few kids and then you would realize that having to pay 2% property tax is cheap compared to paying for 4 college funds with one kid going back for 2 extra years.

I did not mean to knock your grandfather and nor was I prying into your family life but you are so quick to tell us all how great your reputation is and how clients beg for you.

I actually have the same views as you regarding the ones who will not work or prepare but there are alot of folk out there who have been hard hit and through no fault of their own.

Just a quick search comes up with "In 2011-12, 44 percent of all full-time undergraduate college students attend a four-year college that has published charges of less than $9,000 per year for tuition and fees.

At the other end of the spectrum, approximately 28 percent of full-time private nonprofit four-year college students are enrolled in institutions charging $36,000 or more yearly in tuition and fees." Throw in books and R&B and it's not hard at all to top 25K or more per year. Many, many kids are working F/T supporting themselves completely and often children while going to school. Difficult to even accumulate the low end of the spectrum working the jobs an inexperienced person can get with only a H.S. diploma. They must borrow it or fore-go the education. No other choices.
There are precious few "self-made" people around today. Just because nobody stuck cash into our hands doesn't mean we haven't been helped in thousands of ways that lightened our burden making what we did possible. Most of us were even saved from our own stupidity on more than a few occasions by people who could have just as easily turned their backs saying we deserved what happened to us. When I see a person homeless or destitute it's not hard for me to think of a hundred if not a thousand times when my life took a turn where were it not for the grace of God, good fortune or my fellow man, there I could be. If I lived to be a thousand years old I could never repay what has been given me. Little things like a cop who gave me a dollar on the streets of Greenwich Village when I was 13, convinced I'd use it for drugs, but that instead enabled me to get to a safe place. Or the mentor who should have fired me but instead said "I don't care if you make 1,000 mistakes. Just don't make the same one twice". I'm forever grateful that those people understood that they were their brother's keeper.

Experience

CaptJ,

So what is it,

"I've been in this business since around 1999, with a little hiatus in the corporate world from 2001-2002"

or,

"Managed a 63' Ocean from 18 years old to 2008."

....and being a yacht Captain is a big difference from being a Merchant Mariner

....and when you have washed that boat you go home and then what, try being a teacher marking papers and preparing for the next days class or having to work as a mentor during all of those long summer holidays to make ends meet.

....and try being a soldier away from home being shot at and 3 months on Rum Cay sounds pretty cushy to me.

....and my garbage was collected yesterday, Thanksgiving Day, by the guy who you are paying your 2% taxes to.

So there are alot of folk out there working trying to make ends meet who do not repeat and repeat how good they are or how bad it is that they are having to work on holidays or be away from family for long periods.

As for college fee's why not start off with school fee's, a school not far from Merritt's charged me $9,600 per year for a 3 yr old from 8.30am to 1.30pm per day 5 days a week. Then the high school charges $23,100 per year for a 17 yr old. Both of them have "fund raisers" where you are obliged to spend even more money.

Now add two college educations, one 4 year and the other 5 years, $47,000 per year for the two of them.

All of that and not a book bought, a night of rent paid or a spoonful of food eaten.

There are alot of Macmansions as they are commonly known down in South Florida however there are also alot more regular homes in between them and try driving west of Federal Highway and see how many "regular" homes are being fore-closed because people have lost their jobs.

You loose me a bit on the next one though.

"What on earth does me being passionate as well as good at what I do and good to my customers have to do with my grandfather or my grandfather becoming a millionaire????? In a way it does, because he is the one that really instilled in me the work ethics I have, and how to treat other people, and how to do business even though he passed over a decade ago. He was liked by everyone, and hated by no-one. But other than that, one has nothing to do with the other."

You ask me what it has to do with it and then tell me that it does and again you tell us all how good you are. ?

PS. I was also taught it was acceptable to make a mistake but never to make the same mistake twice.

PPS. I once did a 11 month trip away on a ship and never saw my family so please........