<p>Unfortunately I’m home because my 94 year old father is staying with us since he has no power. I want to thank you for the entertainment value of this blog. Razorshop might do well as a standup comedian.</p>
<p>“If you do not like how hedge funds are taxed, change how they are taxed, but don’t blame hedge funds for paying the game under the rules as they exist.”</p>
<p>OK…so if carried interest goes away…</p>
<p>if taxing short term trades as long term trades goes away…</p>
<p>You are ok with that if society wants these changes…</p>
<p>I don’t see too many calls for the elimination of hedge funds…</p>
<p>Volvo was so 1990’s. It’s BMW, MB’s and Range Rovers now. </p>
<p>My sister lives in one of the financial enclaves outside NYC. He ex was on Wall St. but the new hubby is “only” in advertizing so a considerable down the ladder for her - although her settlement etc., from hubby#1 definitely helped out, I’m sure she’s blown through most of that in the 5 yrs since everything was finalized. She hasn’t changed one bit in adjusting her lifestyle. Every two years they lease bigger “better” cars, she shops constantly and spends thousands and thousands on handbags, shoes and clothes, has the cleaning people 3 times a week and the gardener twice a week. She has desperately wanted to do her kitchen but, according to her, she can’t possibly do it for less than $400K! What would the neighbors think if she put in a cheapo kitchen? She spent $40K remodeling a bathroom the size of a small closet and $100K on her daughter’s wedding!</p>
<p>She doesn’t understand how we can possibly live on what my DH makes working for the State.</p>
<p>Volvos were 80s cars. The old 24*s which were seen in New England as tanks, stodgy with poor gasoline mileage. They went to the 700 series in the 90s and they were no longer classics.</p>
<p>The middle class (what’s left of it) seems to frequently be supporting the upper class to the disadvantage of the lower class. Since we seem to be so mechanized we don’t need many workers, maybe we just don’t need the lower class any more. Or the middle class? Do those groups pay enough taxes to make them worthwhile to the 1%? Do they buy enough stock for their 401Ks? How much of the population can we eliminate without negatively impacting the very wealthy?</p>
<p>cars & boring volvos etc. wealth vs spending. A million years ago in my early 20s I wanted to get a car and thought it would be sensible to buy a used car. I told my brother about my girlfriend’s used car because I thought that might be one he could help me find. It was very old but still quite comfortable and seemed to run pretty well. He explained to me the $$ value of a vintage & classic mercedes</p>
<p>So I was a decade off. ;)</p>
<p>They also were only rear wheel drive then and awful in snow.</p>
<p>We were too poor for a Volvo- we had a Subaru after the Country Squire was retired.</p>
<p>I think mini-vans, SUV’s and such kind of did in the Volvo. So did the boom-boom conspicuous consumption era!</p>
<p>Subaru was a pretty hot car recently. They topped Toyota on quality briefly.</p>
<p>Volvo did themselves in with various quality and maintenance issues and then they got bought out by Ford. Many Euro-brands had severe maintenance issues - perhaps using common components made by a third-party contributed to that. The Japanese companies, on the other hand, were moving to very low maintenance cars with high levels of quality. I think that even the US brands moved ahead of the Eurocars in quality.</p>
<p>Yes, and I when I was growing up, the wealthy families never bought new furniture. Ever. Most guys had a a couple of blazers, a suit and some khakis and a pair of black shoes and a pair of brown loafers and a couple of belts. They were likely to have gotten them from their older brother.</p>
<p>But, we are in the midwest. Even now it’s not very “conspicuous.” It’s considered tacky. Nobody gets an “obvious” car. Or whatever. The coasts seem to be a little more flamboyant about money, imho.</p>
<p>There is no question that a few people have done everything they can to get as much as they can for themselves. But, this is nothing new. The difference now isn’t in the motoves of those on wall street, the difference is in the “way” bankers get (don’t get) regulated. The Dodd-frank bill regulates small bankers and does nothing to reign in the too big to fails. Unfortunately, the average American just doesn’t understand the difference. </p>
<p>Whatever gets “done to” wall street becuase of OWS won’t be paid for by Jamie Dimon or Goldman, it will be paid for by the average guy trader, who already operates at a disadvantage becuase he can’t get his money at the fed window and isn’t going to be invited to lunch with Berneke and Geightner to plan the next year. The OWS kids are on the right track, but they don’t have enough information to recognize they are headed in the wrong direction.</p>
<p>it’s a shame.</p>
<p>True, BCE. I was thinking of the marketing appeal to families.
But our Subaru wagon does fit your arguments, too, BCe. We had ours in the early 80’s.</p>
<p>We have a fair number of 80s and 90s era Subaru wagons in our parking lot. Very popular in Vermont and that’s spread to MA and NH.</p>
<p>Its kind of funny how during the boom years no one had anything bad to say about wall street. Everyone was quite jolly about their 401k’s doubling every few years and the word regulation was only spoken in hushed tones within dark alleyways.</p>
<p>The **** hit the fan recently and everyone needs to wake up and stop this witch hunt. Once we as a country cast off this sense of entitlement and start actually working for a living we can climb out of this hole.</p>
<p>Sent from my DROIDX using CC App</p>
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<p>You should have been on the bear or gold boards back then - lots of bad stuff about Wall St there.</p>
<p>Sean, plenty of people in the financial industry had plenty of things to say about things like Greenspan having lunch with his favorite people the day before he would speak to congress, but nobody in the media had anything to say about it, and they don’t have much useful to say about it, now. Short of fomenting outrage, the media doesn’t really have much to do with the solution, since they don’t investigate these days and merely offer their boxing match version of an opinion.</p>
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I TOTALLY agree with you razor. I work with many people who live in government-sponsored projects, get welfare and food stamps, send their kids to public schools and state-supported afterschool programs, get the government to pay for their adult education, get unemployment benefits when our program is off season, and still they complain. One of the things they don’t do is pay taxes. In fact, something like 48% of all Americans don’t pay taxes on their income. Sure, everyone pays sales tax and tax on gasoline when you fill up and tax for cigarettes, but the average American’s tax on income is zilch.</p>
<p>Really limabeans, most of the ows protesters live in the projects?</p>
<p>What a bunch of crap…</p>
<p>DocT, why do you write that hedge fund managers belong in jail? Just because they make money doesn’t mean they’re dishonest.</p>
<p>dstark, I didn’t say that. I said i work with people who live in projects. (Most can’t read and aren’t aware of the ows stuff.) They not only don’t pay tax, but they do get a tremendous amount of govt sponsored provisions. </p>
<p>The ows folks, on average, make, I recall, something like $54K. While they pay taxes, but they pay less in income tax than the government expenditures they use.</p>
<p>You do realize that is a ridiculous argument? Pay less in income tax than government benefits…</p>
<p>My 84 year old dad is supposed to pay more in income taxes than his government benefits…</p>
<p>The people I see at Special Olympics are supposed to pay more in taxes than they receive in government benefits…</p>
<p>[Who</a> Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power](<a href=“http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html]Who”>Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power)</p>
<p>Check at how progressive our tax system really is…</p>
<p>I think it is figures 6 and 7…</p>
<p>And you took what razor-sharp said about OWS protesters and tied that in with people in the projects…</p>
<p>You did that…</p>