many Americans are the worst with money...this is a crisis in the US

Most likeley your are just a victim of the flawed school system in your country? Or is it just too much commercials in TV?

Read "The selfish gen" for example. One theory that does not sound much more stupid than any other theory (be it in biology or economics)

Most societies before say 2000 BC probably didn't know the concept of money (or shells or whatever). Natives in the south american rain forests didn't know the concept of money before "the white man" came. Though they knew how to make war against other tribes and even slavery wasn't uncommon to them as far as I know.
Given that we can speak of "humans" since a min of several 100.000 years, the assumption that "money" is a new concept in the history of mankind seems legit.

Which leads us directly back to the beginning of the thread: "Whatever you do: TRY TO GET MOOOOOOORE!". I guess we can forgive that lady from the article. She never had a chance, because she was indoctrinated by her society.

 

Try an active mind. It victimizes me daily.

Before 2,000 BC? Money is not mandatory for capitalism. It can be accomplished with barter, and barter and trade are as old as man.

It's not about forgiveness or not. She made a bad decision. And in fact, a decision she should have known better than to make.

It's not up to you to forgive or not. She has to live with the consequences of her actions.

Btw, you should change your name from mythbuster to "disinfoagent" since you seem inclined to perpetuate myths rather than debunk them.

 

I guess that this will depend on the definition of capitalism. Though I very much doubt, that many economists or historians would define most archaic societies as "capitalistic".

Really? The simple fact is: We don't know.
What's with her (estranged) husband? Did they buy the house together? What was their total income when they bought the house? Did she buy it alone? What was her income THEN? She bought the house for 600k? Was it a bargain? Was she able to hope to sell even higher? Did the actual breakdown of the real estate prices influence her decision not to sell the house right now?

I found this piece, but can not say, if true or not:
(http://lolegag.com/?p=570)

IF this is true, then yes, there obviously have been mistakes. Made by her AND HER HUSBAND. But the mistake was not initially buying a house for 600k.

 

What is capital? It is savings. The accumulation of wealth, either through productive gain and/or deferred consumption. Capital is then used for investment.

Anyone who works and makes $100 in a week, and only requires $80 to live, is a capitalist. They are participating in a productive gain.

Anyone who makes only $80 per week, needs $80 but reduces their consumption to $60 is a capitalist.

In order to have time to master fire, invent the wheel, construct a better hut, raise children, capitalism must come into play. We must exceed the amount of production required to get by each day.

So I don't really give a flying fart what you think historians or economists would say. Capitalism is the accumulation of capital. Of progress.

Why are we even talking about one person when an entire industry is going under, housing values are collapsing, it's getting harder to get a mortgage, the FED is making changes unprecedented in American history, the dollar is crashing, and it was caused by artificially low interest rates?

Again, this is like the earmarks argument. People want (sic) free healthcare. So they bitch and moan about earmarks and pork barrel spending. Which is a fraction of what gets spent on government shadow programs like space defense, and military weapons technology. Not to mention the cost of the war and global imperialism.

This woman is not the problem. Corporate and government collusion, to produce a fascist democracy is.

 

What's your alternative? Let several large banks go down the drain? What would happen to the economy THEN?

What's wrong with it? Though usually it's not free of course, but usually "equal regardless how much you are able to pay".

You don't want communism and you don't want imperialism/capitalism. It's a bit difficult to understand WHAT you want.

 

So your rationale is to devalue the dollar, risk hyper inflation and a total economic collapse to rescue some investment banks?

Do you have any idea what you are talking about?

Imperialism/Capitalism? Who said that? Not me. They aren't the same thing.

What I want is for you to stop acting as a disinformation agent, spreading half truths and propaganda.

Look, if you're going to keep spreading disinformation in this forum, you better bring more game than attributing false positions to me.

 

Guerilla has his hands full with this one.

Sounds like mythbuster has a very flawed view of capitalism. I personally think that capitalism works best with people with a heart, if not it can be destructive and we see some of that here in the states. That is why there has to be laws, because without them men can get so greedy they don't care if they destroy others to get what they want.

BUT - this is by far better than socialism or communism many of the reasons already outlined by Guerrilla.

Why should everyone pay for my financial mistakes or should I just quit working and collect welfare like the character in the UK with his 12 kids? The housing fall out in the USA is in part the fault of the buyers. You can't blame the banks alone or the buyers alone, they each played a part of foolishness and now everyone wants to be bailed out.

 

I wouldn't say it's wrong to invest in higher risk/greater rewards if you also balance it out with some safer investments it can be rather dangerous, if that's all the money you have saved up and the returns just don't come in.

 

Flawed logic. The money I save to buy an apple today, should buy an apple in 10 years. But it won't due to inflation (which is a scam).

People are forced into investing to keep up with inflation at the minimum, and this creates the risk and potential loss.

I've discussed this on the forum several times. It's a racket, and sound money is not an unreasonable concept. Money should be sound, and the government, which has been empowered to control monetary policy, should be responsible for maintaining it's value.

 

The American tax system punishes people for earning money and low interest rates discourage people from saving money.

If we were to do away with the federal income tax and replace it with a national sales tax, Americans would work harder, spend less, and save more.

 

The collapse will start if you allow too many investment bank to go bancrupt. There are just too many connections to other banks, investors, etc. The ECB and governments in EU have the same concerns and personally I'd think that they have much more knowledge than some unknown inet guy.
Would I be happy if the dollar gets devalued more? Not at all! I'm living in Germany and our (very much export based) economy is severely hampered by the low dollar. Several years ago, Airbus started "Dolores" ... "Dollar low rescue" which fortunately never was played out full, because the dollar regained value. Now they have "Power 8" and sell several of their plants to cut costs.
Maybe you get nice interest rates with high dollar and low inflation. Unfortunately many people will not be able to profit from it, because after loosing their good paid Jobs at Boing, Caterpillar etc, which then have to compete against much cheaper products, are "cutting costs" to stay in business.

Do you?

If you have the right of your own homebrew definitions, I probably have the same right. And putting capitalism and imperialism together is something that many experts have no problems with. Of course, you give a fart on experts.

 

You can backup your statement with statistics that show interest rates and inflations of the past 20-30 years?

 

Why waste a perfectly good fart?

You can search my old posts. I'm not going to go through this with every P&R poster who hasn't researched or discussed this before.

Or you can go pull the data yourself. IIRC, The St. Louis FED site has a great stats engine.

 

1. Capitalism and Imperialism are two wildly different concepts. You do no service to your arguments by phrasing them so poorly.

2. An Appeal to Authority is a sign of a weak mind. If you can't do any better than that, you probably shouldn't be debating with adults.

 

ad 1: Since you quote Wiki, I could do the same for capitalism and imperialism http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialismus#Gegenwart unfortunately it's german and as long as you don't understand that language it's probably useless

ad2: Quoting wiki to prove a point is not an "Appeal to Authority"? And also what is with "Many experts have a far greater knowledge of some subject than other people, and they should be trusted. However, the possibility of a mistake remains, and does happen.". Do I say the poster is 100% wrong? No. But since he (or others) can not prove their expertise on this topic I'd prefer to stick to those who have more creditbility and if a significantly large group of those have a different point of view I would follow the thesis that they are most likely not completely wrong.

 

Free markets are the way to build wealth

Capitalism works against the free markets with it's tendency to build monopolies, fix prices amd restrict the free flow of labor

 

Sounds like you caught on to the newest American weapon. The slow death of foriegn economies with our Trojan Horse of consumerism. LOL, everyone just opened the doors and let us in.

You all can just do what most American's do....

Going to hell in a bucket, but at least I'm enjoying the ride.

 

I think the guys who cant do any saving and has confusions should read that book "rich dad poor dad".

 

Thats a fine idea. But do you realize, the cost of living is so high, that 2 earners families find it hard to manage. The lecture by Elizabeth Warren on Youtube was an eye-opener. I am afraid for my country.

 

social security wt's tht?? in India we hav none & v loose job/money v r on our own.
no govt. no society. v r left to th mercy of fate. is it this bad in america or th 1st world?

at times v jus survive on bare necessities.

~the higher you are the fall gets equally hard