The Elite: It's a Big Club and You're Not in it

Monkeyface said:
You mostly pay for the 24/7 concierge service and show off factor.
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Well, the concierge service is only for a year, then you pay 3K annually for it. So really, it's mostly about the show off factor. Plus it complements a bulletproof Mercedes AMG G Wagon quite well.
 
You'll enjoy this one OfficePants OfficePants

http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/22/7434841/comcast-priority-assistance-cards-washington-elite

Comcast hands out 'priority assistance' cards to Washington power players
NBC's parent company takes a very hands-on approach


  • The controversial Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger hinges on regulatory approval from the FCC and the Department of Justice, both of which are based in Washington, DC. It will come as no surprise that Comcast is trying to ingratiate itself to the DC elite by passing out cards with "priority assistance" codes to select staffers, journalists, and other influential citizens of the nation's capital, which can help expedite service for the select few who posses the cards.

    In an excellent report by Luke Mullins of the Washingtonian detailing how former Meet The Press moderator David Gregory lost his job, Mullins notes how Comcast is a much more hands-on corporate parent for NBC than GE ever was. Comcast executives show up to Washington events — something that GE executives rarely did — including the White House Correspondents' Dinner, where Comcast execs "mingled with lawmakers, Capitol Hill aides, and media muckety-mucks."

    Comcast also had an even more personal way of sucking up to Washington. Its government-affairs team carried around "We’ll make it right" cards stamped with "priority assistance" codes for fast-tracking help and handed them out to congressional staffers, journalists, and other influential Washingtonians who complained about their service.

    A Comcast spokeswoman says this practice isn’t exclusive to DC; every Comcast employee receives the cards, which they can distribute to any customer with cable or internet trouble. Nevertheless, efforts like this one have surely helped Comcast boost its standing inside the Beltway and improve its chances of winning regulatory approval for its next big conquest: merging with the second-largest cable provider in the country, Time Warner Cable.

    As The Verge reported back in August, Comcast has been passing out these cards for years, and the company is using them to target Washington power players, perhaps in the hopes that it will shift negative opinions of the company and its $45 billion merger with Time Warner Cable that will create an even larger conglomerate which will supply internet access to more than a third of US broadband subscribers.

    Mullins goes on to state that Comcast exercising its control over Meet The Press may be for more than just higher ratings, pointing toward approval for the Time Warner Cable merger:

    All Comcast needs, once again, is Washington’s blessing. Which is why Meet the Press, the company’s marquee Beltway property, is not just another show.

    The FCC's review of the merger is currently scheduled to wrap up in early 2015.
 
Indisputably elite
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/w...ign-robert-menendez-hillary-clinton.html?_r=0
MIAMI — The Obama administration overturned a ban preventing a wealthy, politically connected Ecuadorean woman from entering the United States after her family gave tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic campaigns, according to finance records and government officials.

The woman, Estefanía Isaías, had been barred from coming to the United States after being caught fraudulently obtaining visas for her maids. But the ban was lifted at the request of the State Department under former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton so that Ms. Isaías could work for an Obama fund-raiser with close ties to the administration.

It was one of several favorable decisions the Obama administration made in recent years involving the Isaías family, which the government of Ecuador accuses of buying protection from Washington and living comfortably in Miami off the profits of a looted bank in Ecuador.

The family, which has been investigated by federal law enforcement agencies on suspicion of money laundering and immigration fraud, has made hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions to American political campaigns in recent years. During that time, it has repeatedly received favorable treatment from the highest levels of the American government, including from New Jersey’s senior senator and the State Department.

The Obama administration has allowed the family’s patriarchs, Roberto and William Isaías, to remain in the United States, refusing to extradite them to Ecuador.
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doghouse said:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...d1c-11e4-a085-34e9b9f09a58_story.html?hpid=z2
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http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs...fused-about-the-economy-everyone-else-is-also

Robert Samuelson Thinks That Because He Is Confused About the Economy, Everyone Else Is Also

Monday, 29 December 2014 06:27

Robert Samuelson has a really serious problem of projecting his own conceptual confusions on others. In his column this morning he repeatedly uses "we" when he actually means "I."

"We overestimated our ability to control the economic environment. What we have learned is that outside events — here, the financial crisis and Great Recession — can overwhelm collective protections and discredit conventional beliefs. The economy is more random, unstable and insecure than we imagined. It is less susceptible to policy engineering."

Of course "we" did not overestimate the government's ability to control the economy. Some of us were completely aware of the dangers posed by the housing bubble and the amount of stimulus that would be needed to bring the economy back to full employment. As we pointed out, the Fed should have taken steps to burst the housing bubble, starting with public warnings like the ones that Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen made last summer in reference to junk bonds and social media company stocks. The Fed also could have used its regulatory power to crack down on fraudulent mortgages that were being securitized in huge numbers.

This is not the only error in Samuelson's piece. He also mistaken argues that because most government benefits go to the poor and middle class:

"it is not possible to pretend that the whole superstructure of government has somehow been turned against the middle class. This is not just a distortion of reality; it is the converse of reality."

In fact the government has structured the market over the last three decades in ways that cause most income to flow upward. For example itss trade deals have been focused on putting less educated workers in direct competition with the lowest paid workers in the world. This has the predicted and actual effect of driving down their wages. At the same time, highly paid professionals, like doctors and lawyers, are largely protected from international competition. The government has also had longer and stronger patent protection, causing middle class people and the government to pay hundreds of billions more for prescription drugs than would be the case in a free market. The benefits from these forms of protectionism disproportionately go to the wealthy.

The government also has adopted more anti-union policies in the last three decades, substantially reducing the ability of workers to organize effective unions. It also gives huge subsidies to the high six and seven figure salaries of top officials at non-profits like the Gates Foundation.

And the government gives free too big to fail insurance and special low tax status to the financial industry. It also gives them special exemption from criminal law, making Samuelson's comment:

"The fact that the upper classes can better shield themselves against its [the economy's] upsets naturally breeds resentment."

Of course the public is angry because the upper class were able to use their political and economic power to not only gain the huge subsidies in the form of below market loans from the Fed and Treasury, they were also able to shield themselves from criminal prosecution for fraudulent activity in the housing bubble. This fact does breed resentment.
 
Samuelson is a much more informed commentator, and there are about 10 factual errors in that article you posted.

Also, you are squashing my fun.
 
doghouse said:
Ha, no.

Samuelson is very good though. Only the die hard partisan warriors on either side would dispute that.
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I really couldn't give much of a shit either way but he seems like a pretty big putz. Almost all of the WaPo op-ed writers do. That paper's really gone to shit.
 
Rambo said:
I really couldn't give much of a shit either way but he seems like a pretty big putz. Almost all of the WaPo op-ed writers do. That paper's really gone to shit.
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Disagree. It's actually gotten much better recently. I have been disappointed in the New York Times, which has gone off a cliff.

Samuelson is probably the most non partisan, data driven guy out there. So invariably every partisan hates him.
 
Rambo said:
Actual information like Robert Samuelsson uses actual information?
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Seriously, go read the just the article you posted in this thread. If you can't pick out several logical errors and misrepresentations then I don't really know what to say. It's straight hack journalism drivel.
 
doghouse said:
That's the point, he really just gives you the data and says here are the numbers. Pretty much the antithesis of Faux News.
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doghouse said:
Seriously, go read the just the article you posted in this thread. If you can't pick out several logical errors and misrepresentations then I don't really know what to say. It's straight hack journalism drivel.
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Ok then.

Meanwhile, government raises most of its taxes from the upper middle class and the wealthy. In 2011, the richest 1 percent of Americans paid 24 percent of all federal taxes (income, payroll and excise) and the richest 20 percent, including the top 1 percent, paid 69 percent of taxes, says the Congressional Budget Office.
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How much income do the 1% earn vs the rest? Wouldn't that be a critical point? Income disparity is completely ignored... wonder why?

It is possible to argue that, reflecting the growing inequality of market incomes, taxes on the rich and affluent should be higher or that middle-class subsidies should be more generous. It’s also possible to complain that some programs aimed at helping the poor and middle class have gone awry: College student loans, now worth about $1.1 trillion and facing 11 percent delinquency, are a current popular example. These are legitimate views, as are (of course) the opposing positions. They’re the stuff of responsible debate.
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So where is his debate point? What does it matter to throw it out there and do nothing with it?


But if you accept these numbers — which I have cited many times — it is not possible to pretend that the whole superstructure of government has somehow been turned against the middle class. This is not just a distortion of reality; it is the converse of reality.
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Red herring. Superstructure is built to favor corporations.

Likewise, the financial crisis and Great Recession are typically blamed on the miscalculations and greed of financial institutions and their overlords. There is much evidence for this, but it ignores the deeper cause: an intellectual, political and social climate that legitimized lax lending policies in the name of promoting middle-class well-being. This was reinforced by a parallel conceit (which now seems foolish) that our enhanced economic understanding enabled us to enjoy prolonged expansions and brief recessions.
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Why? Because we don't educate kids on proper financial responsibility (watch that Carlin vid again). And another red herring: this lax lending was made to benefit the elite... how many elite got foreclosed on? An educated consumer is exactly what the elite does not want.

What the middle class faces today is a crisis of faith. Being middle class is more than attaining some threshold income. It also involves embracing a set of beliefs that, unfortunately, have been severely shaken.
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Yes, because the system is rigged.

Middle-class Americans believe in opportunity, stability, reward for effort, a brighter future and the ability to control their lives, as sociologist Herbert Gans showed in his 1988 book “Middle American Individualism.” Big government and big companies are distrusted, because they might impose their own imperatives on individuals’ personal preferences. But government is also expected to provide economic security — a contradiction that’s widely accepted.

The individualism that Gans described endures. A 2013 poll by The Post and the Miller Center at the University of Virginia asked respondents what values define the “American Dream.” The top response (75 percent) was “to have freedom of choice in how to live one’s life,” followed closely (68 percent) by “to be rewarded for hard work.” The trouble is that these hopes seem increasingly at odds with experience.

The great middle-class fear today is that the connection between personal aspirations and societal opportunities is breaking down. Gallup periodically asks about opportunity in the United States. In 1998, 81 percent of respondents found “plenty of opportunity” and only 17 percent judged “not much.” By late 2013, the gap was 52 percent to 43 percent. In a 2014 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, only 21 percent of respondents believed their children would live better than they have, down from 50 percent in 1990. (All these figures come from “Is the American Dream Alive?” a report recently published by the American Enterprise Institute.)
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Has broken down. That gap is an accurate representation. Juxtapose wealth disparity and cost of living against that graph and you'll see a clear match in trends. It's easy to make an argument viable when you cherry pick information suitable to make it.

We overestimated our ability to control the economic environment. What we have learned is that outside events — here, the financial crisis and Great Recession — can overwhelm collective protections and discredit conventional beliefs. The economy is more random, unstable and insecure than we imagined. It is less susceptible to policy engineering. The fact that the upper classes can better shield themselves against its upsets naturally breeds resentment.
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Perhaps. But keep flooding the country with H1B visas to steal what good paying jobs are left and you'll fuck your own destiny, all randomness aside. You can live with randomness, but stupid policies designed to reward the political contributions of facebook, google, and microsoft at the expense of college grads with computer science degrees is not helping your own people.

The other stupidity is this idea that the elite "shield themselves better". Isn't that just code for "rig the system so they are protected"? That's the crux. The resentment is growing because the game is rigged.

The middle class is thinning. Belonging is a matter of self-identity, and fewer Americans buy into its defining presumptions. Whether an improved recovery begins to reverse these attitudes and restore traditional beliefs and confidence is a crucial question for 2015. But repairing the middle class won’t be easy, because it’s a matter of psychology as much as economics.
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If the elite believe the middle class needs repair, they'll provide the illusion for us. Otherwise, keep bending over everyone and wait in line on black friday.
 
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doghouse said:
Seriously, go read the just the article you posted in this thread. If you can't pick out several logical errors and misrepresentations then I don't really know what to say. It's straight hack journalism drivel.
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Well, Baker isn't actually a journalist. He's one of the heads of CEPR in Washington. He's as much of an economist as Samulesson. As for logical errors, he's literally pointing out logical fallacies in Samuelsson's article, so I don't exactly know how to counter a "my guy is right and your guy is wrong" statement.
 
Rambo said:
Well, Baker isn't actually a journalist. He's one of the heads of CEPR in Washington. He's as much of an economist as Samulesson. As for logical errors, he's literally pointing out logical fallacies in Samuelsson's article, so I don't exactly know how to counter a "my guy is right and your guy is wrong" statement.
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Because if you read it critically you would see that his critique are actually the errors, and Samueson's data is correct. He's making several strawman arguments. It's hack journalism.
 
doghouse said:
Reading comprehension. Go follow conversation again and see if you still think that's the article I am referring to.
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All that shit got posted after I started picking the one you posted apart. I edited it to include that comment you made, and it got out of context. This aside, any comment about the issues with the article you posted?
 
doghouse said:
Because if you read it critically you would see that his critique are actually the errors, and Samueson's data is correct. He's making several strawman arguments. It's hack journalism.
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My critical thinking hat is in the shop (excess sweat caused the brow to shrivel) at the moment so help me out here - where in the article is there a strawman argument? He is literally taking Samuelsson's talking points and shooting them down.
 
OfficePants said:
All that shit got posted after I started picking the one you posted apart. I edited it to include that comment you made, and it got out of context. This aside, any comment about the issues with the article you posted?
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Besides you are still unable to define this mythical "they"? Not really. I mean, I could toss out the obvious stuff about how silly it is to assert immigrants are "stealing" jobs or the superstructure of government does go to the middle class and you have confused it with the superstructure of the private sector, but until you realize there is no "they" only 330 or so million individuals, then there really isn't a point.
 
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