Greed is so awesome!

[JFN1]

Look what it has done for America!

From the AP:

The calculus of living paycheck to paycheck in America is getting harder.

What used to last four days might last half that long now. Pay the gas bill, but skip breakfast. Eat less for lunch so the kids can have a healthy dinner.

Across the nation, Americans are increasingly unable to stretch their dollars to the next payday as they juggle higher rent, food and energy bills. It's starting to affect middle-income working families as well as the poor, and has reached the point of affecting day-to-day calculations of merchants like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., 7-Eleven Inc. and Family Dollar Stores Inc.

Because that's what the story should devolve into - CORPORATE CONCERNS. Screw poor Americans - let's worry about the corporations and how they are faring. The story see-saws back and forth, and seems to use the plight of poor Americans to prop up corporate strategies as they adjust to a poorer American consumer.

Greed is so fucking awesome.

Isn't it?

[Fovea]

1. Those poor CEO's!!!!!111!

Let's hold a bake sale.
We can start by baking Jabba, the Exxon.

[Stephanie]

2. I have always wondered what those CEO's think is going to happen.

After they bankrupt American consumers by sending their jobs overseas.

[JFN1]

3. Which isn't working out so well now

It turns out, as they raped our economy and Treasury, and screwed American workers out of good paying jobs in the name of PROFIT, they also raped the value of the dollar (the rest of the world isn't stupid), and thus the cost of doing business overseas is going through the roof (and also why oil is $90 a barrel).

Great plan, you greedy fucks.

[nightrider767]

5. Exactly

When they break the American back, it'll be in the form of Middle class melt-down. It's the middle class that drive this economy, and when that falls, so does everything else.

There are only so many stones you can remove from the levi, before the son of a bitch breaches...

[SoCalDem]

4. I used to do payroll for a place that employed about 35 people

and when i worked for a grocery store, I saw many paychecks every day (as they were cashed, and later processed in the office for our daily deposit)..

There are/were heads of households, whose checks were in the $350.00 and below.. Whatever these folks "made" pre-tax is irrelevant, since they only have available to them, the money that's on their check.
At the 35-employess place, the checks were more likely to be in the $175-$250 range..

Do the math..

Try to pay for daycare, auto expenses, rent, utilities, food, car insurance, and all the other things that crop up daily...on those wages.. The problem is part-time, barely-over-minimum wages.
When people have to pile extra jobs onto their shoulders, they only ADD to their commuting expenses and daycare expenses, so their net benefir is pretty small.. These "on the edge" people just keep doing with less and less until they just give up..

[JFN1]

6. I know

Does no business model out there take into account the longer view of things? How their actions today will affect their ability to do business five years from now?

Hell no.

instead they spend the American consumer and economy like its just another resource to be exploited, and no the entire POINT of this little exercise in capitalism...