Do you owe more than $26k, not including a mortgage?

[Thorin]

Hmm, yeah, Canada went off the gold standard way back in 1931 apparently.

The global financial crisis was in very large part caused by lending money to people that wouldn't pay it back and then selling these loans as "packages" to unsuspecting investors.  If everyone who had gotten a mortgage had paid it back, it would've all worked.  But when you extend a mortgage to someone with ballooning payments that they simply can't afford (in some extreme instances, it was more than they made in a month), well, then it's all gonna crumple.  Of course, if the bank extending the loan is forced to hold the loan and retain the risk, these terrible mortgages would never have happened.

[Darren Dirt]

"Money As Debt"

a 75 minute version or sequel here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsmbWBpnCNk

HOLY CRAP just started watching it while eating and had to post this -- it simplifies/clarifies (in a headasplode kind of way) the process of getting/granting a loan -- starting at 10:00 in ... check it out, and be prepared to have your presumptions overturned about ... well, most of our day to day consumer lives...

definitely recommended viewing (and maybe discussion, with the kids etc.)




nice, troubling quote @ 26:26 in the video

"The entire world economy rests on the consumer; if he ever stops spending money he doesn't have on things he doesn't need -- we're done for."
- Bill Bonner, author, publisher and columnist on economics and money

http://paulgrignon.netfirms.com/MoneyasDebt/references.htm

[Darren Dirt]

"I can tell you somethin'. You might think I'm an idiot. My family is one of the richest families in the world. But not with money; with love, kindness, tolerance, and patience; qualities dat's worth more than money. And you can't buy dat... They taught me to treat people the way I want to be treated. They taught me to treat people for who they are, not clump 'em together 'cause we all different in our own way. Dat's the richness that I was brought up with." The taxi driver has the solution.
- a "poor" taxi driver offering up wisdom far more valuable than any stock options, in a documentary on the gap between the ultra-rich and the rest of us ... written/directed/narrated by Jamie Johnson, a 27-year-old heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune.

"The One Percent"

[Thorin]

Yah.

'cept one of my kids wants to play hockey, two want to play ringette, one wants to play soccer, and my wife wants to go camping again next year.  Oh, and the basement carpets stink from having a week's worth of soaking in water so they need replacing, and the car's making a horrible noise when we drive it.  Add on that they all need to eat and we need to heat the house and we need fresh, clean water.

So there is a requirement for money.  Sure, some of those things we could go without, but then we could all go without computers and electricity, too, and go back to cooking our meals on woodburning stoves.  And yet no one does.  Well, no one except for the weirdos that wanna live "off the grid", but even they usually have high-tech electricity capture and storage systems so they can still use lights and computers and all that.

If the taxi driver didn't need money because he's "rich", he wouldn't be driving his cab 12 to 16 hours a day.

edit: see Maszlow's hierarchy of needs.  The cabbie is talking about the Love & Belonging and Esteem layers.

[Darren Dirt]

dude, when you have no money, it is a source of stress, no argument there.

What I'm saying is that this guy "gets it" when it comes to what is really valuable. Sure he coulda done more in his life re. doing stuff / bought more stuff for his loved ones over the years with cash if he had it.

But clearly he was in a socioeconomic situation where that just wasn't gonna happen.

And maybe that was a good thing, for him.


Maybe he was was forced to come to a place of handling that poverty reality -- he coulda chosen to live in denial/anger, instead he seems to have accepted it and ended up focusing on other ways of experiencing "wealth". In human relationships and sharing of himself with others.

If the taxi driver didn't need money because he's "rich", he wouldn't be driving his cab 12 to 16 hours a day.

edit: see the (not-uncontroversial -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs#Criticisms ) Maszlow's hierarchy of needs.  The cabbie is talking about the Love & Belonging and Esteem layers.

By the looks of it, this cabbie had gotten to a place where he chose to embrace that "layer" (even if according to some "experts" it's something that has to wait until the "survival" type of needs are taken care of).


Sometimes people lose their home and all their possession in a fire. They are devastated, and it makes for a good news story. But for a lot of people, it's an eye-opener about their priorities, about where they invest their time and heart -- stuff? or people? And for some folks it never goes back to the way it was -- by their choice. (In the case of the taxi driver, it probably wasn't his choice, but no matter... whatever the reason, this guy got to a place where he could really experience a kind of fullness in his life that an awful lot of rich people never get to; just watch that "One Percent" documentary, some of the "born into wealth" people will turn your stomach when you hear what myopic viewpoints come out of their mouths [very brief soundbites can be found here.)


Jamie Johnson actually put together a pretty good film, well-balanced, no obvious pre-selected "voice" filtering every scene (Michael Moore could learn from this kid), and in the end he shares a moment of honesty and vulnerability with his dad (who is opposed to the film project the entire way through).

I for one am glad I watched it tonight -- no doubt because lately been doing a lot of reflecting on [sorry for the wording but it's true]"what really matters"[/sorry] and this kind of food for thought appeals to me more and more as my kids get older and my grave gets closer (have I mentioned that at the end of this month I am moving to be super-close to my kids, even though it's gonna cost me a bit more in rent?)

[Thorin]

Want what you have, instead of trying to have what you want.  In the end nothing really matters (we're all gonna die), but if you treat your family nice they'll treat you nice and maybe even come visit you in your old age.  That's what you're trying to say, right?

The other thing that cabbie said was don't put people into groups, but you quickly make a born-into-wealth group.  There's lots of people at every level of income that are self-centered and don't even try to make nice with their families, it's not a high-income-earner-only problem.

Two things, though.  First, I kept misreading your text because you keep using quotation marks wrong - the way you're using them makes it look like you mean the opposite of what you're writing, kind of like you're doing air-quotes.  Second, please don't quote me and then add your own text to said quote.  At that point it's not a quote anymore, it's altered text; at best paraphrased, at worst completely changed in meaning.  If you want to say Maszlow's hierarchy is controversial, do that outside of the quote since it's your words not mine.

That said, it sounds like a good film and I am somewhat surprised that a man about to inherit a large fortune has the ability to see and show the world from a poor man's point of view.  Poor being relative to the country said man lives in, of course.

[Darren Dirt]

That said, it sounds like a good film and I am somewhat surprised that a man about to inherit a large fortune has the ability to see and show the world from a poor man's point of view.  Poor being relative to the country said man lives in, of course.

yeah, it's a pretty solid film on its own, even more impressive that it's basically just him and his co-writer who were behind it (and a camera man or two) ... but his life path is fascinating, it shows that being born into wealth (fact, not "category" ) can be utilized either as a blessing (Jamie, used his name recognition to get access to a lot of hard-to-reach people, for this documentary as well as his previous one called "Born Rich"), or it can be a "Golden Handcuffs" burden/curse (his later sister/cousin -- Wikipedia is unclear on their exact relation -- is Casey Johnson.)


and I was actually saying not "then my kids will want to see me in my old age" but rather "establishing genuine, deep relationships with fellow human beings > building a large bank account just for the sake of accumulating material wealth or lots of zeros". Most people will pay lip service to that noble-sounding ideal, but their actions tend to show an attitude towards money that is (as Warren Buffet's grand-daughter in the film points out) based on fear... to the detriment of their human relationships. (imo that's what the bible was talking about "the root of all [sorts of] evil", meaning when you put greed/moneylust in a higher priority than the people in your life -- instead of utilizing it to improve the quality of people's lives -- then you're on the wrong path).



ps: sorry about the "quotes", most people expect them to be used for irony, but they can also be used for "emphasis". Ah the internet, "advanced" technology except when it comes to literary clarity

[Thorin]

No, quotes can't be used for emphasis because it creates an ambiguous, nigh-unparsable piece of text.  Readers will try to figure out what's so ironic or what alternate usage of the word the writer meant, much as I was late last evening reading your post.  Why not just italicize, bold, and/or underline the emphasized word?  Quotation marks mean the text is a direct, verbatim quote of someone else's text, or the words quoted are being used in an ironic manner, or the words quoted are being used differently than what the reader would reasonably expect them to be used as.

Let me give you two examples:

What I'm saying is that this guy "gets it" when it comes to what is really valuable.

If the quotation marks mean irony, you're saying he doesn't get it.  If the quotation marks mean alternate usage, the alternate usage is unclear.  If the quotation marks mean emphasis, you're saying he gets it even more than most people.  Throwing in that third (incorrect) usage of quotation marks makes this sentence ambiguous and unparsable on its own.  Luckily previous posts have indicated the line of thinking and therefore the meaning of this sentence can be assumed to be that he gets it even more than most people.  Switch to italics, and the sentence is parsable without resorting to previous posts.

By the looks of it, this cabbie had gotten to a place where he chose to embrace that "layer" (even if according to some "experts" it's something that has to wait until the "survival" type of needs are taken care of).

I tried counting the possible ways this could be parsed (and thus interpreted) if quotation marks are used for either irony or emphasis.  For simplicity, I ignored their use for alternate meanings.  I came up with eight different variations this sentence could be parsed: irony/irony/irony, irony/irony/emphasis, irony/emphasis/irony, irony/emphasis/emphasis, emphasis/irony/irony, emphasis/irony/emphasis, emphasis/emphasis/irony, emphasis/emphasis/emphasis.  Indicate emphasis using italicization, and suddenly there's only one way to parse the sentence.  Seriously, reading and re-reading this sentence and the surrounding text and adding in what I've encountered as your general world view, I cannot tell whether you mean the experts are not really experts or whether you mean to emphasize that they are experts, nor can I tell whether you mean they're not really survival needs or whether you mean to emphasize that they are survival needs.

And at eleven at night, as I was trying to properly read your post to understand what you were saying so that I could coherently reply, this was just hurting my head.

But if I'm gonna criticize I should do so constructively; no point in complaining if I can't provide a solution.  So, if you use the plaintext posting method, you can type [ i ] (no spaces) at the start of what you want to emphasize and [ /i ] (again, no spaces) at the end.  Or, if you use the WYSIWYG interface, I'm pretty sure you can highlight the text and press Ctrl+I.  Or if that's too much work, put an underscore wherever you're putting quotation marks for emphasis.  Yes, I know, using an underscore for emphasis is not in any proper style guide; however, the underscore at the start and end of a word or phrase has no other meaning and therefore does not make the sentence ambiguous and unparsable.

[Darren Dirt]

w.

t.

f.



I'm tired of being tired of this.

Someone needs to lighten up.

Maybe it's me, I'll take a break and see if that's the case.

[Tom]

w.

t.

f.



I'm tired of being tired of this.

Someone needs to lighten up.

Maybe it's me, I'll take a break and see if that's the case.

I have to admit it confuses me as well when you use quotes for emphasis. most of the time I try to pretend they aren't there, since the post doesn't make much sense if they aren't meant as air quotes.

[Mr. Analog]

It's just confusing all around. It's difficult to get the intended inflection when the punctuation is used in an ambiguous way.

I really like Edmonton vs I really like Edmonton vs I "really" like Edmonton

World o' Difference

I think the other thing to avoid is using platitudes, because let's face it, we have a bunch of borderline OCD programmers here and very often sentiment gets dumped for logic (particularly if people are grumpy).

The old classic "All you need is love" vs "no you need food and water, duh" type crap that does nothing but push each others buttons.

In the mean time I'll try to sound less arrogant

[Lazybones]

Now that we are nitpicking off topic as usual, i will fist stay it doesn't bother me, I ignore the quotes since all the other formatting tends to be inconsistent anyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark
In English writing, quotation marks or inverted commas (informally referred to as quotes or speech marks)[1] are punctuation marks surrounding a quotation, direct speech, or a literal title or name. Quotation marks can also be used to indicate a different meaning of a word or phrase than the one typically associated with it and are often used to express irony. Quotation marks are sometimes used to provide emphasis, although this is usually considered incorrect

So some people use it as a practice but it is not formally correct....

[Tom]

It's just confusing all around. It's difficult to get the intended inflection when the punctuation is used in an ambiguous way.

I really like Edmonton vs I really like Edmonton vs I "really" like Edmonton

World o' Difference

I think the other thing to avoid is using platitudes, because let's face it, we have a bunch of borderline OCD programmers here and very often sentiment gets dumped for logic (particularly if people are grumpy).

The old classic "All you need is love" vs "no you need food and water, duh" type crap that does nothing but push each others buttons.

In the mean time I'll try to sound less arrogant

Heh. I have this thing. Where my brain immediately tries to argue with whatever someone else is saying, even if I agree with them. It can be hard to resist :-x Sometimes I can't help being contrary. Maybe thats my OCD Programmer personality coming out, I dunno. Of course I grew up with parents and siblings that did nothing but argue till blue in the face, and you could never ever prove my mom wrong, even if you were right. So yeah.

[Mr. Analog]

Exactly, I find people sometimes get really contrary as well (myself included).

Some days we're looking for a fight heh

[Thorin]

I think the other thing to avoid is using platitudes, because let's face it, we have a bunch of borderline OCD programmers here and very often sentiment gets dumped for logic (particularly if people are grumpy).

Okay, this is a very valid point.  Also, some of us aren't borderline OCD - we're full-on OCD.  All I have to do is look in the mirror to see that.

So some people use it as a practice but it is not formally correct....

There's lots of examples of people using punctuation incorrectly; I'm sure people can find examples of me doing so as well.  That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to present our ideas in unambiguous language, which was really what I was whining about here.

You see, at first I read the bit about the "experts" and thought Darren was implying they're not experts.  I started typing up a reply basically defending the human psychology chops of those who have debated Maszlow's hierarchy.  Then I re-read Darren's post and thought that he might be emphasizing that they are experts rather than implying ironically that they are not.  Which would've made my reply rather foolish, and over the last twelve years Darren and I have had several run-ins that can be attributed to misunderstandings (I'd say the Sony Store thread was pretty famous?  At the time I didn't realize Darren was making up a story and responded rather harshly to what I thought he had really said at a Sony store).

So there I was, not sure how to reply because I actually couldn't figure out from the post and the rest of the thread what was really meant and how to respond.

Some days we're looking for a fight heh

Thing is, I was trying to understand what Darren posted so that I could respond to it without a big misunderstanding and an ensuing fight.  Didn't turn out that way, though