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Soy Adrián

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    So you would be happy to be represented by say a 29 year old who had a career experience of doing a paper round, having a Saturday job, going to university, joining central office straight from university, writing a few speeches for a minister then being fast tracked into parliament?

     

    Whatever floats your boat I guess

    If the constituency next door is Dennis Skinner's then yes.

    Politicians get everything for free on expenses near enough and largely got into politics by having the right connections so politicians didn't have to sweat and strive to get what they have earned, the consultancies and directorships they have too are largely due to being politicians

    Said like someone who evidently knows no one in politics (who's an establishment stooge now Tirren :basil:)

    Also looks like 'The Catalyst' will continue to be Linkin Park's lowest peaking lead single as 'A LIGHT THAT NEVER COMES' should easily beat #40 this week. Seems to be holding up pretty well so far, could this actually be a biggish hit for them?

    A shame since it's one of their best, and had it been released OA/OS it would have probably done as well as "Burn It Down".

     

    The new one sounds a bit tacky for me but it's always nice to have them back in the charts.

    The people I admire are those that create something from nothing, I have no time for CEO's of utility or train companies, just glorified bean counters but I have nothing but admiration for someone that creates a business out of nothing and takes risks to do it

    In which case, none of what the article said should be of merit to you. I'm sure that the "glorified bean counters" account for the vast majority of the 1%.

    All of this is on the assumption that the money made from private enterprise trickles down to the majority, which it unequivocally doesn't. People aren't rewarded for making profits, they're rewarded on their position in the company hierarchy and can be given millions in bonus money when they lose billions.

     

    Since the money is never seen by the majority, a reward for private enterprise is a reward for selfishness.

    Posted

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswange...-back-to-the-1/

     

    Give Back? Yes, It's Time For The 99% To Give Back To The 1%

     

    It’s time to gore another collectivist sacred cow. This time it’s the popular idea that the successful are obliged to “give back to the community.” That oft-heard claim assumes that the wealth of high-earners is taken away from “the community.” And beneath that lies the perverted Marxist notion that wealth is accumulated by “exploiting” people, not by creating value–as if Henry Ford was not necessary for Fords to roll off the (non-existent) assembly lines and Steve Jobs was not necessary for iPhones and iPads to spring into existence.

     

    Let’s begin by stripping away the collectivism. “The community” never gave anyone anything. The “community,” the “society,” the “nation” is just a number of interacting individuals, not a mystical entity floating in a cloud above them. And when some individual person–a parent, a teacher, a customer–”gives” something to someone else, it is not an act of charity, but a trade for value received in return.

     

    It was from love – not charity–that your mother fed you, bought clothes for you, paid for your education, gave you presents on your birthday. It was for value received that your teachers worked day in and day out to instruct you. In commercial transactions, customers buy a product not to provide alms to the business, but because they want the product or service–want it for their own personal benefit and enjoyment. And most of the time they get it, which is why they choose to continue patronizing the same businesses.

     

    All proper human interactions are win-win; that’s why the parties decide to engage in them. It’s not the Henry Fords and Steve Jobs who exploit people. It’s the Al Capones and Bernie Madoffs. Voluntary trade, without force or fraud, is the exchange of value for value, to mutual benefit. In trade, both parties gain.

     

    Each particular individual in the community who contributed to a man’s rise to wealth was paid at the time–either materially or, as in the case of parents and friends, spiritually. There is no debt to discharge. There is nothing to give back, because there was nothing taken away.

     

    Well, maybe there is–in the other direction. The shoe is on the other foot. It is “the community” that should give back to the wealth-creators. It turns out that the 99% get far more benefit from the 1% than vice-versa. Ayn Rand developed the idea of “the pyramid of ability,” which John Galt sets forth in Atlas Shrugged:

     

    When you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you.

     

    When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making . . .

     

    In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns. But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability. The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the ‘competition’ between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of ‘exploitation’ for which you have damned the strong.

     

    For their enormous contributions to our standard of living, the high-earners should be thanked and publicly honored. We are in their debt.

     

    Here’s a modest proposal. Anyone who earns a million dollars or more should be exempt from all income taxes. Yes, it’s too little. And the real issue is not financial, but moral. So to augment the tax-exemption, in an annual public ceremony, the year’s top earner should be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

     

    Imagine the effect on our culture, particularly on the young, if the kind of fame and adulation bathing Lady Gaga attached to the more notable achievements of say, Warren Buffett. Or if the moral praise showered on Mother Teresa went to someone like Lloyd Blankfein, who, in guiding Goldman Sachs toward billions in profits, has done infinitely more for mankind. (Since profit is the market value of the product minus the market value of factors used, profit represents the value created.)

     

    Instead, we live in a culture where Goldman Sachs is smeared as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” That’s for the sin of successful investing, channeling savings to their most productive uses, instead of wasting them on government boondoggles like Solyndra and bridges to nowhere.

     

    There is indeed a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity: the Internal Revenue Service. And, at a deeper level, it is the monstrous perversion of justice that makes the IRS possible: an envy-ridden moral code that damns success, profit, and earning money in voluntary exchange.

     

    An end must be put to the inhuman practice of draining the productive to subsidize the unproductive. An end must be put to the primordial notion that one’s life belongs to the tribe, to “the community,” and that the superlative wealth-creators must do penance for the sin of creating value.

     

    And Ayn Rand is just the lady who can do it.

     

    I'm sure Craig agrees wholeheartedly. See what's currently the first comment for my opinion summarised better than I can be bothered to.

    It's all down to the momentum (and I'd have liked Shot At The Night to have been released straight away, but then it runs the risk of flopping and putting the album in jeopardy) but I can see this doing well. A Killers GH has been talked about for years as a potentially good seller - I'd have liked them to wait another album or at least utilise Sawdust but it has every chance.

    I listened to it late last evening and it didn't impress me AT ALL. Where are the CHOONS+1/2 like Closer, On Call, Use Somebody or The Face?! :(

    The Face? Really?

     

    I kind of like the fact they've stopped trying to recreate Closer for every album opener, even though I liked The End. On Call remains my favourite of theirs and there's nothing on that level here but it sounds like a career saver to me. Good, solid stuff and Wait For Me remains gorgeous.

    PLEASE NO. Ronan should stay on whatever Australian one it is he's on (and doing terribly at) x

     

    Marvin Humes I can imagine would be a great co-host for Emma. More relevant than his Mrs :heehee:

    I didn't even know he was doing something else.

     

    Assuming they're going for a man, they'll want someone to bring in the teenage girl viewers (I'm assuming that was the idea with Danny?) so he'd make sense. Plus he's angled a bit more towards the Radio 2 audience they were shooting for when they were thinking about Will Young.