Not really, back home there's very little I can get without money. I was making barely enough money to make ends meet and ultimately had to choose between living with my parents and saving money on the outrageous rents in my home town or essentially forfeit any quality of life in retirement.

I'm not being loose with the definition of everything at all, in the US it's quite easy to find yourself working for decades with essentially nothing to show for it.

In that regards, China is in some way a better place to live than the US, there is no particular illusion about what one is going to have on retirement. What you have is going to be whatever cash you can save up and whatever your children can help you with. It's not as high a standard of living, but it is quite a bit more relaxing than what I was living back in the US>
Hammer meet head.

This is more or less it. The rich, at least in the US, didn't get there solely by the sweat of their own brow, they got their in large part due to the labor of others. Others who are competing in a system that's effectively fixed against them in terms of earning a living wage at this point. Wages have been largely stagnant in the US for decades even as the super wealthy have more and more wealth and the tax policies increasingly favor them.

Not to mention the regressive and incompetent corporate policies that reward screwing over employees whether or not it's a sound business decision.

Now before we bring out our Bolters and Phasers, let us take steps to not have a more violent revolution then the French Revolution, let us try to PREVENT our parents blood running down the streets of the ruins of New York.

Step 1: Ban lobbying so that it doesn't influence political decision making.
A few hundred steps later, then you can bring out your collective arsenals.

This is one of the dumbest quotes I've ever heard. It doesn't even make sense on any level.

If you kill the richest 1% of the population, that just means that the people immediately below them become the top 1%, that's how percentages work.

And the top 1% of rich people in the world have put the other 99% "in a position where humanity has no value"? What a tool.

I was thinking all Lor...

Say, where's that chubby kid...

You know what I find hilarious? In January, Apple reported $13.06bn in quarterly profits. Around the same time, Obama had his "State of the Union" address and boasted about truncating various federal agencies to "save tax payers" a total of $10bn over the next 5 years. Impressively big number here, but when you compare the two, it really puts into perspective the pathetic disparity of wealth in our society.

I'm all for hard work being rewarded, but let's face it, humans grab for a much bigger piece of the pie than they deserve when it's available to them. How many people have gone (further) into debt just to own the latest iPhone or iPad? Sure, it's their own fault for not managing their funds. However, companies aren't blameless here. They simply don't care for your well-being as long as you contribute to their quarterly profits. (And last I checked, this isn't an honorable position in society.) Ads are plastered everywhere to subconsciously get you thinking about their brand name and socially engineered to most effectively pull you into spending. It's flat out deceptive and deplorable. We speak about all the wonderful technological advancements in the past few decades, but only a few truly benefit society. Being able to watch a TV show or browse the Internet on the bus to work is hardly worth all the hype and product worshiping (let alone the price-tag).

Not only that, our wonderful government gladly shells out money to poorly managed and dying industries. Yet the average person (who is the driving force behind the entire economy) shouldn't be afforded this second chance? When you are tasked with great responsibilities, it is important that your personal punishment for failure be equally severe, since the outcome is devastating for everyone.

On the flip side, you seal your own fate when you buy into commercialism. Break everything down and you'll see that living life takes very little money or effort to do. It doesn't require a 40 hour workweek to grow enough food to live on, for example. Toss out 'wants' and only then will you see the scope of freedom you are given in this world. But by becoming a slave to yourself and your desires, you will also become a slave to others.

Yeah, it's super funny how most of the people here ignore you. You are the only guy here who makes any sense speaking here.

Maybe they are ignoring you, because they don't want to admit the fact when they're shouting "we are 99%", they should actually shout "we are 1%" . I find it super amusing, really.

I hope all of them who are so willing to say "we should take the money from 1% and redistribute it!" or "we should kill them all!" will be so willing to give their money away, or be killed, because they are actualy the wealthiest 1%, not the 99%.

Most of us, just because we have computers and internet connection, that makes us the richest 5% of the world. Many don't realize this.
Just for your notice: book was first, then was the movie, and then was the manga.

All of them share the same story, unfortunatelly. But if you buy a book or a manga, you will definitely know more about every character's backstory, motives, etc. etc.

And in the manga? Hardcore gore'y images of gruesome deaths :D

Someone makes a product people want, said people buy that product, the producer is rewarded for making his product and is either encouraged to make more of his product or hire people(creating jobs) to make it for him.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell.

This hate the rich stuff gets as old as hearing the race card being played daily in the media. Are some things not fair? Sure
Are there things we can change? Sure

I'd rather hear the arguments about closing tax loopholes and ending subsidies of companies that shouldn't get them than hear about just flat out taking the rich guys money and giving it to poor people. I think people on both sides of the issue can agree to some basic things that could help and while not immediately fixing everything it would be a start.

Otherwise we're just going to hate on each other and dig our heels in and nothing will get done at all.

Even if your "superb" idea of redistribution of goods would succeed somehow, you don't realize that when everybody's rich then nobody's rich.

If every man on a planet had 1,000,000 dollars, the bread would cost probably around 100,000. The situation where everybody has equal amount of money or other goods would last for, like, 6 months tops.

Because there are smart people (a few) and there are stupid people (a horde). Smart people begin to earn money fast (honestly, or by scam). Stupid people would only spend it, and become poor once again.

And for all of you who say "these cruel companies make money on works of the others! boo! ;(" you should shoot your head off asap.

First, nobody's stopping you from starting your own company. It's not so hard as it seems. But when you start it, you realize how much work you have to put in that company to even balance the books, not to mention making any profit.

Second, second, watch the original Wall Street movie, and you will realize how big companies worked then (like Ford company) and how they work today. Today's companies are bullies of the world mostly, because they don't have an owner. Many of US companies, banks, etc have a board of directors of 50 people, they have shareholders counting in thousands of people and nobody has more than 50% of the shares.
When this happens, nobody's really caring about the company, and it's going to bankrupt sooner or later.

Third, you must realize that not everybody is "designed" to be rich. This is how the world works since the beignning. Some people are good in what they're doing, and it's metalworking, for example, but they don't have any skills to run a metalworking company.

But I see that most of you who are talking about "evil corporations", "satanic employers" probably never had started even a lemonade stand, so they don't know what they're talking about.

Ps. Go hate corporations more by buying iPad 3 when it comes to shops.

Thank goodness there's a few of us posting here that make sense.

Let me put it to you in those terms:

Some companies offer services whose cost outweighs the value they bring, because a big chunk of the costs are borne by others (country, employee, customer, you name it).

I'm not talking about communism, but I'm talking about a saner redistribution of wealth.

Your definition of intelligence assumes that the accumulation of wealth should be someone's top priority.

I would argue that if you don't have a vision of what you want to do with the wealth, the accumulation of wealth is not that meaningful.

I'll let you know how it goes if I can get to the point where my gf has to balance books :P.

Well, when I entered the work force, I was expected to sign a waiver granting my employer ownership of any intellectual property I generated while working for them (on their time or mine) and I was expected to work a lot of unpaid overtime hours.

I did not appreciate that.

I don't really care about hardware beyond it's capacity to run software (and I only need one piece of hardware to do that).

My mobile phone is a cheapo that is over 5 years old.

I also have crap furniture and no car.

I'm a bigger consumer of intellectual property.

Screw you. Obviously, you have no idea of how hard a job is to get these days. So I'll give you a basic high school lesson in geography.

Lets start with the term developed country. A developed country typically has high levels of technology and Age pyramids that tell us the country has less younger people and more older people.

Now, we have reached a point where we have a high level of technology and too many people. The technology cuts the need for extra human workers and makes many jobs alot easier. This means that there is less jobs and more people without jobs.

And revolt has always worked in history, why wouldn't it now?

I find it funny that you dodged the fact that better technology has led to less jobs. And no, im not advocating murder, But the current leaders have shown their incapabillity to run nations.

I think you would be surprised at the lengths that people would go because they are unsatisfied with a governments performance... I can think of tonnes of civil wars that have happened because of a governments incompetence.

Also, i want a job, but if they were that easy to find there would be no complaining in the first place. Stop thinking it's lazyness, maybe you had it easier to find your job some time ago, but its not that easy now. You need to realise things change over time.

Also, what makes you think that every guy in the army is their because they respect their governments? It's just a job.

So yeah, it looks like im not the one on drugs. You're the one suffering from hallucinations of your governments excellence.