Do "bootstraps" still exist for Americans?

[grasswire]

It used to be that someone who took a heavy financial hit like losing a job, or family distress, or a natural disaster, or illness of one kind or another knew there was a natural and logical path to recovery.

Bootstraps.

A person could find another job of some kind within a day; two jobs if he/she wanted or needed. A loan from a family member whose life was not torn up. A night job waiting tables would pay for some new job training. Union jobs were available for those with trade skills. Affordable housing existed, and no one would ask for $45 "screening" fee and then turn you down.

There was a path to recovery for nearly everyone.

Where is that now? What is the path? What is the way?

And what the hell are our leaders thinking, to allow unemployment to fester and grow? Something wicked this way comes! Festering unemployment -- who does it serve? It could be turned around on a dime, if there was the will in our leadership to do so. Who do they serve? What is the end game? Where do our Congressmen think they will be in ten years?

I just want someone to tell Americans the truth. The hard truth, the whole truth. Lying to the people is a denial of the whole of our founding documents. Lying to the people is an insult to those who have shed their blood for the dream of America and liberty.

I digress. If anyone has a recommendation for a new kind of "bootstrap" path for personal recovery, let's put it down to help all those who are bewildered, stumbling, confused by today's situations.

[Hannah Bell]

1. kr.

[Starry Messenger]

2. The bootstraps were always an illusion.

They were supported and paid for by our inflicting of capitalism around the globe. Now that the moneymen are seeking greener pastures and profits, we are seeing what the rest of the world has been living like, courtesy of the US and other "prosperous" countries.

[grasswire]

3. so an "attitude adjustment" is necessary?

Someone who in other times would pull themselves up by the "bootstraps" now has to think like a third-worlder? First they have to realize that no help is coming. No solutions are available aside from food stamps.

What then? Do they turn to crime? Do they squat in abandoned housing? Do they go off the grid? Do they rig a tent in the woods somewhere?

It's pretty clear that some extended families are fragmenting. Some members find a sugar daddy and kick off the other family members who might ask for help. Those who are not physically attractive enough (or too old or poor) to do that must find another path.

[sudopod]

18. More like a "reality adjustment"

by which, i mean something of a revolutionary nature.

[Starry Messenger]

24. The only attitude adjustment will be for the so-called middle-class.

Perhaps when people see how flimsy the illusion has been all of these years for the working class and already destitute, there will be rising solidarity. People with something to lose will usually want to keep it. There need to be butts out on the streets like in Egypt.

[underpants]

12. They were a justification for executive salaries

"they made it and YOU CAN TOO!!....and if you don't it is your own damned fault"

That is the underlying theme in the whole bootstraps BS. Yes a lot of people really do move up but that is about maybe 2% and the execs rarely come from nowhere - look at W all his classmates at prep schools and Yale and Harvard ended up running things. That IS how it is. And they screwed every single thing up.





Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) was asked about what he thought about the President . "Well," he said, "I really think he shatters the myth of white supremacy once and for all."

http://marissabracke.com/quote-it-shattering-the-myth

[Horse with no Name]

34. Exactly. It made it more palatable for us

But the thing is...a FEW have risen to that. However, they are ALWAYS the ones that fall--it is never the ones that have been sitting there their entire lives.

[NNN0LHI]

4. Anyone who is bewildered, stumbling, confused by today's situations hasn't been paying attention

Don't need a PHD to figure this stuff out. Common sense dictates a country can't import more than it exports and flourish. Can't be done. I have tried explaining this concept to people for years and no one wanted to hear it because it had not effected them yet. Now it has.

Be nice if we could farm out all of our labor intensive work to other countries and exist simply by consuming. But it won't work. The numbers won't add up. That is the problem.

Lot of unemployed people sitting at home on the couch right now wondering how they got there.

Sad situation isn't it?

Don

[Populist_Prole]

11. Amazingly, regarding your 1st paragraph, I still run across people who think this is just fine

Accelerated even. Still buy the "we think, they sweat" malarkey...even as they are negatively affected by it, as though we still have yet to have the full benefit of it kick in, to prove them right. It's as though they have been such well known vocal supporters of an ideology they just can't turn tail and change their minds now. They'd rather sink and drown with a comfortable idea than swim with an ugly truth. Freaking bizarre.

[Horse with no Name]

33. Also--the false sense of nationalism that has been instilled in us from a young age

Go USA! We are #1! We are the best! The best country in the world! The best healthcare in the world!
The highest standard of living in the world!

There are many that still buy into that...just like there are many that still buy into the myth that we are supporting the rest of the world.

[MrTriumph]

5. But the Chinese are our "friends". The same shaft from Nixon to Obama

In his televised resignation, Pres. Nixon noted the Chinese need not be our enemy, but our friends.

What a rotten 37 years it has been for American workers.

For years the Chinese have manipulated their currency to destroy American manufacturing. And our politicians do nothing about it. They won't even admit there is a problem.

The betrayal of the American worker continues under Pres. Obama.

[Kievan Rus]

6. The bootstraps never existed in the first place

[OffWithTheirHeads]

7. Sorry, we used the last bootstraps to make soup.

Only thing left is to eat each other.

[grasswire]

20. I have a 26-pound tabby cat

He's looking mighty tender, with a nice stash of belly fat.

[pipi_k]

32. But there's always dog leashes, used tires, tree bark, and newspaper! n/t

[Chisox08]

8. Bootstraps!?

We don't even have the boots to have bootstraps on. Jobs are still going to India and China. We are still handing out H-1b visas like Halloween candy. unemployment is officially at 9% and it doesn't look like it is getting lower any time soon. The Republicons say jobs, jobs, jobs while they work to either destroy or move those jobs out of the country. We have a Democratic party that is either to afraid or owned by the same people that own the Republicons to do anything about it.
The top 2% is an exclusive club and you are not invited to join. As soon as we Americans realize this we can force our government to work for us instead of the Wallstreet criminals and jackasses like the Koch brothers.

[Gregorian]

9. We were growing, and there were no limits. We weren't against a wall.

We had one quarter the number of people on the planet all trying to use this one little pixel in space as their livelihood.

Like I said in another post, my father grew up in poverty, like my mother. My dad's family had to hit the streets looking for ways to eat. And yet they had a house.

Unfortunately we now have more competition, fewer resources, and a planet that is crying out that if we don't stop we're all going to be treading water soon.

And this is why I've been yelling fire for so long. No one wants to hear it. Everyone wants a family. And it's sort of a natural thing. But now we're up against a wall. A wall called reality. Reality is brutal. We have been successful in creating our own reality. Mostly for whites and people with something to start out with. But nevertheless we've made a fantastic world. Coffee, jobs, cars, heating, running water. That's not going to go on forever.

And then, I don't know what tomorrow will bring. So I've tempered my histrionics a bit.

[southernyankeebelle]

10. Bootstraps? Hell only the republicans seem to find them. But again they help each other and let you

keep the illusion you can do it too. Have you ever noticed that the rich treat each other very well. They somehow give each other taxs breaks on their purchases i.e. Newty Fruity not paying taxes on his Tiffany buy. The rest of the little people, well you know the drill.

[Brickbat]

13. Sure there are. Spaghetti dinners at the Legion to raise money for the second grader's cancer

treatment, overpriced Christmas wrapping paper sold door-to-door for the PTA fundraiser so they can buy crayons and workbooks for the classroom, a third-shift second job for the single mom who prays every night her kids don't wake up while she's at work -- you don't see that kind of bootstrapping in other countries, now do you?

[grasswire]

17. God bless America

Suckered by the snake oil salesmen and the con artists.

[Aerows]

14. They've never existed

for those that needed them. Bootstraps are things wealthy, well-educated people have if they fall in a hole. Everyone else should pretty much live in that hole, and there are things in place to keep you in that hole.

I hate to bring up something else that is glaringly obvious - but you don't get fantastically wealthy by following the law. You get it by seizing it from everyone else that you possibly can when your society has degenerated to the point of feudalism.

[Warpy]

15. Who can afford boots?

Most of the people around here are using Sharpies to disguise the fact that their shoes are completely worn out.

The truth is that Horatio Alger died many years ago, killed off by Ronald Reagan. After 8 years of Reaganism, the ladders between the classes (up and down) were largely pulled up and the only way to be rich was to have been born that way.

Now everybody who wasn't born rich has seen everything they have decline in value, moving everybody down a class. The middle class are now working class, living paycheck to paycheck. The working class are now poor, the paychecks not stretching far enough to support them. The poor are now destitute and we step over them when we walk through any city.

If we don't manage to toss out the GOP, this country is finished.

[grasswire]

16. There are a lot of destitute people still living in limbo..

Educated people who would be highly employable just as long as fifteen years ago. People with good, solid skills and a sound work ethic.

Many of them are still in housing, still can scratch for food.

But many of these in limbo are actually destitute, either leveraged to the hilt with debt, or no way to pay for retirement, or have lost equity in a home....

Not many more years until they crash, too. These people are starting to show up at the food banks, and are doubling up wherever possible in housing. If destitution means that net worth is zero, then millions and millions are destitute but just not quite in rags yet.

[backscatter712]

19. The entire metaphor is just ridiculous! And it's telling!

Put on a pair of boots with straps on them, then squat down, grab your bootstraps, and pull up.

Do you go anywhere? Yeah. You see how ridiculous "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is?"

And it's interesting that the teabaggers continue to demand we do this!

[Gemini Cat]

35. When one squats down and starts pulling those straps

they will generally fall on their ass.
Teabaggers should give it a try.

[BOG PERSON]

21. unrec for promoting defeatist thinking + nationalism

[Forkboy]

22. ...

:eyes:

[grasswire]

23. eh?

come again?

[Liberal_in_LA]

25. rec to override unreasonable unrec

[Starry Messenger]

26. Do you *ever* make sense?

[Marrah_G]

39. what a strange post

[999998th word]

27. No

[Hubert Flottz]

28. I think most of the GOPers are into leather and airport bathrooms.

Edit..."Series" leather and "Series" chains!

[HughBeaumont]

29. No chance. This is America, where you're either perfect or you're a bum.

A modern American's life, literally, cannot have ANY landmines if they even hope to retire or prosper. College is no longer affordable or feasible and corporate America is no longer time accommodating if a "Plan B" means a relatively quick career switch. We no longer have plants or factories hiring for a living wage on these shores.

The average high schooler would be wise to not only start saving regularly in his/her teens for retirement/home, but consider going into an ever-dwindling field of "recession-proof" (I put that in quotes because everyone here knows those no longer exist) careers whether they like or hate them.

What's funny is that all of the Republican laissez-failists who were fully supportive of just letting a corrupted economic system "do what it do" (a linear system which requires both infinite amounts of capital and resources to thrive in a world where neither one exists) still adamantly refuse to admit the painfully obvious flaws of unfettered capitalism, all while still blaming the victim when even one bad plan-derailing thing happens to them.

[grasswire]

30. unfortunately, it looks as if the military is the most secure career...

...for young people. The college freshman in my family is studying history and Russian at university and on the dean's list. He has a strong family history of USAF pilots. Grandfather and three uncles. Even though military service is anathema to his mother and father, it logically would provide the most prosperity for him and his family when he has one.

It used to be that military was the opportunity for poor kids who didn't do well in school.

[hifiguy]

31. "Bootstraps" haven't existed for going on thirty years

Primarily because jobs that pay a living wage have become so scarce. To argue otherwise is to ignore things that are so readily apparent they cannot be ignored.

But the plutocracy could care less. They have servants to put their boots on for them.

[taught_me_patience]

36. I thought "bootstrapping" typically referred to entrepreneurship?

And building something with "sweat equity" rather than outside money. If you want to start a company, this is the best time. Consumer spending is picking up, loans are cheap and available... and, if you get that far, venture capital is FLOWING.

[raccoon]

38. It would be easier to start a company if the US had a national health plan.

Of course, more and more people who are working for somebody else these days don't have insurance through their employers.

[grasswire]

40. are you kidding?

Loans are available and venture capital is flowing freely? For whom? People with assets and collateral? Come on! Get real!

[taught_me_patience]

42. Dead serious

My brother received a small business loan of $30k with no collateral @5% to buy a new machine.
My best friend is the CEO of a small tech company that just closed $25 million in venture cap funding.
A good friend of mine secured $200k in Angel funding for a new startup...

All of these guys bootstrapped from basically nothing.

[grasswire]

44. You must live in Atypia, then.

Send us a postcard, would ya?

[HughBeaumont]

45. "And if THEY can do it, why, ANYone can!!"

:eyes:

[taught_me_patience]

47. That's not what I said at all

I said that if you want to start a business, there is money out there, and provided three examples of people I know who have recently secured money. I also tried to explain that these guys are normal guys and the money was not "daddy's money". Of course, you read something that complete wasn't there...

:eyes:

[raccoon]

37. No. Nyet. No way, Jose. Negatory. nt

[GeorgeGist]

41. Newtonian physics does not allow one ...

to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

[DefenseLawyer]

43. Sure they do, just ask Donald Trump

Step 1: Inherit $100 million in New York real estate.
Step 2: Grab your bootstraps
Step 3: Pull!!!!!

[lonestarnot]

46. Mudflap, boot straps, what the fuck is the difference?