In this linked post, JMB recounts the trip to Assissi and it's a place I never got to over there but would like to have. Now I can and you can too. Find out for yourself about this gem of a blog [and something about Assissi whilst you're there].
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
[return to assissi] ignoring carlo
[the new serfdom] fed by mother pig
... and the situation in the
Published by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), the 2004 survey points out that a significant number of people are off track with their retirement saving ... Why aren't some Americans saving at all for retirement? Is working during retirement a viable way to make ends meet? In a culture where we are constantly told to "spend, spend, spend," is it realistic to expect that people will save for retirement?
The Friends Provident survey found most people are likely to have a suffer a shortfall of around £10,000 in their pension income compared to what they needed. On average, Britons reckoned they would need between £20,000 to £24,000 each year to maintain the lifestyle they wantd in retirement. But the amount they realistically anticipated they would get was only £10,000 to £12,000.
Why?
1] The cost spiral ... including housing:
Let alone spiralling credit debt to help pay for everything.Overdependence on home equity loans and lines of credit have economists concerned that consumers are financially over-extended and ready to cut back on spending. Too many costs are gnawing away at consumers' wallets, and while the job market has improved over the past year, wages have not kept up with the cost of living.
Middle-class America also binged on equity credit [in 2005] … equity cash paid ordinary homeowners' credit card bills, college tuition and vacation expenses, among other things, says Yacik.
The rich, however, are taking borrowed cash "and using it to leverage other investments," says George Walper, president of the Spectrem Group, a Chicago-based firm that researches the affluent.
2] It's not only spiralling costs. It's also simple envy:
"It's not the mega-rich we envy, but the people with the slightly nicer house up the road," says Simon Carr, of the Independent.
... and downunder, Adele Horin, of the Melbourne Age, reported on November 30 2002:
Australians have never been richer, says the study report by the Australia Institute. Yet the majority of middle-income households believe they are doing it tough. The report's author, institute executive director Clive Hamilton, says inflated expectations, not inadequate income, are the problem.
"A large and growing proportion of the population wants to emulate the lifestyles of the rich and famous," he says. "Because they can't afford it they constantly feel deprived of the good life."
3] Children's escalating and more expensive demands:
There's a lot more to kids' marketing today than trying to keep brands relevant, hip and cool. Today's kids want two additional things from marketers: brands that are interactive and brands that are instant.
Make no mistake. The accepted wisdom a generation ago was that one saved for retirement. Now the strategy has been all but abandoned in the grapple for a comfortable upper-middle class life and to combat spiralling costs which are being generated by both consumers and credit institutions.
And in the process, men and women have become, not their own bosses, not the parents of the classic saccharine sitcom but in reality - no more than piglets feeding on the teats of a bloated financial mother pig.
Interest rates are being artificially held down and sometime soon, maybe in 2012 or thereabouts, the financial institutions are going to precipitate the crisis, alongside the new SPP and EU initiatives.
Apply this simple test. If all your debts, mortgage, car, credit, mobile phone and others were to be called in today by the institutions - would you be in the black or would you be one of the new class of serfs?
My advice to you is to get out of any form of debt to a financial institution as soon as you practicably can. Get off the grid and live within your "real" means, even though your dollar or pound is fiat money.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
[american dream] effortless well-being
Do you really think this pill is the answer?
Acomplia, the new weight-loss pill from Sanofi-Aventis, has not yet been approved in the
I say to not only Americans, on the strength of the body of medical literature, that what is needed is not a pill but:
1] Exercise! Nothing more, nothing less. Go out and do it, whether it's mall-hiking or out in the real world;
2] Eat right. Halve the portions and get off the processed;
3] Appreciate. Be satisfied and keep your ambitions within bounds;
4] Love right. Get the head straight and put the other at the centre of your world;
5] Laugh;
6] Reconnect with your Maker.
Monday, June 11, 2007
[islam] it's just a click away
How to Convert to Islam How to convert and become a Muslim with Live Help by chat www.IslamReligion.com
So go on, be a devil. Click on it, convert and let me make extraordinary wads of dough.
[stupid people] revel in their cleverness
One day she'd had enough and one of the other lecturers, whom most students liked, took me aside and asked what I'd done to anger Nina so much that she'd stormed into the staffroom, throwing her bag at a chair and starting to mouth obscenities.
She got her revenge later by demanding that I seek psychological counselling - from her [she taught psychology]. She asked why I always took a contrary position to her and tried to argue with her superior knowledge, why I had such hate in me.
Still I didn't learn.
The following year I fooled around in politics tutorials, feeling I'd pass politics easily [I'd had 90% at school]. The tutor was an entirely different kettle of fish. He never said one word but at the end of the year, asked me where my assignments were.
There weren't any. He gave me till Friday afternoon.
Suddenly I realized the pickle I was in. I begged him to let me do them in "point form" and he never replied. I spent all evening at the uni library four nights running and wrote at breakneck speed, finally finishing the last one on Friday around 3 p.m.
Still time to get them to him. He wasn't there in his room. The bstd had gone home early. Still, I left them on his desk and as there was no exam, just course work, I thought I was home and hosed.
The day of the posting of results came and in two key subjects, failure was out. One of those was politics. He'd failed me and had not even graded them, on the grounds that they didn't fulfil the instructions, as given in the faculty guidebook.
That was the day I learnt that people don't like the p--s being taken out of them. They tend to store it up and it comes out later. Mild-mannered people become quietly vindictive and bide their time.
They get you later, sometimes much later and the quiet ones who don't rant and rave are the most dangerous.