dear mr carolla:

I understand what he is saying, and aside from all the course language, he has a point.
(because youth today is far too "entitled" and he's right as to how they got that way.)

BUT

His argument falls apart because the economy has changed. If the economy was the same as it was even 20 years ago (never-mind 35-40 years ago in the 70s) and this attitude of youth existed, then I'd completely agree - but it isn't. Today's economy says I can't feed my family and own my own house, even with two full-time incomes in the household. I work damn hard, I'm not a slacker.

I may not run my own company but, my job, as it is today, and would have been 20 years ago, would have paid the bills and allowed some extra cash to take my family on a holiday once a year. My wife would have been able to stay home with the kids, at least part-time.

I bought a house. It cost me $400,000. Ten years ago, the same house was valued at $140,000-170,000.
Twenty-one years ago, when my house was built, it cost $100,000 brand new. Wages, on the other hand, haven't changed all that much. As I left high school, people with good jobs were making $19-25 an hour working at the mill. Today, the wages are much the same. No one is making 300% more for the same job they were doing 20 years ago. So why has housing gone up, why has everything gone up(fuel, food etc.)? The truth is I can't afford a $400,000 house, no regular person can, but what choice do I have, the cheapest rental I could find was $200 more than what my mortgage payment is.

It's the economy, it's the banks, It's globalization, It's International Trade, It's Corporations buying up all the little guys and then jacking up the prices, paying employees less and paying all the politicians to stay out of their way.

His analogy about seeing Mr. Rich and respecting him in the old days and slamming him today also doesn't stand. Today, very few people own their own business and are successfully wealthy. Most small businesses are barley hanging on, operating in the shadows of the companies like Wal-Mart. Most small businesses need to barrow money to set up shop. These businesses pay more tax and interest than they ever did.

In the sixty's to late eighties, both of my uncles owned their own businesses. They were very successful and made a decent living and had many employees. Life was good. That bubble popped in the late eighties to nineties not because business was decreasing but because new governments raised business and property taxes to the point that, they both had to close up their shops. Taxes more than doubled over night and the interest on banking skyrocketed.

So Adam's rant is fun. It makes a good point about entitlement and winy brats wanting reward without working for it but that's it. It doesn't explain Occupy of the financial state every one is in now.
Period.

Upvote the *WTF insanity

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Love Adam Corolla!

Been a subscriber to his podcast for years now, he's great.

I got a signed book from him and got to hang out for little bit backstage at the comedy store back in the 90's

I agree with most what he says.

Its about tax? I thought it was that the top 1% are HOLDING ONTO more than 50% of the national wealth...and doing fuck all with it. That they pay 50% of tax means absolutely nothing.

It's a logically consistent argument that Corolla makes but there is just one problem that I see with it: it's purely imaginary. It's easy to make a theory consistent when you don't have to incorporate actual details from messy reality.

Oh but how is it imaginary, I hear you Neocons asking? It's all based on a mythical group of trust fund 'self esteem' babies who are adverse to doing a day's work for a day's pay and want to be rewarded like a CEO for their entry level customer service worker position.

If you need evidence why this is so much bullshit, you really need to come out of your gated communities and maybe talk to some of the people formerly known as 'the middle class' but now more accurately referred to as 'the working poor.'

>> ^Sagemind:

I understand what he is saying, and aside from all the course language, he has a point.
(because youth today is far too "entitled" and he's right as to how they got that way.)
BUT
His argument falls apart because the economy has changed. If the economy was the same as it was even 20 years ago (never-mind 35-40 years ago in the 70s) and this attitude of youth existed, then I'd completely agree - but it isn't. Today's economy says I can't feed my family and own my own house, even with two full-time incomes in the household. I work damn hard, I'm not a slacker.
I may not run my own company but, my job, as it is today, and would have been 20 years ago, would have paid the bills and allowed some extra cash to take my family on a holiday once a year. My wife would have been able to stay home with the kids, at least part-time.
I bought a house. It cost me $400,000. Ten years ago, the same house was valued at $140,000-170,000.
Twenty-one years ago, when my house was built, it cost $100,000 brand new. Wages, on the other hand, haven't changed all that much. As I left high school, people with good jobs were making $19-25 an hour working at the mill. Today, the wages are much the same. No one is making 300% more for the same job they were doing 20 years ago. So why has housing gone up, why has everything gone up(fuel, food etc.)? The truth is I can't afford a $400,000 house, no regular person can, but what choice do I have, the cheapest rental I could find was $200 more than what my mortgage payment is.
It's the economy, it's the banks, It's globalization, It's International Trade, It's Corporations buying up all the little guys and then jacking up the prices, paying employees less and paying all the politicians to stay out of their way.
His analogy about seeing Mr. Rich and respecting him in the old days and slamming him today also doesn't stand. Today, very few people own their own business and are successfully wealthy. Most small businesses are barley hanging on, operating in the shadows of the companies like Wal-Mart. Most small businesses need to barrow money to set up shop. These businesses pay more tax and interest than they ever did.
In the sixty's to late eighties, both of my uncles owned their own businesses. They were very successful and made a decent living and had many employees. Life was good. That bubble popped in the late eighties to nineties not because business was decreasing but because new governments raised business and property taxes to the point that, they both had to close up their shops. Taxes more than doubled over night and the interest on banking skyrocketed.
So Adam's rant is fun. It makes a good point about entitlement and winy brats wanting reward without working for it but that's it. It doesn't explain Occupy of the financial state every one is in now.
Period.


we should be happy that all the increases in wage/salary/benefit that we should have been getting over the last 30yrs have been going to a small group of individuals

we should be happy that money is allowing for the degradation of rights and civil liberties

we should be happy that every noble endeavor should be stifled and made irrelevant for the sole reason of monetary gain

we should be happy that our elected officials blatantly lie to our faces, and serve only their greed, and thus the whims of those with money... and not so much individuals as much as corporate interests... corporations who while now given the same "rights" as humans, bear none of the responsibility... either to their local communities or to the nation they are now a "citizen" of

we should be happy that education is becoming something you pay off over your life as opposed to something nutured and pushed by your nation, because it's how we seize the future and progress as a society... better we become ignorant and uneducated so that we are easier to control and are reduced to grunt manual servitude to our feudal lords

we should be happy the rich get bailed out; are allowed to gamble with our money consequence free... then because of it, we lose our home and our children lose their future

better we lose our right to privacy than be subjected to invisible boogeymen
better we lose our freedom of speech than be allowed to exercise it

i honestly hope not... but I can't help feeling the road back to sanity starts with the rolling heads of politicians and bankers... and I don't mean that metaphorically

i honestly hope they have the humanity to overcome their greed... because no amount of money will overcome the fury of the masses... right now the bear is waking up... best not poke it with a stick

I've noticed that conservatives like Corolla and Victoria Jackson seem really confused about what OWS stands for - Opposition to corporate control of our democracy and the many resulting injustices it has created at home and abroad. Do you and other conservatives really not get it? Are you trying to re-characterize it as a negative in order to rationalize dismissing the movement? Or, are you just trying to be insulting? Or is it a mix of all three? Or something else? Just curious.

Downvote for holding such an arrogant position on an issue Carolla does not seem to grasp. >> ^cito:

Love Adam Corolla!
Been a subscriber to his podcast for years now, he's great.
I got a signed book from him and got to hang out for little bit backstage at the comedy store back in the 90's
I agree with most what he says.

*politics
*controversy

I think those of us that are disillusioned with the 1%'s economic narrative need to understand how the conservative people see the occupy movement.

These conservative people really do think that poor people are people who haven't worked hard enough, or haven't gone to college or haven't pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps.

So we get conservatives that blame budget shortfalls on the 'extravagant' salaries of public school teachers.
We get conservatives who think that kids going into social work- should have $40,000 in student debt.
We get conservatives who believe that $7.25 an hour is just too much to pay for back-breaking work.

really, I can testify that liberals are guilty of group-think even more than conservatives are. so in the spirit of trying to absorb the tone of this conservative vomit...
*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Thursday, December 1st, 2011 10:36am PST - promote requested by marinara.

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Pro 1% propaganda, it's the new racism.

Yes Mr. Carolla, everybody that's in a position of wealth worked their asses off for it, from ground zero, through adversity, against all odds, without springing from the shoulders of their rich parents. Please. There are entitled douchebags at each end of the scale.

With no analysis and the title, "Great Adam Carolla Rant On OWS." I can not upvote this. This is pure propaganda parroted by an idiot.

Wow, AC is so bitter. It seems that he's oblivious to the scale of inequity and its exponential growth in recent years. If he would really examine the balance of equality in the "good old days," he would realize that it was much more equitable.

Goods used to be American made and today's globalization has seen manufacturing almost disappear and replaced by outsourcing and child labour. From a purely business standpoint, this makes sense. There is no law against foreign investment, so it's not economical to be patriotic.

And here we are today, with the balance so skewed that it makes sense to pay a few hundred million to buy a senator, republican or a judge. A few years down the road, you'll be paid back by sidestepping that environmental restriction or class-action lawsuit or anything else that might hurt your business.

And if you're an investment banker or bis securities trader, you provide very little to society other than a higher tax rate that you can comfortably afford. But even then, you can weasel your way out of most of that with creative deductions and perfectly legal loopholes. Remember what Warren Buffet said about his cleaning lady? Do you think he was talking out of his ass?

sounds like he is actually talking about rich people more than everyone else. Everything he says fits with the rich who don't realize where the fuck their money comes from. The 1% haven't generally built something it is the lowest paid who actually build stuff and start new companies, etc.

There's a great interview of him by Marc Maron, which explains where he comes from. From memorry, he had a pretty deprived childhood, and his mother never wanted to work or something - it was pretty rough. I think he sees welfare as a crutch and that's all this is to it.

Doesn't make me agree with him in any way. The suggestion that the problems facing the US derive from a generation of people who were told they're too important is just silly.

As a great person once said: for every problem, there is a solution that is simple, elegant and wrong.

Adam's views are a great reflection of this.

Moving this video to chck_mate's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

*audio

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