RadioFreeLiberal.com

Take a look at the savings rate of the U.S. versus other countries. The U.S. has a personal savings rate of 3.7% as opposed to Norway's 19.2%. How do other countries compare"
Sweden - 12.4%
Switzerland - 13.3%
Denmark - 12.2%
Germany - 10.1%

There are many countries that have a savings rate lower than the U.S. but many of the European countries that you think are too liberal actually do better than the U.S. in many areas.
OECD.org



Yet, in the past you've said you drove as a union driver so you accepted the liberal mindset?


What a bunch of 100% USDA prime crap!. Not everyone can or wants to be a business owner. Someone has to be the employee to service your truck, prepare the shipments you pick up, stock the shelves at the supermarket, etc. so get off your high horse thinking you're something special; you're not.


Yet, when you're in your "golden years" you're going to be collecting Social Security and getting your healthcare paid by Medicare all courtesy of that "liberal mindset" you abhor so much, you hypocrite.

BTW, Norway was ranked as the happiest country in the world followed by Denmark, Iceland, and Switzerland. The U.S. didn't make the top 10 list coming in 14th place dropping from 13th place the year before.

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When you vote Left you vote right.

Believe it or not, I was offered a job with a trucking company when I was still in the AF. I was loading a field hospital, on pallets and rolling stock, onto civilian operated 18-wheel flatbed trucks when the owner of the trucking company came over to me as I was helping him tie-down the load and asked when I was getting out. I told him I was reenlisting and he said the reason he was asking was he liked the way I worked and wanted to hire me. Sorry glen, but I wouldn't want to live worrying about how many loads I could find or being away from home for long periods of time. I doubt most people wouldn't want to spend their 50 years the way you've spent yours and as proof I submit as proof the fact you've said before the trucking companies have a hard time keeping drivers because of the time away from home.

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When you vote Left you vote right.

[quote="glenfs » Fri Jan 12, 2018 7:35 pm"]
What a wasted life, yet that is the life the mentality of the American Liberal seems to crave. One where we work 46 to 50 weeks a year for close to all of our 50 years of freedom.
/quote]



Yup, no insult there.


Union, non-union or independent You were still working for "the man."

You do realize there's a difference between taking pride in your work and having a brown nose, right?

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I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat. - Will Rogers

BTW, glen only recently became an owner/operator again. Before that his last two jobs was driving for a company, in their trucks. Even now, he's contracted with a single company, he can't take loads from anyone else.

So FFREEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDDDOOOOOOOOMMMM! is quite relative.

I never had to set around at a company on my own time waiting for a job. I never had to mow lawns to curry favor. I was a professional who was highly paid and didn't have to debase myself like that. My time was my time. When glen is waiting to deliver, or stuck, he's not being paid. Hell, when the power would go out once or twice every few years, we couldn't work, but we were still getting paid.

I don't see glen as being nearly as free as he pretends.

Workers in Norway get 27 days of paid vacation a year. 27 days! It's mandated by law!

Glen, that's 27 days you can spend here. And get paid to do it!



I think there are some workers in the U.S. who would love that freedom.

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-- Tis an ill wind that blows no minds.
Malaclypse the Younger

BTW, I've learned that if glen says something, especially a statistic, you must check it, because it's probably not true, and way overblown.

Once again, it pays to check on him. He said Norway pays "50%+ taxes", so I looked it up. Reality check:



Less than forty percent.

And BTW, glen, in that factory, you misrepresented our time off, too. When I left, I was ready to get the next year four paid weeks off. Plus the fact we always had the time between Christmas and New Years off, paid. So that's five week a year. Plus the fact that I had two weeks sick leave a year, which you could use or let build up, and if you built it up past a certain point, anything that went above that was paid out to you.

If you get sick, you don't get paid. If you didn't work between Christmas and New Years, you don't get paid.

And here's where you're being dishonest in your screed too. You don't really like vacation. You've taken a few, but likely less than you would have taken had you worked a Union Job.

To me, the difference is doing something you love. When I went to work at the plant, I had friends who said "how can you stand being cooped up inside all day, I want to work outside!"

Well, reality is, Kansas summers AND winters suck. I conjectured there are probably only 30 days or so in Kansas that it's truly great to be outside. Give me a roof over my head while working any time.

I love to drive. My cousin was an owner-operate when I was younger, and our uncle took him under his wing and taught him, and he drove for a few years, and tried to entice me. I thought I'd get bored after a few months straight, so I didn't, plus I didn't want to give up my job in hand for something that might not pan out.

Plus, I loved working with my hands and making things. I liked being part of building cool things. When we had a rollout, I could go see what I was part of. When there was a problem, I was part of a team with engineers who would go over to the line and trouble-shoot.

My cousin, on the other had, ended up going to work in the factory, too, had a long career, and now is retired living a good life on his union pension.

On another note, I had a buddy in Junior High whose dad was a Teamster trucker. His dad retired at thirty and out (which means you can retire with full union pension at any age if you've completely thirty years with the company) when my pal was in Junior High. His dad then opened a little motorcycle repair shop which allowed him to get my friend a couple of motorcycles and race motocross.

glen, unlike you, I don't either envy or denounce how a working man earns his living. My buddy has a son who is an electrical lineman, a great union job. He climbs polls and towers for a living, something I could NEVER do. After the hurricane, he was down in Houston restoring electricity. He slept a couple of hours a night in a truck. He loves it. I'd hate it.

But we need people that do that. When I was on the road, I always had respect for the truckers that shared the road with me. I almost always found them to be professionals.

But glen's one of those people who likes to look down on others, and consider himself superior. Me, I champion and respect ALL working people, even if they are cleaning a bathroom. Well, because that's what my mom and aunt did. I was taught that all work deserved respect.

So even though glen insults me and those who chose the jobs I did, I don't insult truckers.

Getting back on topic, Norway has quite a bit going for it. The United States still has a fair amount going for it too, but in Norway the arrow seems up and here it seems down.

No, the stock market does not count. It doesn't correlate to quality of life. It correlates to market value of corporate equities, and lately to growth on investment. We just rolled over some very nice capital gains into IRAs, so I can't bitch too much, but I can note that, as always, it is a boom for - whom? Not joe sixpack, but he's the guy who likes our current leadership the most.

> Norway posts tax returns online.

Can't say. I do know that they post just about everything else. I have some friends in Norway, and I found out an almost guilt-inducing amount of stuff about them just poking around the net. I mean stuff like addresses and phone numbers, in perfectly respectable databases searchable by anyone. They just aren't as worried about doxxing there. What does THAT tell you? It tells me a lot.

See, you can view these "socialist" Scandinavian states as glass half empty or half full. Yes, the taxes are YUGE. They tell me that Norway is a very expensive country. People living around Oslo, which is most of the population, tend to visit Sweden often for shopping trips. They don't bitch that taxes are too high, because they know they get something for them. They bitch about stuff that I wish was the least of my problems.

It's also a constitutional monarchy, like the UK. They seem to like their king and queen, for about the same reasons. The royals have a palace and such, but compared to the UK it's pretty modest.

They tend to like Americans. There's a lot of good will from helping them out during and after WWII. I tend to like them. End of story. Fade out, roll credits.

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"If it were up to John [Bolton], we'd be in four wars now." --President Donald J. Trump, May 2019

Conservatives don't see the world as it is. They hatehatehate public schools, Social Security and Medicare, but you don't see them enrolling their kids in private schools and paying the bill themselves. When glen retires he will rely on Social Security and Medicare, as he hasn't prepared for retirement. He doesn't care about the Republicans demanding to destroy Social Security, because he knows he's old enough they aren't going to hit him. They'll hit his kids, and he doesn't care if they don't have that cushion.

If we had a national pension plan and single-payer health care, both paid for by taxes, the companies who pay for health care wouldn't have to pay over a thousand dollars a month per employee for health care, so they could raise wages and be more profitable, and not worry about pensions either.

And no one would lose everything going bankrupt because of illness.

It makes more sense financially. It's a better use of national resources. It's far cheaper for everyone in the long run.

What we have is national musical chairs. He got his chair, and blindly thinks it's his savvy and no luck that got him there, and he holds those who didn't get a chair in contempt.

His ongoing belief in what us liberals want is, of course, not true. I look at our nation as a big business, in some ways. I think that it's an investment to educate our workforce. The GI bill proved that out. It worked so well we SHOULD expand it. It was the GI bill, more than anything else, that drove our technological innovation in the sixties, when the United States could do anything. Put a man on the moon. Build a huge national highway system.

After Reagan, we became the "We Can't" states. Even though China is now becoming the solar power superpower, and the manufacturing powerhouse, we can't. We can't compete. That's what glen tells us. We can't do what Norway does. We can't do what China does. We can't do what Japan does. We can't do what Russia does. Hell, we can't even do what Mexico does.

glen wants us to become a shithole country. Behind everyone else. We're becoming that big-shot athlete from high school driving a truck whose best days are behind him.

We can't do anything because first and foremost, we don't want to EVER pay taxes. And the taxes we DO pay needs to go to corporations to bribe them to give us a few low-paying jobs. Because we can't.

Provide jobs for Americans? No, our corporations want to move our jobs to China. So what does Trump do? He bribes Foxconn, a Chinese company, to put a factory here to provide some (what will be) low-paying jobs.

That's conservative America.

Post-modern conservatism is too economic. They lost touch of the principles that made it a viable ideology. It's all about the rich getting richer, and whatever pittance is left over being reserved for "good" people.

In all fairness, I have to note that post-modern liberalism is off the rails too. It's not as spectacularly malevolent, though

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"If it were up to John [Bolton], we'd be in four wars now." --President Donald J. Trump, May 2019

That is the mindset I am talking about. If I go down to the truck stop and jump start a rig then get a prime load I not only helped another driver I helped myself. Under the union system very few give a crap. Because of the seniority gets first pick deal.

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"my choice is for people like you to be deported -Ike Bana 5/13/18

"within weeks of being rid of the likes of you, rid of every fucking one of you,we would begin to see what kind of country this ought to be" Ike Bana 6/14/18

Congrats on trying all the lw talking points. All are b.s. but as you know repeat a lie enough and
....
....

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"my choice is for people like you to be deported -Ike Bana 5/13/18

"within weeks of being rid of the likes of you, rid of every fucking one of you,we would begin to see what kind of country this ought to be" Ike Bana 6/14/18

The union job was a rural paper route in a state where you didn't have the right to choose. As for ssi I was forced to pay so yes I will collect the benefits I am owed.

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"my choice is for people like you to be deported -Ike Bana 5/13/18

"within weeks of being rid of the likes of you, rid of every fucking one of you,we would begin to see what kind of country this ought to be" Ike Bana 6/14/18

BWAAAAAAAAAHAHAH!!! You ignorant fool. You're a FOXNEWS tape loop with all the introspection of a cow pie.

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Not Netanyahu, Knesset, the IDF..the whim of Jews.

The point, glen is that Americans are pigs. The average American believes they are entitled to...want whatever they fuck they want...want it to be delivered right this fucking second...and want somebody else to fucking pay for it. And redneck conservatives are the most entitled of all...what they want most is to make their country white again.

Mrs. glen at the tea-party rally...

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Not Netanyahu, Knesset, the IDF..the whim of Jews.

I will thank you to keep any reference to my wife out of your mouth. Unless you are replying to a comment I made about her.

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"my choice is for people like you to be deported -Ike Bana 5/13/18

"within weeks of being rid of the likes of you, rid of every fucking one of you,we would begin to see what kind of country this ought to be" Ike Bana 6/14/18

I am the first to admit that successful drivers just aren't like "normal" people.

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"my choice is for people like you to be deported -Ike Bana 5/13/18

"within weeks of being rid of the likes of you, rid of every fucking one of you,we would begin to see what kind of country this ought to be" Ike Bana 6/14/18

Again, that is part of the progressive mindset. Worrying about who will take care of me if I get sick.

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"my choice is for people like you to be deported -Ike Bana 5/13/18

"within weeks of being rid of the likes of you, rid of every fucking one of you,we would begin to see what kind of country this ought to be" Ike Bana 6/14/18

Yeah, you don't worry. You'll just rely on the company and the government to take care of you if and when it happens. You won't plan ahead yourself.

Yes, Glenn, we worry about who will take care of you when you are sick...or old...or needy.....It's a moral obligation we extend to all of our fellow humans. You're welcome.

It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped. Hubert H. Humphrey

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I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat. - Will Rogers

glen is relying on us liberals. He knows if something goes wrong, our liberal programs will be there to care for him - just like a union pension, Medicare and Social Security pays for his mother in a nursing home. Uncle Sugar, not glen, takes care of it.

You act as if those programs are some sort of gift from "Big Brother" and not something that my dad was forced to pay in to from the day they were enacted. Or that I have been forced to pay to from the day I started working. It is not a gift it is an insurance program as you state everytime somebody calls it a tax, one that we are forced to buy. So don't sit there and pretend that conservatives are being hypocrites for cashing in those policies when the time comes.

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"my choice is for people like you to be deported -Ike Bana 5/13/18

"within weeks of being rid of the likes of you, rid of every fucking one of you,we would begin to see what kind of country this ought to be" Ike Bana 6/14/18

So are other social programs. It's all social insurance.

And YES, you ARE hypocrites, pure and simple. You hold your hand out like everyone else. But when others take these programs, you call them lazy.

Why, for instance, should rich guys like Mitt Romney take Social Security? It's pocket change to him. If I had that kind of money, I'd leave the Social Security money for everyone else. But it's the conservative mindset - if there's something FREE - they'll take it even if they don't need it and won't use it!

Conservatives always wants something for nothing.

So you are claiming that only conservative millionaires are taking their SSI checks. PLEEEAAASSSSEEEE

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"my choice is for people like you to be deported -Ike Bana 5/13/18

"within weeks of being rid of the likes of you, rid of every fucking one of you,we would begin to see what kind of country this ought to be" Ike Bana 6/14/18

Why the fuck would you even bother? It's like filling out forms for a nickel. Not worth the time!

But conservatives are for ANYTHING free. I saw that years ago with a conservative friend who was on layoff with me. He found everyplace that had something for out-of-work people. Told me about it, especially about the government cheese. I said, no, I don't need it, I'm getting by fine. He said "well, go get it and give it to me!"

When we went back to work, he bragged he had to take a pay cut to go back.

Just the conservative mindset. Something for nothing.

I have no idea of what you "didn't have the right to choose" means.

Just because you were "forced" to pay into SSI doesn't mean you have to accept it later in life. If you really believe in those conservative principles of yours then you'll refuse to accept Social Security and Medicare or you're a hypocrite.

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When you vote Left you vote right.