Planet-Love.com Searchable Archives

My opinion and conclusions:
#1 there is a serious problem in our society where a very small % of our population are getting obscenely rich.

#2 irrational AW's are searching for their own Bill Gates and snubbing everyone else.

I say let them look for their super-rich nerds.  I am going to the FSU were other qualities beside your net asset value are considered for romance.

God Bless the ladies of Russia, Ukraine and all those other places where sincere AM are welcome.

I am no huge Ayn Rand fan, but I have no problem with Bill Gates making billions of dollars, either.

Believe me, Microsofts practices are no more unfair than Pepsi, Coke, or Hartz Pet Products.

And don't kid yourself... Bill Gates may have made his second billion because of "unfair" prcatices, but his first Billion was made on a better product.

Yes, Windows 1.0 sucked, but I am talking about MS-DOS. It had its faults... but does anyone remember CP/M? Yikes!

And as for the "Rich getting richer" this is hyperbole. When Reagan lead us to financial recovery, everyone was decrying that he only helped the rich. But the fact is that new millionares were produced at a faster rate during the Regan economy than at any other time.

There are plenty of things wrong with our society. The fact that Bill Gates has an "obscene" amount of money is not one of them.

If you want to see a society where just a few flourish and many suffer, you need to visit the FSU sometime.

Watch the Russian Mafia driving mercedes and then visit a lovely lass who makes $55 a month. THERE is something wrong.

As for the rest of your post about the AW... It simply is a reflection of the over all society. Ours is a society built on competition. That has slowly entered into the area of the family, where now the spouses compete with each other. I agree that this is a bad thing. I had a marriage end because of it.

I am delighted that I have found a woman who wants to join with me and form a family... not a corporation...

(btw, come on don't knock cp/m!  I miss my old assembly days - calling bdos all the time - heh heh).

These kids now adays, with their IDEs and Application Servers have it so easy... LOL... I remember when "C" was considered a high level language!

Yikes, I'm feeling old!

You mean it's not? Heck, I still write mainframe assembler every day.

I personally never worry that Bill Gates has too much money and that Microsoft is too dominant.  I rather look at the change that PCs have brought to the workplace and how they increased our productivity many times above what it is in less advanced societies.  Personal computers let me do more work and find information through the Internet that I could never get before.  I did a report a couple of weeks ago in just 2 hours that I couldn’t have done in 2 weeks 20 years ago.  Bill Gates became dominant because he was very competent and his competitors were not.  I can’t just say take it all away because he was better at running a business.  

I personally do know several people that have become wealthy and they worked their ass off to get there.  They started their own companies and everything they owned was at risk of being lost.  They did not have connections.  If a person gets a good education, then a decent paying job and saves their money all their life to have a better future, what’s wrong with that?  In life there are a few superstars, some pretty good guys, a whole lot of average and some real boat anchors that drag everybody down.  

At 62 years old I think it’s a little too late to get your ass in gear and improve your situation, so I would just advise you to coast into retirement and stop whining.  Not reading the NY Times editorial page would help since most of them are whiners.  I read the Paul Krugman article you mentioned and he does have some valid points.  A top executive at US Steel in the early 1970s was the highest paid executive and he made less than $500,000.  Now executives doing a lousy job will ask for 10 million dollar bonuses and then lay off thousands of employees to improve efficiency.  That really sucks and I’m watching it happen in my own company.  If I were them I would think more about how many people I'm screwing over so I can top some salary list.  

I don’t mind if a woman postpones marriage a little while to find a better husband but she is up against a deadline to have children.  Some of the girls I dated married guys that were big talk, little action.  They were stupid and suffered the consequences.  They should have waited to see if the guy amounted to anything.  

Oh, and I am an affluent nerd with affluent nerd friends.  As for my friends that got rich, I am happy for them.  

First of all let me explain that I firmly believe in the free enterprise system. or capitalism.  Politically I am a libertarian, a student of Adam Smith, author of, "The Wealth of Nations.  I retired from a position as a sales executive.   Thanks to the "fruits of my labor," I am able to enjoy an active retirement, a villa in Spain and frequent world travel.  My presence on this forum comes from my appreciation for the ladies of the FSU and belief in cross cultural relationships.

I believe that the greatest danger to our economic system is the growing disparity between the accumulation of wealth by the top 1% of our population and the stagnation of the middle and the negative wealth of the bottom. I believe that much of the top 1%'s accumulation is by unethical and dishonest practices.  You referred to some youself.  

I certainly do not begrudge the wealth accumulated by hard honest work and the employment of skill and talent. With emphsis on "HONEST."  I agree that your friends deserve the rewards for their efforts and the risks that they took.  How many Fortune 500 CEO's made it that way, Enron's Ken Lay, Tyco's Dennis Kozlowski, etc.? Sorry you have such low regard for the NY Times.  Perhaps you would appreciate Businessweek's June 3 interview with Paul Volcker.

Bill Gates does not deserve the credit or the rewards for the PC revolution.  Lets take a look at his "efforts".  He sold a PC OS to IBM that he did not possess. I guess you could call that clever. He then entered into agreement with IBM to develop an OS that would actually function properly to be  called OS/2.   At the same time he put his efforts into Windows.  This product was largely stolen from Apple, another unsuspecting MS partner.  Thats OK because Apple stole it from Xerox.  Mr. Gates than released Windows effectively destroying OS/2 in the marketplace.  I guess you can call this competence, but honest?  I think not.  I will agree that the incompetence of IBM was his unwitting  accomplice.  You think MS has done a good job?  Think about that the next time you get the blue screen of death or read about another Windows, NT or XP security breach.  I submit MS and its monopolizing practices has inhibited the development of superior operating systems.  And those same practices have made Gates rich.  Thank GOD for Linux.  It is probably our only hope for an operating system that will permit our PC technology to perform up to its real capability, without the "cross" of DOS on its back.

The problem with Linux, is that it's got the cross of Unix on it's back, and then the gui's are free... which leaves us with no competitive entities trying to derive a "better moustrap", which is where the best products come from, competition.

Bill Gates may not have "had product" which was his, but what he did have over and above everyone else, was business savy.  Drive and determination.  This is what determines the difference between success and failure.  I love linux, but I prefer windows because I can always get the job done faster, better and cheaper with a windows machine.  But for a server, I prefer linux or unix.

Bill Gates is rich in his own right, and not because he stole something, but because he decided to work and produce instead of sitting around cutting bait like the rest of the fools did.

jm2c.

I'll let you have the last word, as this isn't the right place for this discussion anyways - don't get me wrong, I love my linux machine - for the purpose for which it was intended.

cheers.

On a historical note, when Microsoft was working with IBM to bring out OS/2 (up to version 1.2) their engineers raped IBM's R&D archives for ideas.  A lot of those ideas mysteriously appeared in Windows 3.0 (and more so in Windows NT).  IBM effectively gave Microsoft it's core Windows technologies on a silver platter.

What's interesting is that only about 10% of the original Windows NT code remains in Win 2K/XP.  I wonder who's ideas continued into the new OS, Microsoft's or IBM's.  Nobody will ever know, but it is kind of fun to speculate...

me thinks he was just making the point that all of us are  reactionary to, and that is to go find a woman that is realistic.  Heh heh, if I would've made the post, the last thing I would be envious of, is some rich dude with his btch snot wife a bmw and three mercedes.

And I can think of b1tchy wives that made some rich guy's life more miserable.

But also, I hope that is not the only reason you are looking for RW. I am scared to find what the study like this will find out about RWs. After all, most of them ARE getting better financial position after moving to USA. There ARE a lot of marriages with a BIG age range. And to make it even worth for you - even a middle income American might be considered a "Bill Gates" in Ukraine (that would be a separate scholar study based on US media and "Santa Barbara" soap operas).

sorry, but I can not agree with you on your conclusions.

Russian Wife

I enjoy your participation in the discussion.

Appreciate the reference.  It helps if you say where it is published. Thanks to Google I found it.  

I do not think Mr. Williams addresses the unethical, unscrupulous and dishonest practices that have allowed the top 1% of the US population to accumulate 35.1% of the US's total household net worth, Forbes, 1 July 1999.  Or the fact that US CEO's pay themselves 475 times the average manufacturing workers pay, The Economist 30 September 2000. These excesses are, I believe a serious threat to our capitalist systems.  Beware the excesses of greed.

RW

Concerning the "age range," do you feel that most RW are delaying their marriages into their 30's to find the most financially attractive spouse?

I am interested in the issues you may have with my conclusions.  Please discuss.

I can not agree with your conclusions because:
1. Men in USA are getting married much-much later in life as well
2. Women everywhere in the world are selective in the process based on the partner's current (or potential) financial position - it's same old "provider's" instinct

There is just different demographic and economic situation in Russia/Ukraine, so women can not sit and wait as they do in USA. There are aso different society expectations.

What are you trying to achieve with this discussion?

Why? Because we should never begrudge anyone for what they have honestly gained or acquired. Take a look at the Tenth Commandment.

Your #1 sounds like Karl Marx.

He says it better than I can.

I also refer to the wealth accumulated by corrupt physicians who run Medicaid mills.  Or those who refuse to treat medicaid patients because the fees are too low.

Stock analysts who recommend stocks that they know are dogs because the bonuses are tied to the lousy stock's success.  Remember all those great Dot Com opportunities.

How about those great corporate leaders at Enron?  Or maybe their peers who continue to reap stock options even though the co.s they run are losing money.  In many cases they even get the "rubber stamp" boards to reprice their options so they will still be valuable after the stock value has cratered.  The stockholders can bear the risk.

And the lawyers who get rich assisting their clients to manipulate the tax system so that the clients and the lawyers can avoid paying their fair share of taxes.  So the rest of us can pay more. Or do you employ such a lawyer yourself.  If so, for shame!

Please show me a CEO who is earning more than, no I won't use even J. P. Morgan,s standard, lets say 100 times the average that the employees in his company are earning.  He or she is going to be tough to find. In 1999 average American CEO total compensation was 475 times average manufacturing employee pay. Ref. - The Economist, September 30. 2000.  I also suggest for your reading pleasure "This Stuff Is Wrong", Fortune June 25, 2001.
neither journal, I hope you will agree, spreaders of communist propaganda
That's enough for now.

You seem to be obsessed with jealously and envy over what other people have.

It's best to focus on one's own house and get the log out of thine own eye first.

I do not laugh at the commandment.  I laugh at how those who justify greed interpret or exploit the commandment to  comdemn those who oppose the greed of a few who are obssessed with acquiring more and more.  

But I realize that the words of the Bible can be manipulated to justify almost anything today.

I understand. That is why when I referred to the commandment I referred to *honest* gain. And *that* is why I did not understand why you "laughed."

Even if a man has made his gain unscrupulously, it is still wrong to covet.

There is nothing in my response that can be interpreted as attempting to "justify greed." I agreed with you on that subject.

The problem is that your original post made a broad stroke and you came across in a way that I can now see is far different than what you meant. Now I understand where you are coming from - you are not jealous of what others have, you are just critical of the *ways* that *some* have made their acquisitons and I agree with you.

Now how about those Russian Honeys!

I have had the good fortune of dating three of them and have been delighted with all three.  I must admit, I feel like a cupid, two of the three have married other fellows.  To my delight though we have remained friends and correspond often.

Number three is very special.  I may chase her until she catches me.

I am divorced, after too many unpleasant years of marriage. Also I am and retired.  I am not in a hurry to get married again. I love to travel and it has been my pleasure to invite Russian ladies to accompany me.  Traveling with them has been cheaper than it was to take my wife along and far more enjoyable.  I try to be as honest as I can about my intentions so as not to deceive the ladies.  I have only dated ladies from Moscow.  I visit there a couple of times each year.

Have you experienced other cities in FSU or Eastern Europe that you would recommend?  I am eager to expand my horizons.  

I appreciated our discussion.  If you care to pursue the topic, as you can guess it is a pet peeve, I would be happy to, ourtside the forum.

If you are looking for real adventure in Eastern Europe go to any city in Russia or Ukraine that has a population of less than 500,000 people - what people there would call a "village". *That* is where you will really experience the "real" Russia or Ukraine! And you will be treated so well by people living in meager circumstances that you will be humbled. You will never view life the same.

Be careful and have fun!

I paraphrase Graef Crystal - Bloomburg Columnist and formerly compenstion consultant for corporate boards until he became disgusted by the magnitude of excesses that unaccountable corporate executives were paying themselves at the expense of the stockholders, taxpayers and customers.

The greatest danger to the free enterprise system or capitalism is not communism but the extreme excesses that those few who unjustly manipulate their positions of unaccountable power.

Just my opinion!

I agree that there is much abuse of position and power to make material gain and that it is a moral wrong.

However,
Jesus never said anything about what amount of income a person should have. And His death had nothing to do with the subject of income. "He gave his life a ransom for many."

I realize that today the words of the Lord can be interpreted, translated and semantically twisted to justfy almost anything.  Especially the unlimited greed of most American corporate executives.  You have to admire their PR.    

It seems fairly clear though to me that JESUS was not endorsing corporate CEO greed in Luke 12:15 where it is told that HE said:

"And HE said to them beware of all covetousness for a man's life doth not consist in the abundance of things which he possesseth."

And if I recall correctly the 6th Deadly sin is Greed.

Finally the question is, when is enough enough?

J. D. Rockefeller's alleged answer was, "One Dollar more."

Good quote from the Word. Jesus was clearly referencing the fact that there is a spiritual reality out there that encompasses eternity! Therefore it *is* foolish to think that life is only about material acquisiton. I agree wholeheartedly that greed is wrong (I said that before) and a problem for many and that we have witnessed much of this in our country's  history as you have so accurately referenced in one of your longer posts above.

I was just making a distiction between greed and legitimate gain. The Bible teaches that there is a big difference  - and that God wants to prosper us both materially as well as spiritually. It also teaches that we should enjoy the fruits of our labor for it is God who gives the increase.

As I said above, Jesus never spoke to the issue of income itself - yes he condemned an attitude of pure materialism and greed. And as I also said, he was not crucified because of any issue pertaining to income, although in a general sense, because greed is sin and Jesus died for the sins of the world, he also died to pay all sin debts involving greed.

I think you and I are on the same page.

My thought on AW is this. They want a rich man to marry so they can have the big house, exotic car, and jewelry. They want the secret lover who was released from jail so she can live her dirty desires and fantasies. She wants the sensitive man to be there for her so she can cry on his shoulder when everything comes crashing down but she doesn't respect him because he is weak. The rich guy should provide a house maid to do her work and a pool boy for when the convict is arrested again. Divorce over the past thirty years have destroyed the wealth of this country. It takes the money away from the family and kids and hands it to the the women, lawyers, and courts.
Marriage is a business now, once you say yes you sign a contract over to your material. Life was much better and easier when marriage was religion as it should be. They should change the laws so if people  were married in a church you would have to go in front of the priest to see if the marriage should be annulled. If found plausible guilt to desolve the marriage then it could go to the courts but government needs to get out of our lives especially the lawyers. A common law marriage would go through the courts because no religion is involved. This would be good for the family because if she is a gold digger she would refuse the religious marriage because her only real chance to divorce would be an unfaithful husband. Like a lot of men are saying don't marry an American, don't, don't, don't especially with how mothers have been raising their daughters to materialism and to think of themselves first over anything else, even including their own children. Another way to lower divorces would be for guys to stop dating or having sex with divorecd women. If they couldn't find another guy they would definitely think twice before raking their first husband over the coals. I know I wouldn't marry one, she has already proven the ability to divorce and even knows all the gains to be made. For the good AW it is sad because more and more everyday men are starting to not trust any of them which is not good for our country. Since I am on a rampage hear you can call me even more of a flake by telling you that drugs should be legalized. Another business ran by the government. We pay the taxes for the extra prison space, courts, and police. It makes me sick to think they will put a junky in jail for 15 years then release a murderer for good time because of lack of space. They could even tax it creating more revenue instead of draining it from us.

Thank you for your comments.  I am in total agreement with you on the legalization of drugs.  "The War on Drugs" has been a disastor.  I honestly believe that it has popularized drugs more than anything else.  

Please excuse me, I have been cautioned about straying from the MOB topic so I will try to restrain myself.

We must spread the word, our nation's drug policy is turning the country into a police state, and the fastest growing industry is building prisons.

Did you see the analysis that all the money they have spent on advertising has proven a complete waste.  The researchers found that not only were the ads. ineffective , but many were found to be counterproductive.  They actually were found to promote drug use by the young.

A tip, I usually use the term "decriminalize" instead of "legalize."  It doesn't seem to upset the diehard "lock em all up" crowd.  It gives me a chance to express a little more logic to them.

Thanks again.

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1022959958490&p=1012571727088