So craazyman, I agree with you on some of the micro-grain here, but take a different perspective on the systemic ordering of society in general and of change at the macro-level. [Note: I know that sentence sounds like pseudo-intellectual bullship, my friend, it was just the easiest way to say it without using a lot more and smaller words. : ) ] I’m in a very liberal city, in the Downtown core where the major actions of the Occupiers here, Seattle have all take place within a mile of where I live and less of where I work. I’ve seen only perhaps one or two 99% stickers on people even so walking around. I go into my quite large an moderately posh athletic club situated between where I live and the camps, wearing my sticker. No one has ever even mentioned it to me, let alone voiced support. Now, is that evidence of ‘failure of the movement’ or what does it mean in a larger sense?
I’ll back off a step and ask you this: How many people do you think were _personally, physically involved_ in the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s? The numbers who were personally involved were likely less than those personally engaged in Occupation actitivities right now. And keep in mind that for everyone who tells you, now that they ‘sympathized’ with civil rights at the time, likely three out of four are fibbing. And there was quite a large section of the population who were vigorously opposed to any civil rights legislation, many of whom were _not_ in the South; a problem that the present Occupation movement dos not face at all. This committed numbers to overt support to eventual impact holds in most situations of radical change. It’s very much the exception that there is mass _activistm_ at the start as opposed to broad sympathy of with critiques and grievances. It’s easy to confuse the confusion of the mass about the active minority with the impact _on the mass_ of the contest of needs and actions. I could go on in this vein but I’ll stop there.
Something which we all know though it’s inelegant to say, my friend is that the large bulk of the public are just looking for a comfortable place to park their ass out of the action and so they usually use their head for a pillow since it’s the softest thing handy. Most people go with the flow and don’t want to be bothered, even if they do have sympathies that go one way or another, or material interests snagged up in things. Large social change always is driven by a few. A critical issue is who has legitmacy and who doesn’t. Yes, many of those folks you talk to for example may not in any way come to any action of the Occupiers, and in fact wish they would just go away. And yet, they’d drop Bloomberg like a shot if he screwed things up, and would lean away from another candidate who identified with a failed activity.
One has to erode the legitimacy of those in the wrong before public opinion shifts sufficiently for their efficacy to sag. This isn’t a linear process, which is why polling is really, really stupid about things most of the time. Supposing some of your friends went down and cop just hauld off and slammed them in the kisser with a baton. Do you think they’d sue? Of course. They wouldn’t see the cop as just doing his job: they only see that when he’s doing his job on somebody else. So in fact, they’re _not_ indifferent to injustice but insulated from it. Part of a social change movement is pulling out handfuls of insulation—or more often about the police burning it. I know that this isn’t a very satisfying rebutal to your concerns, which are real, but the fact is that you do influence people wearing that symbol simply by being a reasonable person endorsing something which isn’t the same tired bullshit. You can’t know the incremental effect you have until the shift comes. And yes, it may take years. In Egypt, they’d been organizing (in far more difficult conditions) for five years before The Big Unwind. The point is for the Occupation Movement to maintain intitiative and keep the pressure on. The authorities only have a limited playbook, and no solutions whatsoever.
There is a faction of people who continue to insist credit cards are evil and credit card companies greedily care only about one thing: making a profit.
Can we get real and cease with the tired rhetoric? Credit card companies are not evil.
When it comes to profits, credit card companies are also no more greedy than, say, the Hollywood movie industry.
As someone who has been a credit card user for more than 20 years, I have never once been taken advantage of by a credit card company. In fact, they’ve always gone out of their way to ensure they keep me a satisfied customer – despite the fact that I’ve never paid a penny in interest to them over all that time. That’s just one reason why I refuse to cut up my credit cards – and why maybe you shouldn’t, either.
I know what you’re thinking: But, Len, how can that possibly be? Credit card companies don’t care about their customers!
They most certainly do. The competition out there between the credit card companies is fierce – especially for their best customers.
And just who are their best customers? Is it the poor sap who’s exceeded his credit limit and is making the minimum payment each month – at an interest rate of 29.9 percent – on a balance of $15,576? Nope.
Think about it. How on earth can a high credit-risk individual who’s always one missed payment away from defaulting on his debt and leaving the credit card companies holding the bag be their best customer?
The reality is a credit card company’s best customers are people like you and me: folks with superb credit who charge nearly everything they buy each month to their card and then pay the balance off in full at the end of each month.
Even though we don’t pay a cent of interest to them, the credit card companies love folks like you and me because we earn them a steady stream of income from the merchant transaction fees that are generated every time we use our cards. Best of all, because we are financially responsible, they have almost zero risk of us ever defaulting on thousands of dollars of their money. As a result, the credit card companies are more than happy to let us take advantage of them.
Which brings me to the subject of today’s post…
One day not too long ago, I noticed my wife and I were charged $107.47 interest on our credit card statement.
So I called customer service to say there must be some mistake. Unfortunately, there was no mistake at all. It turns out the credit card company received my payment one day beyond the end of the grace period, and so interest charges were applied as per the terms of the contract I agreed to when I first got the card. Fair enough.
Truth be told, this was the third or fourth time in 20 years that I had interest charges applied because a payment got to the credit card company a day or two late.
Hold on, Len. But you said you’ve never paid a dime of credit card interest in 20 years. How did you get the interest charges waived each time?
I simply asked.
And their reply was as swift as it was decisive, “That will be no problem at all, Mr. Penzo.”
Done.
Hey, why wouldn’t they waive the charges? I’m one of their best customers. Well-run corporations aren’t in business because they are stupid. They know I’d leave them in a New York minute if they let those charges stick, and I’m worth much more to them than $107.47.
Just keep in mind that if you make late payments more than once per year, it will probably take more than simply asking to get your credit card company to waive those interest fees. And who can blame them?
Credit card companies certainly aren’t evil. Not by a long shot. But they are in business to make money.
This post originally appeared from Money Talks News.
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Denver Broncos <b>News</b>: Horse Tracks - 11/19/11 - Mile High ReportThe 2011 World Poker Tour Jacksonville kicked off on Friday and attracted 188 players for Day 1a. Matthew Jarvis looks to be the early chip leader.
2011 World Poker Tour Jacksonville Day 1a: Jarvis Bags Bunches <b>...</b> So craazyman, I agree with you on some of the micro-grain here, but take a different perspective on the systemic ordering of society in general and of change at the macro-level. [Note: I know that sentence sounds like pseudo-intellectual bullship, my friend, it was just the easiest way to say it without using a lot more and smaller words. : ) ] I’m in a very liberal city, in the Downtown core where the major actions of the Occupiers here, Seattle have all take place within a mile of where I live and less of where I work. I’ve seen only perhaps one or two 99% stickers on people even so walking around. I go into my quite large an moderately posh athletic club situated between where I live and the camps, wearing my sticker. No one has ever even mentioned it to me, let alone voiced support. Now, is that evidence of ‘failure of the movement’ or what does it mean in a larger sense?
I’ll back off a step and ask you this: How many people do you think were _personally, physically involved_ in the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s? The numbers who were personally involved were likely less than those personally engaged in Occupation actitivities right now. And keep in mind that for everyone who tells you, now that they ‘sympathized’ with civil rights at the time, likely three out of four are fibbing. And there was quite a large section of the population who were vigorously opposed to any civil rights legislation, many of whom were _not_ in the South; a problem that the present Occupation movement dos not face at all. This committed numbers to overt support to eventual impact holds in most situations of radical change. It’s very much the exception that there is mass _activistm_ at the start as opposed to broad sympathy of with critiques and grievances. It’s easy to confuse the confusion of the mass about the active minority with the impact _on the mass_ of the contest of needs and actions. I could go on in this vein but I’ll stop there.
Something which we all know though it’s inelegant to say, my friend is that the large bulk of the public are just looking for a comfortable place to park their ass out of the action and so they usually use their head for a pillow since it’s the softest thing handy. Most people go with the flow and don’t want to be bothered, even if they do have sympathies that go one way or another, or material interests snagged up in things. Large social change always is driven by a few. A critical issue is who has legitmacy and who doesn’t. Yes, many of those folks you talk to for example may not in any way come to any action of the Occupiers, and in fact wish they would just go away. And yet, they’d drop Bloomberg like a shot if he screwed things up, and would lean away from another candidate who identified with a failed activity.
One has to erode the legitimacy of those in the wrong before public opinion shifts sufficiently for their efficacy to sag. This isn’t a linear process, which is why polling is really, really stupid about things most of the time. Supposing some of your friends went down and cop just hauld off and slammed them in the kisser with a baton. Do you think they’d sue? Of course. They wouldn’t see the cop as just doing his job: they only see that when he’s doing his job on somebody else. So in fact, they’re _not_ indifferent to injustice but insulated from it. Part of a social change movement is pulling out handfuls of insulation—or more often about the police burning it. I know that this isn’t a very satisfying rebutal to your concerns, which are real, but the fact is that you do influence people wearing that symbol simply by being a reasonable person endorsing something which isn’t the same tired bullshit. You can’t know the incremental effect you have until the shift comes. And yes, it may take years. In Egypt, they’d been organizing (in far more difficult conditions) for five years before The Big Unwind. The point is for the Occupation Movement to maintain intitiative and keep the pressure on. The authorities only have a limited playbook, and no solutions whatsoever.
There is a faction of people who continue to insist credit cards are evil and credit card companies greedily care only about one thing: making a profit.
Can we get real and cease with the tired rhetoric? Credit card companies are not evil.
When it comes to profits, credit card companies are also no more greedy than, say, the Hollywood movie industry.
As someone who has been a credit card user for more than 20 years, I have never once been taken advantage of by a credit card company. In fact, they’ve always gone out of their way to ensure they keep me a satisfied customer – despite the fact that I’ve never paid a penny in interest to them over all that time. That’s just one reason why I refuse to cut up my credit cards – and why maybe you shouldn’t, either.
I know what you’re thinking: But, Len, how can that possibly be? Credit card companies don’t care about their customers!
They most certainly do. The competition out there between the credit card companies is fierce – especially for their best customers.
And just who are their best customers? Is it the poor sap who’s exceeded his credit limit and is making the minimum payment each month – at an interest rate of 29.9 percent – on a balance of $15,576? Nope.
Think about it. How on earth can a high credit-risk individual who’s always one missed payment away from defaulting on his debt and leaving the credit card companies holding the bag be their best customer?
The reality is a credit card company’s best customers are people like you and me: folks with superb credit who charge nearly everything they buy each month to their card and then pay the balance off in full at the end of each month.
Even though we don’t pay a cent of interest to them, the credit card companies love folks like you and me because we earn them a steady stream of income from the merchant transaction fees that are generated every time we use our cards. Best of all, because we are financially responsible, they have almost zero risk of us ever defaulting on thousands of dollars of their money. As a result, the credit card companies are more than happy to let us take advantage of them.
Which brings me to the subject of today’s post…
One day not too long ago, I noticed my wife and I were charged $107.47 interest on our credit card statement.
So I called customer service to say there must be some mistake. Unfortunately, there was no mistake at all. It turns out the credit card company received my payment one day beyond the end of the grace period, and so interest charges were applied as per the terms of the contract I agreed to when I first got the card. Fair enough.
Truth be told, this was the third or fourth time in 20 years that I had interest charges applied because a payment got to the credit card company a day or two late.
Hold on, Len. But you said you’ve never paid a dime of credit card interest in 20 years. How did you get the interest charges waived each time?
I simply asked.
And their reply was as swift as it was decisive, “That will be no problem at all, Mr. Penzo.”
Done.
Hey, why wouldn’t they waive the charges? I’m one of their best customers. Well-run corporations aren’t in business because they are stupid. They know I’d leave them in a New York minute if they let those charges stick, and I’m worth much more to them than $107.47.
Just keep in mind that if you make late payments more than once per year, it will probably take more than simply asking to get your credit card company to waive those interest fees. And who can blame them?
Credit card companies certainly aren’t evil. Not by a long shot. But they are in business to make money.
This post originally appeared from Money Talks News.
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NBA Lockout <b>News</b>: Eventually A Hopeful Rumor Might Actually Be <b>...</b>Your daily cup of orange and blue coffee. Horse Tracks!
Denver Broncos <b>News</b>: Horse Tracks - 11/19/11 - Mile High ReportThe 2011 World Poker Tour Jacksonville kicked off on Friday and attracted 188 players for Day 1a. Matthew Jarvis looks to be the early chip leader.
2011 World Poker Tour Jacksonville Day 1a: Jarvis Bags Bunches <b>...</b>
