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Quoting hal9g:

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Quoting Unicus69:

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Quoting Rico:

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Hi Guys,

Brian - Thank You & well said! I'm surprised your not part of the 'Daft' club.

Just to be clear, I never said you were daft...I simply asked if you were. 

So if I ask you if you're a moronic idiot, that would not be an insult? 

Many people would take it as an insult, but I never claimed it wasn't.  What I said was, I never said you were daft...which is true, I never did.

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Unicus,

I certainly don't disagree with your intense dislike of credit card companies -- I have had my share of anger with them over the years. Many of them are downright immoral and unethical (if not outright criminal) in their tactics and practices.

However I think the point that Hal and Rico (if I can speak for them) are trying to make is that ultimately people have to be responsible for their choices - including going into business with unscrupulous people and signing agreements that can get them screwed. I'd have a problem with people who get themselves into these messes expecting everyone else (taxpayers for instance) to bail them out.

In your example you did the responsible thing and saved the money for your trip and were able to payoff the credit card rapidly with minimal monetary damage. In other cases people make these spending decisions w/o adequate thought (I'm sorry to say I speak from personal experience on this score) and end up getting screwed by the credit card company. I agree that regulation of the industry is appropriate but when its all said and done I think people have to be responsible for their own choices -- if they plan accordingly (like you did) the damage of an obnoxious credit card company will be minimized. Also I think in the long run companies that engage in deceitful and unethical conduct will lose customers and go out of business.

Just my two cents.

Brian

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Is the distinction important? Does it reduce the level of the insult by some degree?

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Quoting m.cellophane:

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Is the distinction important? Does it reduce the level of the insult by some degree?

Depends on the context, but I am a parser...which means the distinction is always important.

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Quoting hal9g:

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Not really!

You are a DINK, so I can understand why you feel that way.

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Not sure how being a DINK is relative.  I think most anyone would read the "question", "Are you daft..." as an insult.

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From a German Magazine:

'Ironically, it is in the country of unfettered capitalism that the government now plans to intervene in the economy on a scale not seen since the Great Depression, and, with hundreds of billions of dollars, attempt to save the financial sector from failure -- out of fear of something even worse: an economic collapse with declining prices and widespread unemployment.

This is no longer the muscular and arrogant United States the world knows, the superpower that sets the rules for everyone else and that considers its way of thinking and doing business to be the only road to success.

A new America is on display, a country that no longer trusts its old values and its elites even less: the politicians, who failed to see the problems on the horizon, and the economic leaders, who tried to sell a fictitious world of prosperity to Americans.

Also on display is the end of arrogance. The Americans are now paying the price for their pride.

Gone are the days when the US could go into debt with abandon, without considering who would end up footing the bill. And gone are the days when it could impose its economic rules of engagement on the rest of the world, rules that emphasized profit above all else -- without ever considering that such returns cannot be achieved by doing business in a respectable way.

With its rule of three of cheap money, free markets and double-digit profit margins, American turbo-capitalism has set economic standards worldwide for the past quarter century. Now it is proving to be nothing but a giant snowball system, upsetting the US's global political status as it comes crashing down. Every bank that US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is currently forced to bail out with American government funds damages America's reputation around the world.

Of course, it is not solely the result of undesirable economic developments that the United States is in the process of forfeiting its unique position in the world and that the world is moving toward what Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, calls a "post-American age." Washington has also lost much of its political ability to impose its will on other countries.'

I feel that pretty much sums it up.

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Quoting hal9g:

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Envy is a ugly trait!

It is indeed, but you Americans shouldn't feel too bad about feeling it...