Enough Bitching, How Would You Fix "It?"

[quote name='Knoell']Yep, quite a few actually.[/quote]

Glenn Beck University?

Not sure where it says a government needs to spend massive (and record) amounts of money though, guess I should look it up.
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If you took a class let alone more than one and do not know the first thing about countercyclical fiscal policy then you should get your money back.

Or you are just lying.
 
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[quote name='Msut77']Glenn Beck University?



If you took more a class let alone more than one and do not know the first thing about countercyclical fiscal policy then you should get your money back.

Or you are just lying, which I would not put past you.[/QUOTE]

Yep nothing like putting us each into more and more debt to keep us out of this recession. Glad it is working :roll:. Doesn't it feel like we are just putting off an inevitable collapse of the economy on our children?

That policy does not mean the government is at a point of no return with its spending.
 
Well knoell, that is some mighty fine word salad you got going on there but I have already stated the stimulus should have been bigger.
 
[quote name='Msut77']Well knoell, that is some mighty fine word salad you got going on there but I have already stated the stimulus should have been bigger.[/QUOTE]

You ever get the feeling the government is just a teenage kid with his first credit card? We are living beyond our means. Individual states are in the same situation. Individual people are in the same situation.
 
Actually I think it's been said numerous times that people are saving more now than in the recent past, so while I'm sure some people are living beyond their means, I wouldn't say it's as widespread as it was a decade or so ago.
 
[quote name='Clak']Actually I think it's been said numerous times that people are saving more now than in the recent past, so while I'm sure some people are living beyond their means, I wouldn't say it's as widespread as it was a decade or so ago.[/QUOTE]

Yup. We, the people, have learned to cut back on our spending and to have some savings.

Our government, on the other hand, spends, spends, spends.
 
[quote name='nasum']On the other hand, something I think we've really lost in the US is a sense of rugged individualism. The notion that one had to work to "get theirs" that came with a sense of pride.[/QUOTE]

I think that is tied with the loss of stable blue-collar jobs. It's hard to think "well if I just bust my ass for this company, I'll either be taken care of or promoted for my hard work" when you get fired from your entry level job you've been trapped at for years because some 18 year old kid will do it for less pay or when you and all of your coworkers get fired so the company can bring up their bottom line for one quarter.

It went from the standard of working at a company for 30 years until you could retire, to that company trying to fuck you over as much as possible so they can maximize their profits while you do the minimum amount of work not to get fired.
 
exactly, the attitude has shifted from an employee friendly work environment to one of a shareholder friendly environment. Doesn't it stand to reason that happy (and well compensated) workers will produce more to the end that shareholders will also be happy because of higher revenues?
 
[quote name='nasum']exactly, the attitude has shifted from an employee friendly work environment to one of a shareholder friendly environment. Doesn't it stand to reason that happy (and well compensated) workers will produce more to the end that shareholders will also be happy because of higher revenues?[/QUOTE]

The shareholder wants the best return on investment right now. If the pension fund has to be raided to earn a better percentage, so be it. Once the company has been destroyed, the shareholder will be two or three companies down the road.
 
[quote name='Dr Mario Kart']Most of them already do, which is why we're losing big currently. You can compete to make whatever it is you do better. Secondarily, not every country specializes in making everything that they need/want. For example, You cant grow everything in every climate. Whatever raw materials come from there are going to differ, which is going to make for a differential advantage in manufacturing whatever can be made with them.[/QUOTE]

Here's another point. Though some have more natural reserves of say, particular precious metals, and may have certain industries which are inherently competitive; I bet there's also quite a bit of false competitiveness which is propped up by US aid and all the weird-ass trade deficits we have going on now.

We could also attack them, since the U.S. has military bases across the globe. Anybody who has the balls to say so knows that wars of the past were often pre-empted by economic warfare.
 
[quote name='Sporadic']I think that is tied with the loss of stable blue-collar jobs. It's hard to think "well if I just bust my ass for this company, I'll either be taken care of or promoted for my hard work" when you get fired from your entry level job you've been trapped at for years because some 18 year old kid will do it for less pay or when you and all of your coworkers get fired so the company can bring up their bottom line for one quarter.

It went from the standard of working at a company for 30 years until you could retire, to that company trying to fuck you over as much as possible so they can maximize their profits while you do the minimum amount of work not to get fired.[/QUOTE]

There's been a loss of character in this society because people see that those who are dishonest are the only ones getting ahead. And corrupt politicians aren't able to produce the legislation that would keep companies on the straight and narrow...

We could do ourselves a favor and remember that, yes, America is an experiment which is largely based on capitalism, but what we're living under is not true "capitalism"--rather it's "piracy on the high seas." We should never seek to confuse healthy means of wealth generation with robbery.
 
[quote name='Knoell']You ever get the feeling the government is just a teenage kid with his first credit card?[/quote]

I get the feeling that cons try ruin things intentionally as part of their strategy to drag the US back to the gilded age.


We are living beyond our means. Individual states are in the same situation. Individual people are in the same situation.
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And that those who support them either don't care because they are motivated exclusively by petty tribalism or too addled to notice.
 
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[quote name='ME!!!']How about special interests? I may not be part of a campaign, but I can still post everywhere and buy ad space for a candidate I like, right? How about yellow journalism? O'Reilly and Olbermann can blab about candidates an hour every night, but counter via a TV ad is bad.[/QUOTE]

[quote name='nasum']FoC, I think it was you that mentioned O'Reily and such when you countered my campaign funding reform suggestion. I don't mean to belittle people, but if your news comes from that guy, then you're fucked in the head. There's a major difference between news and opinion/commentary, unfortunately with the advent of the golden microphone the line has blurred considerably. There's little to no journalistic integrity left in this country anyways.[/QUOTE]

Look up yellow journalism. Your idea is to muzzle candidates. Not a bad idea at a glance, but you shift more power to O'Reilly and Olbermann types. Are they newsmen? No, but people don't know the difference. To make your idea work would require censorship of any news network, special interest group and candidates. You have to bury the First Amendment to get to that point.
 
@ the fallacy of tariffs:

[quote name='fullmetalfan720']
Or we could just bring back tariffs.
[/QUOTE]

Although you were right about how the fed forcing interest rates would be awful (an idea initially proposed by the idiotic Keynes), this statement is stupid.

[quote name='Indigo_Streetlight'] If a company lays off its workers here, closes a plant and moves the whole operation offshore, tariff their products in an amount equal to the American wages eliminated. Say if it was 600 workers laid off. By taxing the import, you can pay all of those workers to do something else! And if the company doesn't want to ship its products here, they lose the American market--the hell with them. We can always back a new, American-friendly company to satisfy the domestic market.[/QUOTE]

The Wealth of Nations was written over 200 years ago and yet people still don't understand how tariffs work or who they hurt. Tariffs are basically a subsidy for a special interest producer at the expense of all other producers (international and domestic) and all consumers.

Please read Economics in One Lesson by Hazlitt. I linked to it on google books. I post on these forums to hopefully make my fellow Americans smarter. Read and learn (even if it is just that chapter).
 
I think we're talking about different sides of the coin FoC.
Michelle Bachmann is already running commercials (seemingly about twice an hour on most of the local tv channels and even more on radio) and has been for about 3 weeks now. That's a full two months before a non-presidential election. It simply isn't needed. If her campaign had a message, other than pretty weak attack ads showing that her opponent has voted to increase taxes at every opportunity (which isn't actually true), then maybe she wouldn't have to run these ads. It's just ridiculous and it never ends.

Does that mean I want to censor network TV by who they decide to take money from for the purpose of advertising? Nope. But I'd rather see an actual debate between the candidates than sneaky bullshit that distorts the truth. That's the job of journalism, bring about real discussion. The ads can be bought (and they're mostly ignored I would imagine) but there's just no substance and it serves little to no purpose. The commentators will commentate because they get ratings, but again no substance.
Hell even the debates from the last presidential election were a bunch of crap. Can't we just know that the candidates thank the audience and the moderator? Do they have to take up 80% of the allotted time for their first question to suck dick? Listen, we know you suck dick, you don't have to show us how pearly white your teeth are, just answering the fucking question. Just shows that actual issues matter even less now than they did 20 years ago and we're only interested in the politics of personality. I can't remember what year Idiocracy was supposed to be, but I get the feeling that we're about 15-20 years out from that...
 
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