Gloom And Doom Hits Home.

[jdmidwest]

Made it 5 pages so far and still civil.....

[Flyflinger]

So what's your solution, Flyflinger?

We pay taxes to pay for things we can't do for ourselves, that can only be done collectively.

Solution: Freedom.

Do you have a mouse in your pocket or something? I have taxes extracted from me at the barrel of a gun. I don't "pay" anything....to "pay" would imply a voluntary exchange. The only reason the collective gets anything from me is because they would kill/imprison me if I withhold my capital.

[mixermarkb]

Yep. Maybe we just pair congress up into one from each side of the aisle, throw them all in boats and stick em on the Potomac until they get things sorted.

[Al Agnew]

The ONLY way this changes is if somehow, there is something that energizes the middle class job market. The last time it happened in any sort of real way was in the 1990s with the tech/dot.com boom. It created a whole new class of industries, with a whole new job market. Can government stimulus do this? Not by just throwing money at existing industries. That's good enough to stave off further depression sometimes, but it would take far too much money to really get things booming again. But that doesn't mean the government can't encourage the creation of new industries. They tried with "green energy", but the problem was that they bet on individual companies at the same time that China was willing to steal the developing technology and outcompete (with massive Chinese government subsidies) those same companies. The key to stimulus money, in my opinion, is to spend it on basic research and development, and green energy is a perfect place to do so. It might take longer, and it might still fail, but there's still a chance that green energy could be the next big development that would result in a huge new economic boom, one that would sustain itself for many years.

So you've basically said corporations are in it to make profits, not create jobs, not support infrastructure, etc., but if we would just fund your favored sector "green energy" then the folks who will profit from the government money tossed thier way won't act like the other greedy corporate barons in other industries because they are "green"? And I can't see it causing a huge economic boom, if anything the trend has been towards higher energy prices as we attempt to become more "green". I also find it ironic that as oil prices have jumped it's now become profitable to use very non-green sources of oil such as oil sands. And who gets hurt by high energy prices? The poor do, they still have to heat their homes, drive to work etc., it's also ironic that the green energy types who are likely to be the ones constantly advocating for the poor, are screwing those folks by supporting policies that are driving us away from producing cheap energy, high energy costs are extremely regressive. I guess we could spend more government money ahd heat the homes of the poor and fill their gas tanks (better yet buy them a Prius), course we don't have any money to do something like that, but that fact seems to escape everyone.

You didn't get what I wrote. I said it wasn't a good idea just to throw money at companies to produce products that are already developed, already have a market, and already have plenty of competition, though if that competition comes from other countries who ARE heavily subsidizing that production, American companies can't really compete anyway without subsidies. Where I said to throw the money was at basic research and development of BETTER green energy. Take Solyndra, for instance. They produced solar panels. They got a big government subsidy to produce them. China had already stolen the technology and was selling solar panels at a rock bottom cut rate price. Developed product, foreigners producing it and selling it cheaper than the American company could.

But what if Solyndra had an idea for a much improved solar panel? Just didn't have the funds to develop it and manufacture it. Then it would have made sense to furnish them with the funds to do so. Everybody gains, because it's valuable technology, American developed, and serves a need.

As for green energy not being a possible boom technology, you're probably right IF we keep doing things the way we have been. We're subsidizing ever more expensive oil, even if it is being produced in the U.S. and our friend Canada, at the same time we're paying lip service to developing alternatives. OF COURSE the alternatives are more expensive, and aren't quite ready for prime time, yet. That's the way of developing technologies. But just because that's the way it is now doesn't mean it always has to be that way. Improving the technologies, improving battery technology, and changing the way we produce energy and deliver it could turn things around. Understand...as long as energy keeps getting more expensive, the economy suffers. As long as green energy is more expensive and less reliable, it will not help us. BUT, oil is NEVER going to get cheaper and stay cheaper, either, and betting on it for the foreseeable future is planned economic mediocrity. Our best hope is that we can develop something that WILL be cheaper.

As for changing the way we produce and deliver energy...solar, wind, and other green technologies have the potential to de-centralize energy production and delivery. As long as all we're trying to do is fit green energy into the existing grid, it may eventually work but it won't in itself produce that boom we need. But what if we developed green energy to a point where it would be reliable and inexpensive enough for the individual homeowner, business, or municipality to produce it themselves? Tie it seamlessly into the existing grid. Keep the best of the grid, existing hydro, gas, nuclear plants to furnish the base, back-up power for everyone, but mostly have everyone be responsible for producing their own electricity. Then, there would be a booming industry based upon manufacturing, installing, and maintaining all those millions of home and business energy systems. And it would have the added benefit of not having to worry about natural disasters or terrorism taking out a whole region's grid.

[Flyflinger]

The Declaration of Independence states: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

That is, each individual has a natural, inalienable right to self-ownership, to make use of one’s own life, person, labor, contracts and property as one sees fit, as long as one does not interfere with any other individual’s same right. (For those who think there’s a difference between inalienable and unalienable, please see this.)

But the problem is that statists, communitarians, collectivists, political conservatives and progressives, and even some libertarians, don’t believe that rights are inalienable. Whether they would ever state it directly or not, they believe that the community in which one lives has collective ownership rights over each individual and one’s life, labor and property, and that the community has the right to make use of each individual as the community sees fit.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/lazarowitz/lazarowitz64.1.html

[jeb]

You didn't get what I wrote. I said it wasn't a good idea just to throw money at companies to produce products that are already developed, already have a market, and already have plenty of competition, though if that competition comes from other countries who ARE heavily subsidizing that production, American companies can't really compete anyway without subsidies. Where I said to throw the money was at basic research and development of BETTER green energy. Take Solyndra, for instance. They produced solar panels. They got a big government subsidy to produce them. China had already stolen the technology and was selling solar panels at a rock bottom cut rate price. Developed product, foreigners producing it and selling it cheaper than the American company could.

But what if Solyndra had an idea for a much improved solar panel? Just didn't have the funds to develop it and manufacture it. Then it would have made sense to furnish them with the funds to do so. Everybody gains, because it's valuable technology, American developed, and serves a need.

As for green energy not being a possible boom technology, you're probably right IF we keep doing things the way we have been. We're subsidizing ever more expensive oil, even if it is being produced in the U.S. and our friend Canada, at the same time we're paying lip service to developing alternatives. OF COURSE the alternatives are more expensive, and aren't quite ready for prime time, yet. That's the way of developing technologies. But just because that's the way it is now doesn't mean it always has to be that way. Improving the technologies, improving battery technology, and changing the way we produce energy and deliver it could turn things around. Understand...as long as energy keeps getting more expensive, the economy suffers. As long as green energy is more expensive and less reliable, it will not help us. BUT, oil is NEVER going to get cheaper and stay cheaper, either, and betting on it for the foreseeable future is planned economic mediocrity. Our best hope is that we can develop something that WILL be cheaper.

As for changing the way we produce and deliver energy...solar, wind, and other green technologies have the potential to de-centralize energy production and delivery. As long as all we're trying to do is fit green energy into the existing grid, it may eventually work but it won't in itself produce that boom we need. But what if we developed green energy to a point where it would be reliable and inexpensive enough for the individual homeowner, business, or municipality to produce it themselves? Tie it seamlessly into the existing grid. Keep the best of the grid, existing hydro, gas, nuclear plants to furnish the base, back-up power for everyone, but mostly have everyone be responsible for producing their own electricity. Then, there would be a booming industry based upon manufacturing, installing, and maintaining all those millions of home and business energy systems. And it would have the added benefit of not having to worry about natural disasters or terrorism taking out a whole region's grid.

The old magic bean schtick again? Really? We've been through all the if's and but's in this one before. Billions and billions have been poured into green energy. Almost nothing has come of it. The technology is not there to support it yet. We've been hearing the magic bean stuff on batterys for 20 years or better, yet we are still not seeing the kinds of results needed. Not every problem is solvable. We have things like the common cold to prove that to us every day. Someday we may get there, but pinning the hopes of a nation on it is irresponsible. We should be encouraging all job creators, not just the ones the current ultra-leftist regime panders to.

[jeb]

You have a whole different definition of "the same chance". Yeah, everybody has a chance, but if you have to work harder at it due to external factors and not your own innate intelligence and drive, then it ain't an equal chance. That's simply a myth, and always has been. Sure, it works both ways. But it's a lot easier for the kid from a poor, badly parented home with poor schools to not make it than it is one from a better home and better schools.

Your definition seems to be that everyone should have an easy chance. Yeah, well, life isn't fair. But everyone still has the same chance. Some might just have to work harder for it, as I said.

Somebody above said that they are all for education, but the money shouldn't be coming from the federal government. Well, it doesn't all come from the feds. Our schools are funded primarily through property taxes. And because some areas are much more affluent than others, this is a perfect way to insure that not all schools are equal and not all students have the same educational opportunities. I would submit that ALL the funding for schools should be put into one big federal fund, and then doled out in equal amounts per student to every school district across the country. It isn't where the funding comes from that's the problem, if there is a problem, it's the strings attached to it. Make sure those strings are there to insure the BEST education possible for each student, and that problem goes away.

Some states already do that. But while we're at it, lets cut funding by, say, 30% across the board. It's clear spending more is driving our education level steadily down. It seems logical spending less is a reasonable route to try.

And yes, cost of living DOES have something to do with it. It costs to keep kids in clothing and food. Food costs. Sanitation costs. Transportation to a job costs. In the countries in Africa that I've visited, there are lots and lots of people who don't have those costs...because they live in a cardboard box, drink water and deposit waste in the same trickle of water flowing through the mud, don't go to school, eat food out of garbage dumps that they walk to, glean firewood to keep warm from either scraps miles away or construction sites, and don't have a job, nor ANY hope of ever getting one. You really want Americans to live like that? If you want Americans, and American kids, to live like civilized people, then it costs to do so. I'm not talking about comfort and keeping up with the Jones's, I'm talking what we consider to be the basic necessities of food, shelter, clothing, and transportation.

You need to do a little research into what the govt defines as poverty/poor. It is currently defined, as I said, as not being able to keep up with the Jones's.

And a point I tried to make a while back in this thread, if I remember, is that if you allow Americans to live like those third world poor, they aren't going to meekly submit to doing so, simply because this country is developed enough that the poor can't help but see how the better off live, and want some of the same. In those African countries I'm talking about, there are enclaves of well-off people, totally separated from the rabble, and very few really rich people who are totally insulated from the poor, never dealing with them in any way. Those poor never see a TV. They have no concept of how the better off live. Everybody they know lives as they do. That's beginning to change in some countries with cell phones, but here in America, the poor are constantly exposed to how the rich live. They want it, but they are not educationally equipped to get it. So they'll try to get it in other ways, ways that will simply insure that this country turns more and more into one of rich enclaves and gated communities, surrounded by large numbers of poor people with little hope.

Wow, that's quite a stretch! Surely you're just making this stuff for sake of arguement and you don't really believe it?

And while I'm on this rant, I might as well say something about "job creators", although others have said it well. American corporations are making record profits. Their taxes were, and still are, lower than they were back 15 years or more ago when the economy was booming.

Not sure if that's true, but it is true we have either the highest or among the very highest corporate tax rates in the world. So they must have really been out of whack if they're lower now.

There are other ways to insure a level playing field in that case, and maybe tariffs are the way to go to get that level playing field.

Very naive to think tariff's work. We slap some on them, they slap some on us. I think some of the treaties our govt signed make it pretty hard to do anyway.

As has been pointed out, so-called job creators don't create jobs, don't invest in infrastructure, just because they pay less in taxes. The goal of any company is purely and simply, profit. Every other benefit in the capitalist system is a byproduct of the quest for profit. People don't start up companies and don't run companies to give people jobs, they do so to make money. If they can make more money by spending less on employees, safety and environmental regulations, etc., they will do so. The REAL job creators in this country are NOT the big corporations or even the small businesses, they are the middle class that buys the stuff.

What an odd way to look at things. If there were no jobs, the person wouldn't have any money to spend. Saying because he's got money to spend creates jobs is Alice in Wonderland level thinking.

The only way you get companies hiring more people and paying better wages is if you already have a thriving middle class that is willing to spend the money to buy stuff. As the middle class shrinks and falls behind relative to the richer, they buy less stuff.

No question that this is the case. As I said earlier, it is the chickens come home to roost. ONe more tax, one more regulation, one more entitlement program, one more golf outing with Tiger Woods. No big deal, right? We reap what we sow.

[Feathers and Fins]

I am more concerned about a Executive Branch that thinks drone strikes on US Citizens is legal and the constitution only applies where he wants it to at his WILL. THat is Monarchal statement. Gloom and doom is smoke and mirrors for a President who has now said flat out he will do it!

[LarrySTL]

Well I have never bothered to figure out how to quote here, so for now I will just do this

"You need to do a little research into what the govt defines as poverty/poor. It is currently defined, as I said, as not being able to keep up with the Jones's."

The actual current Federal definition is $ 11,000 per year income for a single person, and $ 23,100 per year for a family of four. Fifteen percent of the US population and about twenty percent of US children live below those financial levels. Says who ? US Dept of Health and Human Services.

I'll spare folks from my rant about the St L City public schools other than saying that pathetic would be an accurate description of most of them, and of the better ones, such as the few Magnet Schools, watch the news in July and see the parents lined up on sidewalks 24/7 for two or three days to try to get their kids into the magnet schools.

I live in the burbs in a suburb that nobody would think of as rich, but that has well rated public schools and which sends a substantial percentage of kids to college. I work primarily in the City in a neighborhood where over half the school kids are poor enough to be on the Fed school lunch program and which has one of the highest school dropout rates and the highest per capita murder rate, in the metro STL area. Anyone who believes those two sets of kids have remotely equal chances is dreaming.

If its so do-able for folks to bootstrap themselves out of poverty, why is the percentage of our population below the poverty level steadily increasing for decades, and why is the number of those who are middle class steadily decreasing at about the same rate ? Lastly, why is the percentage of wealth held by the richest 5 or 10 % continuing to increase at a rate that alarms me ? If we look at other countries in history, when the "haves" have much much more than the "have nots" for long, and the "nots" become more than about 60 % of the population, some really ugly things start to become common.

I'm dont know the overall answer, but I agree with Al ( and others) as to the general nature of the problem, and also with those who say that some major changes need to happen. At a national level lately I feel like both the Republicans and the Democrats would rather point the finger at the other side, and kick the can down the road months or years at a time, rather than risk their personal political futures by making some tough decisions.

[jeb]

Well I have never bothered to figure out how to quote here, so for now I will just do this

While I agree there are actual numbers associated with the "poverty line" as well, there is also verbiage around it that defines where the numbers are set. From this link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States

The most common measure of poverty in the United States is the "poverty threshold" set by the U.S. government. This measure recognizes poverty as a lack of those goods and services commonly taken for granted by members of mainstream society.

I'll spare folks from my rant about the St L City public schools other than saying that pathetic would be an accurate description of most of them, and of the better ones, such as the few Magnet Schools, watch the news in July and see the parents lined up on sidewalks 24/7 for two or three days to try to get their kids into the magnet schools.

I live in the burbs in a suburb that nobody would think of as rich, but that has well rated public schools and which sends a substantial percentage of kids to college. I work primarily in the City in a neighborhood where over half the school kids are poor enough to be on the Fed school lunch program and which has one of the highest school dropout rates and the highest per capita murder rate, in the metro STL area. Anyone who believes those two sets of kids have remotely equal chances is dreaming.

I think we're tripping on symantics here. I agree someone coming from a very poor family would likely have to work harder to get there, they still have the same chance at the American dream that everyone else does.

If its so do-able for folks to bootstrap themselves out of poverty, why is the percentage of our population below the poverty level steadily increasing for decades,

IMO, in large part, it's because we as a nation are making it too easy for them to live comfortably in poverty. I remember when the welfare state really started ramping up, the state I lived in at the time (MN) passed some very generous benefit packages. There were stories on the news shows for a while after that about welfare families moving to the Twin Cities from other states to take advantage of it.

and why is the number of those who are middle class steadily decreasing at about the same rate ?

See my chickens coming home to roost comments.

Lastly, why is the percentage of wealth held by the richest 5 or 10 % continuing to increase at a rate that alarms me ? If we look at other countries in history, when the "haves" have much much more than the "have nots" for long, and the "nots" become more than about 60 % of the population, some really ugly things start to become common.

I'm not happy that the middle class is disappearning, either. I fully understand that we need a strong middle class to make everything else work. But at the same time, I wonder if we just got too used to living too high off the hog while we were the "best" and now we have to adjust. When I was growing up in the 60's and 70's, we had a strong middle class. But that was defined a lot differently. One TV, probably one car, modest house in the 'burbs. Rare to find anyone with expensive boats, RV's, motorcycles, etc. I guess they call that poverty these days. I think the economics of the world stage we are now forced to play on, and the diminished education level of the USA, is going to force us to go back more to that style of middle class. It's sad and it's going to be painful, but I don't see anyway to avoid it. We have to become competitive on the world market or jobs will continue to flow overseas.

At a national level lately I feel like both the Republicans and the Democrats would rather point the finger at the other side, and kick the can down the road months or years at a time, rather than risk their personal political futures by making some tough decisions.

I think most of us feel the same way there. But we all know they're just a bunch of liars. And as someone else mentioned, the process to get into national office is absolutely corrupting. You can not get there without owing a lot of special interest a lot of favors. The process is completely broken, IMO.