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U.S. trade deficit is almost exactly equal to the amount of energy we import.350 billion vs.389 billion.Gee,if we used our own energy sources,nuclear,nat gas and coal,how much stronger as a country,economy,could we be?
Corporate profits determine how much we can import and how much we can export. Even energy is decided by corporates.
Unless you have a job in the health care industry,I'd be worried!
I work in the health care industry and I'm forever worried! 40-45% of our Federal Budget eaten up by Medicaid/Medicare costs, wouldn't you be worried too?
While I don't think being proven wrong will have one iota of effect on the OP. What I am hoping is that people that are new, or just happen on this, will take a look that driving oneself obsessively with panic and anxiety with fear of some economic apocalypse is not only wrong...it's completely insane.
Thanks for reviving this three-year-old thread. I agree that it will probably not affect the OP, who seems impervious to evidence, but it is important to strive for honesty in City-Data forums, to which you have contributed here.
So how is the collapse coming? Just want to revisit because it's been three years and everyone is still here...
Well the Fed finally got permission to pump up the stock market far enough to get a new bubble going. So the collapse is on schedule for 2017 ish. But that depends on how things in the EU play out. If things go down hill fast there then it would tend to take things down with us as well.
Real unemployment numbers are over 17% with the Detroit area over 50%!
More jobs are going overseas every year and we manufacture almost NOTHING anymore!
Unless you have a job in the health care industry,I'd be worried!
Shameful are the SHEEP who follow what the idiots on tv tell you and actually believe it! If you're not prepared for what can and will happen you have no one to blame except yourself!
Even hospitals are laying people off. I don't see how anyone could say our economy is improving.
In last 3 months, 5 of my friends left US for greener pastures in other countries. All 5 were Ph.D. in STEM fields (Engineering, Agriculture, Chemistry) and even after 2-3 years after they have finished their Ph.D., they were unable to find a minimum wage job. One went to Canada, one to Germany, one back to South Korea and two to their home country India. I am not saying that those foreigners are entitled for good jobs in USA. I just wanted to say that things are not good for young educated people who wish to start their career.
VIENNA, 3 March (UN Information Service) - China is now the world's second largest producer of manufacturing output, says a new report by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). With this development, China unseats Japan and is trailing behind the United States.
So, the United States is still the #1 manufacturer in the world, yet here you are declaring we manufacture almost nothing. This word "nothing" I do not think it means what you think it means.
It's this type of shrill hyperbole that makes rational discussion difficult. Is our country continuing to lose manufacturing base? It certainly is and we would be wise to address that, but just making things up that are easily proven false serves no purpose, you should be embarrassed.
And our manufacturing sector continues to decline by all measures other than dollar output (which dollar devaluation skews). Manufacturing as a share of GDP has gone from 24.3% in 1970 to 12.8% in 2010. http://forum.uschamber.com/blog/2012...ning-share-gdp The share of Americans employed in manufacturing, as opposed to less well-paying industries, has been steadily declining for decades. "Over the past 12 years, U.S. manufacturers have cut 31 percent of their workforce, or nearly 6 million workers. Their contribution to gross domestic product fell to 12.2 percent in 2011 from 22.7 percent in 1970." Bloomberg View: A Reality Check on American Manufacturing - Businessweek Our GDP has been shifting from producing goods to producing services since about 1948, as this chart shows: History lessons: Understanding the decline in manufacturing | MinnPost
And let's not forget that much of what we do manufacture is military arms and weapons. The U.S. is by far the biggest exporter of military weaponry, with Russia coming in 2nd. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing are the 3 largest arms manufacturers and account for 1% of the U.S. GDP, and U.S. arms sales amount to 60% of world arms sales. The three largest defense companies in the world are Is it a good thing to depend so heavily on arming the world, creating an incentive for the U.S. to start wars and encourage international conflict? I don't think so.
High tech is often called out as the way American manufacturing is trending, but "The $30 billion trade surplus in high-tech products that the United States enjoyed 10 years ago has become a $56 billion deficit...in 1980, America produced 42 percent of the world's semiconductors. Today, the United States produces only 14 percent of the world's supply of a device that we invented 53 years ago." Research and Development was once our key to innovation; now we've dropped from #1 to #8 in terms of GDP devoted to R&D. Outsourcing manufacturing hurts U.S. - SFGate
The importance of manufacturing to an economy cannot be understated: it is a productive "engine" that produces wealth, while game-playing sectors like Finance and Insurance create no wealth at all. But some manufacturing is not positive--like military arms that create incentives for American politicians to keep the world in a constant state of war. Overall, America's shift from manufacturing to a service and finance-type economy has been disastrous for every worker, and in every American. And the rise of Big Government as a share of GDP has similarly hurt all of us as non-productive activities took the place of productive (wealth producing) ones. Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: Government Spending as Percentage of GDP
"So just how bad is the U.S. economy? Well, the truth is that sometimes it is hard to put into words. We have squandered the great wealth left to us by our forefathers, we have almost totally dismantled the world's greatest manufacturing base, we have shipped millions of good jobs overseas and we have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of mankind. We have taken the greatest free enterprise economy that was ever created and have turned it into a gigantic house of cards delicately balanced on a never-ending spiral of paper money and debt. "
Do you ever bother reading these screeds with a critical eye? You must not. Hey, I'm not exactly a sunshine pumper, but without much looking around at all, I've found several glaring problems.
The one that's immediate is the bolded quote above. Actually, American manufacturing as a share of the GDP has remained remarkably steady over the past 50 years. But because of huge leaps in productivity, the share of manufacturing jobs have plummeted. The American worker today is roughly 4-5 times more productive than his predecessor from 1950.
Well the Fed finally got permission to pump up the stock market far enough to get a new bubble going. So the collapse is on schedule for 2017 ish. But that depends on how things in the EU play out. If things go down hill fast there then it would tend to take things down with us as well.
LOL is this guy for real?
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