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I do what I can by educating myself on how people running for election in my Country, State, City, and County voted. I don't care what they say, as most of it is to please the party they are in. I look and educate myself by what they voted for and how they voted for it. Did they vote at all on this issue? How did they vote on this issue? Then, I go vote for the ones who are representing WE THE PEOPLE and I vote for those who voted the way I would vote on important issues. If everybody running for election is a complete bought off jerk I'm not afraid to use the write in vote. Until the general population cares enough to do this, we'll always be behind and continue falling further behind. Use the system or lose the system!
That's maybe the problem. To many Americans still think that the U.S. is so modern or advanced. Even Joe Biden thinks that the rest of the world still considers the U.S. as a modern (infrastructure wise) country. Many Americans still think that the world envy the U.S. because the U.S. is so advanced.
Do you have electricitiy in Europe? Yes we have, and without almost no black outs.
That maybe shows how some Americans still tick.
New York is the world financial capital and should be a very shiny city with a high standard of living. But it looks in many areas more like a city that is rotting away. It's seems to be much worse than in poor German cities in the Ruhr area or old industrial cities in Northern England. I guess that rents in New York are very high, why the landlords don't invest more of the revenues to revamp those buildings? It's not only the infrastructure that is falling in disrepair, also the majority of the residential buildings are getting more and more outdated. Normally there should be scaffolds on about every 50. house per year, so that after 50 years all buildings are revamped. But the amount of scaffolds in New York is very limited.
Americans are great in building something new, but once the buildings are finished, there are mostly no further improvements. Instead of revamping the existing buildings and facilities they often build new suburbs miles away from the city center. That leads to even more infrastructure that have to be maintained in the future.
I can not believe that a city like New York isn't able to increase the tax receipts a little bit so they have enough funds to fix the infrastructure and other problems.
Americans are so patriotic, that should be a big advantage. It should be a matter of course, that everyone cares a little bit more about their surroundings. A little bit more cleanliness, why so many people just throw their litter on the floor? That isn't patriotic, it's just disgraceful.
The U.S. has plenty of ressources, very patriotic people and one of the biggest advantages, a rising population. It shouldn't be a problem to get the things on the right track.
Thank you, I grew up in NYC.
Multi million dollar Manhattan buildings with rotted plumbing. Even the subway has water main*sp breaks. Homeless men on the street, zero compassion.
I was just thinking about this the other day, how America was once such a super power and is now letting other countries take that position away from us.........China for example. If I had to pick only one thing that is leading to this decline, it would be that we simply do not make anything here any more, we outsource it to other countries. This is going to prove to be our downfall, IMO.
In WW I and WW II, what set us apart from the other countries was our ability to make things. We had a very strong manufacturing base here and were able to build machines to defeat the enemies. We no longer have those factories, countries like China have taken them over.
The day will come when we regret letting this happen, I think it will be our ultimate downfall.
Sometimes I think this "battle" whether the U.S. should be more "socialistic" (more public spending) or less "socialistic" is meaningless. It's not a question of the amount of public spendings whether a country can offer a high standard of living or not.
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
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America has a major debt spending issue, mostly because of policing the rest of the world. We spend more on military spending than the rest of the world Combined. That is no longer sustainable. I'd like for us to do a Britain style draw down of troops across the globe, but the problem is who fills the void? Britain knew we'd take over, there is no one we trust that would do the same now.
Our government is the cause of our problems. Too many rules and regulations. Capitalism gives everyone a shot, if they're willing to do the work and take the chance.
gawd how I hate this right wing free market weeny crap!!!
wake up! the jobs are all in China! We no longer have the stepping stones of entry level jobs, followed by decent blue collar jobs combined with night school and then to well paying higher and high level jobs including management jobs, as I experienced in the 70's and 80's.
That idiot Rush Limbaugh attitude that the now permanent under employed and unemployed class can just open businesses is idiotic from the start. What, we all open t-shirt shops on line or start to take in eachothers' laundry, or open lawn cutting businesses? Give me a break.
In the past, American prosperity was based upon manufacturing, the production of goods. What are we now? A wealthy managerial class that gets all the benefits from a slave class overseas.
Welcome to the global economy. It aint what you think at all, and tour children or grandchildren will be slaves. Glad I wont be alive to see it come to pass.
It is urgently important that we concern our-self to push forth and become more focused in how we address our political leaders, and in turn they must address different our industrial leaders.
Other nations are willing to learn from the world about them, we on the other hand think in terms of criticizing rather than learning from other nations. Within our aims to criticize, we miss the awareness of respecting the advances other nations are making and do make. They move ahead of us at a great ratio in performance %'s, while we get stuck of thinking we are still the world of the Post World War II glory days. Which vanished, and were cemented into history at the point of the Nixon Administration and the ideology and actions engaged in leadership and academia ideology going forward. These served to push up further behind.
We forgot to protection our nationalist stand and performance as a nation- and greed and arrogance led us, instead of sound thinking of how to protect a nation while reaching out to engage the globalist world. Only in the last Administration have we reached to relearn what is diplomatic concerns, late as it is, it is met still with challenges from the Right, but through the respect of diplomacy, opens the mind to respect, and when respect is a highly considered elements, so too does the openness to learn from others move forefront.
We can see an article about China's advances, instead of learning from it, we speed immediately to doubting and put downs of China, rather than being open to learn and integrate what is learned into our own model as a nation. "Utter Arrogance, based on a historical mentality of a bigoted view of the global nations, has only served to put us at a great disadvantage.
Today, we have the Right Wing unaware of any of this, still fighting the Civil War at home, and still thinking we are the dominant World War II victors, when the rest of the world is going about their business stabilizing their nations and expanding the capability and excelling in performance in doing so. While we try and hold on to a bigoted ideological tonality.
We must learn to change. China today, is the world #1 Exporter, which means it too is the #1 Manufacturing producer in the world. It too, holds a capital advantage, when we are indebted to them to the tune of 1.3 Trillion dollars.
It's time for us to let go of past delusions and acknowledge and pay attention to what is within the world dynamics to function, performance, position and standings.
We first can't get past the ignorance of racial and class bigotry within our own nation, and we try and skirt it and down play it, and the more we try and draw curtains to avoid fixing it, we blind our-self and ultimately inflame it even more.
We have more things within our circles of biases and bigotries working against us than we want to acknowledge, but until we acknowledge and make adjustments to correct, we diminish our own forward progress as a nation and its people.
Last edited by Chance and Change; 04-25-2015 at 07:18 AM..
What is interesting is our 44% tax rate puts us on par with much of Europe (I think we're very similar to Germany). We don't tax as much federally but we levy a multitude of other taxes. But do we get affordable healthcare? No. Does our infrastructure suck in most of the country? Yes. Is education affordable? No.
Of course the rich don't pay anywhere near 44% The actual tax rate for the 1% after mortgage interest deductions and large capital gains is often lower than the middle class. But still where does all the money go? We have some of the most corrupt politicians of any first world country, and the fact that we have only 2 parties is a massive hindrance and more easily corruptible. It's much harder to create corruption with a Euro-style Parliamentary system where any party that gets 5% of the vote gets a seat in Parliament.
One thing people forget to mention? Due to its isolation the US was the only major industrialized manufacturing economy in the world after the world was destroyed in World War II. Now we have to compete with the rest of Europe as well as new economies like China and India. We no longer are the only game in town and our profit margins are getting lower. Consequently, wages are dropping, and with falling tax revenues local governments are going bankrupt.
The fact that we based over 40% of our economy on finance and shuffling money around instead of developing new technologies didn't help. Of course when we do develop things the Chinese government actually hires people to steal the patents and then sells it to local companies who don't adhere to patent laws. So international patent enforcement is probably important as well.
Exactly! There is plenty of money out there to do the things we need to do, but the government keeps wasting it on things like military spending. We don't need anymore tanks!! We need healthcare, education and well paying jobs!!!
I love this country, I have no no desire to leave, however it has been my observation lately that we are starting to fall behind the rest of the world. We were so much further advanced for so long we got stagnant, and i predict in the next 20 years we will start to see our country not be the most advanced/ highest quality of life. Here are some reasons behind this statement.
Oil - We are so accustomed to using gasoline and our dependence on foreign oil is through the roof. How was Brazil able to completely cut any foreign oil dependence out in 8 years while simultaneously bringing 40 million to the middle class all by growing sugar and making ethanol/methanol mainstream? We have made no real strides at the pending energy crisis and likely wont since our government can be bought. We literally have the ability to produce enough ethanol/methanol to cut out all foreign oil today, but we don't. We allow companies like Exxon/BP to run our life while simultaneously draining our pockets.
We knew long ago at the end of the 1960's our domestic oil supply was challenged, we failed to use a better refining process and continued the waste at alarming rates. By the Mid 1970's with the awaking arrival of OPEC, we again knew our reliance had gone offshore. We let big oil executive influence our foreign policy and create atrocities in foreign lands in a oil grab expedition of brutal means. We played the game of political manipulation of foreign leaders and toppling government as well as creating conflicts and then doing policy shift to support whom we first opposed, while our aim was to gain oil accessibility in the middle of such generated conflicts. the meddling infuriated the region with distrust and anguish at the policy shifting madness of pitting one group against another and arming both. Then we want to step in and play the broker, while the underlying aim, remain the grasp for Oil. We were oil blinded, and unaware of the havoc we set in motion as well as how we fueled the havoc which has raged on for decades and centuries before.
We knew the need for battery technology at the advent of the 1970's technology revolution, but big oil coupled with an auto industry who refused to change both served to promote more of the same, 'gas guzzling cars". American Industry wanted NOT to make the investment to effect the change, they were more concern with their concept of prestige and wealth gathering, and ignored what is responsibility. We knew no different because we blindly accepted what was presented.
War - We are so worried about policing all these morons in the middle east when they have been war-ing since the beginning of man kind. When is enough enough? Why are wasting this money with all the issues we have here. We could eliminate hunger, homelessness, infrastructure issues, ect. very quickly if we just stopped dumping money into that **** hole of sandbox to accomplish nothing. The fact of the matter is they don't even really want us there! Lets invest in ourselves for a change, lets go back to building this country and taking care of our citizens.
We are trying to democratize people whose ideology of life and their religious premise which dominates their landscapes does not lend itself to democratic premise. We further need to give up the imperialist dominance goals, and realize those did not serve the British well in the ultimate outcome, neither will it serve us. We need to learn how to work within the frameworks, not try to rebuild the frame in other lands.
Violence - Our country is wayyy to violent. I love guns, I have a gun, however who decided having a gun is a right? It is a privilege IMO not a right, one that needs to be restricted to those who can handle it. I am all for citizens having guns, but the truth is it is way to easy to acquire. Our violence is off the charts compared to the rest of the developed world. Culture needs to change, there is no logical reason Detroit alone should have more homicides than the entire country of Japan in a year, that is disgusting.
Utter domestic frustrations- no longer do we have employment, nor the military draft system which provided uplift to many in past decades. We have a system which set out to export industry, when Civil Rights Bills were passed, which gave women and minorities more rights within the opportunity spectrum's, the exodus devastated who? Women, poor whites, dire poor whites and minorities. It served well for the wealthy, but it did nothing but set back and block out the means to advance for the Women, poor whites, dire poor whites and minorities. Until we acknowledge this, we will continue the suffrage of our neglect to consider, adjust and make corrections. when poverty expands, violence being within its make up, expands. We know these things, but do little to regard or address it and instead we hail the suit and tie and fall prey to the groomed degrees who are taught to protect the wealthy at the expense of the poor and minority base of our populace.
Middle Class - We have the rich and the poor and increasingly less in-between. In the long run this will not be good for either side. Something big and violent will likely happen eventually. Middle class is what made this country as great as it is, without it we lose our greatness. Socialism is horrible, I hate it, it gives no reason to push yourself. However there is no reason corporations/companies should not be paying a livable wage. There is no reason someone who works 40 hours a week should not be able to bring home even $20k in a year. We need to start being human again and being compassionate. Stock price is not more important than people. We throw thousands people into poverty by eliminating jobs just to save a buck and add a few pennies to a stock price. We pay people dirt wages that they cannot even afford their own food on while profiting billions on top of billions just to say we did. Its really ridiculous when you think about it.
Look no further than Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Norway and other Nordic Regional Nations, they ensure their people "work", they retain industry to build much of what they consume, they ensure to protect their nation, as they reach out to interact economically with the world, they understand when all their people do well, the nation does well.
Unfortunately, America never got over fighting the Civil War and it never diminished the influences of Antebellum Ideology within our systems. What people forget, Antebellum ideology retained a premise of poor whites and dire poor whites as near indentured servants and share croppers as it could, and it viewed minorities in terms of resentments if it could not use them as slave labor or share croppers and segregated servant society group with a determination to avert equality in principle to uphold Antebellum ideological tenents.
If we don't let go and get past that level and stage of ideological premise, we doom ourselves in the repetitions of such a cycle of ideological undertones in thought and manner. Which is a detractor to our growth and progress as a nation. People failed to grasp, the 8-10 yrs cycles, where even Real Estate is crashed and any gains made by women, poor whites, dire poor whites and minorities is wiped out in a cyclic process. We must stop the cycle.
Government - All this wraps into my final rant. Democracy is what makes a country great, however we are losing our greatness. If our four fathers saw what was going on in Washington today they would be disgusted!! We completely stomp on greater good now in the name of money. Any one with a brain can see how corporations are literally buying policies that favor them. Our government is supposed to be for the people, but yet we pass bills that corporations literally buy that do nothing but benefit a handful and hurt the rest of the population. Does this really sound like democracy?
The wealthy have continued to assault Democracy with aims to install a Plutocracy, we willing comply with our worship like praise of the wealthy and celebrity. We ignore much in our giving away much to hail these groups as if they are the kings and queens of the nation. Yet, we are not a Monarchy, we continue to allow the plutocrats to give us the impression of being such, by our fawning over these groups. Our government is filled with a division in generalized premise concepts,
Republicans= Business BEFORE people and hail the wealthy above all.
Democrats = Equal people BEFORE Business and respect for a social and civic union of a nations with respects and regard the equality of all.
We forget to look at the basis of theory ideology which directs our education in the ranks of university who produces the leaders of industry and political out-workings. Until there is a change within how and what people are taught, and for people to be taught, the ethics of respect for a nation and its people as being premier, we will further teach unto our young and young adults the premise of chasing status and prestige rather than being a contributor to the stability, growth and respectful care of its nation and its people.
I would love to hear some intelligent discussions/opinions on these matters or anything i left out. I could go on but these are my biggest complaints about our society in America today.
Comment are posted within the quote
Last edited by Chance and Change; 04-25-2015 at 08:10 AM..
The fact that we based over 40% of our economy on finance and shuffling money around instead of developing new technologies didn't help. Of course when we do develop things the Chinese government actually hires people to steal the patents and then sells it to local companies who don't adhere to patent laws. So international patent enforcement is probably important as well.
Those people in the finance sector, especially on the stock markets, which commodities they are offering for the average American? They make a lot of money, but no one can eat money, no one can live in money, and no one can wear money. It's just money. But they can buy a lot of products and services, which where produced by hard working American people. But what get those hard working people in return? They got just money. That means, that the average American has to produce goods and services for themselves and additionally for those people on the stock market.
Rising stock prices or rising property prices leads to a higher GDP, but stocks are just paper and a house is a house. The value of a house is that you can live in the house. The house doesn't get more beautiful or more comfortably when the price of the house ascends. Compared to many other countries the GDP growth rate in the U.S. is more inflated through risen stock and house prices. Statistically the U.S. middle class is richer than in most other countries, but in fact it is more struggling.
2,200 employees out of work because Walmart has allegedly some plumbing issues:
Every employee of these companies is introduced with a picture on the website. There is so much more appreciation towards the employees than in most U.S. companies. Almost everyone in those companies have at least a 3 years apprenticeship and is highly skilled and able to produce first class products that are probably unparalleled everywhere in the world. Offering high quality living areas that are affordable for middle class families. Whereas in the U.S. such products and services are probably only accessible to very rich people.
Labor costs in manufacturing are significant higher in most European countries. Anyway most of those countries were able to retain stronger manufacturing base. U.S. products sometimes seem to lack in design or in quality, so manufacturing is hit harder by competition from China. U.S. factories are also less automatized than factories in Europe.
Sorry, when it sounds rather Anti-American. I only try to explain why I think that there are some problems in the U.S. Every country has its pros and cons. And every country has to find its own way. What works well in country A is maybe completely inappropriate for country B.
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