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I'm not a liberal numbnuts. If any "thing" I'm a libertarian bordering on anarchy. The only person I support if and when he quits the vile republican party is Ron Paul or Jesse Ventura if he runs. Otherwise you and everyone else can take your partisan politics bend over and shove them up your rear end. I'm sick of it! Sick of this liberal conservative bs.............sick of democrats vs. republicans..........THROW ALL OF YOU PUKES OUT! Both ideologies have ruined this country.
Now we are getting somewhere.... Other than the Ventura part that is...
I was beginning to think I was the only one....
If only we could look beyond our stagnated ideology, stop being suckered by the divisive tools of partisan government and focus on what we have in common rather than what the radio shock jocks tell us we are conflicted on... Just imagine what we could accomplish...
I will agree with the contention that the Real Problem is the financialization of the US economy by switching from a capital intensive manufacturing base to a high cash flow consumer economy. By eliminating domestic manufacturing the financiers have eliminated the major source of the nation's wealth and substituted wealth transfer and consolidation instead of growth. This only benefits the financiers and their owners. The rest of us only acquire debt, not prosperity.
To our great harm politicians of both major parties have helped with this transition. Creating this consumer economy is a nearly certain way to destruction.
I understand the points you are driving here .. and I agree ... but just to refine them just a tad .... it's really not "consumerism" per se ... as we've always had a consumer economy and need that consumerism to circulate wealth and job opportunities.
The issue is consumerism on credit, rather than on earnings and production. This was the bait .... as production was transferred off shore, a "services and Hi-tech" economy was sold to the public as a replacement for manufacturing. The philosophy presented was to outsource that unskilled or moderately skilled labor to other countries, while educating and training Americans to more white collar professional jobs in technology ... the claim was that this switch would give Americans better, higher paying jobs with brighter futures.
As manufacturing disappeared, technology advanced that allowed those "hi-tech" jobs to move off shore as well, leaving Americans caught competing for fewer opportunities. And the fewer the opportunities, as is the case with supply and demand, more workers for fewer jobs meant lower wages.
The reality is ... setting aside political correctness ... there is a significant segment of the population that simply do not possess the intellectual capacity or talent to be engineers, doctors, scientists, developers and finance professionals. Yet they need work just like anyone else does. Making matters worse, those blue collar folks saw massive influxes of immigrants (many illegal) flooding the market with cheap labor in agriculture and construction, eliminating those opportunities also. What are these people to do? There is not enough service jobs to employ all of these people ... and as the former "hi-tech" worker is forced into the services market also, the pressure on the blue collar crowd is insurmountable for them ... and they wind up with unemployment, food stamps, government hand outs, etc.
In the last couple of decades, some of the shortfall in earned income has been offset with personal credit and depleted savings, along with financial schemes from Wall Street and the banker gangsters, creating artificial bubbles and wealth pockets. The fast paced consumer electronics industry flooded the markets with cheap goods .. and the mega retailers marketing those goods drove the small retailers out of business and the loss of those jobs.
This has resulted in the huge corporations wrecking the domestic economy with off shore slave labor produced goods ... no production at home ... a shrinking job market .. rising unemployment .. and corruption of the highest order in the financial markets ... all assisted by a compliant corporate owned government which created the environment to allow their controllers to literally sucking the wealth of the country dry.
At the same time ... that "credit" everyone got dependent on slowly evaporated, and now we have the results. Huge federal deficits, reductions in services ... overgrown State bureaucracies going bankrupt and placing greater tax pressures on small businesses and those still employed to make up for the shortfalls in tax revenues, etc.
And you are correct ... large corporations and the banker gangsters are hoarding huge sums of wealth ... refusing to invest ... refusing to loan ... and consolidating their holdings by buying up infrastructure using tax payer money given them in the form of financial bail outs in what can only be described as an outright criminal heist in broad daylight.
All of this was made possible by the very calculated dumbing down of the populace with constant propaganda and manipulation ... leaving a large segment of the population too stupid to even recognize how they are being fleeced like sheep, many of whom aren't shy about boasting how smart they are and attempting to explain the logic of handing Trillions of dollars to billionaire bankers, because it's going to save the economy
There was a thread here on CD, with a poll asking how each person viewed themselves intellectually ... "are you in the top 10% ... top 50% ... or bottom 50% in IQ. 98% thought they were in the top 50% ... and 50% thought they were in the top 10%. Hardly anyone thought they were in the bottom 50%.
Either CD attracts only the brightest of the bright ... or half the population are low grade morons who think they are geniuses. A careful examination of some of the positions presented here on CD really does answer that question.
tex, great take on what is going on, especially the decline of the "use your hands" type of work though transferring the "portable" work to countries overseas with lower labor costs. The fly in the ointment in this plan has always been how to lower the labor costs of the jobs that cannot be shipped overseas. Someone needs to build and repair our structures, public and private. Ikea doesn't make bridges and roads yet, and you cannot ship this type of work overseas. the actual work on our vast infrastructure must be done here. in America. How do you globalize those jobs that still use picks and shovels? How do you globalize the jobs that are still protected by union contracts. How can you take control of those jobs, reduce their cost and still get the work done? The bigger question is how do you get the middle class to turn on itself?
Koch Brothers', et al, scheme for finishing off the decline of the middle class, breaking the unions and undermining the opposition party, a stroke of genius. Set one segment of the middle class (the ones that have already been globalized) against the targeted segment (Our teachers, the builders of our infrastructure and government workers) that are holding onto those jobs that can't be easily globalized.
Sure, blame the financial mess you created and profited from on the perceived excesses of the union workers who's pay cuts haven't kept pace with your pay cuts. Tell them that the deficits that have been brewing for years and exploded with Bush's Great Recession need to be fix today.
I wonder why the health care industry has completely escaped this attack on labor cost when every level of government is effected by those soaring costs... Every public worker is expected to take cuts and pay more, yet health care workers have not been asked to sacrifice. Could they be next?
we are in a race to the bottom, we will be a third world country of overweight consumers if they have their way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GuyNTexas
I understand the points you are driving here .. and I agree ... but just to refine them just a tad .... it's really not "consumerism" per se ... as we've always had a consumer economy and need that consumerism to circulate wealth and job opportunities.
The issue is consumerism on credit, rather than on earnings and production. This was the bait .... as production was transferred off shore, a "services and Hi-tech" economy was sold to the public as a replacement for manufacturing. The philosophy presented was to outsource that unskilled or moderately skilled labor to other countries, while educating and training Americans to more white collar professional jobs in technology ... the claim was that this switch would give Americans better, higher paying jobs with brighter futures.
As manufacturing disappeared, technology advanced that allowed those "hi-tech" jobs to move off shore as well, leaving Americans caught competing for fewer opportunities. And the fewer the opportunities, as is the case with supply and demand, more workers for fewer jobs meant lower wages.
The reality is ... setting aside political correctness ... there is a significant segment of the population that simply do not possess the intellectual capacity or talent to be engineers, doctors, scientists, developers and finance professionals. Yet they need work just like anyone else does. Making matters worse, those blue collar folks saw massive influxes of immigrants (many illegal) flooding the market with cheap labor in agriculture and construction, eliminating those opportunities also. What are these people to do? There is not enough service jobs to employ all of these people ... and as the former "hi-tech" worker is forced into the services market also, the pressure on the blue collar crowd is insurmountable for them ... and they wind up with unemployment, food stamps, government hand outs, etc.
In the last couple of decades, some of the shortfall in earned income has been offset with personal credit and depleted savings, along with financial schemes from Wall Street and the banker gangsters, creating artificial bubbles and wealth pockets. The fast paced consumer electronics industry flooded the markets with cheap goods .. and the mega retailers marketing those goods drove the small retailers out of business and the loss of those jobs.
This has resulted in the huge corporations wrecking the domestic economy with off shore slave labor produced goods ... no production at home ... a shrinking job market .. rising unemployment .. and corruption of the highest order in the financial markets ... all assisted by a compliant corporate owned government which created the environment to allow their controllers to literally sucking the wealth of the country dry.
At the same time ... that "credit" everyone got dependent on slowly evaporated, and now we have the results. Huge federal deficits, reductions in services ... overgrown State bureaucracies going bankrupt and placing greater tax pressures on small businesses and those still employed to make up for the shortfalls in tax revenues, etc.
And you are correct ... large corporations and the banker gangsters are hoarding huge sums of wealth ... refusing to invest ... refusing to loan ... and consolidating their holdings by buying up infrastructure using tax payer money given them in the form of financial bail outs in what can only be described as an outright criminal heist in broad daylight.
All of this was made possible by the very calculated dumbing down of the populace with constant propaganda and manipulation ... leaving a large segment of the population too stupid to even recognize how they are being fleeced like sheep, many of whom aren't shy about boasting how smart they are and attempting to explain the logic of handing Trillions of dollars to billionaire bankers, because it's going to save the economy
There was a thread here on CD, with a poll asking how each person viewed themselves intellectually ... "are you in the top 10% ... top 50% ... or bottom 50% in IQ. 98% thought they were in the top 50% ... and 50% thought they were in the top 10%. Hardly anyone thought they were in the bottom 50%.
Either CD attracts only the brightest of the bright ... or half the population are low grade morons who think they are geniuses. A careful examination of some of the positions presented here on CD really does answer that question.
I worked for a bank for several years. That bank was bought out! With that being said, the last year and a half that I was with that company, I saw everything start going down hill. It wasn't until about 2 years or so after I was gone, when they finally went under. But with that being said, I saw the writing on the wall. I will NEVER work for another bank! They are a big reason as to why we are in the shape we are in today!
Gee, if I didn't know any better I'd think that AlterNet had turned into the Tea Party because that's basically what got the TP rolling: Big Bank bailouts that Americans objected to.
Good to see the radical progressive leftists finally embracing the Tea Party mantra.
Gee, if I didn't know any better I'd think that AlterNet had turned into the Tea Party because that's basically what got the TP rolling: Big Bank bailouts that Americans objected to.
Good to see the radical progressive leftists finally embracing the Tea Party mantra.
I think the difference is how to fix the mess. teabaggers want to cut the size of governments and do more tax cuts whereas, speaking for myself, I'd like to see taxes raised on the top quintile. I'd also remove the income cap on FICA. Spending isn't the problem, this Starve the Beast mentality is the problem. How can companies like GE owe no federal taxes? Can anyone honestly say our military didn't protect their interests abroad and they don't owe us a dime?
i think both sides need to quit throwing bombs at each other and think about who really caused this mess. It really isn't the middle class, union or non union. It is in the laps of the big banks and the big multinational corporations that are always creating these financial crisis's as a means to loot the treasury.
If we needed to hand them Trillions of dollars to bailout and stabilize the markets, where are those missing trillions, that we had to REPLACE? AND where did the trillions of dollars we handed the banks and corporations go? WHERE DID ALL THAT MONEY GO? Finally, I wonder why it is such a crisis when corporate America and we need to bail them out, but the same corporations sit on their hordes of loot when they declare the nation has a debt crisis that has to be address now. Why does it fall to the middle class to fix the aftermath of their excesses.
How long before the middle class AND the teabaggers direct their anger in the right direction, AT WALL STREET, THE BANKS AND BIG BUSINESS instead of each other?
LOL Yeah then they turn around let Sarah Palin and Glen Beck be their spokesholes. The Tea party is a complete and utter joke! They need to go away. They are a distraction and a bandwagon for the corrupt republican party plain and simple.
Waaaaaa.....they're standing in the way of our march to socialism and the redistribution of wealth. They're not buying our accusations of "racists" anymore. They don't back down when we come at them with nasty rhetoric instead of intelligent debate. They won't GO AWAY. What to do, what to do.
What, is "distraction" the Obama word-of-the-day?
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