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I appreciate everyone's big contributions to my pension. Where else but CA where Unions run gov. can I get a pension that equals my salary after working much less years than the private sector fjs do. Oh, and a 491k, 457, 491a, and Roth 491k. It's a great country!!!
Nor a bad haul for a kid from South Dakota. Even if it is completely made up.
And no, the middle-class is not built on government programs. If a country's middle class only exists because of government programs, then the economy is terminally ill.
Indeed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FIREin2016
As others have said, the US can never be in that position. We can print money, forever, to survive and pay debt and expenses.
At the cost of Monetary Inflation.
You all keep ignoring that reality.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FIREin2016
Worse case, our currency gets so diluted and cheap, our exchange rate makes it beneficial for our exports.
Except you can't export anything without importing raw materials or semi-finished products.
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Originally Posted by FIREin2016
Manufacturing returns to the USA. Foreign countries buy our products. And we return to prosperity (albeit with some inflation, maybe)
Keep dreaming.
India is about to move into it's 2nd Level Economy.
Think you can compete against the Indian minimum wage of $0.28/hour?
Go ahead....try.
Ndela in Sierra Leone currently gets $0.03/hour.
Think you can compete against that? When the time comes, she'll be making somewhere around $0.30/hour.
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Originally Posted by FrankMiller
I can't refute any of this because most of it is so ridiculous I don't even know where to start.
Well you can't refute facts, Frank, especially when you don't even know where to look.
Amused...
Except you can't export anything without importing raw materials or semi-finished products.
Silly. The US has very favorable natural resources compared to most other countries, and importing semi-finished products and adding value to them would be just fine.
Imports are ~17% of GDP. That isn't a large number. The problem is that exports are only ~12%.
Quote:
Think you can compete against the Indian minimum wage of $0.28/hour?
Don't need to.
With all the poor people in world ready to be exploited, why are so many still waiting? You don't appear to understand economics or productivity.
The only reason the United States isn't in bigger trouble right now is that other countries keep buying our debt. How long before we are where Greece is? Do you think we will avoid it? 10 years? Longer? Socialism doesn't work. Eventually you do run out of other people's money. Greece is the textbook. Germany didn't blink like Greece thought they would. Can just kicked down the road and Greece I think hS hit a point of no return . Hopefully Portugal, Spain etc. will learn from Germany's actions. How about the United States? How far are we away from where Greece is now?
The USA is truly too big to fail. If the USA went under the world would follow. That speaks volumes.
As far as being where Greece is...we would need to get rid of Greece and tow our country over there...it may not fit in that little space
Nor a bad haul for a kid from South Dakota. Even if it is completely made up.
28 years at a public agency ..A typical CA pension formula. 78% of my highest year. It equals my take home because now the retirement contribution of 8% and the Social Security/Medicare contributions aren't included. Plus I'm going to start drawing Social Security in a year when I turn 62. It's a great country as long as other people have to pay for it! Thank you taxpayers!
I should know since I was tasked with administering our agency's pension fund which is reciprocal with CALPERS.
Here's another one for you. I have a university classmate who was aN administrator for a rather small city in Northern California. He retired about five years ago at age 54 after 30 years of work, of which only a few were at a higher salary. He currently gets a pension of
154,000 a year Plus cost-of-living increases plus free medical for life.
And no I didn't make any of it up. It's all public record.
Fortunately, I'm following your formula for capitalism and socialism as I also have some private sector income coming in.
You must be a very unhappy person, Barbara. You should visit some of the more appropriate forums for you on this city data site.
Never. The U.S. is nothing like Greece. Our public sector is nowhere near as large as theirs was, we actually collect our taxes and we are not in a monetary union where other, stronger countries can boss us around.
The U.S. has the world's reserve currency and the world's largest, most dynamic economy. Our 2nd largest competitor, China, is primarily a manufacturing hub so they will not be challenging us seriously for some time yet. The only reason their economy looks good is because the average person out of their 1.2 billion people gets paid between 10 and 20 dollars a day. Times a billion that looks like a lot, but when you really look at it, it's not.
Actually I'm more worried long-term about Brazil as a serious economic competitor. I used to be worried about the Eurozone prior to the 2008 crash but the Greece mess proves they're not going to be a problem.
So when will the U.S. become Greece? Never. Or at least never for us - it'll be several generations yet before anyone challenges the U.S.
Last count your electrical grid would cost $3.5 TRILLION and interstate and US route infrastructure was approaching $2.5 TRILLION.
Over the same time period, you have to come up with $2.7 TRILLION for Social Security plus $1 TRILLION for State-funded pensions and close to $1 TRILLION for private pensions.
It's just not going to happen without a tremendous amount of pain.
Unfunded...
Mircea
The infrastructure projects that the U.S. ought to undertake are now beyond our capabilities. A few generations back, we would put nose to grindstone and find a way to do it.
Today, with 47% of the country living on the public dole, this is simply no longer feasible. Those still working in the private sector have to carry along the indolent and lazy, service the nation's vast debts, and plan somehow to support themselves in their retirement with little certainty that Social Security or any other assistance will exist.
Workers today expect $15/hour to take burger orders and clean grills. Construction and trade unions demand usurious fees to do basic physical labor; NIMBY neighbors and enviro-radicals hire lawyers to litigate any project into oblivion.
Meanwhile, the Chinese are throwing up one skyscraper after another in weeks or months, projects that would take years to forever in the U.S. Shanghai now has twice the skyscrapers as New York City and ten times the energy and ambition.
Anyone who visits eastern Asia can see for themselves that the Asians have functional, efficient economies that are growing astronomically and achieving great things. Students in China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan work extremely hard to pass exams and get ahead.
Then come home and witness how lazy and slow Americans have become, how the spark of ingenuity and entrepreneurship has all but disappeared. Students graduate high school unable to speak or write correct English, with low math skills, no knowledge of history and literature, and hopelessly backward in the sciences. College students argue with professors over anything less than an A, deserved or not.
The respect for the hard driving businessman, the understanding that private economic activity is what brings us wealth and prosperity and good jobs, the notion of self-reliance and personal responsibility -- gone, replaced by a surly resentment of those who have more, hatred for a mythical "one percent", anti-Semitism, reverse racism, and all the old ugly prejudices of the past now rearing their heads as people struggle to explain and find blame for our degenerate state.
Never. The U.S. is nothing like Greece. Our public sector is nowhere near as large as theirs was, we actually collect our taxes and we are not in a monetary union where other, stronger countries can boss us around.
The U.S. has the world's reserve currency and the world's largest, most dynamic economy. Our 2nd largest competitor, China, is primarily a manufacturing hub so they will not be challenging us seriously for some time yet. The only reason their economy looks good is because the average person out of their 1.2 billion people gets paid between 10 and 20 dollars a day. Times a billion that looks like a lot, but when you really look at it, it's not.
Actually I'm more worried long-term about Brazil as a serious economic competitor. I used to be worried about the Eurozone prior to the 2008 crash but the Greece mess proves they're not going to be a problem.
So when will the U.S. become Greece? Never. Or at least never for us - it'll be several generations yet before anyone challenges the U.S.
Not many generations, actually. China will probably surpass the U.S. economically within one generation, and their military will also achieve parity with ours within a couple of decades.
You really ought to visit China and some of the other east Asian powers, then come back and tell us how you're not worried. They are, at this point, far in the lead. China's GDP today is higher than America's in terms of purchasing parity.
Brazil has huge social problems, corruption, lack of a strong work ethic -- the notion that they're going to challenge the U.S. for predominance in any particular sector seems a bit far fetched. We're sinking, but so are the Brazilians. The only thing they have going for them is their natural resources, and they can't just chop down the Amazon rain forests, which supply some huge percentage of the earth's oxygen.
The U.S. model of imperial overreach and overly funded domestic programs is unsustainable. Eventually it collapses under its own weight.
Same thing happened to Rome, Ottoman Empire, British Empire, many Chinese dynasties. It's cyclical. We've been on top for 100 years or so, and now it's someone else's turn.
I suspect the great powers of the latter 21st century and the early 22nd will be the spacefaring nations, those that build self-sustaining colonies on the moon and in space, learn how to exploit the asteroid belt, discover new economic opportunities that we can't even imagine today.
The U.S. will be left behind, just as Britain was after WWII. We twice elected a president who doesn't give a damn about the space program; he cancelled the manned vehicle that was to replace the Shuttle (Congress forced him to restore bits of it).
Meanwhile the Chinese are planning to land people on the Moon within 10 years, and probably they'll take the lead in space while we're sitting here on our fat butts, trying to figure out how to borrow (or tax) more money to fund more pointless and ineffective stimulus programs.
Don't make me laugh! Roads and bridges falling apart, no agreement on funding, Congress can't even keep basic government functions going. To make things worse, the lack of work in construction for so many years has persuaded many to quit the field.
Last edited by pvande55; 07-19-2015 at 07:05 PM..
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Meanwhile, the Chinese are throwing up one skyscraper after another in weeks or months, projects that would take years to forever in the U.S. Shanghai now has twice the skyscrapers as New York City and ten times the energy and ambition.
The Chinese are very productive. They have the workers and the resources. Where do you suppose they come up with so much money so quickly to do so? And where do you suppose the USA is missing it?
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