Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
That is what we have now. Capitalism with a few social programs to help the down and out. It's not working. The problem is capitalism. I can't think of a worse system. I honestly believe capitalism is a worse system than communism. But for some strange reason, it's just taking a lot longer to collapse, then communism. But it is coming. 1% can't keep getting richer, and 99% poorer forever. There will be a breaking point.
I can't think of any business services that we have now that couldn't be provided better by government sponsored nonprofit corporations. Businesses should exist to provide good quality, low cost products and services to the public. Not to rape consumers to make investors rich. If we don't change our system fast, China is going to be the number one economy, not us. Actually it's probably already too late, to stop that.
We have a centrally planned economy where the central bank finances about 1/4 of the cost of the federal government and decides the level of asset prices and the level of economic activity that derives from extracting equity from financial assets and residential real estate. It is essentially a top-down system where other sectors of the economy will benefit with a delay and to a smaller degree. In the past, we used to think of the government employees, contractors, and vendors standing at the front of the line when the government passed economic stimulus. It is now the FIRE sector. In the long run, it's a losing proposition for the middle class since they're being asked to extract equity by increasing the amount of debt.
California housing prices are about twice as expensive as in the 80's and 90's when you look at the ratio of median price to median household income.
I suspect the OP never had to wait hours in a gas line either.
I didn't have to wait because I was a kid, but I remember all of that. I still think we're in decline. They've kept things looking nice on the surface so the masses don't get riled up. They have to keep things just good enough for us to believe that things aren't "that bad" until we have a complete Orwellian dictatorship. Then it gets really ugly from there. The elites have a very long timeline. They think in terms of multiple generations, not mere years or decades.
Who are "they" doing all this "engineering"??? And what possible advantage is there for "them" in subsidizing more welfare??
You have a lot of research to do. There are plenty of YouTube videos about it. Forget about getting a comprehensive picture from any of the mainstream media outlets. But just to put a few names out there, people like George Soros and Henry Kissinger. The advantage is the same as always--Power & Control. That's the real point of the welfare state--and the warfare state as well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hollytree
Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb book came out in 1968. Educated people read it and the uneducated didn't. The educated class reduced their family size thinking they were doing the right thing for the planet.
Yes, that's precisely my point. Educated and intelligent people voluntarily reduce their numbers. The unintelligent won't read a book like that. That's how you get a steadily increasing percentage of less intelligent people over time. Less intelligent people are easier to control.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hollytree
The ultimate result of that has been that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer because having a lot of kids is no longer advantageous since we no longer have an agrarian society.
Correct. None of that is an accident. The middle class and the wealthy respond to economic incentives to not have kids. The poor not as much, especially if you subsidize them with housing, welfare, etc.
It's a matter of policy all around the world to get people into concentrated urban centers, because, once again, it's easier to monitor people who live in concentrated urban areas. That's what UN Agenda 21 is about.
Yes, California has a high poverty rate. A lot of is driven by the Central Valley, where families of immigrant agricultural workers live. The poverty rate is considerably lower in the main metro areas.
California has America's highest cost of living adjusted poverty rate. The cost of living is highest in the coastal metro areas.
What I see is something like the fall of Rome. Not just the usual generational complaining about the young people, but the rich becoming filthy rich and the poor are becoming more like peasants. Meanwhile, the corruption in the higher levels continues and anything goes. We seem to have lost our culture and our values, things that once held us together. Everyone is out for themselves and they seem to hate each other. Never have I seen that before in my life. Laugh if you want, but these are not normal times. It feels like the country is falling apart.
We disagree a lot on politics, but I feel the same way.
This (politically liberal Bernie Sanders supporter) is saying similar things:
Every now and then articles in mainstream media allude to things such as this statement:
These drink dynasties, whose origins stretch back 1,300 years, reflect the extent to which families retain a firm grip on the industry, even though many of their companies have gone public over the years...
That's not a conspiracy. That's the natural tendency of humans (and really, all higher animals) to prefer their own kin.
I am child-free by choice, for a bevy of reasons. But if I weren't, I'd aim to leave everything to my progeny - preferably favoring one offspring, for maximal concentration of wealth. Then, hopefully that offspring would continue, so that in several generations' time, our "clan" would become wealthy. My concerns with social-policy would be to advocate for laws that support and enshrine such inter-generational concentration of wealth. The health, wealth and vitality of my fellow humans would only concern me, in so far as they'd be potential customers of the goods or services that my progeny's firm would sell, or perhaps as source of reliable (but not too uppity) employees.
When I look around at American society, I am actually quite shocked that there's so little emphasis on inter-generational transfer. Fathers bemoan that their sons are irresolute and ungrateful; so, the older generation spends. The younger generation meanwhile resents the older, calling them ossified and banal. Instead, it would be better if the older suppressed their own gratification to enrich the younger, and the younger in turn suppressed theirs, recycling their inheritance into an even bigger one for their own children (or more properly, favored child), and so forth. Every generation merely acts as steward of the money. Then, over the course of centuries, this legacy snowballs, accumulates, becoming enormous. But somehow this is contrary to the American way! Not only is it rare, it's deemed to be somehow disreputable, even antisocial. Why?
You have a very non-standard view of what makes a centrally planed economy.
You might want to read up on the work of Leonid Kantorovich, who won the 1975 Nobel Prize in Economics (shared that year with the brilliant Tjaaling Koopmans) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Kantorovich. Kantorovich won the prize for his pioneering work in centralized planning of resource allocation, and specifically in his work using various forms of linear programming and other mathematical optimization techniques.
Yet, the United States GDP is over 20 trillion dollars [dollar bills] - the highest it's been in history.
Actually, it's the highest that any nation has ever been.
It would be great if it was really dollars (coin).
Since 1933, all that has circulated is worthless debt (federal reserve notes), debauched and hyperinflated to disguise the theft of value.
(See HJR 192, June 1933, and Gold Reserve Act of 1934)
Pity the fools, when the creditor comes to collect.
BAM - can't pay debt with debt.
FYI: Coining all the known gold bullion in the world, only amounts to $122 billion, pursuant to the Coinage Act of 1792 et seq (the reference for what a unit dollar is).
Coining all the (alleged) gold bullion in FT Knox depository only amounts to $2.9 billion.
Either way, Americans are going to suffer a 'hair cut' when the dust settles.
Prices will fall below "Monopoly" game values, to correlate 20+ trillion dollar bills with 2.9 billion dollars in gold.
LEGAL TENDER STATUS http://www.treasury.gov/resource-cen...al-tender.aspx
". . .Federal Reserve notes are not redeemable in gold, silver or any other commodity, and receive no backing by anything. This has been the case since 1933. The notes have no value for themselves..."
But we, the American people, were different back then. We stuck together, we knew we could get through it, we didn't have a major portion of the population on drugs, we weren't fighting amongst ourselves, it wasn't state against state like a civil war, we worked things out and we got through it.
What we are experiencing now is moral decay throughout the country. I'm not talking about religion either, I'm talking about actual hatred for our fellow man. Not caring about each other anymore and not sticking together. We don't seem to have that love of country and sense of unity that made us Americans.
This is not a good sign. Those who think it's all about power do not get it. We are disintegrating from the inside, rotting.
Correct.
I do think, however, that outside forces have encouraged and enabled our worst impulses. Just as one example, that's what the breakdown of the family unit is about.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
