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Why do we say that it's unlawful to pay someone less than minimum wage in the US, but we allow products to be shipped here that were made by people making 50 cents/day?
Why do we say that a factory has to meet minimum pollution standards, but we allow stuff like our cellular phones to be produced in places in China where the air literally corrodes buildings and streams run in colors of orange and blue - so polluted that you couldn't run it through 100 miles of wetlands to clean it up.
We ship off jobs overseas to take advantage of lower wages and pollution standards.
Some stuff just causes my mind to boggle boggle boggle.
Fortunately, we now have the lowest energy costs in the world and that advantage is going to get larger over, at least, the next 20-30 years. While we have that, we should gradually require overseas suppliers meet our wage and pollution standards over the next ten years ( +/- ).
While we have the cheap energy, we need to build out our renewable energy supplies by tapping the new supplies with small taxes that also help build out our infrastructure. Heck, the gasoline tax no longer produces enough revenue to finance the roads and bridges we've already got. We're likely to see gasoline go below $2 in the next six months. If the price of gas drops by $1 then drivers can certainly afford to see the Federal tax go from 18 cents to 50 cents, but people will still squawk if they have to pay $2.50/gal - even if they were paying $3.50 a year before.
Also, as we force foreign suppliers to meet our standards, we need to staff our agencies to make sure domestic suppliers meet our standards. It's our low staffing levels that cause our regulators to make opressive regulations that are expensive to follow. They can't be reasonable and spend a decent amount of time investigating a site, so they just issue orders that make them look like they know what they are doing.
I've been watching the PBS special on the Roosevelts. They both had to get the government involved to save capitalism. I've got a pretty libertarian bent, but the thing that groups like the Tea Party doesn't get is that even if theoretically, people could suffer and sacrifice to "live" on a minimum-wage diet and support rich owners and government employees who live much better than they do, but they won't. There will be rebellion in the streets. The Occupy Wall Street stuff was just a taste.
We need another Teddy. I don't care if he/she runs as a Democrat, Republican, or a Bull Moose.
I think this is the first time I've actually read a little bit of a different idea to fix some of the problems than the either less regulation or higher taxes on the rich. It really should be against our laws to import any products made overseas where workers are paid below our min wage requirements and our environmental standards.
I agree, I'd vote for a strong leader with good ideas like this no matter what party they belonged too. Sad thing is they won't be a member of either party because this said leader can't be in the pockets of special interests, and the 2 parties both are. Koch Brothers for the Right...Buffett and Soros for the left.
While we have the cheap energy, we need to build out our renewable energy supplies by tapping the new supplies with small taxes that also help build out our infrastructure. Heck, the gasoline tax no longer produces enough revenue to finance the roads and bridges we've already got. We're likely to see gasoline go below $2 in the next six months. If the price of gas drops by $1 then drivers can certainly afford to see the Federal tax go from 18 cents to 50 cents, but people will still squawk if they have to pay $2.50/gal - even if they were paying $3.50 a year before.
I'm going to pick on this statement alone, because if you would like to know why the Federal gas tax no longer covers the cost of maintaining roads:
Of the 18.4 cents on every gallon the government levies on gasoline, 2.5 cents per gallon go to deficit reduction and another 2.5 go to fund a "Mass Transit Account", which is where the government decides to shift road taxes towards people who don't actually drive. So, a third of the gas tax never actually goes to maintain roads.
Coincidentally enough, the highway trust fund faces an annual shortfall of... about a third.
If the government stopped siphoning off gas tax money to pay for mass transit, the highway trust fund would be self-sustaining.
Pun? No, I agree with IDtheftV. We need to level the playing field. We need to treat our workers fairly. And we need to stop running the world on a resource with a finite supply. Those all are fairly common sense, logical points that often get clouded behind the stupidity of special interest and complicated rhetoric.
And we need to tax accordingly. There are a lot of ways the gas tax does not cover the necessary infrastructure costs required for our highways, which essentially rewards people for driving. Why aren't we rewarding people for using fewer resources, as they would be if they ride a bike or walk? The highways were a marvel in engineering and Eisenhower was an absolute genius to have them built, yes, but now it is time we 1) get them adequately repaired by charging a gas tax high enough to really cover their costs, and 2) start more aggressive road dieting.
Take a drive around Middletown sometime. That's a city where almost every major street could use a road diet!! And many other places need the same. It's common sense, why pay for infrastructure we don't use and don't need? Put some bike trails or natural areas in their place instead. That's something everyone could use. And then put the right incentives in the right places to keep people from making stupid decisions. In essence, soda shouldn't be cheaper than water, and a Big Mac shouldn't be cheaper than a salad, but a lot of market unfairness changes the economics and puts incentives in the wrong places. Same issue here.
Pun? No, I agree with IDtheftV. We need to level the playing field. We need to treat our workers fairly. And we need to stop running the world on a resource with a finite supply. Those all are fairly common sense, logical points that often get clouded behind the stupidity of special interest and complicated rhetoric.
And we need to tax accordingly. There are a lot of ways the gas tax does not cover the necessary infrastructure costs required for our highways, which essentially rewards people for driving. Why aren't we rewarding people for using fewer resources, as they would be if they ride a bike or walk? The highways were a marvel in engineering and Eisenhower was an absolute genius to have them built, yes, but now it is time we 1) get them adequately repaired by charging a gas tax high enough to really cover their costs, and 2) start more aggressive road dieting.
Take a drive around Middletown sometime. That's a city where almost every major street could use a road diet!! And many other places need the same. It's common sense, why pay for infrastructure we don't use and don't need? Put some bike trails or natural areas in their place instead. That's something everyone could use. And then put the right incentives in the right places to keep people from making stupid decisions. In essence, soda shouldn't be cheaper than water, and a Big Mac shouldn't be cheaper than a salad, but a lot of market unfairness changes the economics and puts incentives in the wrong places. Same issue here.
Take a drive around Middletown sometime. That's a city where almost every major street could use a road diet!! And many other places need the same. It's common sense, why pay for infrastructure we don't use and don't need? Put some bike trails or natural areas in their place instead. That's something everyone could use. And then put the right incentives in the right places to keep people from making stupid decisions. In essence, soda shouldn't be cheaper than water, and a Big Mac shouldn't be cheaper than a salad, but a lot of market unfairness changes the economics and puts incentives in the wrong places. Same issue here.
You'll have those lanes in Middletown removed over my dead body, because they are absolutely necessary to the flow of traffic.
You clearly haven't been to Middletown lately. I work there every day, and I appreciate not having to wait 2 or 3 light cycles to get through an intersection simply because there were too many cars and not enough road. Moreover, I would have absolutely zero use of a bike lane in Middletown. What am I going to do - Bike my way down from Dayton every day just so I can use said bike lane?
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I think the "road diet" on Brown Street was the most idiotic thing they could have done. They reduced it from four lanes to two, got rid of the off-peak on street parking, and added bike lanes. The only time the bike lane ever gets used is when the UPS truck stops in it, the guy hops out, and delivers a package. Combined with the construction on Main Street, the traffic at rush hour on Brown is now intolerable. Ever since I've graduated from UD, I've had no reason to go to those restaurants... simply because the inconvenience of getting in and out.
^Nope, I was actually born and raised, for the most part, in Middletown. Now that I'm in college I drive through every time I go back home. That city does NOT need the kind of build-out its roads have.
Take a look at these Google Street / earth views of some of the biggest offenders:
Case in point - there are a number of over-designed roads. So let's take them down a notch. If Nan and other mayors really want to feed the Rauch machine, why not have them start jackhammering out about half of each of these pointless boulevards? Or all of it (like Reinartz in Middletown, for instance, would make a great candidate for total removal). Dayton has its share too - Steve Whalen? But no, it doesn't have anything quite as ludicrous as Middletown's many vacant boulevards - University, Reinartz, large chunks of Briel, Grand (for the small section that it is a massive boulevard), even parts of Verity and Roosevelt could use a diet too. Common sense thinking here. I thought the tea party was supposed to be against spending stupidity like this?
^Nope, I was actually born and raised, for the most part, in Middletown. Now that I'm in college I drive through every time I go back home. That city does NOT need the kind of build-out its roads have.
Take a look at these Google Street / earth views of some of the biggest offenders:
Case in point - there are a number of over-designed roads. So let's take them down a notch. If Nan and other mayors really want to feed the Rauch machine, why not have them start jackhammering out about half of each of these pointless boulevards? Or all of it (like Reinartz in Middletown, for instance, would make a great candidate for total removal). Dayton has its share too - Steve Whalen? But no, it doesn't have anything quite as ludicrous as Middletown's many vacant boulevards - University, Reinartz, large chunks of Briel, Grand (for the small section that it is a massive boulevard), even parts of Verity and Roosevelt could use a diet too. Common sense thinking here. I thought the tea party was supposed to be against spending stupidity like this?
I see no problem here.
It's designed to move large numbers of vehicles from one part of town to another, quickly. Now, is it a fair statement to say that the use may have declined in recent years (loss of jobs and population?) Possibly. Now, as to those roads only having a couple cars at a time, it was probably taken at an off-hour, which would be completely understandable. What does the road look like at rush hour? Remember, a road has to be built to handle peak traffic, not average traffic.
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A bit amusingly, your example of Middletown pokes a glaring hole in the fallacy that the transit boosters like to say.
They always claim that more roads bring more traffic.
Well, in Middletown, that clearly isn't the case. More roads just mean plenty of capacity and fewer traffic snarls, which I consider to be a good thing.
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With regards to Steve Whalen Boulevard in Dayton, I can only surmise that if Dayton actually had a decent job base, it would be more heavily used, as it connects the residential areas of Twin Towers and Linden Heights to the industrial area north of that.
It's one thing to reduce capacity when it's not needed (and you can make a fair case for a couple roads). The problem is when the road is already at or near capacity, or more significantly, has to deal with lots of thru traffic. Removing lanes in that instance is just an exercise in insanity.
I mentioned Brown Street in Dayton before. With all the construction on Main Street, commuters from Oakwood and points south only really have one other road - Brown - to get downtown. And now that it's one lane in each direction...
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