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America is, by far, currently the most indebted nation on the planet. We rank dead last in terms of our national bank account in a list that includes every country in the world according to the CIA World Factbook. We're number one just like we've been brainwashed to think; number one in debt!:
This is truly scary but really comes as no surprise. Numerous endless foreign wars and occupations are very expensive. Since the late 70's, America also has clinched the title of having the world's largest prison population and it costs tens of thousands of dollars to keep mostly nonviolent criminals incarcerated year after year. America is also the first post-industrial country in the world. There are museums of industry in cities like Balitmore because manufacturing is nothing but history in an impoverished, dangerous, crime-filled bombed out ghetto city like Baltimore or Trenton, New Jersey in which a bridge ironically reads with huge letters that "Trenton makes, the world takes". Anyone who has visited a scary decaying former manufacturing powerhouse American city like Detroit can attest to this. No one else bought into outsourcing more than America. It is highly ironic that the richest and most powerful corporations in the world were birthed and nurtured, and are still headquartered, here in the United States.
No good for average American people can be derived from any of this. Wealthy all-powerful globally omnipresent corporations like Nike, Ford, Apple and Walmart were built from the ground up from tiny fragile small businesses by hard-working loyal American workers and consumers, yet these U.S. born and bred companies have turned their backs on the American economy and the American worker in favor of a huge unethical loophole in the law, known as free trade, which allows large scale exploitation of slave labor on the other side of the globe. Aside from outsourced manufacturing slave labor at the hands of rich global American companies, high paid white collar jobs have also been outsourced to places in China and India for lower corporate costs. The middle class in China is already bigger than the entire population of the United States.
America has become a nation of morbidly obese lazy sedentary non-wealth producing non-workers and non-producers. The federal government is currently the nation's largest employer, yet the government doesn't actually produce, well, anything to generate substantial revenue for our country. If you need any proof that big government can't truly produce wealth, look no further than the 41 million jobless or struggling Americans on food stamps. Irresponsible federal spending has led to inflated salaries for government workers in the last ten years. The average federal worker earns roughly double the salary of their private sector counterparts. Tens of thousands of "nonessential" government workers do nothing but help run up the already huge national deficit. The majority of people who still sweat it out and actually work in America are illegal immigrants who are paid slave wages and live in one bedroom apartments with 20 other people. The growingly non-working sedentary nature of American jobs is the reason why Americans have been getting drastically fatter in recent years. We collectively have more government workers than manufacturers, construction workers, miners and farmers combined.
In a relatively short span of a few decades, we have managed to squander the great fortune left to us by our forefathers. Is there anyway the U.S. can make a comeback?
Last edited by goldenchild08; 09-25-2011 at 11:17 PM..
America is, by far, currently the most indebted nation on the planet. We rank dead last in terms of our national bank account in a list that includes every country in the world according to the CIA World Factbook. We're number one just like we've been brainwashed to think; number one in debt!:
This is truly scary but really comes as no surprise. Numerous endless foreign wars and occupations are very expensive. Since the late 70's, America also has clinched the title of having the world's largest prison population and it costs tens of thousands of dollars to keep mostly nonviolent criminals incarcerated year after year. America is also the first post-industrial country in the world. There are museums of industry in cities like Balitmore because manufacturing is nothing but history in an impoverished, dangerous, crime-filled bombed out ghetto city like Baltimore or Trenton, New Jersey in which a bridge ironically reads with huge letters that "Trenton makes, the world takes". Anyone who has visited a scary decaying former manufacturing powerhouse American city like Detroit can attest to this. No one else bought into outsourcing more than America. It is highly ironic that the richest and most powerful corporations in the world were birthed and nurtured, and are still headquartered, here in the United States.
No good for average American people can be derived from any of this. Wealthy all-powerful globally omnipresent corporations like Nike, Ford, Apple and Walmart were built from the ground up from tiny fragile small businesses by hard-working loyal American workers and consumers, yet these U.S. born and bred companies have turned their backs on the American economy and the American worker in favor of a huge unethical loophole in the law, known as free trade, which allows large scale exploitation of slave labor on the other side of the globe. Aside from outsourced manufacturing slave labor at the hands of rich global American companies, high paid white collar jobs have also been outsourced to places in China and India for lower corporate costs. The middle class in China is already bigger than the entire population of the United States.
America has become a nation of morbidly obese lazy sedentary non-wealth producing non-workers and non-producers. The federal government is currently the nation's largest employer, yet the government doesn't actually produce, well, anything to generate substantial revenue for our country. If you need any proof that big government can't truly produce wealth, look no further than the 41 million jobless or struggling Americans on food stamps. Irresponsible federal spending has led to inflated salaries for government workers in the last ten years. The average federal worker earns roughly double the salary of their private sector counterparts. Tens of thousands of "nonessential" government workers do nothing but help run up the already huge national deficit. The majority of people who still sweat it out and actually work in America are illegal immigrants who are paid slave wages and live in one bedroom apartments with 20 other people. The growingly non-working sedentary nature of American jobs is the reason why Americans have been getting drastically fatter in recent years. We collectively have more government workers than manufacturers, construction workers, miners and farmers combined.
In a relatively short span of a few decades, we have managed to squander the great fortune left to us by our forefathers. Is there anyway the U.S. can make a comeback?
...hey, can i have all your stuff when you move to a country you perceive is a better place to live than the usa........!
1. Divorce big business from the US government. And that includes REPUBLICANS and DEMOCRATS. Just like big oil is synonymous with George Bush, GE and MSNBC are synonymous with Barak Obama. It's a fact that a candidate CANNOT be elected today without being "pre-elected" by and without political donations from big business. Politicians are just pawns to big business. Democracy isn't democracy if it's primary purpose is to make big business happy. Look up the term "capilatocracy" on Google. That would more appropriately describe what the US system of government has become. This will never happen because big business won’t let it happen.
2. Kill NAFTA and global free trade and levy import taxes. This will promote business growth and hirnig within the US. This will never happen because big business won't let it happen.
3. Tax all business profits and capital gains together and progressively (similar to citizen taxation) to promote small business growth. This will never happen because big business won't let it happen.
4. Reduce minimum wage to competitive levels. If we are to compete on a world stage, we will need to compete with world wages. This will never happen because the people won't let it happen.
If all this were to some how miraculously be integrated *back* into the US government, we might have a chance of recovering. Without real reform, jobs will continue to vanish, poverty will increase, the economy will collapse, and so will the government itself as the tax base disappears.
If we continue down the current path we are on, we will quickly become a 3rd world country.
Americas economy could be better. But its not by a long shot the worst in the world yet. I mean Zimbabwe, much of sub-saharan Africa...Heck, look at Greece.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vjsoto
Divorce big business from the US government. And that includes REPUBLICANS and DEMOCRATS. Just like big oil is synonymous with George Bush, GE and MSNBC are synonymous with Barak Obama. It's a fact that a candidate CANNOT be elected today without being "pre-elected" by and without political donations from big business. Politicians are just pawns to big business. Democracy isn't democracy if it's primary purpose is to make big business happy. Look up the term "capilatocracy" on Google. That would more appropriately describe what the US system of government has become. This will never happen because big business won’t let it happen.
This. Damn straight!
I've sometimes though that measuring economy by how close the economic and political powers in a country are, would be a more useful axis than capitalist/communist. Separation of powers. Not just for government.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vjsoto
Reduce minimum wage to competitive levels. If we are to compete on a world stage, we will need to compete with world wages.
I don't think I can agree with this. The only way to compete with third-world wages is to be third-world. There is not other way. Take a lesson from the First World countries that do compete successfully in the global environment. Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland etc. High-wage economies that do not try to compete with sweatshops.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vjsoto
If we continue down the current path we are on, we will quickly become a 3rd world country.
There is a distinct risk of that. Super-rich living in walled-off enclaves with masses of poor outside. But the fall of a superpower do not need to be the Fall of the Roman Empire. Britain fell, and just sort of settled down with its slippers. Probably still one of the 25 top countries to live, 70 years after it retired.
I don't think I can agree with this. The only way to compete with third-world wages is to be third-world. There is not other way. Take a lesson from the First World countries that do compete successfully in the global environment. Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland etc. High-wage economies that do not try to compete with sweatshops.
The idea would be a temporary minimum wage reduction to attract production back to the US. Knowing that we have not seen manufacturing/production numbers this low since prior to WWII (early 40's) is really scary! Manufacturing is the key to bringing back the middle class. Once we regain some production capability we could raise minimum wage again.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Grim Reader
There is a distinct risk of that. Super-rich living in walled-off enclaves with masses of poor outside. But the fall of a superpower do not need to be the Fall of the Roman Empire. Britain fell, and just sort of settled down with its slippers. Probably still one of the 25 top countries to live, 70 years after it retired.
I think the risk of it happening is a bit more real than you suggest. The super rich will always be able to find a place to live, and considering China is growing at such a rapid rate, it may be the new destination for the super-rich as the US is no longer able to provide them the fantastic lifestlye they demand and the people start to revolt. The same is true for companies. Yea, the US still has many of the worlds businesses based here, but it wouldn't be too difficult to imagine them abandoning the US when the economy goes south. Britain is a bad example because they are in almost as much trouble as the US right now in terms of unemployment, economic turmoil, and national debt.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Grim Reader
But its not by a long shot the worst in the world yet. I mean Zimbabwe, much of sub-saharan Africa..
Zimbabwe and sub-saharan Africa are a product of corporate rape and rampant government corruption in the region. American businesses pay off government officials to buy huge tracts of land to mine huge amounts of resources just to export those resources to the US and Europe at wages that are considered by many to be almost a form of slavery. It's doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to see how the corporate profit making machine can do the same to the US. While the US continues to be the largest corporate consumer in the world, it won't happen. But under different circumstances - under a collapsed economy with rampant unemployment, big business will happily walk away because there is no profit to be made.
4. Reduce minimum wage to competitive levels. If we are to compete on a world stage, we will need to compete with world wages. This will never happen because the people won't let it happen.
I definitely CANNOT agree with this. Inflation and rising cost of living has already devalued the minimum wage. Gas is nearly $4 a gallon where I live, yet the average minimum wage is $8. Most people who work minimum wage where I live are illegal immigrants who can't speak any English. The only reason they can afford working for minimum wage is because they share one bedroom apartments with 20 other people and carpool in rickety old vans to work double shifts everyday and night.
If minimum wage were lowered, vast swaths of America would come to resemble the third world in widespread starvation. Healthcare and higher education are already unaffordable for regular working folks who make well above minimum wage. Higher education is also proving to be useless for millions of recent college grads drowning in tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt facing the reality of financial ruin with zero job prospects or a job that barely pays over minimum wage with hefty student loan payments every month. Lowering the minimum wage would only widen the already huge gap between rich and poor in this country. America already has the widest income inequality gap in the developed world. Our crime would also crime dramatically. Americans aren't going to sit by and become drastically poorer. Even though many countries have greater poverty than America, we lead the world in violent crime rates. Detroit and New Orleans already rank in the top ten most dangerous cities in the world list. Making places like these poorer would only make America much worse.
We need to get back to paying people a living wage. I don't think you would be willing to work below the current minimum wage, so why would you suggest something like that of your fellow country men? You might be living high on the jetset right now, but I have seen many comfortable people lose it all in a short period of time in this unforgiving economy. You might be next.
...hey, can i have all your stuff when you move to a country you perceive is a better place to live than the usa........!
My "stuff" and your "stuff" isn't worth anything unless you are filthy rich. Most of the "nice things" we have is overpriced cheap slave-labor produced plastic crap made in China that is actually shoddy and outdated the minute we buy it. A pair of Nikes that retail for $300+ dollars that American kids in the ghetto kill over only cost $5 to make, materials and all. Fancy electronics and gadgets come out every month and are quickly worthless. They basically give away iphones at the Apple store. That brand new $200+ iphone is worth $40 in a few months when a slightly "better" version is released. You can't go to the pawnshop and get any money for your worthless crap. Pawnshops are only taking gold nowadays. Even those collectibles and nice things you can sell on eBay won't give you as much return as a few years ago because the American dollar has devalued so quickly. Most people can't sell their homes to save their lives in this economy. Homes across the board are worth much less than they were only a few years ago. Even a brand new car greatly looses its value once you drive it off the lot. Not many regular people are driving brand new cars that retain their value over the years nowadays. Most newer cars aren't built to last and devalue quickly. Non-coincidentally, most of these cars are assembled using the cheapest materials and the cheapest labor overseas. Unless you have a private jet, a yacht, a fleet of luxury cars and many mansions scattered across the country like a billionaire, all of those "nice things" you have are actually next to worthless in this economy. Nouveau rich people who can't afford these shiny things end up going broke because these luxury items, too, rapidly lose value once used and purchased:
Suburbs turn into ghettos in these types of economic climates. Compton looks nice and used to be a nice place. There are many beautiful huge houses in Detroit that are currently selling for the whopping price tag of one dollar. You can buy a few houses in Detroit with the change in the ashtray in your car and in your couch cushions! Would you live there today? There are countless neighborhoods in America you would never dare step foot in let alone live there .
I don't think it is the wages. In the SE of the US a huge automotive cluster has developed, mostly foreign companies producing right there in the US.
In my opinion the fault lies with the American mindset, management, etc., i.e. at a much deeper level...
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