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yes.
Its called Greece/Spain and many other countries are spending more than they are taking it and racking up way to much debt.
its a deadly liberal/socialist lifestyle that will undermine and destroy the eurozone.
2nd i watch CNBC every day not fox news. so plz save the ASSumptions for later.
The US is on the same path of decline with Obama and Congress spending 1 TRILLION more than we take in.
Watch America collasp like Greece after this year if we dont replace obama and much of the Senate.
Since the mid-1970s, the lowest levels of debt increase were during the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. The last year of the Clinton administration, the second half of the Carter administration, and Reagan's first year were the only years that the level actually decreased - 3 Democrat-led years, 1 republican.
There are 2 other Reagan years in which the debt level escalated more (and by more than one full percentage point) than during Obama's presidency (1983 - +15%, and 1986 - 13.9%, numbers no president since has touched), and 1 other Reagan year (1985 - 12.5%) in which the level of increase was about the same.
Of the biggest increases in federal spending (meanwhile) since the mid-1970s (the post-Vietnam War era), two of the three biggest years also were during Republican administrations: 6.1% in 1980 (Carter), 6.1% (Bush I), and 6.0% (Bush II). In the years since, 4.6% (Bush II, and the year of the financial meltdown) has been the greatest percentage increase, and in one of the years of Obama's administration (2010), federal spending actually decreased, by 2.4%.
The idea that this president is spending more than any of his predecessors is pure propaganda, pushed out into the mainstream media by billions of dollars flowing freely from elites, via superpacs, into general consciousness. It's being hammered into our heads, but it is not backed up by statistics, which can be gathered (and cross-checked) from any number of sources that would refute this political pollution. It should also be noted that debt spending during the Great Depression was far, far beyond anything anyone has seen since. The merits of that spending can and have been debated endlessly - whether or not "make work" projects pulled us out of the depression, or whether it was defense spending leading into WWII (or more likely a bit of both), but for whatever reason, coming out of WWII, America entered it's greatest boom - 1945 through roughly 1970. This era saw poverty rates falling, educational attainment rates increasing, a national infrastructure becoming the finest in the world, the gap between rich and poor at it's narrowest point in American history (before or since), civil rights issues finally tackled, and spending - including seed money from the federal government that impacted such forward-thinking new industries and enterprises as NASA, hi-tech, pharmaceutical research, and overall research and development, often as private enterprises that spun out of major research universities. For example, the links between the military, Stanford, and the earliest private sector high tech start-ups essentially created what was to become Silicon Valley (and all that has emerged from the breakthroughs generated there).
That is not socialism. I KNOW people who grew up in socialist countries, and frankly, they laugh when the term is so very, very misused in current American political discourse. It's boneheaded, it's a quest for a boogeyman, which is NOT the same thing as ferreting out truths, or even hidden agendas. It reduces political dialogue to the level of professional wrestling, which is precisely what the oligarchs pulling the levers behind the green curtain want. It keeps us all distracted.
Swallowing everything on a news network unquestioned is not 'being informed.' And really - I would be uncomfortable using the word socialism as an insult in the American context as I did not grow up in a European (Western) safety-net state, nor a stagflated pseudo-communist states like the late and unlamented Soviet Union, Maoist China, or the psychotic North Korea and Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia, 1975-79). I have friends who did - natives of China, natives of Russia, who have noted that Americans using the word 'socialism' as an accusatory political indictment are - upon close inspection - revealing (a) their utter lack of education about socialist political theory and how very different it is from anything anyone in the US (including now) would dream of attempting, or (b) their utter cynicism in thinking that they can mindf*** the American public into believing the other guy is a demon because I called him a socialist, and actually being believed. That's the behavior of silly childhood bullies who never grew out of it.
Of course, unfortunately, as history has shown, hundreds of millions of people can be wrong. Germany, starting about the mid 1930s, or Italy and Japan, during roughly the same period would be phenomenal examples. The infamous leadership in those countries enjoyed enormous popular support, for quite some time, and those who did not support them were driven from the country, or silenced in other ways, and for those left behind, look at what their political naivete got them: three developed countries ruined, bombed flat, and brought to their knees, mostly by their own infantile impulses run amok. The safety-net principles, and overall idealism (an idealism that puts the citizens of the nation, and their needs FIRST) seen in those countries in the decades since is a direct response to, and an explicit statement about what they think led them towards past catastrophic missteps. This is intelligent self-examination, and intelligent admission of past wrongs in political gamesmanship. Frankly, they have been through what dead-end ideologies can lead to, and have been committed to learning from and not repeating the experience. We have been fortunate in not having to learn the same lesson - yet. The comparative view gives us the luxury of indulging in our own superiority complex.
But the idea that we're better than that (or them) is a ridiculous conceit in a country where large numbers of high school kids couldn't find their own state on a map if you held a gun to their heads, and we have presidential candidates (Mr. Santorum, specifically) who call a statement that more Americans should pursue college degrees an expression of snobbery. It's mind-boggling that aspiring to be stupider than you should be would be a virtue.
What we really need to worry about is oligarchs that would LOVE to turn the US into a banana republic along the lines of mid-20th-century Central America (literally - CIA engineered coups in places like Guatemala so we could get cheap pineapples and bananas), or return us to the era of the Robber Barons - a social engineering machination masquerading as a political theory called "starve the beast": cut the federal government so severely that it functionally dies, and the nation can only run or survive as an entity if unregulated corporate interests are allowed to take over huge chunks of running the country. This is a giveaway, a money grab by elites, and I'd argue that while the Federal Government has often been corrupt (Nixon), barely there (Ford), ineffective (Carter), confused (Reagan), out of it's depth (Bush I), egotistical (Clinton), or inept (Bush II), I don't see any proof that private enterprise would inherently always "do the right thing," or at least operate with greater levels of transparency. It may not be any worse, but it certainly would not be any better either.
Because no company that makes you press 87 buttons to get a live person (in India or the Philippines, with a phony Midwest accent) on the phone to answer a simple, single question is transparent, unless I guess you own a very, very large quantity of stock in said corporation. And given corporate behavior in the run-up to the 2008 collapse (Enron or World Com anyone?), I'd say they are no more or less trustworthy. We need a balance of both.
And now, back to suburbia...and it's merits, or lack thereof.
Since the mid-1970s, the lowest levels of debt increase were during the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. The last year of the Clinton administration, the second half of the Carter administration, and Reagan's first year were the only years that the level actually decreased - 3 Democrat-led years, 1 republican.
There are 2 other Reagan years in which the debt level escalated more (and by more than one full percentage point) than during Obama's presidency (1983 - +15%, and 1986 - 13.9%, numbers no president since has touched), and 1 other Reagan year (1985 - 12.5%) in which the level of increase was about the same.
Of the biggest increases in federal spending (meanwhile) since the mid-1970s (the post-Vietnam War era), two of the three biggest years also were during Republican administrations: 6.1% in 1980 (Carter), 6.1% (Bush I), and 6.0% (Bush II). In the years since, 4.6% (Bush II, and the year of the financial meltdown) has been the greatest percentage increase, and in one of the years of Obama's administration (2010), federal spending actually decreased, by 2.4%.
The idea that this president is spending more than any of his predecessors is pure propaganda, pushed out into the mainstream media by billions of dollars flowing freely from elites, via superpacs, into general consciousness. It's being hammered into our heads, but it is not backed up by statistics, which can be gathered (and cross-checked) from any number of sources that would refute this political pollution. It should also be noted that debt spending during the Great Depression was far, far beyond anything anyone has seen since. The merits of that spending can and have been debated endlessly - whether or not "make work" projects pulled us out of the depression, or whether it was defense spending leading into WWII (or more likely a bit of both), but for whatever reason, coming out of WWII, America entered it's greatest boom - 1945 through roughly 1970. This era saw poverty rates falling, educational attainment rates increasing, a national infrastructure becoming the finest in the world, the gap between rich and poor at it's narrowest point in American history (before or since), civil rights issues finally tackled, and spending - including seed money from the federal government that impacted such forward-thinking new industries and enterprises as NASA, hi-tech, pharmaceutical research, and overall research and development, often as private enterprises that spun out of major research universities. For example, the links between the military, Stanford, and the earliest private sector high tech start-ups essentially created what was to become Silicon Valley (and all that has emerged from the breakthroughs generated there).
That is not socialism. I KNOW people who grew up in socialist countries, and frankly, they laugh when the term is so very, very misused in current American political discourse. It's boneheaded, it's a quest for a boogeyman, which is NOT the same thing as ferreting out truths, or even hidden agendas. It reduces political dialogue to the level of professional wrestling, which is precisely what the oligarchs pulling the levers behind the green curtain want. It keeps us all distracted.
Swallowing everything on a news network unquestioned is not 'being informed.' And really - I would be uncomfortable using the word socialism as an insult in the American context as I did not grow up in a European (Western) safety-net state, nor a stagflated pseudo-communist state like the late and unlamented Soviet Union. I have friends who did - natives of China, natives of Russia, who have noted that Americans using the word 'socialism' as an accusatory political indictment are - upon close inspection - revealing (a) their utter lack of education about socialist political theory and how very different it is from anything anyone in the US (including now) would dream of attempting, or (b) their utter cynicism in thinking that they can mindf*** the American public into believing the other guy is a demon because I called him a socialist, and actually being believed. That's the behavior of silly childhood bullies who never grew out of it.
Of course, unfortunately, as history has shown, hundreds of millions of people can be wrong. Germany, starting about the mid 1930s, or Italy and Japan, during roughly the same period would be phenomenal examples. The infamous leadership in those countries enjoyed enormous popular support, for quite some time, and those who did not support them were driven from the country, or silenced in other ways, and for those left behind, look at what their political naivete got them: three developed countries ruined, bombed flat, and brought to their knees, mostly by their own infantile impulses run amok. The safety-net principles, and overall idealism (an idealism that puts the citizens of the nation, and their needs FIRST) seen in those countries in the decades since is a direct response to, and an explicit statement about what they think led them towards past catastrophic missteps. This is intelligent self-examination, and intelligent admission of past wrongs in political gamesmanship. Frankly, they have been through what dead-end ideologies can lead to, and have been committed to learning from the experience. We have been fortunate in not having to learn the same lesson - yet. The comparative view gives us the luxury of indulging in our own superiority complex.
But the idea that we're better than that (or them) is a ridiculous conceit in a country where large numbers of high school kids couldn't find their own state on a map if you held a gun to their heads, and we have presidential candidates (Mr. Santorum, specifically) who call a statement that more Americans should pursue college degrees an expression of snobbery. It's mind-boggling that aspiring to be stupider than you should be would be a virtue.
What we really need to worry about is oligarchs that would LOVE to turn the US into a banana republic along the lines of mid-20th-century Central America (literally - CIA engineered coups in places like Guatemala so we could get cheap pineapples and bananas), or return us to the era of the Robber Barons - a social engineering machination masquerading as a political theory called "starve the beast": cut the federal government so severely that it functionally dies, and the nation can only run or survive as an entity if unregulated corporate interests are allowed to take over huge chunks of running the country. This is a giveaway, a money grab by elites, and I'd argue that while the Federal Government has often been corrupt (Nixon), barely there (Ford), ineffective (Carter), confused (Reagan), out of it's depth (Bush I), egotistical (Clinton), or inept (Bush II), I don't see any proof that private enterprise would inherently always "do the right thing," or at least operate with greater levels of transparency. It may not be any worse, but it certainly would not be any better either.
Because no company that makes you press 87 buttons to get a live person (in India or the Philippines, with a phony Midwest accent) on the phone to answer a simple, single question is transparent, unless I guess you own a very, very large quantity of stock in said corporation. And given corporate behavior in the run-up to the 2008 collapse (Enron or World Com anyone?), I'd say they are no more or less trustworthy. We need a balance of both.
And now, back to suburbia...and it's merits, or lack thereof.
Yep, you've just about covered everything better than I could.
And that doesn't even get into the nitty gritty of the privately-operated central banking system.
I hear people talk so much trash about the suburbs in there metro region for some reason. People in the Twin Cities diss our suburbs over the internet but in person if they meet someone from the suburbs there all friendly and nice.
Chicago seems to diss on there suburbs too. epically Schaumburg (which actually seems like a really awesome suburb)
But really all i hear is "Your cookie cutter homes are too boring" "Everyone in the suburbs are sheltered and boring"
I grew up in a Suburb and i loved the Homes with large yards and Large shopping centers. I moved to a city mostly because its more convenient for me. I do like the public transportation and how i can walk a couple blocks to University Ave where i can do all my shopping and get food.
It's basically two different lifestyles, some people choose the suburb lifestyle and enjoy it, they prefer to have more room live more spread out and not dense.
I used to be on the suburb-hating bandwagon. No more, but I am still pro-urban.
I think a lot of the drive behind hating the suburbs is immaturity, lack of wisdom, narrow-mindedness, and lack of understanding and respect of peoples choices different from themselves or who are in a different place in their lives.
I think part of it also has to do with the fact more and more kids in recent decades are going off to college. So they leave their suburb. The crowd they knew in high school and formed a 'community' for them disperses. They go off to college and live the college life in a college town, which posesses many of the qualities of city life. Their momentum is built up. They become used to always being amongst an energetic environment, always around people, always near or in common places on campus, living in buildings or housing that is urban in that it is very near others, walkable, transitable, etc.
So when they graduate college to you expect everybody to want to immediately settle down to the pace of suburban life?
Even if they thought about or do go back home, it's different. They're back around parents and other elders after having had a distant independence, which they may not like. Their HS friends are mostly not there anymore. And as for other suburbs, especially in other cities, they don't know anybody and it might be weird to intrude on others home environment, where lots of families are. Plus in other cities, it may be best to live in a more central, common, urban environment and get to know the place before moving to the suburbs. However, when the young do move to suburbs, you'll notice it's often apartment complexes with others like them.
Ultimately, I think preferring to live in urban areas and the city life in ones 20's is to continue or recreate college and college-town life while they start and get used to working, etc. I think it's pretty common that once they're 30-ish and start thinking about a family, then they start seeing why others like suburban life, and many or most move onto the suburbs. At that point, things should become clear as to why others choose suburbs.
Another thing I think that drive pro-urban, anti-suburban rhetoric is TV shows, I think, which advertise some glamorous, highly-social life, such as Sex and The City, but also Friends, How I Met Your Mother, etc., even Seinfeld.
Ultimately, I think most 'play city' in their 20's and it isn't all that deep a part of them. What I'd like to see is REAL urban living, where people can and choose to stay in the city their entire lives. I've noticed a lot of people who do live in the city treat the city just like a suburb. They drive everywhere, even though they live in 'urban' developments. Even many 'urban' developments seem to have that in mind. They seem to look urban, but function much like a suburb, which is truly lame. Of course, I live in Kansas City, so in some other cities I'm sure some people may actually dig in and truly live a more genuine urban life, like cities with rail transit and that truly have everything you need walkable or transitable.
Further, when urban promoters suggest many people don't realize they may prefer urban living because they don't have or haven't experienced the option of urban living, I agree with that totally. However, I think many urban promoters are so biased they can't see their own BS, like in Kansas City where they discount people's genuine concerns and make hateful fun of them because they're concerned about crime, etc. A lot of folks sugarcoat and turn a blind eye to the fact you're always a few blocks from a huge ghetto in many parts of my city and don't understand some people value safety and low crime over urban living.
I used to be on the suburb-hating bandwagon. No more, but I am still pro-urban.
I think a lot of the drive behind hating the suburbs is immaturity, lack of wisdom, narrow-mindedness, and lack of understanding and respect of peoples choices different from themselves or who are in a different place in their lives.
I think part of it also has to do with the fact more and more kids in recent decades are going off to college. So they leave their suburb. The crowd they knew in high school and formed a 'community' for them disperses. They go off to college and live the college life in a college town, which posesses many of the qualities of city life. Their momentum is built up. They become used to always being amongst an energetic environment, always around people, always near or in common places on campus, living in buildings or housing that is urban in that it is very near others, walkable, transitable, etc.
So when they graduate college to you expect everybody to want to immediately settle down to the pace of suburban life?
Even if they thought about or do go back home, it's different. They're back around parents and other elders after having had a distant independence, which they may not like. Their HS friends are mostly not there anymore. And as for other suburbs, especially in other cities, they don't know anybody and it might be weird to intrude on others home environment, where lots of families are. Plus in other cities, it may be best to live in a more central, common, urban environment and get to know the place before moving to the suburbs. However, when the young do move to suburbs, you'll notice it's often apartment complexes with others like them.
Ultimately, I think preferring to live in urban areas and the city life in ones 20's is to continue or recreate college and college-town life while they start and get used to working, etc. I think it's pretty common that once they're 30-ish and start thinking about a family, then they start seeing why others like suburban life, and many or most move onto the suburbs. At that point, things should become clear as to why others choose suburbs.
Another thing I think that drive pro-urban, anti-suburban rhetoric is TV shows, I think, which advertise some glamorous, highly-social life, such as Sex and The City, but also Friends, How I Met Your Mother, etc., even Seinfeld.
Ultimately, I think most 'play city' in their 20's and it isn't all that deep a part of them. What I'd like to see is REAL urban living, where people can and choose to stay in the city their entire lives. I've noticed a lot of people who do live in the city treat the city just like a suburb. They drive everywhere, even though they live in 'urban' developments. Even many 'urban' developments seem to have that in mind. They seem to look urban, but function much like a suburb, which is truly lame. Of course, I live in Kansas City, so in some other cities I'm sure some people may actually dig in and truly live a more genuine urban life, like cities with rail transit and that truly have everything you need walkable or transitable.
Further, when urban promoters suggest many people don't realize they may prefer urban living because they don't have or haven't experienced the option of urban living, I agree with that totally. However, I think many urban promoters are so biased they can't see their own BS, like in Kansas City where they discount people's genuine concerns and make hateful fun of them because they're concerned about crime, etc. A lot of folks sugarcoat and turn a blind eye to the fact you're always a few blocks from a huge ghetto in many parts of my city and don't understand some people value safety and low crime over urban living.
I "hate" the suburbs because--at least in this region--they thrive at the expense of the city. Most of the problems cities face, including higher crime, is uaually the result of disinvestment in the city as people leave (or flee, maybe) for the suburbs.
People who hate on the suburbs should be lucky that they don't have to live there. To each his own, not everyone needs to be all close to everything. I kind of lean that way.
I "hate" the suburbs because--at least in this region--they thrive at the expense of the city. Most of the problems cities face, including higher crime, is uaually the result of disinvestment in the city as people leave (or flee, maybe) for the suburbs.
I don't know where you live, but I live in Kansas City, and it's the same story. Both Kansas Citys, actually, have fallen out and the communities that once thrived were essentially replaced by suburbs, some of which have fallen out themselves. It's easy to blame the suburbs here, but in reality there are many factors that caused suburbanization. Desegregation, racial integration of schools, race riots, crime, the want of something new and shiny, desire to live in more spread out areas, desire for bigger houses, and desire for prestige. I think sometimes it's not acknowledged, but the abandonement of cities also seems to correlate with major economic change from an industrial economy to the post-industrial economy. When the majority prospered from industry, there was a need to be close to industry in cities. When more and more kids went off to college and wanted to move far beyond blue-collar work, they wanted to be physically distant from all it entails as well. Plus they were able to afford something new and shiny, hence the prestige remark. I'm speculating here, but at some point early on I think it was prestigious to the masses to have a garage door and garage built into their house. The suburb was a trend that really took off because people wanted it. About class, that's not to say there wasn't solidly working-class housing built well into the 50's (tiny 2 or 3-bed, 1-bath ranches, often with no basements) because industry was still prospering at that time. So I think what explains that is cars...and development oriented toward them...as opposed to the more urban-style bungalow still being built along gridded streets with walkability and multi-family mixed in. I could say I don't like and attack the development policies that did that, but it was because of demand, essentially a combination of democracy and the free market. So the suburbs have often replaced cities as centers of widespread activity and investment, but it's the choice of the people. I'd rather have it more balanced, with viable urban living options for all, and cities are making progress at coming back, but schools remain a huge obstacle in them becoming a place for ALL people and many cities lack middle-of-the-road families and are either ghetto dirt poor or upper-middle class or better who can afford provide schools and survive socially in close proximity to the lower and underclass because of a great degree of socio-economic indifference that serves as a barrier. I think the biggest way to breath life into old urban housing stock would have to do with the schools. But even then, people don't want to live in close proximity to lower-class folks and crime that will affect them or influence their kids...unless they have a great degree of indifference, like the upper-middle and upper class do. I don't know what the answer is, but it's very complex. If you want to hate something, maybe you should look toward some of the forces that drove people out of the city. Progessive endeavors like forced bussing and integration (note I didn't say desegregation, but rather bussing kids across town to create some sort of utopia), uprooting neighborhood-oriented schools, for example, is one reason the Kansas City, MO school district went completely bad. Prior to that, part of the school district and city still survived on public schools.
I don't know why people knock the suburbs a lot. I wasn't raised in one but they seem fine to me. Not exactly the city life, but not a small rural town either. I wouldn't mind living in one although I do love the city and rural life, lol.
I think the point needs to be reiterated that drastic differences exist between suburbs based on the built environment, HOA/no HOA, cul-de-sac vs gridded roads, large lot/small lot, etc. You could take the average suburb built in the early to mid 20th century and it wouldn't have much at all in common with the modern cul-de-sac HOA suburb. Also, the modern cul-de-sac HOA suburb is often more cut off from the outside world and more auto dependent with little walkability. Older suburbs are generally more dense and offer more wakability and better proximity to shops and restaurants.
one of the things I never understood from suburban haters is that they dont acknowledge the bad issues with the city. I moved to the suburbs a couple of months ago and the two big reasons were crime and schools. Where I lived at in the city, we had to put bars on our windows and I had my car broken into a couple of times. Recently I found out there had been a shooting in our neighborhood that was drug related. The crazy thing was it happened at 4:30 in the afternoon when kids are running around. the public school systems are a joke and we cant afford private schools. These are two issues that drive people out of the city and yet city lovers wont acknowledge it.
The suburbs are like purgatory. They are not down town and they are not in the glory and peace of the country side. To live in such a place is an admission of failure and just settling for what you can get- I find the burbs frightening...bad enough you feel trapped- but hopelessly trapped is a bit to much to bare. Either right in the core of humanity or right out of society for the most part in the country is what I say. The suburbs remind me a a huge storage facility for human beings.
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