Helping Americans understand just how rich we are

Amigo... we already do every year and spinach, broccoli, potato, lettuce, sweet corn, beans... I've grown it and eaten it.

So, if I understand right, that currency - American dollars - is likely bought by South American banks. Who then turn around and invest that money in America, or trade it to someone else who eventually does the same.

If the $1500 worth of pay goes to people here, it gets spread about on a local scale. If it goes to a bank who then re-invests it here, it goes somewhere - but it's hard to say where, or to say how it directly helps the local economy in the same fashion.

On a smaller scale. If there is a producer of finely carved trunks who works in my hometown, and one who works abroad, how is it not more advantageous to me to purchase locally, in terms of the dollars spent being recycled into my local economy?

Let the record indicate that I deny being "filthy".

U r absolutely right, Bill. In some of my travels overseas, if I dropped a dollar, it woud never hit the floor. Thay lunge for it.

The bank will spend it on any project in America that's profitable, given the interest rate. And by doing so, it will inevitably end up paying American people. For example, it might invest it into building your and your wife's house, which pays American construction workers. Or it may invest into a new Intel chip factory, which pays other kinds of construction workers. Or it might invest into a Silicon Valley startup, paying American computer programmers. The Americans who work on those projects -- construct your house, build Intel's factory, program the startup's software, etc. -- are as real as the American factory workers who build your car.

OK. Shall I also infer that the French, Germans, British, Swiss, Swedes, Italians, Spanish, etc. or you, Francis, "don't have the slightest clue about what poor really means." either?

When we move everybody into high rises and reforest Europe...

part of France's territory occupied by forests is bigger now than it was in the middle ages

No one here has addressed at all the question of why some nations are poor and others not. Implicit in much of the commentary is the unstated notion that wealth or plenty in this nation - or any other advanced nation, from Germany to Singapore - must necessarily be based on the forced poverty of others.

georgeob1 wrote:

No one here has addressed at all the question of why some nations are poor and others not. Implicit in much of the commentary is the unstated notion that wealth or plenty in this nation - or any other advanced nation, from Germany to Singapore - must necessarily be based on the forced poverty of others.

That's not a fact, just your interpretation of what we said. Another plausible interpretation might focus on wasted opportunities, not forced poverty.

Take free trade, for example. Our protectionist policies against the Third World waste opportunities to support productive people there. Without those policies, these people might jump-start economic engines that lift their nations out of poverty.

On the issue of free trade the fact is that few developed countries equal the United States in advancing and supporting free trade.

Then you'll kindly keep your keyboard off of my life in the future. Your comments were far out of bounds.

You've no qualification to speak on what I understand and what I am able to contribute here.

You're no more impassioned about this topic than anyone else.

Just because I or anyone else do not express themselves in the way you choose to, is no reason to dismiss with such an authoritarian zeal.

I agree with you about not handicapping 3rd world nations with tariffs and leveling the playing field. This seems to me fair, and sensible. Why not keep the topic here?

You introduced this topic by demonstrating the overproduction of aircraft carriers and relating their value to what potential good that money could do in a humanitarian sense globally. Why not keep the topic here?

Speaking to the title of the thread, what about my (and other Americans) wealth, do you think I don't understand?

How does someone convince you that they do understand their wealth?

What actions should I as a consumer do to improve my global impact?

What actions should I take as a citizen to advocate the enabling of developing nations?

These questions are harder than making angry bold print posts, and in my opinion (an opinion you've declared not to value), are much more important.

Can we move on?

Wouldn't be an authentic A2K Moralizing(tm) thread, without you stopping by, Bill. Nice to see ya.

I'll ask you the same question I asked RG: is there any nation on Earth whose behavior in this area is materially different then ours?

1, our status as 'top dog' is only temporal. We are not inherently better than other countries and we will not REMAIN top dog. My point wasn't to show that we are better, or superior or something, but to say that we are being looked at to solve the problems because we happen to be on top of the heap right now - and for that reason only. You could have addressed your comments to any country on the planet and they would have been equally valid, in terms of their foreign and economic policies.

2, it's not chest thumping. It is a realistic way of viewing the world. I don't think you properly assessed my comment or it's place in our discussion.

1. Americans are fortunate indeed. We inhabit a country with ample natural resources and have fewer adverse historical burdens toi bear than some other nations. However, that alone certainly does not explain our relative wealth. There are far less economically successful nations with the same gifts of fortune.

2. You have not made the case at all that America is more niggardly than other rich nations.

Many of us don't agree with you on this score. Certainly through the fall of the Soviet Union, now 20 years ago there was a clear need for it, and our military itself beneffitted other nations otherwise in peril.

Throughout our history America has advocated free trade and economic policies that promise economic benefits to poor nations that have the will to produce and export.

3. You have not addressed two key questions. First what is the cause of poverty?

Second, will giving by richer nations alleviate it significantly,. or is something else required? Until you do this, I think you are merely making a lot of wind.

I'll ask you the same question I asked RG: is there any nation on Earth whose behavior in this area is materially different then ours?

Are not morally equivalent statements. I think that you ought to come down from your sanctimonious high and recognize that most Americans do recognize their blessings, even poor Americans, but it is stupid to compare conditions in Burkano Fasso to Anytown, USA. They are different places so substantially so as to make comparisons them of little value for discussion.

But go ahead and vent. Only the worst part is that your words are exactly what one hears from the lips of rich industrialists like that millionaire owner of the coal mine disaster telling his workers how lucky they are to be his wage slaves since they don't live in the Third World.

btw: I think that you are completely wrong; the overwhelming majority of Americans know exactly how lucky they have it and understand how filthy rich we are as a nation.

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Not exactly true. Where Robert's living now the U.S. Dollar rules and doesn't suffer the daily devaluation of the native currency. I suspect he'd have to look pretty hard to find a merchant who wouldn't accept it.

That's correct. But I already discussed the very limited relevance of this exception in this post as well as this one. When dollar bills circulate as quasi-legal tender in foreign countries, they work out as interest-free loans to the US, and so yield a tiny benefit to it. But that doesn't redeem Cycloptichorn's erroneous argument for spending US dollars in the US rather than elsewhere. For every dollar that goes around because an American spends it, a dollar comes around to buy an American product or service. It doesn't matter if the American spends the dollar at home or abroad.

Nonsense. No other country is able to throw their economic weight around like we do. No other country is as aggressive about negotiating favorable trade agreements for themselves.

And no other country is spending so much money to wage so much war around the world to reshape our geopolitical (often financial) interests. You are right that others are not saints, but that doesn't mean we can't stop being the world's bully.

While I would agree that Cyclo's contention is short-sighted, I think you're counter-argument is way over the top. It does indeed matter where a dollar is spent. Take a drive through Anytown, U.S.A. where a lot of jobs have been shipped out of the country and you'll see the dramatic result, and the fact that it's felt throughout the community and the surrounding communities.

Exporting jobs can never be good for America; as an equal economic boost will never be returned on a dollar for dollar basis... in the short term.