Where is the US economy headed?

You surely don't think I retired from the fray because I'm ugly do you?

Only you would come up with such an answer - because you know! LOL

I sure do.

c.i. wrote :



we seniors have to watch our pennies <GRIN> .
watch out - the canadian post office "reserves the right to recall the forevers at any time" - anybody hoarding stamps yet ???
hbg

Yall are incorrigible.

Saw this. I've been thinking for a long time that the advent of IM and Email has cut down on the amount of actual mail signficiantly. And a lot of what is sent, is under special bulk rates or other devices which lower the price per unit.

Very few services in America (which cannot be piped in) are delivered to-your-door in the method of the USPS. I think the costs are due to go up quite a bit in the next two decades.

I believe that we have been living in a golden age of sorts; we have been enjoying the luxury of a loose energy and environmental policy for my whole life, and we look likely to move the other direction, in terms of both policy and in technology; many of the things we've taken for granted will be different in the future, and I think the mail/paper is one of them. When electronic ink devices are cheap and plentiful - 3-5 years from now - and internet access becomes ubiquitous - 8-12 years from now - it will become rarer and more difficult to send physical paper messages to one another.

Cycloptichorn

We already see the trends in print media; the San Jose Mercury News have reduced their pages so much, they seem to barely have 20-pages that includes the ads. I believe they are ready to go belly up in short order.

What you say, Cyclops, about the surge in IM and emails is true, which is making the PO a relic. But do you realize, from there in CA, that there are many folks (with Congress members representing them) who don't have access to the internet? Unavailable or too costly.
Have you been following the scheduled switch next month to some new technology involving tv? Some 6 million houses with the old fashioned "rabbit ear" antennas stop working on Feb-someday. A proposal to delay the switch got defeated.
The gov't set up a PR campaign to announce the change and offered money to help folks make the switch, but that money has long since run out.
I have no dog in that fight. I don't have a TV.
My point is this: whose ox is being gored? Losing mail delivery 1 or even 2 days a week will not affect me or you. So we are tempted to say "great idea" without thinking about the impact on others.
Just musing.

I'm not sure it's a great idea. But it will happen. Sending information physically is expensive, in terms of resources and environmental costs, compared to sending information electronically. It is inevitable that we will see more declines and higher prices on the way.

Cycloptichorn

Isn't some publications like the WSJ a daily that's delivered by the USPS?

This is a sample, ci:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/01/28/special-groups-line-piece-stimulus/

"Among the funding measures included in the proposal are $25 million for new ATV trails; $400 million for the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global warming research; $335 million for the Centers for Disease Control to combat sexually-transmitted diseases; and $650 million coupons to subsidize TV viewers for digital television conversion."

Great, I am in favor, but Democrats have obstructed this, and so is will Obama if I read him right because he still wants to quibble over a storage solution for the waste, and environmentalists continue to obstruct this industry. Your party's problem, primarily.
Thats fine, but no credible analyst predicts solar and wind will make a significant dent in the total energy demands. I would favor some tax incentives, but I do not favor a government all out boondoggle that will end up wasting gobs of money. New technology needs to progress in a reasonable way that allows for perfection of developing technologies, otherwise you end up spending money foolishly.

And what if the customers do not buy them, cyclops, you might wish to consider that? I would rather not see technology forced upon the private sector until the consumer demand justifies it. Central planning does not work well, cyclops, just to remind you.


Okay, worth considering, but I would also like to look at other important factors that would enable us to compete better. Trade restrictions reform is not enough. I have already outlined what those may be.


Its called free market economics, and it does pit people, but a better term is it brings out the best in all of us because it makes us do our best so that all boats rise. When we excel, then other people excel as well.


Okay, thats called local control, plus other stuff as well, that I've already mentioned.


National single payer health care is not the answer, it leads to more inefficiency, irresponsibility, and corruption. Overall, this discussion at least addressed some points, we at least agree what the problems may be, but we disagree as to the solutions. There might be 10 to 15% agreement or overlapping of our solutions, but thats about all.

okie, I don't need FOX news to inform me about the pork attached to the stimulus package. You probably have not been reading my posts, and I'm also sure that you fail to see the forest for the trees.

Bush and his gang got us involved in Iraq at 10 billion every month; where's your beef about that? At least the pork being attached to the stimulus package will benefit (shock) Americans.

Do you realize the cost of this giant pork package is more than both wars combined, ci, and at least we got more than ATV trails and some obscene artwork funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. I would rather spend my money liberating people that are living under a tyrant.

We are winning in Iraq, or at least we didn't lose, we are turning over the country to them, without WMD program and without tens of thousands being slaughtered by Hussein, but yes, I am ready to quit spending money there. I hoped we could come back alot sooner than we are. And this is going to be interesting, in order to win election Obama constantly pounded away that he would put more troops into Afghanistan and hunt down Osama Bin Laden, even unilaterally bomb Pakistan without even talking to Pakistan I guess, so now the man will show what he is made of. Is he a man of his word, I doubt it, he hasn't been before, and if he is, it will increasingly place him at cross purposes of the ultra left. Down deep, I really think he has sympathies for terrorist organizations like Hamas, al Qaida, etc. Call me a nut, I do not think so, remember his reverend for 20 years had sympathies for those people and make no mistake, Obama harbors similar feelings in his emotional makeup. As president, he perhaps will come around and maybe as he wakes up in the White House every morning, he may be incredulous, hey, this country actually elected me, I do in fact need to protect it. That remains to be seen, ci.

You do need Fox to inform you, ci, as alot of other networks are no longer news organizations, they operate more like the old TASS. Obama, as we speak, is attempting to neutralize the free thinkers on the right. Instead of doing it with the gulags, he is using other tactics to try to convince people that free thinkers are no longer needed, they are divisive, and everyone should worship the Messiah, Mr. Obama. One thing is clear, Obama does not take kindly to criticism and he runs from debate, he wants it his way. It remains to be seen how he will react to opposition in Congress, how he will deal with it, how he reacts.

Here is the Republican approach to sinking the country.


If At First You Don't Succeed, Lie, Lie Again

Bill Scher

January 28th, 2009 - 4:35pm ET


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The House is debating the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on the floor as I write this. And the conservative minority is employing the same tactics that have led them into the minority: failed ideas wrapped in fresh lies.

The big lie/talking point being repeated on the floor is that their own alternative economic plan "will create 6.2 million new American jobs over the next two years, according to a methodology used by President Obama’s own nominee as Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, Dr. Christina Romer."

For the past month, conservatives have been distorting and misapplying Romer's 1994 economic paper to claim that tax cuts offer a huge "multiplier" effect for the economy, and public investment offers nothing. Of course, the conservative claims have been repeatedly debunked, most prominently this past Sunday by Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman on ABC's This Week, but also by Brad DeLong and Nate Silver

But being debunked hasn't ever stopped conservatives before. So they released an alternative plan that is all tax cuts, no public investment, then used their fictional Romer formula to calculate it would create 6.2 million jobs.

BREAKING NEWS (RealityBurg, ObviousLand): We just spent eight years trying to create jobs and grow the economy with only tax cuts and no public investment. It was a colossal flop, no matter how you interpret one aide's academic paper from 15 years ago.

Of course, that was only one of the lies spluttered out during the course of debate.

Conservatives continue to employ the strategy as predicted by Marc Ambinder last month: "Think back to the (Bill-Clinton/Joe Biden!) crime bill of 1994, when Republicans rallied their base against the legislation by ridiculing a tiny part of it -- proposals to expand midnight basketball leagues as a way of keeping kids off the streets and out of gangs. Watch for Republicans to settle on a handful of objectionable items and create the impression that the entire enterprise is suspect."

That's what the attacks against tiny slivers of the package -- family planning services, re-sodding the National Mall, arts funding -- are all about.

And facts rarely get in the way. I am still seeing conservative congresspeople whine on TV about re-sodding the National Mall, even though that has already been stripped from the bill (and would require hiring people and buying materials to do it.)

Most importantly, McClatchy Newspapers put the criticisms in proper context: "House Republicans have lampooned some modest spending provisions in the package that have little to do with stimulating the economy, but those measures account for only a small portion of the money."

Yet they desperately try it make it sound the entire bill is wasteful pork. GOP Rep. Paul Ryan claimed on the House floor that only "12 percent" of the bill in about creating jobs, and "the rest is spending."

Where to begin with such idiocy?! First, it's not relevant what percent is about creating jobs (though I certainly don't take their number at face value), but how many jobs would be created or saved.

The Obama administration pegged it at 3 to 4 million jobs, which is in sync with the Congressional Budget Office's high-end estimate of 3.6 million jobs by next year (though CBO notes that more skeptical economist predictions put the low-end estimate at 1.2 million jobs.)

And those jobs would be largely created by the spending, the investment in tangible projects that our crumbling neglected infrastructure is crying out for.

Second, the other large portions of the bill are not on pork, but education, unemployment benefits, other aid to state governments as well as tax cuts mostly geared to working families (apparently for conservatives, tax cuts don't count unless they go to CEOs).

These initiatives are not necessarily designed to create jobs -- a comprehensive economic strategy involves more than one thing! -- but to forestall job and service cuts that would undermine federal stimulus, and give the squeezed, unemployed and impoverished funds to they can survive and keep money flowing in the overall economy.

It's bottom-up stimulus, not more failed trickle-down nonsense.

There are fair arguments to be made against the plan. For example, there are respected economists concerned that the bill does not spend enough to move our $15 trillion economy.

But no one with any expertise and credibility is advocating another around of conservative tax cut rehash that amounts to, as my colleague Isaiah Poole put it, "used junk on eBay."

Perhaps that's why the past month of conservative nonsense has done nothing to move public opinion, which is strongly for President Obama and strongly for an economic recovery bill like Obama's which is "a combination of tax cuts and transportation, education and energy projects."

One Republican political operative worried that his party risks becoming "a talk-show party." That's what the conservative House minority has done to the party today.

Lies are the lubricant that keeps conservative talk radio cranking and the conservative diaspora detached from reality. But today's reality is too stark for most to be ignored, which is why the continuation of a lie-based strategy is bound to keep conservatives mired in irrelevance.

UPDATE: And now it has passed the House, 244-188, without a single Republican vote. House conservatives have sent a clear signal to the nation: we are not renouncing our failures of the past, and we are not part of the solution you voted for. Good luck with that.

-- ourfuture.org

That's what politics is about; when you sink the ship, you don't want anyone to prove why you sunk the ship.

The ship is sinking fast (all our thanks to Bush and his gang of economists):

Americans receiving jobless benefits hits record
By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER, AP Economics Writer Christopher S. Rugaber, Ap Economics Writer 1 hr 45 mins ago

WASHINGTON " The number of people receiving unemployment benefits has reached an all-time record, the government said Thursday, and more layoffs are spreading throughout the economy.

The Labor Department reported that the number of Americans continuing to claim unemployment insurance for the week ending Jan. 17 was a seasonally adjusted 4.78 million, the highest on records dating back to 1967. That's an increase of 159,000 from the previous week and worse than economists' expectations of 4.65 million.

As a proportion of the work force, the tally of unemployment benefit recipients is the highest since August 1983, a department analyst said.


The total released by the department doesn't include about 1.7 million people receiving benefits under an extended unemployment compensation program authorized by Congress last summer. That means the total number of recipients is actually closer to 6.5 million people.

Businesses continued to hemorrhage jobs Thursday. Ford Motor Co. reported a fourth-quarter loss of $5.9 billion and said its credit arm would cut 20 percent of its work force, or 1,200 jobs. Eastman Kodak Co. said it's cutting 3,500 to 4,500 jobs, or 14 to 18 percent of its work force, as it posted a $137 million quarterly loss on plunging sales of photography products.

In another sign of the deepening recession, the Commerce Department said Thursday that new orders for durable goods dropped by 2.6 percent last month, even worse than the 2 percent decline economists expected. Orders fell 5.7 percent for the year, the second biggest drop on government records, exceeded only by a 10.7 percent plunge in 2001.

That's exactly what I'm accusing you of doing ci. You're in denial. They were all elected to do their constituents bidding. It would have been remiss of them to do otherwise.

Everytime I offered a warning I got shouted down.

Are you saying you're all a bunch of kiddies? That's the logic of your statements.

I've already told you about the repeal of the 1933 Glass-Seagall Act, twice, this is thrice, and still you look away and lie.

I'm not denying anything; the GOP's in congress are catering to their very small base of constituents, but the majority including republicans/conservatives want change.

The same is happening in California where the GOP members are holding up the budget to prove they are "strong," but the majority of Californians are sick and tired of their lock on the budget.

Throw them out then. Marginalise them. Liquidate them. Let's try communism instead of piss-balling around on the edges.

Look at this equal pay for women malarkey your hero has signed today.

There's not a capitalist in the country who wouldn't pay women twice as much as men if they outperformed them enough. The guy's ridiculous. He'll do anything for a round of applause.