Where is the US economy headed?

Ican wrote:

an attempt to beat the Depression with massive government outlays--an attempt that failed.

Ican is right on target--the so called stimulus bill has stimulated little despite the MASSIVE outlay of over 700 BILLION dollars.

But, parados replied:
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That is funny ican. The market is up almost 50% over the last year but you claim it is DECREASING it's participation?
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What does the market have to do with the stimulus package? The market does not participate in the stimulus package. There is ample evidence that the market views the stimulus package as a failure. What in the world is Parados talking about?

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The stimulus package has been a failure:
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The results of the Obama Stimulus have not been good. Obama foolishly promised unemployment would not go over 8 percent if the Stimulus Bill were passed. Unemployment peaked in 2009 at over 10 percent.

Obama vowed the Stimulus money would be spent on “shovel ready” projects. Obama went right ahead and made massive cuts in our missile defense program, shut down the production of F-22 fighter jets even though many foreign allies want to buy them, and shut down our manned space program and our ability to go to the Moon and beyond. All of these projects were employing 10s of thousands of highly skilled and well-paid people. These projects were perfect examples of great “shovel ready” projects with the shovels already warm and working.

Obama promised over 90 percent of the jobs created would be in the private sector. It appears most of the new jobs are government jobs. Government jobs create nothing and add no value to the economy.

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@MASSAGAT,

A great part of the stimulus package helped the people at whose feet you worship: the bankers and insurance company heads.

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@plainoldme,

The "failure " of Stimulii is highly politicized. In Central and Western Pa, the funds have been used to cure many infrastructure problems and repair bridges, and build things. ALL this work was done by private companies.

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@plainoldme,

That was TARP, unless you mean the AIG rescue, which occured before TARP was even a gleam in the government eye. I am told by people who know more than you or I that they were necessary. I know of no one who worships these people.

1 Reply

This has been making the rounds:

NO SOCIALISM! SOCIALISM BAD! *Brad smash*Share
Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 4:12pm

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric ADministration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food & Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards & Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After work, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to a house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and the fire marshal's inspection, which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then log on to the internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and post on freerepublic.com, Fox News forums, and intowncolumbus.com about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.

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Source: Internet forum, with a hat tip to my friend Jason. Pass this along to everyone you think needs to read it.

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@roger,

I addressed that remark to massagat, so please do not feel that you were tarred by its brush.

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@farmerman,

Politicized it is . . . just like the incorrect definition of socialism that all too many are embracing.

Speaking of infrastructure, I live in a small town, about a half mile from a bridge over a small dirty river that had powered many mills at the end of the 19th C. The current bridge was built in the early 50s and is twin to another bridge built in 1948 about 4 miles to the north, which crosses the same river.

Both bridges are in abysmal condition. What bothers me is that a little regular maintenance might have helped . . . at least, painting the thing every second or third year. The southern bridge needs replacement and how to do it is a huge problem for the city and the state.

Remember during the 80s when there were spectacular crumblings of infrastructure, with bridges falling? I crossed a bridge on Route 38, over the Merrimack River in Massachusetts in 2005 and 2006 and had to remain there a long time because the bridge is just south of a traffic bottleneck. It is rusted, patched, falling apart. This was during a torrential storm that lasted for days and that area flooded within the next 48 hours. I could understand people losing track of roads back in the 1980s but neglect seems to be a public habit in the US. A bridge fell into the Mississippi in 2007.

Some recovery money was used to patch a road between the two bridges I cross but it was along a stretch that really didn't need work.

1 Reply

@plainoldme,

plainoldme wrote:

Some recovery money was used to patch a road between the two bridges I cross but it was along a stretch that really didn't need work.

Great example of Central Planning. If you wish to find a much larger mountain of inefficiencies of that system, read about the old Soviet Union, or even China of today. Also, study Stalin and how tens or hundreds of millions died of starvation. Then realize Obama is a proponent of Central Planning, then realize support of Obama is taking the wrong road, then face the truth that free markets are not perfect but infinitely better than the road that Obama and the Democrats are trying to take us down. Then make an honorable decision, become a conservative and go register with the Republican Party, then vote for freedom, liberty, and individual responsiblity candidates in the next election, and sweep this current bunch of losers out of office.

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@okie,

By the way plainoldme, why are you so dumb as to be surprised to see the results of Central Planning when that is what you voted for and should have expected if you had an ounce of knowledge about its track record in history?

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Quote:

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 27, 2010

BP will close its solar-panel manufacturing plant in Frederick, the final step in moving its solar business out of the United States to facilities in China, India and other countries.

Just 3 1/2 years ago, in an announcement widely hailed by Maryland officials and promoters of "green jobs," BP unveiled a $70 million plan to double output at the facility and erected a building to house the production lines.

But on Friday the company said it would lay off 320 workers and keep only a hundred people involved in research, sales and project development. BP said laid-off employees would receive full pay and benefits for three months, followed by severance packages and job-placement assistance. The company, unable to sell or lease the building, will tear it down.

"We remain absolutely committed to solar," BP chief executive Tony Hayward said in an interview Friday. But he said BP was "moving to where we can manufacture cheaply."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/26/AR2010032604611.html?hpid=sec-business

So Obama trumps up spending "stimulus" money for green projects as a way to help get America moving, but how many people are aware that America is not competitive in the industry? It was just two years ago that Thomas L. Friedman of the NYT's was saying that America should rule the green era, that we had what it took if only we would apply ourselves.

We have already lost to China.

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@hawkeye10,

hmmm...
3-1/2 years ago BP announced plans to double output

1 year ago, Barack Obama worked to expand the number of green jobs

today - BP decided they can't compete in the US against the green jobs created by other companies..

Sounds more like a problem with BP than anything else.

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@parados,

Like those wind turbines? Which are also largely produced in China.

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@okie,

Change the record already. What makes you think you know more than me or anyone else here?

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

A long time ago, I thought that the need to be green, to protect the environment was so obvious that Americans would imitate the CHinese and take to the bicycle. I was so wrong! THe Chinese took to the car.

There are people I know . . . admittedly, very conservative, and largely uneducated . . . who fear the greening of America because they think it will eliminate jobs rather than saving their sorry behinds.

1 Reply

@parados,

Quote:

today - BP decided they can't compete in the US against the green jobs created by other companies..

Sounds more like a problem with BP than anything else

there is nothing wrong with BP's green technology business, except that they wasted a boatload of money trying to manufacture in America. Now they are in China, where others started out.

I think that there is not a single segment of the green tech industry that is doing well in America. As someone has pointed out certainly not the wind turbine business, most of that is produced not in America.

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@plainoldme,

Quote:

There are people I know . . . admittedly, very conservative, and largely uneducated . . . who fear the greening of America because they think it will eliminate jobs rather than saving their sorry behinds.

it will do that, but only because we never got our act together. We habitually worry about the wrong things, and spend our money on the wrong things.

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@plainoldme,

plainoldme wrote:

Change the record already. What makes you think you know more than me or anyone else here?

And what makes you think you know more than history or anyone else. What makes you think the record of history littered with death and destruction from Central Planners can be made to have a different outcome than that of any charlatan that comes along like a Barack Obama? I suggest you educate yourself just a little bit about the subject. I am just now reading a book by Alan Greenspan, one of the foremost economists of our time, in which he points out the obvious, that free markets have been responsible for unprecedented prosperity of the world, starting with America and spreading its influences throughout the world.

If you think I am preaching to you, you are correct, because I am frankly tired of the losers in this society that are too blind to see or incapable of appreciating the fabulous conditions of an America that offers you freedom and liberty to live the American dream. There are too many people that have died giving their last drop of blood in places all over the world, such as the shores of Normandy, fighting the despots and Leftist Central Planners of history that thought the world was unjust and wanted to change it to their particular vision of utopia, a vision that was totally illusionary and based upon their own egotistical and narcissistic view of themselves, not on reality. They represent an evil that must be recognized and defeated before it causes more mayhem, suffering, and death.

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Quote:

http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/unabridged?va=socialism&x=22&y=6
Main Entry: so·cial·ism
...
1 : any of various theories or social and political movements advocating or aiming at collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and control of the distribution of goods: as a : FOURIERISM b : GUILD SOCIALISM c : MARXISM d : OWENISM
2 a : a system or condition of society or group living in which there is no private property <trace the remains of pure socialism that marked the first phase of the Christian community -- W.E.H.Lecky> -- compare INDIVIDUALISM
b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state -- compare CAPITALISM, LIBERALISM
c : a stage of society that in Marxist theory is transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and payments to individuals according to their work

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

Structurally, the issue is a result of the free flow of capital investment and trade across national borders. BP corporate operating officers have allegience only to the stockholders' financial benefit, and operate within that paradigm. In fact, they likely would be sued by stockholders if they did not attempt to maximize profits.

This is the way it is in the capitalist world. National boundaries don't count.

As Arthur Jensen said to Howard Beale in Network

Quote:

Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it!! Is that clear?! You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance!

You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.

It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?

You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state -- Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.

We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.

Paddy Chayefsky was a genius.

1 Reply

Where is the US economy headed?

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