Where is the US economy headed?

I don't rant. I state my opinion with calm and rational reasoned posts, based upon what I believe to represent right vs wrong and what I believe are based upon very sound, honorable principles. The principles I believe in are tried and true, based upon personal responsibility, freedom and liberty, vs that of overbearing government, totalitarianism, dictatorships, ultra socialism, and ultra leftism. I am very very comfortable with what I believe, pom, and I believe they match pretty closely to the foundational principles of America and its constitution.

If y0u interpret my repeating of what I believe to be sound principles as ranting, then that is your problem.

Okie- I hope you will allow me to tell you that you are an excellent poster. You provide evidence and documentation. I rarely give this advice to anyone but I have to the conclusion that plainoldme does not merit the effort that you give in answer to her.

She bases most of her disconnected rambling anecdotal blurbs on the past. She is so unaware of reality that she continues to hold that, despite the documentation that clearly shows that Asians have much higher SAT scores than African- Americans, indeed, higher than Caucasians, Asians do not do well in Academics.

In the face of such foolishness, it is folly to respond. As I noted previously, examine her proclivity to dwell mainly on the distant past. That is, or can be, the sign that little rational thought can be expected of such a person.

Oh, dear, rabel22! May I inform you that I would never accept the label of "intellectual". The people who accept such a description are mainly the left wing who disdain to speak to or debate with anyone who is on the "right". Therefore, your definition is misplaced.

With all due respect, rabel22, I must offer you some advice which was passed on to me by a most learned professor twenty-five years ago. In graduate school I decided to apply for another advanced degree. He encouraged me. When I finished my application I showed him my final draft. He read it and told me that I could not send it out until I had corrected several completely correctable spelling mistakes. He noted that the substance of my application was good but that owing to my execrable spelling no one would pay any attention to it since most people in academia equate poor spelling with an inability to reason adequately. I have come, over the years, to doubt that poor spellers cannot reason but, it is true, unfortunately, that people will not take you seriously if you misspell a large number of words. Get a good Dictionary!!!!!

rabel22- Please allow me to apologize. I re-read your post in which you said:

You see I dont have to read your stuff because I already know what your going to say.

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Anyone with the strartling and much envied ability to be able to know what a person is going to write before he writes it should be able to misspell anything at any time. Certainly, we must encourage talent like that!

Were you around in the Abuzz days? They ranted on there as well . . . they are still using the same techniques and the same stilted vocabulary and the same hatred!

Today, I learned of the 9/12 movement. It originated with the posturing of glenn beck. While I can sympathize with the idea of not leaving debt to our children and grandchildren, if we were to follow the dictates of the glenn becks of the world, our grandchildren would be left with a world of disease and starvation, chemical pollution, bad schools, ill maintained infrastructure and chaos.

Beck is using the poor and the lower middle class, the not well educated masses.

The problem is not with government. The problem is with the fact that the real wages of 80% of the working population have stagnated since 1979, although the trend toward flat wages actually began in the middle-1950s.

That is the enemy that lower and middle AMerica needs to and must attack.

Yes! And the same people that are ranting on this site were ranting on abuzz.

A much more important and pertinent question is:
What is the Obama administration doing to bolster the US economy?
Our economy is based on Capitalism and I don't see Obama doing anything to support Capitalism.


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plainoldme. Poor plainold me! Does she ever read anything? Can she recognize the truth if it is laid out in front of her nose?

She wrote:

The problem is not with government. The problem is with the fact that the real wages of 80% of the working population have stagnated since 1979, although the trend toward flat wages actually began in the middle-1950s.

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WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! If you put any effort into research, Plainold, instead of huffing and puffing and excreting nonsense on these threads, you might serve to inform people. Instead, you are just taking up valuable broadband space.

Note:





Furthermore, wages are only a part of the story. Living standards are rising, not stagnating, and Wall Street deserves a fair measure of the credit. For one thing, companies are paying more bonuses, which are not included in average hourly earnings, so total money income is rising faster than wages. (Bonuses can be sizable; in 1994 the average Chrysler worker got $8,000.) Second, because money income is taxed but benefits are not, benefits were rising faster than money income until very recently. Therefore, total compensation per hour (including wages, bonuses, and benefits)has climbed faster than wages.


Additionally, real disposable personal income has increased faster than aggregate compensation (which accounts for less than 60 percent of personal income) because small business income, dividends, rental income, and transfer payments have all grown faster than compensation. While real wages declined slightly between 1991 and 1995, real disposable income rose 2.7 percent annually, and real disposable income per worker rose a respectable 1.24 percent annually. Living standards, quite simply, are rising, not stagnating. And by the way, they are rising nearly as rapidly today as in the fabled 1950s: real disposable personal income per worker rose 1.44 percent annually between 1956 and 1960, or only 16 percent faster than over the past four years.

A key to rising living standards is low inflation that Wall Street loves. Real wages declined nearly four times as fast when inflation was high (down 1.03 percent annually, 1972-1982) as when it was low (down 0.28 percent annually, 1982-1995).

Lower and middle America has one enemy and that enemy is the Obama administration.

The Obama administration is setting the stage so that lower and middle American will never again have any disposable income.

Of course you make this statement without one shred of evidence, pom. Exactly to the contrary of what you say, if you wish to find disease, starvation, chemical pollution, bad schools, and ill maintained infrastructure and chaos, I suggest you will find them far more often in liberal bastions of the inner cities or large cities, or in third world or communist countries generally run by leftist dictators. Example, how many have starved in North Korea?

Since pom don't know or won't answer the question I asked about North Korea, here is some info. for folks if they care.

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14000-3/famine-in-north-korea

"In the mid-1990s, as many as one million North Koreans died in one of the worst famines of the twentieth century. The socialist food distribution system collapsed primarily because of a misguided push for self-reliance, but was compounded by the regime's failure to formulate a quick response-including the blocking of desperately needed humanitarian relief."

No, it is the 7 or 8 lobbyists for each member of Congress that are the enemy. Stand up and pick up your pants.

no one cares . . .

A partial antidote to the 9/12 hate mongers and the Tea Totalitarians:

If there was something you could do to prevent hate crimes " would you do it?

Join the Not In Our Town movement. Make change in your town and your school.

Not In Our Town (NIOT) is a national movement that encourages and connects people who are responding to hate and working to build more inclusive communities.

Not In Our Town uses the power of media, grassroots events, educational outreach and online activities to help communities talk to and learn from each other. Together, Not In Our Town communities share stories and strategies about how to foster safety, inclusion and acceptance.

Developed by The Working Group, Not In Our Town began with a PBS documentary that told the story of how people in Billings, Montana joined together to respond to a series of hate crimes in their town. This simple, powerful story of citizens banding together struck a chord with audiences, and created a model that inspired viewers around the country to hold their own campaigns against intolerance. Now in its second decade, the Not In Our Town movement continues to grow.

From Salon on MLK and economics:


With his popularity in decline, an exhausted, stressed and depressed Martin Luther King Jr. turned his attention to economic injustice. He reminded the country that his March on Washington five years earlier had not been for civil rights alone but "a campaign for jobs and income, because we felt that the economic question was the most crucial that black people and poor people, generally, were confronting." Now, King was building what he called the Poor People's Campaign to confront nationwide inequalities in jobs, pay and housing.

But he had to prove that he could still be an effective leader, and so he came to Memphis, in support of a strike by that city's African-American garbage men. Eleven hundred sanitation workers had walked off the job after two had died in a tragic accident, crushed by a garbage truck's compactor. The garbage men were fed up -- treated with contempt as they performed a filthy and unrewarding job, paid so badly that 40 percent of them were on welfare, called "boy" by white supervisors. Their picket signs were simple and eloquent: "I AM A MAN."

A few weeks into their strike, which had been met with opposition and violence, King arrived for meetings and addressed a rally. Ten days later, he returned to lead a march through the streets of Memphis that ended in smashed windows, gunshots and tear gas.

Upset by the violence, he came back to the city one more time to try to put things right. The night before his death, King made his famous "Mountaintop" speech, prophetically telling an audience, "Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!"

The next night he was dead. Twelve days later, the strike was settled, the garbage men's union was recognized and the city of Memphis begrudgingly agreed to increase their pay, at first by a dime an hour, and later, an extra nickel.

That paltry sum would also be prophetic. All these decades later, little has changed when it comes to economic equality. If anything, the recent economic meltdown and recession have made the injustice of poverty even more profound, especially in a society where the top percentile enjoys undreamed of prosperity.

Unemployment among African-Americans is nearly double that of whites, according to the National Urban League's latest State of Black America report. Black men and women in this country make 62 cents on the dollar earned by whites. Less than half of black and Hispanic families own homes and they are three times more likely to live below the poverty line.

The nonpartisan group United for a Fair Economy has issued a report that features Martin Luther King Jr. on the cover with the title "State of the Dream 2010: Drained." King's dream is in jeopardy, the report's authors write, "The Great Recession has pulled the plug on communities of color, draining jobs and homes at alarming rates while exacerbating persistent inequalities of wealth and income."

Nor will a recovery ameliorate the crisis. "A rising tide does not lift all boats," United for a Fair Economy's report goes on to say, "because the public policies, economic structures, and unwritten rules of racism form mountains and ridgelines, and hills and valleys that shape our economic landscape. As a result, a rising economic tide fills the rivers and reservoirs of some, while leaving others dry and parched."

You heard it right here from pom, loud and clear, she does not care that
"one million North Koreans died in one of the worst famines of the twentieth century."

If she could get her leftist agenda instituted right here in this country and the same thing should happen here, let me guess, she would not care either?

I'm not surprised, the left tends to celebrate and idolize dictators that are mass murderers.

plainold reported:

. All these decades later, little has changed when it comes to economic equality. If anything, the recent economic meltdown and recession have made the injustice of poverty even more profound, especially in a society where the top percentile enjoys undreamed of prosperity.

Unemployment among African-Americans is nearly double that of whites, according to the National Urban League's latest State of Black America report. Black men and women in this country make 62 cents on the dollar earned by whites. Less than half of black and Hispanic families own homes and they are three times more likely to live below the poverty line.

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Of course- "The injustice of poverty!!! And how do we change that? Can government change the injustice of poverty? Yes it can and Obama knows how to do it. Redistribution of assets.

I don't know if the administration in DC is referencing the Marxist playbook but a key principle used by the Communists was "from each according to his abililty and to each according to his need"

What does that mean? Well, if strictly interpreted, a brilliant surgeon, who makes $500,000 a year in the US now should be left with only $100,000 a year. That is certainly enough for the surgeon to live on and he then could pass the money left $400,000 to help the poor starving and ragged black and Hispanic masses who are being punished by being at the bottom of the income distribution ladder.

But, plainold does not realize that the ladder of distribution changes very frequently and that most Americans, even blacks and Hispanics, believe that, because we are in America and not Soviet Russia, they will soon become truly middle class and, perhaps, with hard work and talent, upper class.

Plainold does not know that:

Our poor people live much better than any large group of poor in the world. Plainold is horribly confused;

Note:

Income also has a "life-cycle" component, meaning that it depends on where you are in the life cycle. A graduate student may have a low income, but once she completes her degree her income likely will take a leap. A retired person may have a low income, but he has sufficient wealth to sustain a lavish lifestyle.

Wealth also has some shortcomings as a measure of well-being. Statistical measures of wealth count only financial assets, without taking an individual's earning power into account. A new graduate of medical school may have no wealth (in fact, she could be carrying a large debt on a student loan), but her prospects for future earnings may be bright. In general, younger people have less wealth than what they will be able to accumulate later in their lives.

People seem to make consumption decisions more on the basis of long-term income and wealth than on the basis of current income and wealth. Therefore, it makes sense to focus on consumption as an indicator of how people view their economic circumstances. Using consumption as a measure, economists tend to find that poverty in the United States is shrinking.

For example, W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, in Myths of Rich & Poor, present information on the ownership of durable goods in 1994 by households whose income was below the official poverty line of around $13,000 per year. On page 15, table 1.2, they compare this to the ownership of those same types of durable goods by all households in 1971.

Percent of Households with: Poor Households, 1994 All Households, 1971
Washing Machine 71.7 71.3
Clothes Dryer 50.2 44.5
Refrigerator 97.9 83.3
Stove 97.7 87.0
Color Television 92.5 43.3
Telephone 76.7 93.0
Air-conditioner 49.6 31.8
One or more cars 71.8 79.5

Looking at the table, it seems reasonable to say that a "poor" household in 1994 was at least as well off as an average household in 1971. This is without taking into account the fact that a majority of poor households have microwave ovens, VCR's, and cable television hookups, none of which were available to the average household in 1971.

Cox and Alm examine a large study of income dynamics undertaken by the University of Michigan. It tracked income of specific households from 1975 through 1999. As Cox and Alm report (p. 73),

Those who started in the bottom 20 percent in 1975 had an inflation-adjusted gain of $27,745 in average income by 1999. Among workers who began in the top fifth, the increase was just $4,354. The rich may have gotten a little richer, but the poor have gotten much richer.

The University of Michigan data suggest that low income is largely a transitory experience for those willing to work...Nearly a quarter of those in the bottom tier in 1975 moved up the next year and never again returned. By contrast, long-term hardship turned out to be rare: Less than 1 percent of the sample remained in the bottom fifth every year from 1975 to 1991.

Cox and Alm argue that if one counts as poor only households that remain below the poverty line for at least two years, then the poverty rate is 4 percent, rather than the 13 percent that was reported at the time. It may be that true poverty among the able-bodied and able-minded (meaning people who are not substance abusers or otherwise incapacitated by mental illness) has been essentially eradicated in this country.