Where is the US economy headed?

I think that you may be onto something, but that does not surprise me in the least!

I agree with everything you said except the part about the dems and repbs being equally responsible for the medicare soc sec problems. Certainly many more so called dems voted for these laws than should have if they were really putting people ahead of business. But all politicians go where the money is.

I'm not sure I said "equally" responsible, but they have both supported and initiated legislation into what it is today.

Also, both parties are responsible for the looting of the trust fund. Its was supposed to be pay as you go with a sizeable cash foundation. Well Congress has seen to **** that up.
Now, the only real way for immediate soplvency is to remove all caps to FICA deductions.

They've been doing everything ass-backwards. Even as we all knew that the social security trust fund was going to get depleted faster as the baby-boomers retired, Obama implemented a social security tax reduction effective January 1, 2011.

Congress and everybody else have been talking about several options to make the social security trust fund more solvent for the past several decades by a) increasing the year of retirement benefits, and b) increasing the tax rate.

They sit on their asses, and the GOP under Bush talked about private accounts as the stock market lost 40% in 2008, and now the GOP is talking about changing Medicare by deep cuts and transform it into a voucher system.

What's screwy is the simple fact that millions of conservative seniors are going to get hurt and screwed by their initiatives.

The GOP will always fund the wars, but will strip anything that happens to be for the security of Americans.

All while they continue on their march for lower taxes for the rich.

Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?

I'm going to vote republican from now on!

Like always you do share good point of views! Now how can we get others to see these views?

Nonsense ! WWI , WWII, and Vietnam and Korea were the projects of Democrats. The Republicans got into this game only very recently.

Our idiot community organizer president is advocating the forced redistriubution of wealth from those who produce it to those who merely feel entitled to it. A certain prescription for catastrophe if ever there was one.

Now, wouldn't that also remove the benefit caps? Might leave us where we started after a few years.

georgeob, We're talking about current and future events. Can't do anything about the past; they're history.

If you want to talk about more recent history, how about GW Bush and his two wars that carried over into Obama's administration? Since the major topic now is the federal deficit, it's apropos to mention those two wars.

Nonsense ! The life expectancy 0f beneficiaries when social security was enacted was about 2 years: today it is about 12 years. The obvious solution is to raise the age for benefit entitlements to about 70 years for both medicare and Social Security. The problem is with a government that believes it owns all the wealth created in the country and that, by foregoing taxing it, it is somehow "giving a benefit" to those allowed to keep what they have created. Social security is merely the forced transfer 0f wealth from those who work to those who do not. There is no benefit in imagining it is anything else than that.

Oh really ? The additions to the deficit in the last two years have eclipsed whaat had gone before. Worse our idiot in chief apparently believes he can solve our problems by taking from those who produce and giving to those who don't (and empowering himself and his claques along the way).

The benefit entitlements for SS have been raised to 70 by increments. Those born in 1947 can not collect full benefits until they are 66. I do not know and do not care when those who were born later may collect, but at some point, the age for collection of full benefits is already 70.

georgeob, You keep talking about taking away from the rich to give to the poor. How do you reconcile your meme with the growing national debt?

Do you truly believe that our schools, infrastructure, police-fire, libraries, national parks, and wars are transferring wealth to the poor?

You're stuck on a conservative meme that lacks common sense. When we were kids, we had plenty of opportunities to better ourselves. That's being taken away from our children; all while we transfer this growing debt onto their shoulders.

Shame on you!

When we were kids the United States had very few serious economic competitors in the world. Today we have many. That is simply the reality, and the sooner you and others understand that reality the better for you.

The very reason why we are failing our children by cutting funding for their schools.

Of the developed countries of the world, our schools ranking is at #15.

The Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe after WWII. However, humans have always imitated other humans and have learned from them. Consider that once the French and the English learned about textile designs from the Subcontinent, they began producing paisley prints and the designs we think are so typically Provencal. The Indians, in turn, looked at the regimental plaids of the English who seized their land and started weaving madras plaids. It happened again and again.

In an era when communications improved dramatically, it is little wonder that the US has many "serious economic competitors." Nothing is secret anymore. Everyone knows everyone else's business plans and engineering specs.

What is there to understand?

Oh, that we have continually relied on the poorest nations of the world to make our goods . . . some of them not so good . . . for us rather than keeping the work here?

There's not enough money in the world to satisfy the AFT and the public educational bureaucracy which resists performance mneasurement in any form. I and my chidren & grandchildren attend (and attended) Catholic schools where the cost/pupil is well below the public school norms and the performance standards are incomparably higher.

Some of the worst performing public school systems are the most costly per pupil, george, proving that money is not the fix to the problem.

Isn't it nice that you can afford to send your kids to a private/Catholic school?

Our parents were too poor to send us to a private school, and many who made this country grew up and accomplished much all attended public schools.

As for "standards," you can blame GW Bush for implementing NCLB without funding it. It transformed our educational system into a robotized system where the teacher's responsibilities became teaching kids to pass standardized tests rather than teaching them how to be creative.

Many music, arts, and sports programs were discontinued, and many schools were closed.

Many called it an "unfunded mandate" of the federal government.