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asylum seeker
Joined: 22 Jul 2007
Location: On your computer screen.
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 Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 4:08 am Post subject: |
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| Sergio Stefanuto wrote: |
| patongpanda wrote: |
| Sergio Stefanuto wrote: |
The only way to get the US, or any, economy back on its feet is to implement Sergio's Six Point Prosperity Plan 
certain! |
Are you familiar with the Landless Peasant Party?
http://landlesspeasants.org/?p=85 |
Awesome |
This would be a great way from stopping land values from becoming ridiculously inflated. At the moment it's like a pyramid scheme. The earlier you get in the better off you are and those who come late to the party (when prices are already high) are screwed. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 9:03 am Post subject: |
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| The US suffers from imperial rot. The recent election puts the US closer to war with Iran. That will be fun. Wars and financial criminals draining the country dry. I do not know how the US can reverse the course she is on. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 9:18 am Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
| Dev wrote: |
| Another thing I heard about the U.S. is that it has almost no manufacturing sector. That's all gone to China except for planes and other military ware some high end machinery. |
http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/28/robert-reich-manufacturing-business-economy.html
| Robert Reich wrote: |
Economists at Alliance Capital Management took a look at employment trends in twenty large economies and found that between 1995 and 2002--before the asset bubble and subsequent bust--twenty-two million manufacturing jobs disappeared. The United States wasn't even the biggest loser. We lost about 11% of our manufacturing jobs in that period, but the Japanese lost 16% of theirs. Even developing nations lost factory jobs: Brazil suffered a 20% decline, and China had a 15% drop.
What happened to manufacturing? In two words, higher productivity. |
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I really like Reich. I agree with most of his writings. A shame he isn't part of the current administration. |
Here is what he fears:
http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=881
I support about half of that. He also has railed against slapping tariffs equal to the spread in the cost of environmental/labour costs from regulation. That's a job killer. He was Clinton's labour sec. He supports every single policy that has driven nail after nail into the American economic coffin.
I know a guy who imports erasers from China. He could buy them in the US from a domestic manufacturer but they're slightly more expensive (after compensating for shipping). The spread is not caused by labour because the process is almost fully automated. Instead, the costs are from environmental regulations and other state created costs of business. So he buys them from China. So, do people like Reich care about the environment or not? Or do they only care about maintaining the system of globalization that has enriched the elite at the expense - obvious expense - of the middle class in the US, Canada and elsewhere. A tariff to compensate for the cost of regulation would shift huge amounts of capacity back to the United States. RR opposes this. He was "labor secretary". Ha.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304173704575578200086257706.html
| Quote: |
Beyond fiscal rectitude and less spending, tea party candidates are targeting the central institutions of American government. The GOP Senate candidate from Kentucky, Rand Paul, is among several who want to abolish the Federal Reserve. They blame the Fed for creating the Great Recession and believe that the economy would be better off without a single institution in Washington setting monetary policy. (mises edit: the Fed DID cause it) Even Maine's stolid Republican Party, now under tea party sway, has called for eliminating the Fed. In a Bloomberg poll a few weeks ago, 60% of tea party adherents wanted to overhaul or abolish the Fed (compared with 45% of all likely voters).
Another tea party target is the Internal Revenue Service. South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, who has emerged as the Senate's leading tea party incumbent, says that his "main goal in the Senate will not only be to cut taxes, but to get rid of the IRS." Mr. DeMint's goal is echoed by many tea party candidates, including Arkansas Rep. John Boozman, now running for Senate.
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Wall Street may be furious with the Obama administration but at least Mr. Obama (and his predecessor) bailed it out. By contrast, tea party activists consider the Troubled Asset Relief Program a betrayal of America. In the Bloomberg poll, nearly 70% of tea partiers said that they're less likely to support a candidate who voted for the bank rescue.
Underlying all of this is a deep tea party suspicion that big government is in cahoots with big business and Wall Street, against the rest of America. This has been the conventional view among leftist conspiracy theorists for years but it's now emerging full-throttle on the right.
Lesser known is that a higher proportion of tea party adherents believes that free trade agreements hurt the nation overall (61%) than does the general population (53%), according to a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll last month. In a poll earlier this year by the Mellman Group, a majority of tea party supporters favored putting taxes on imports from countries with lower environmental standards than the United States.
More
Many tea partiers similarly recoil from global institutions and agreements. In June, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, leader of the House tea party caucus, called the G-20 Summit "one short step" away from "one world government," and suggested America withdraw from international economic organizations. "I don't want the U.S. to be in a global economy where our economic future is bound to that of Zimbabwe," she told radio host Scott Hennan.
History has shown that people threatened by losses of jobs, wages, homes and savings are easy prey for demagogues who turn those fears into anger at major institutions, as well as individuals and minorities who become easy scapegoats�immigrants, foreign traders, certain religious groups. Were it not for their economic stresses, Americans wouldn't be receptive to abolishing the Fed and the IRS, or believe that government and big business were conspiring against them, or turn isolationist.
Business leaders should be standing up to this dangerous idiocy, while actively supporting policies to relieve the economic stresses that fuel it. Their silence in both regards is bad for business and threatens the stability of our economic and political system. |
You like him BB? He is exactly what's wrong with so-called intellectuals in the United States. A poster boy for destroying a country.
Oh, and he thinks that if whites are angry they'll become nazi's. Which is funny because:
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/01/22/robert-reich-keep-stimulus-money-away-from-skilled-workers-and-white-male-contractors/
| Quote: |
| REICH: ��I am concerned, as I�m sure many of you are, that these jobs not simply go to high-skilled people who are already professionals or to white male construction workers�I have nothing against white male construction workers, I�m just saying there are other people who have needs as well.� |
Come on. |
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wesharris
Joined: 10 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 9:29 am Post subject: |
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| asylum seeker wrote: |
| Sergio Stefanuto wrote: |
The only way to get the US, or any, economy back on its feet is to implement Sergio's Six Point Prosperity Plan
* abolish the benefits for the idle poor
* make all land the property of the state, thereby abolishing rent for the idle rich. An owner of capital collecting rent - for example, the owner of a house collecting rent from a lodger - is one thing, but a landowner collecting rent from what is rightfully the state's - land - is an abomination.
* abolish all spending on the military
* legalize all drugs
* abolish all taxes and instead charge people for occupying land. Given the paramount importance of space and how the unproductive occupation of it is such a formidable obstacle to production & prosperity, taxing land, and abolishing the obscene taxes on production & consumption (which makes us prosperous and is the meaning of life) is crucial. The three most heinous things known to man are the unproductive occupation of space, the idle rich stealing from the state and thereby the population, and taxes on production & consumption. This unholy trinity should be smashed without delay!
* restrict government activity to law & order and the collection of land tax thereto and one or two other things that I approve of, such as investment in nuclear (and other green) energy
It's a tall order, I know, that's what's required. If we were to do this, hitherto unthinkable prosperity would emerge. Of this, I am certain! |
I semi-agree with some of these points.
Here's my slightly different prescription to fix the US:
1. A modest tax on gasoline that will not be used for general government purposes but will be channeled directly into improving public transportation networks and green energy technology (alright nuclear too). The US funnels billions of dollars to the Middle East because of it's oil addiction and it has to be weened off it. It will be hard and slow but it has to start now. I say a modest tax because the US economy is too fragile for anything more than that but if the economy improves the tax could be increased.
2. Legalization of marijuana and taxation of it. Good for saving police time and as a form of revenue etc. I'm not sure about legalizing harder drugs but certainly the 'war on drugs' should be drastically scaled back.
3. Get rid of mid-term elections. two years is much too frequent for national elections. it encourages short-term pandering instead of looking at more long-term solutions.
4. Introduce an MMP-style electoral system. This would give smaller parties a chance to have a voice and representation.
6. Put a cap on corporate and individual contributions to political campaigns. Maybe about a $100,000 cap for senate/house candidates and a million for presidential campaigns. This would force candidates to actually come up with good policy instead of spamming attack ads at each other. Not to mention preventing large financial institutes and corporations from dictating public policy.
7. Make a labor standard of safety practices/minimum wages/conditions that any country that wants to export products to the US must adhere to. Of course, the Chinese would balk at this but Europe and Japan would probably back it and China could hardly have a trade war with all three. This would give the US a chance to rebuild it's manufacturing base somewhat.
8. A public health insurer should be created to compete against the private health insurers. This insurer would be run as a for-profit corporation to ensure that it is not a burden to the government but it's profit goal should be set at 1% so it can provide cheaper insurance than the private insurers and this force them to drop their prices to compete.
9. Military spending should be cut as much as possible. To prevent job losses at the big arms companies incentives should be provided to allow them to transition towards producing green technology.
10. I'm not sure what policy the US already has on this but child welfare payments should be capped at two children if such payments exist to discourage people who can't support their own children from breeding. |
Military spending keeps us in line, and is in effect much smaller than most social spending. Increase military spending, decrease social programs, incorporate Canada, begin mining, setup a very nice tariff wall for trade with the Asian economies, establish a nice trade wall around South America, build more nuclear reactors, MANY MANY MORE, a 5 year change over to a hydrogen based economy, encourage fabricator technology as much as possible, pull back military bases from most places -- leaving South Korea and Israel possibly, let the Europeans protect themselves against Russia, get the hell to space as quickly as possibly, encourage massive industrial and colonial build up around the Oneil Belt, and of course lastly a flat tax, abolishing the tax code from all existence. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 9:50 am Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
| So, do people like Reich care about the environment or not? Or do they only care about maintaining the system of globalization that has enriched the elite at the expense - obvious expense - of the middle class in the US, Canada and elsewhere. |
Sorry, mises, I don't buy it. I support globalization, and think you mischaracterize it as a subsidy for enriching the elite (globalization does enrich the elite, but it does more than that). I support NAFTA, and I support lifting billions of Chinese out of poverty. I don't care if China takes our T-shirt manufacturing jobs. I think there are problems with globalization as it works now, but I'm not down on it.
| mises wrote: |
| He supports every single policy that has driven nail after nail into the American economic coffin. |
You're going to have to get specific. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 10:12 am Post subject: |
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The Fed. Free trade. etc. You don't agree.. What do you suppose people in Ohio are going to do in the knowledge economy, Kuros? Open hedge funds? Shall we all be CPA's and JD's?
China can pull her own out of poverty. There is no need to create poverty in the West as the means of diminishing poverty there. In fact, there is no need to export to create wealth. America's greenback experiment proved that. China for centuries was developed (by the historical norm) and it was not because she sent Nike's to Ohio. She had a domestic market and a public currency. Now we all chase the export market. Export to whom? Mars? This system is not logically consistent.
How about this:
| Quote: |
| Underlying all of this is a deep tea party suspicion that big government is in cahoots with big business and Wall Street, against the rest of America. This has been the conventional view among leftist conspiracy theorists for years but it's now emerging full-throttle on the right. |
Is that a conspiracy theory? Who do you think he represents Kuros. You? I have some Gulf seafood to sell you if you do.
Why? What benefit did US or Canadian citizens get from it? The large corporations benefit. Wages are down since NAFTA. That's a fact. The impact on agriculture in the Midwest and Canadian prairies was very negative. Factories went to Mexico. What benefit? Why do you support it?
Our nations did not become wealthy from free trade. We will not continue to be wealthy with free trade. Ricardo's thesis doesn't apply to the modern world. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 10:20 am Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
Another thing I Here is what he fears:
http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=881
I support about half of that. He also has railed against slapping tariffs equal to the spread in the cost of environmental/labour costs from regulation. That's a job killer. He was Clinton's labour sec. He supports every single policy that has driven nail after nail into the American economic coffin. |
Are you sure about that? Not confusing him for Robert Rubin are you? Not the tariff part (since I know he's a big proponent of free trade) but I don't believe he was a supporter of financial deregulation or any other economic "reforms" done in the late 90s/early 00s.
Last edited by bucheon bum on Sat Nov 06, 2010 5:45 am; edited 1 time in total |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 10:21 am Post subject: |
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| Sorry about butchering the quote function in that last post. Unfortunately I cannot edit my posts on this computer because, well, I have no idea why. I'll do it when I'm on my home computer. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 10:27 am Post subject: |
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I don't know about his opinions on financial regulation. He does support the Fed as is, which is bloody typical.
This is interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Reich
| Quote: |
| Two years later his book Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life was published. In it he argued turbo-charged corporate competition, fueled by consumers and investors seeking the best possible deals from anywhere in the world, was generating severe social problems. But governments were failing to address them because big corporations and Wall Street firms were also seeking competitive advantage over one another through politics, thereby drowning out the voices of ordinary citizens. |
Then this from the WSJ article:
| Quote: |
| Underlying all of this is a deep tea party suspicion that big government is in cahoots with big business and Wall Street, against the rest of America. This has been the conventional view among leftist conspiracy theorists for years but it's now emerging full-throttle on the right. |
So, shall I ponder why - now - he's using pejoratives?
Kuros, BB, you actually trust this guy? My BS detector goes off immediately when I read his stuff. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 10:29 am Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
The Fed. Free trade. etc. You don't agree.. What do you suppose people in Ohio are going to do in the knowledge economy, Kuros? Open hedge funds? Shall we all be CPA's and JD's?
China can pull her own out of poverty. There is no need to create poverty in the West as the means of diminishing poverty there. In fact, there is no need to export to create wealth. America's greenback experiment proved that. China for centuries was developed (by the historical norm) and it was not because she sent Nike's to Ohio. She had a domestic market and a public currency. Now we all chase the export market. Export to whom? Mars? This system is not logically consistent.
How about this:
| Quote: |
| Underlying all of this is a deep tea party suspicion that big government is in cahoots with big business and Wall Street, against the rest of America. This has been the conventional view among leftist conspiracy theorists for years but it's now emerging full-throttle on the right. |
Is that a conspiracy theory? Who do you think he represents Kuros. You? I have some Gulf seafood to sell you if you do.
Why? What benefit did US or Canadian citizens get from it? The large corporations benefit. Wages are down since NAFTA. That's a fact. The impact on agriculture in the Midwest and Canadian prairies was very negative. Factories went to Mexico. What benefit? Why do you support it?
Our nations did not become wealthy from free trade. We will not continue to be wealthy with free trade. Ricardo's thesis doesn't apply to the modern world. |
For someone with an econ and finance background, I'm surprised you're so anti-free trade. How do you suppose Germany has been able to maintain its manufacturing base? How is it able to remain such a massive exporter? I'm honestly asking.
I'm in favor of free trade because we get crap for cheaper. I'm for free trade because it allows companies to use resources to develop new products that produce more income. Developing those new resources takes manpower (here in the States). My last job was because of globalization. If not for globalization, my last employer would not have grown from 2 people to over 100 in less than 10 years . And that's just on the domestic end of the company.
He's right: we need to adapt. Sure, not everyone can be a JD or something like that, but they certainly can find something in the new economy, especially if we actually had leadership that provided guidance and an educational system that reflected a new era instead of being stuck in 1955. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 10:37 am Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
I don't know about his opinions on financial regulation. He does support the Fed as is, which is bloody typical.
This is interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Reich
| Quote: |
| Two years later his book Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life was published. In it he argued turbo-charged corporate competition, fueled by consumers and investors seeking the best possible deals from anywhere in the world, was generating severe social problems. But governments were failing to address them because big corporations and Wall Street firms were also seeking competitive advantage over one another through politics, thereby drowning out the voices of ordinary citizens. |
Then this from the WSJ article:
| Quote: |
| Underlying all of this is a deep tea party suspicion that big government is in cahoots with big business and Wall Street, against the rest of America. This has been the conventional view among leftist conspiracy theorists for years but it's now emerging full-throttle on the right. |
So, shall I ponder why - now - he's using pejoratives?
Kuros, BB, you actually trust this guy? My BS detector goes off immediately when I read his stuff. |
Eh, he's not contradicting himself. In his book, he's saying corporations and Wall St. have a lot of influence in government. In the WSJ piece, he's disputing the idea that they're working WITH the government to go against the rest of America.
That is, he doesn't think they're all working together to screw over eeryone else. Instead he thinks corporate America has more influence than it should. There is a difference. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 10:42 am Post subject: |
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| For someone with an econ and finance background, I'm surprised you're so anti-free trade. |
Well, remember that I studies econ at the grad level in Asia. The case studies were Singapore, Taiwan, ROK, Japan. There were not and are not free trading nations. They are also the greatest economic success stories in human history. They protected their economy and at the same time the US kept hers open. That makes for an interesting contrast. We didn't study the theories but the outcomes. It was more public policy I guess. They looked at the global system and found ways to build from it. We should emulate that.
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| How do you suppose Germany has been able to maintain its manufacturing base? How is it able to remain such a massive exporter? I'm honestly asking. |
I don't know. Germany is a unique case. I don't know much about German political economy.
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| I'm in favor of free trade because we get crap for cheaper. |
Yes, that's true. But the jobs are "service sector" (30% of the American work force earns around Wal Mart wages) and we have to borrow to buy because the wages have diminished. This is called the "consumption compromise" where citizens are given increased access to credit in lieu of rising wages. This is, in my estimation, the fundamental problem that caused this depression.
Anyways, how much cheap crap do we need. I am essentially an anti-consumer. I save like mad and consume the necessities of life. Consumption does not bring life satisfaction. I'm satisfied because I'm secure.
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| I'm for free trade because it allows companies to use resources to develop new products that produce more income. |
Yes, and that income goes to the top 1% as our wages decrease.
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| My last job was because of globalization. If not for globalization, my last employer would not have grown from 2 people to over 100 in less than 10 years . And that's just on the domestic end of the company. |
That's fine and good, but you're an outlier in that experience. Most people experience globalization with diminished wages and unemployment.
| Quote: |
| ...but they certainly can find something in the new economy, especially if we actually had leadership that provided guidance and an educational system that reflected a new era instead of being stuck in 1955. |
We disagree on this. I have spent quite a bit of time in Ohio and other rust-belt areas. What are those people going to do if not for 'strong back' vocations? The anti-globalization critics were right in the 90's. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 11:15 am Post subject: |
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Alright, I don't want to go back and forth about this so here is the nuts and bolts of my position.
The state imposes costs on business - for good or bad - and then allows foreign states that do not have those costs to export their products into the domestic market. This is an indirect and massive subsidy to foreign producers or domestic firms that produce overseas. This is why Ricardo is irrelevant. It is a strategy that can only produce domestic unemployment and decreasing wages (the differential can be made up by moving production or diminishing costs). |
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rollo
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: China
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| Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 5:10 pm Post subject: |
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It is a mixed bag Dev i think it will take about 8 years for the U.s. economy to revive. it is in bad straits but if you want to see an economy in trouble look at China's it is trapped. Rising prices falling exports, no creativity, all smoke and mirrors plus dealing with a gigantic fast growing population that is aging and no pension or social security plan.
There is no doubt that an ax is going to be taken to the military and to some social programs. |
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Gatsby
Joined: 09 Feb 2007
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| Posted: Sat Nov 06, 2010 9:58 am Post subject: |
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| No. |
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