Get ready, Again

[KGAINES]

It sure seemed with Bush that everything he did was attacked and it was definately a us against them strategy that the media used to sway peoples opinion, now when someone questions Obama it is thrown out as nonsense. I think everyone would like to give him time to see what he is going to do, but every time he opens his mouth it just sounds like socialism or it sounds like the car salesman trying to fool a sucker. The fact of the matter is I don't trust him one bit.

This is right off the White House website.

"CONTACT US

President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history. To send questions, comments, concerns, or well-wishes to the President or his staff, please use the form below:"

You are limited to 5000 characters, that is an upgrade from the 500 that it was, but it don't take to many words to equal that when it even counts spaces.

I know that they have probably received millions of emails and mine is in the stack somewhere, but with the President of the United States you would figure that there would at least be an automated response that says your email was received. Since Al Gore took the initiative when in congress to create the internet maybe he could work on the website for the President.

[.270]

welcome to the club TAM. Lark.

[TAM]

welcome to the club TAM. Lark.

 

What do you mean?

 

[SilentButDeadly]

Can any of you actually explain the differences and relationship between socialism and communism off the top of your heads? I know I can't, but I do know its not a BIG RED CONSPIRACY threatening to destroy us all, we've already gone through this, instead of a drunk Joe McCarthy you've now got a big sweaty Rush Limbaugh.

 

I also know that this country's (and the rest of the world's for that matter) economy is headed into the toilet, from far more than any political party's recent actions.

 

The problems in this country are so much deeper than the mud slinging you guys are throwing around.

 

Here's a little socialist thought experiment for you though since you guys are always complaining about how liberals don't 'make anything with their own hands':

 

Labor theories of value (LTV) – invented by Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the most quintessential American “are economic theories of value according to which the values of commodities are related to the labor needed to produce them.”

 

The average Chinese laborer costs his employer $0.64/hour ($2.96 adjusted to American buying power); the average Mexican: $2.48 (adjusted - is even less than the Chinese), the average American: $21.11. What is the relative difference in one man’s labor cost and another’s just because they live on opposite sides of the Pacific?

 

This major difference in LTV is what is crushing the American economy today. You all can build the buildings and stores that we manage and sell our cheap stuff in, but you can’t make the stuff (because we’ve outsourced it). Its because of this that all of the catastrophe's unfolding before our eyes are happening today.

 

The cash we've sent abroad for cheap stuff, the oil its all made of, and run off of is in the hands of other countries. Those countries are investing in their own infrastructure, but foolishly putting their savings in our Banks... Opps! There goes the housing bubble, there goes the credit market! There goes everyone's equity and savings!

 

For years the US economy has been leaking the ABILITY TO PRODUCE THINGS, the very basis that CREDIT is built upon, and guess what? Our account is empty! The credit market will tumble until it bottoms out with our ability to produce...

 

Its time for America to start making things again!

 

 

 

[KGAINES]

Here is my theory on socialism, taking from hard working people and giving to lazy bums that think that the government owes them something for living here. I know that isn't the true definition of the Utopian society that many envision with socialism, but that is what I equate it too. Communism is a Government that is based on a socialist society at least that is what I remember being taught when I went to school, in the last few years it may be taught differently.

 

I never said liberals don't make anything with their own two hands, as a matter of fact I know they do, every time I pull up to McDonalds one of them says hello what can I make for you today.

 

We still have the freedom of speech and I think everyone should use it and give their opinion, there was a lot of mud being slung for the last eight years and I suppose we are supposed to sit back and allow this next eight years to go by quietly without questioning anything.

[SilentButDeadly]

...liberals like this guy I'm guessing: http://sendables.jibjab.com/originals/big_box_mart

[KGAINES]

Is every person out there that lost their job a liberal, I don't think so. Is every person out there that shops at wal-mart a liberal, I don't think so. Is every person that voted for Obama a liberal, I don't think so. The word liberal has a lot of definitions and at some point we all are or have been liberal with something. It is when the government decides that certain people have more than they should and even though they have worked their entire lives for it or their parents did and left it to them, and then it is taken from them by the government to give to people that feel entitled to it, whether they work or not, people that have been government dependant from day one and are continuing to make more government dependent people, people that think the welfare system and the benefits that go with it are a right, people that don't strive to make themselves better, people that believe just because this is the greatest country on earth that they should have everything given to them instead of working to make their lives better. The liberals that are in Washington have no problem spending money that isn't theirs, most of them are taken care of. I vote for and back the politicians that most represent how I feel and believe. I do wonder how what someone does for a living determines whether they are a liberal or a conservative, I can see some jobs dictating that, but most people are who they are no matter what they do.

 

 

[TAM]

SBD, we can thank Slick Willy for signing NAFTA for a large part of what you're saying! That cost the US a lot of production and labor jobs.

 

It only took about a year and a half for NAFTA to put my Dad's machine shop out of business. Now about 90% of all injection molds are made in Mexico and overseas. I'm still not sure how it was supposed to benifit the US, but I do know for sure that it cost my Dad his livlihood!

[SilentButDeadly]

From what I've been reading, the seeds of today's disasters were laid down over 30 years ago; the average taxpayer made more in 1973 ($33,000 adjusted) than they do today ($29,000).

 

Over that time the wealth has already been 'redistributed' toward the top 1%. These are not people who 'own small business,' they are CEO's, actors and actresses, and (surprise) politicians. The truly wealthy were in control, and they got there by duping conservatives with things like 'trickle down' economics that basically fed more money to the elite.

 

Its not the stock market that these people (not all Americans today) are reinvesting in: they are buying land, real estate, anything with real worth that only they can afford to buy since there is no credit for the middle class.

 

Should the American Government tax these people because they are smart and know how to move currency to the most profitable part of the economy? I don't know, but I think anyone who loses their job over the next couple of years and can't find a new one might wonder what happened to their American dream.

 

What if the only solution is Government? Its been shown to be the only solution to problems of natural resource exploitation (see Hardin, Tragedy of the Commons, 1968). What if raising taxes on the rich will help to save America? What if there is nothing that can save America? Do we shrivel up, grab our guns and fight amongst our selves, squabbling over the scraps?

[wetmule]

I too would like to see manufacturing return to the US, the problem is, whether we like it or not we now have a global economy whereby if we ditched it alltogether we'd all be in alot of trouble. BO was recently spouting the buy American theory and alot of other countries got their panties in a wad and their leaders pisssed. When we have a whitehouse that is spending exponentially - money we don't have and quadrupling down on the debt and the deficit and sending Hillary to China to beg them to buy our bonds, lend us money etc., - he is just digging us a heck of a hole that we may never get out of. I'm afraid by the time he's done China is gonna own us. He's the wrong man at the wrong time and he's exploiting the economic, banking and credit problem by trying to push his socialized agenda on the population which does nothing at all to fix the crises we are in. As I know it one of the basic principles of socialism is that the inequalities that exist in our society are unjust and that one portion of the population should not own the majority of wealth. He's surrounded himself with those types of people in his administration and we are seeing the results of the agenda he's trying to push. Tax and spend to institute free healthcare cradle to grave, same with education, cap and trade energy taxes that will cost all taxpayers lots of money. He's raising personal, business and corporate taxes on the very people, entrepreneurs and corporations that he wants to buy the so called Toxic assets to help get us out of this mess. Makes no sense to me, whats their incentive to buy this crap up when they are only going to get taxed to death? The American dream is if you work hard, play it smart, use your talents to the best of your ability you have a chance to be successful - some very successful in providing a good life for your family. That is the American way as set up by our founders with our constitution. When we have a guy in the whitehouse that is telling people how much they are allowed to make, he's telling people that they are gonna have to help pay for a bunch of bad mortgages by people that couldn't afford them in the first place - all this flys right in the face of capitalism and I think it's gonna catch up to the guy hopefully sooner than later. He's ordering the US a socialized organ transplant and it's looking like its not much of a match and hopefully the US will reject it. As far as American jobs staying here we need to level the playing field with incentives and a tax policy that doesn't penalize a US company for producing goods here when their competition from overseas reaps all the benefits of selling their crap here without all the same tax consequences.

[.270]

explain again why it's better that chinese and mexican labor is paid next to nothing? there ain't a laborer in either of those countries that wouldn't trade places with a laborer here. do you folks understand how much rich folks contribute to this country? not politicians and celebrities either. i mean the guys that get blasted all the time for being really wealthy. lets take bill gates, because he is easy and everyone knows who he is. how many folks work for him? say 100,000, i have no idea, but we'll use that number. what is the tax bill every year for those 100,000 folks? answer= a bunch. ok, now how many folks work for companies that supply gates? material, electricity, construction of facilities, transportation, etc., etc. answer= a bunch. what's there tax bill every year? answer= a bunch. now take gates out of the equation. ain't a purty picture is it? it's easy to hate rich people. heck, i don't much like any of em personally. but they ain't the bad guys. the bad guys are the ones on the other end of the equation that don't contribute anything and are only a drain on the ones that do and of course the politicians that keep forkin' over my hard earned cash to em. the American economy is based on work and what the value of the work you do is to someone else. i con't care if some fat cat gets a multi million dollar bonus every year, as long as his company stays in business and keeps contributing. the reason countries like russia and china and even mexico don't do well is because it doesn't do you any good to work hard, because you don't get anything more for it than someone who doesn't. unless you're a poltician or a celebritiy or some king of industry that is able to keep folks poor and basically slaves because they don't have the laws we do. socialism sucks and ultra liberal people are socialists. Lark.

[SilentButDeadly]

I think wetmule is right about incentives and tax policy for American companies…

 

.270, my issue with CEO’s is how much more they make than their workers, in 2005 CEO’s made on average 262 times more than their average worker. In 1965 CEO’s made 24:1. A CEO makes more in one day than one of his workers makes in a year! What about all of the vice president’s, and other upper level management salaries? Surely they’ve increased too along with CEO’s, yet laborer wages have been steadily decreasing.

http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entr...shots_20060621/

 

Why can’t we slap a tax on the foreign made imports to a level that puts them on the same price setting as comparable American made goods?

 

Of course other countries are going to cry about it (I’ll bet a lot of Americans are going to cry about it – NO MORE CHEAP STUFF??!!), but the way that all of their economies tanked following our collapse shows that THEY ARE THE TAIL and AMERICA IS THE DOG.

 

Its time we wag that tail, wag it hard!

 

So what if they threaten to not buy our products? Or threaten to stop shipping us their cheap plastic stuff? As America goes, so goes their world. Force them to match us dollar for yuan or dollar for peso.

 

 

[.270]

that is what free market capitalism is all about. the guy who runs things makes the rules. if the gov't puts limits on what a guy can make, then it is socialism. that's why we just have a minimum wage, no maximum. do you want someone to put a cap on what you can sell your house for? or your truck or a gun? businesses have to be able to operate how they want. supply and demand has to be ther driver of cost. there are so many rules and laws governing business and how it operates that it adds a gigantic amount to final cost of a product. a lot of the rules and laws are needed because of folks like carnegie, rockerfeller, mellon, ford and buncha other bastard barons that literally killed people to make em keep working in horrible conditions and had no regard to the environmental damage that was done either. but most of the laws and rules dumped on business are just to get more taxes. TR stepped in and busted the trusts and monopolies, allowed the unions to get a foothold without having to worry about being killed, got some collective bargaining going and allowed other people to get in on things to bust up the monopolies. we've gone from there to where we are now. some of the $$$$$$$$ these guys make seem obscene, they surely do, but if you have caps on what a guy can make, that kills capitalism. i hafta agree with slashing bonus's on these guys that are holding their hands out for welfare/stimulus money. that is total bs. they need to go a step farther and say "NO" bonus, period. for guys like that. but a solvent company that is paying millions and billions in taxes is what keeps this country going. some tax is fair and needed. everyone needs to pay taxes for what we have in order to keep it. but just saying tax the rich guys isn't a good thing. they'll just fold up their money and keep it in their pocket and say to heck with the little guys, if gov't gets to greedy. it's happened before. that's what happened when carter was president. our society takes everyone to make it work. big business and the unions have to have realistic expectation of each other and live up the their agreements. and they have to be able to change when things need be. small business has to be able to borrow money as they need it. they all have to work together in order for things to flow. when the gov't gets involved is when things turn to $h!t. Lark.

[wetmule]

Man Lark you got that right - every time the govt. sticks it nose in something it's a sure sign its about to go in the toilet. If you look at what got us in this mess we can start with Carter in 1977 when he signed into law the Community Reinvestment Act. Then you can look at Clinton who signed into law the Gram-Leach Biley Act repealing the Glass Steagall Act which basically allowed banks, insurance companies and any other big business to do whatever the heck they wanted. Couple that with some democrats Schumer, Dodd & a few others mandating to banks that they make loans to lower income neighborhoods and people regardless of their ability to make the payments. The banks were threatened with lower credit ratings, racism & who knows what else to make these loans. Guess what? Banks do what any business does, they try to make a profit. So they figure out a way to package up all these loans and sell them to other banks, insurance companies - (that were never previously allowed to do this kind of business), other lending institutions overseas and all over the place and then package then all up again and sell them to somone else. It was all great for a while, afterall real estate has always been one of the best investments and God ain't makin any more of it. Problem is there were a bunch of people that couldn't afford these loans and a bunch of speculators that weren't required to put any money down. BOOM !, Houston we have a problem. BI-PARTISAN BAD POLICY out of Washington, Greedy Bankers, Predatory Lenders, greedy speculators, and many people that didn't read the fine print when they closed. Sucks for us the Taxpayers.