Forum Post: Unproductive and Heavily Indebted, The U.S. Is Decaying Under Free Trade!
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 30, 2012, 11:17 a.m. EST by EconomyInCrisis
(4)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Public Forum
0 comments 4 hours ago by agkaiser
0 comments 3 days ago by agkaiser
1 comments 1 week ago by agkaiser
0 comments 3 weeks ago by agkaiser
1 comments 1 month ago by agkaiser
0 comments 2 months ago by factsrfun
7 comments 2 months ago by factsrfun
4 comments 2 months ago by factsrfun
4 comments 2 months ago by factsrfun
4 comments 3 months ago by gsw
7 comments 3 months ago by factsrfun
3 comments 3 months ago by agkaiser
0 comments 3 months ago by agkaiser
1 comments 4 months ago by grapes
2 comments 4 months ago by agkaiser
0 comments 4 months ago by agkaiser
4 comments 4 months ago by agkaiser
2 comments 5 months ago by rachelodell
2 comments 7 months ago by gsw
2 comments 11 months ago by factsrfun
5 comments 2 years ago by agkaiser
6 comments 2 years ago by grapes
15 comments 2 years ago by gsw
12 comments 2 years ago by BrentWeirick81
According to Bernie Sanders, we've lost 60,000 factories in the last ten years. To me, that's mind-boggling. How many millions of workers does that entail? How much lost income? Thanks to our fearless leaders and their corporate stooges, America is committing slow suicide.
Suicidal apathy. But our apathy is deliberate and contrived by those who exploit us.
Absolutely. Supply the population with an endless supply of cheap toys and mindless distractions (sports and entertainment), a never-ending dose of propaganda, enough 'crises' to keep us on edge, fracture the community and family units, and voila! You've successfully turned a potentially unified population of citizens into 300 million self-absorbed, distracted, uninvolved islands. They've been at it for the better part of a century and it's worked brilliantly. But I don't think they ever anticipated the power of the internet, which, I believe has slowly turned the tide.
I also suspect the short-sighted PTB thought the American working class was going to be an endless piggy bank.
Whatever you can suspect, the PTB have already done it.
http://republicandirtytricks.com/mitt-romney-unfit-for-command/
No doubt about that. And a whole lot we haven't even thought of yet.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/chris-hedges-is-voting-green-but-im-voting-for-oba/
I'm working my way up to that one.
Good luck and encourage all to vote.
Can't believe you were voted down 4 that comment (twinkle).
What?
I stepped away for about an hour and hadn't noticed. That's weird. Kinda think I hit the nail on the head, however cynical it sounds. Gotta be personal. Doesn't matter, if I cared I'd post more. Or break out the two laptops upstairs and think up some cool non-gnomunny sounding usernames like Dontbreakit or JaquesDeRipa then up vote the hell out of myself. Bwa!!!!
Thanks for the up-votes guys. Gotta love this playground.
Ah - computer crisis resolved? Can you now access video links? Lot of awesome stuff you could catch up on.
Nah, the laptops are my sisters'. She just got a new one 'cause her old one wouldn't run games. Kept freezing up. So, I could borrow her old one pretty easy. I'm on my old desktop one right now. So, what's this about me being -4?
I don't know - when I gave you a twinkle on your comment it was only a 0 - I just couldn't understand the reasoning behind the down vote. Unless of course someone thought that you were picking on TPTB. And that would just be stupid.
Maybe someone that doesn't care for me happened to notice I'm back. I'll elaborate no further, heh heh heh.
I think it likely that your comment was under attack.
Hmmm, interesting. Considering I've been absent for a while, is there suspicion we have some 'establishment' types here for less than noble reasons? Or maybe a rabid sports fan that resented my 'mindless entertainment' remark. Sports are great, but they can be a distraction sometimes. Hey, if you want to get away with something, do it on Superbowl Sunday. Nobody will notice. :-)
This site has been under attack by the establishment from day 1. That is not paranoia - just common sense as this is a site that protests what went wrong to crash the economy and the fact that those responsible have not been punished - but instead rewarded. This is a site that is reaching out to the public with education. Of course it is gonna be attacked - very thoroughly to prevent it gaining popularity and participants.
Yeah it has to varying degrees. It does make sense they would turn up the juice right about now.
Could be - the one on the night of the storm that lasted about 10 hours I figure was due to the storm.
[-] 1 points by gnomunny (3600) from St Louis, MO 3 minutes ago
The connection problems are undoubtedly due to the storm, I'm sure. ↥twinkle ↧stinkle permalink
Oh, yeah. Definitely.
Yep - my site connection has been acting funky all day and I lost connection to here for about an hour just recently.
As for the upcoming attacks(?) I don't know they seem to lack imagination.
[-] 1 points by gnomunny (3600) from St Louis, MO 3 minutes ago
I'm actually curious about what kind of establishment attacks will come after the election. They've already played the 'dirty hippie, get a job' card. Should be interesting.
Edit: My connection was down for a little while. Was anyone else's? ↥twinkle ↧stinkle permalink
The connection problems are undoubtedly due to the storm, I'm sure.
You bet - just like all the e-mails that are being sent out non-stop right now begging for money. It is a major crunch time for things to happen. It will taper off again after Nov. 6th only to ramp up every time something new comes up.
I'm actually curious about what kind of establishment attacks will come after the election. They've already played the 'dirty hippie, get a job' card. Should be interesting.
Edit: My connection was down for a little while. Was anyone else's?
That can't be true - just ask Obama - according to him manufacturing in this country is increasing -
Worth an up-vote 'cause I love good sarcasm. :)
Free trade agreements is only a part of it. A lot ,unfortunately, also has a lot to do with our un-educational system making for a low skill work force (not to the fault of an individual.) Then there is the situation of extremely low interest rates here in the States caused by national debts which in turn are caused by wars which causes investment money to flow away from the U.S.A. to countries able to pay higher investment returns. Then there are the highly volatile politics where government credits and/or support cannot be assured for more than a few years causing risk and uncertainty in any investment. Then there is this factor where I believe a lot of factories are being shut down and moved even though they are be competitive solely for the purposes of breaking unions and environmental laws. Employee wages are actually only a small part of the cost of a product.
lets not forget the 1 trillion in handouts that the government gives every year
That's a very confused set of statements. The fact is , the vast majority of manufacturing jobs do not require an extensive education. In addition, there are many highly over qualified, over educated people in this country, working in low paying service jobs. Then there's your statement about low interest rates. The fact is, vast amounts of foreign capital have flowed into US treasuries and the US dollar. Many other countries have a higher debt to GDP ratio than the US. When you say; "factories are being shut down and moved though they are competitive solely for the purpose of breaking unions and environmental laws" , that's a distinction without a difference. Union wages cost more. Environmental responsibility costs more. When labor costs less, a corporation is obviously more profitable. If your competitor pays far less for labor, you can't be competitive. It's simple arithmetic.
Many manufacturing jobs require a high degree of discipline, and also many times agility, and a capacity to learn. These are skills which unfortunately many Americans never had the opportunity to learn. Yes there are many people under employed and unemployed for their skill and education, but there are many more who are simply unqualified. As to cash flow of foreign capital, there is a tremendous amount of money coming into the U.S., but there is much more going out. Most monies buy up treasury bills which do not translate into investments for manufacturing. Competition also has to do with quality of a product, and not necessarily price. When one looks one sees often, what is more often bought is the best quality product irrespective of its higher price. The most competitive countries are often the ones with the highest labor rates; Japan, Germany, etc.
I think you have been mislead. While there are undoubtedly instances where the educational system does not align well with job opportunities, but that is no real explanation. The article below points to a number of statistics, one of which is this; The US has lost 32% of its manufacturing jobs since 2000 (as of 2010). Somehow, those jobs where filled prior to that point, so there where qualified people here. http://www.businessinsider.com/deindustrialization-factory-closing-2010-9?op=1 http://economyincrisis.org/content/inequality-the-tales-economists-like-to-tell
Very true; a lot of very qualified people lost their jobs as described, but I'm not talking about that. Beyond that, there exists an entire underclass of folks here in the States that never had decent jobs to begin with.
That's why we had tariffs until Raygun's Milton Friedman, supply side mob screwed everything up for the country (took us from a creditor to a debtor nation) but made a few boundlessly wealthy. Robbery, graft, fraud and economic terrorism are "simple arithmetic," too. Just ask Bernie Madoff. Today's money mad pirates are just the same greed-addled crooks as they always have been, just modern, and perhaps greedier. Who wants to be rich in a poor country? Predator Capitalists; Not Americans!
I don't trust people who talk about manufacturing a lot. Most never worked those jobs. People in college, democrats, republicans, Karl and Groucho Marx go on and on about it.
Excellent article.
either produce a product or stop consuming so much
How Ayn Rand!
you should see my dungeon architecture
programer jargon