This… this right here drives me endless amounts of madness! This here is the fallout of an economy in shambles. I have applied to many, many companies in a variety of genres and even more of the postings I’ve seen have had almost unobtainable requirements. Between education, experience, and skill sets, the best I can figure is that the majority of these positions are looking for either retired CEOs or 20yr vets of the job OR for someone with the skills of multiple people. To make matters worse, they want to pay them beans! Beans! Just look at any job posting on monster or craig’s list and you’ll see the same thing. The tie in factor is high expectations with low reciprocation. It’s definitely a “buyer’s market” if you get my drift. And you can observe this in the job industry as a whole; many jobs have consolidated because of layoffs and there is very little reason to rehire those old positions. Why should they? If you can bleed the work out of one person doing three jobs, why pay the salary of the extra two? I think we’ve gotten ourselves into a bit of a bind here. A catch 22 if you will. Because even if the economy was fixed tomorrow, world wide, what possible reason would the people that laidoff employees to save manager bonuses have to rehire people when their current staff, running above reasonable productivity, can do the consolidated job for less?
But I don’t have a fix for y’all this time. This is a very perplexing issue that we’ll see develop over the next few years and you’ll probably start seeing a larger gap between upper and lower classes. What really needs to happen is to have money circulate again, like just not even stick anything in the bank… go hog wild and spend spend spend! Capitalism is a dirty word… lets say “the life cycle of currency”. It gets passed along to buy things, those things need to get made so people get paid to make them, and the cycle persists. The issue starts when money stops circulating. Just like your blood stream… when it starts to pool, then less money is in the cycle to work, and when the number of members of the cycle stays the same or increases, and the money starts decreasing, that’s bad. It causes shock and more people horde money, thus, recession. Keep holding money and it prevents the number of jobs available and thus layoffs and thus more getting held and thus and so forth… TL:DR, hording money = bad. And the solution to that isn’t so easy. Adding money to the cycle reduces its value. You can’t really force anyone to give up their savings and new taxes will just make people clam up even more. I guess there’s always reducing population so picking a fight with someone might be a good way of doing it… that is… if you’re going for some darkside points.
I guess if you really want to jumpstart the whole thing, set a goal. A major goal. A public work like none have ever seen! Look at what we have done in the past and the massive amounts of money circulation it has generated! Sure, it takes a bit of upfront money to kickstart, but once huge amounts of money start to circulate, then the economy has no place to go but to follow. However, it has to be done well with some sense of finesse, because it’s one thing to build a Hoover Dam and employ hundreds and hundreds of people, and another to hire some company that will buy cheap labor and pocket the excess… One of those methods will have the same results as any of our other fail attempts… guess which one. >)
Anyways, that ends this week’s rant about the evil job market. Let’s just hope I’m totally wrong and out of my mind and things get better soon.
Rather than a poll today, lets brain storm some ideas on how we can get things back on track! How do we get people back to work and start the cycle of cash flow once again?
Don’t really have ideas, but all I can say is, even if you start spending money, the people who get your money will most likely hoard it. Due to the fact that they want their money to keep.
We need to get a lot of people spending money again, and have people continue the cycle. But people are greedy and selfish. We aren’t as altruistic as we want to believe.
Though that is just sentient nature. Maybe something out of our control needs to happen in order to fix this. Cause I doubt we are all gonna stand up and fix it ourselves. And I mean everyone, not few people.
We also rely on others too much don’t we?
right on man. well said! on small scales, things like democracy and communism and capitalism all work really nice. people do their part and you can micro manage the trade networks and needs much more easily. however, we live on a planet with BILLIONS of folks who are all insane and looking out for themselves, so trying to manage the interactions between them in a balanced way is like trying to juggle knives… with blades for handles… and not get cut. long story short, we kind of rely on eachother and it sucks. lol!
well, if you’d like a wonderful way to stimulate the economy, please take a look at my shop link at the top of the page… XD
There is an easy solution to this problem! It’s one that worked a while back, in the great depression. It’s called world war. That’s right folks, I’m talking about world war two! Now, I know what some of you are thinking: “we are just getting out of a war, how will this help?” Look back at the time period leading up to, and following, WWII. A world war forced governments around the world to invest more in their military, which forced high demand for the manufacturing of more clothes, steel, weapons, and ammunition. Supplies were being shipped around the world to our allies. Weapons research increased, providing research that helped technology grow faster. And, as so aptly put by our dear friend coffinshaker, the population decreased, making it easier for others to find jobs. In the aftermath, there were massive cleanup efforts and new construction jobs were born. Etc.
My point is, if you want a quick fix to the economy problem, nothing else will do. Just have to hope no one is dumb enough to detonate the planet in the process. If you don’t like my idea, that’s fine. Just don’t tell me I don’t have a valid point.
well… yes. there’s that. I was trying to avoid it, but I guess France will just have to take one for the team… oh btw… we’re going to invade france. no real reason, just seems like fun. >)
ya know, less scrupulous leaders might decide to orchestrate a war just to help increase money circulation. not saying they should, but who would know? it would be like WWE wrestling but with guns.
sadly friend, you’re pretty spot on with that plan… >\
Ofcourse invading France is fun… that is why everyone does it… and well safe for Italians everyone succeded.
can we still count the romans invading the area (no idea what it was called then) as a win?
I have a thought regarding this apparently depressing situation. It is key to remind people that there are more valuable things in life than money; honesty, friendship, integrity, generosity, courage, humor, to name a few. Once we realize that these sort of attributes are more valuable than the green, folding paper that we are so desperately clinging to, the economy will not just recover, but flourish.
psh, screw that, papa needs a new xbox!
kidding! ya know, you’re right… if anything, I hope this experience helps to humble people to realize that money isn’t the core of existence. I wish we could be in some sort of society where money wasn’t a necessity for life, rather a means for materialism. meaning something like Star Trek, where all your basic needs are met, but if you want your nice earl grey replicated in the morning, then you’ll need to work for some extra spending credits. I guess that idea is a way off, but if we ever were to create some form of replication on a mass level, I’d bet that the significance of currency would rapidly decline. or we could just resurrect zombie marx… that works too.
but seriously… we should really find a way to move beyond a purely monetized economy (oxymoron I know) because it’s a system that has proven to be highly unstable on large scales. (for instance, look at the history of economic theory… we’ve had a better understanding of quantum physics and for a longer period of time than we have of how macro economies work. it’s almost depressing!)
The thing about a lot of those posting is that they are total BS and are just as full of fantasy and hogwash as a majority of resumes. The thing is, depending on the industry mind you, is that you interview them. get them to come clean on what they need as opposed to what they posted in their job posting. Fun fact, in this age of facebook, tweets and such, it is just as easy to scope out the employer as it is for them to check you out. It take little effort these days to contact former employees or customers/clients to learn more than some employers would like you to know going into an interview.
So go in loaded for bear/rhino/elephant and know when to level your sights at the interviewer to get what you came for - if not a job right off the bat, at least respect and maybe a reference or lead.
I suspect that a majority of job postings are copy/pasting from some other resource for the position they’re looking to fill… not stating what they actually need. so you might have a point there.
Now I just have to get in on this discussion.
@Korben
Your correct but that doesn’t actually have any relevance to the situation. The value of “honesty, friendship, integrity, generosity, courage, humor” is meaningless to the state of the economy. No matter how much you value someone’s honesty or courage or integrity, if you need someone who can spew out fortran code all day long and he can’t, then it doesn’t really matter how honest he is because he can’t do the job. Pure goodness (like any of those qualities you mentioned) doesn’t put food on the table, doing a job does.
@WWII Anonymous
Please stop saying that the government spending during WWII ended the Great Depression because it is not the important factor in the ending of the Great Depression. The WWII military buildup did temporarily end the Great Depression from the beginning to the end of WWII. Had that been the end of the story, the US would have quickly slipped back into depression after WWII ended with all our returning soldiers coming home to a country with no jobs for them because there was no more military build up to the scale that had been going on during WWII. What truly ended the Great Depression (not just temporarily) was the devastation of Europe. After WWII ended, the jobs created by the government spending in the name of military buildup would have gone away had the USA not had a massive new market for our products, Europe. Europe was no longer able to produce its own goods. Germany, France, and to a lesser extent Great Brittan had their industrial base either damaged or completely wiped out by the never ending bombing campaigns of both he Germans and the Allies. This new market for manufactured goods is what enabled the Great Depression to end. Instead of all the jobs in the US created by the military buildup disappearing due to lack of demand with no government spending to create that demand, the demand simply shifted from a demand for military hardware to fight to a demand for manufactured goods for all of Europe. The military spending only temporarily ended the Great Depression for the US, but this new demand from a devastated Europe, which took quite some time to go away, was what truly ended the Great Depression for the US. Saying WWII ended the Great Depression in the US is accurate, but saying that government spending on the military during WWII is what ended the Great Depression in the US is simply not true. If government spending on the military during the war was all we had had to go on, we would most likely have entered into the Second Great Depression soon after WWII ended.
War is good for business, at a distance. The ensuing peace is only good for business, if the war was destructive enough to others to create new markets for you.
@Ralanr
There are three generalized classes of financial entities who have money and can either spend it or hold it. There are the regular folk who hold onto it or invest so they can give their children an education or so they won’t have to work when they are seventy. These people are doing the smart thing not the greedy/selfish thing. There are the wealthy/rich who invest the vast majority of their money to make more money. This provides capital needed by businesses to expand and hire as well as enables some businesses and enterprises to start in the first place. They are doing the smart thing not the greedy/selfish thing. There are companies and corporations who spend/invest money to increase their overall earnings or keep money fully in reserve because to do otherwise likely lose money instead of make more money. These entities are doing the smart business option not the greedy/selfish option.
All of these classes of financial entities are doing different things with their money that isn’t necessarily spending it. They are not evil or greedy or selfish for doing so. They all do it to make a better future for themselves and those people or causes they care for (the regular folk and the rich), or those upon whose behalf they operate (the shareholders or company owners). It is not evil to wanting to keep the money that you earn or the money that you receive for allowing others to use your money.
Recent events have woken people up to the reality that has been forgotten in past decades. This reality is that while capitalism and the free market brings overall growth superior to any other economic model in history, but it also inevitably results in periods of contraction as well as periods of contraction. Knowing this it is understandable that all entities would spend less of what they earn. It is logical to save more and to spend less knowing that at any time some industry or economic sector could collapse and that even if it is in another country, it could result in extreme hardship. Not spending your money is not inherently evil or selfish or greedy no matter what kind of financial entity you are. In a great many cases, it’s the smart personal financial chose or the smart business choice.
You seem to want people to spend foolishly again as they have in the recent past to continue the cycle. It would be far better that they not spend and instead are prepared for the next crash that will inevitably come as the price of the free market’s existence. If your vision of altruism on a mass scale is an attempt to perpetuate the cycle at the cost of preparedness for the next collapse which would result in hardship worse than we currently see, I as well as any other logically minded person must reject that vision.
The one thing you stated that is true is that beyond that some who get money in the future will likely hoard (those you reasoning behind the persons reason to do so is flawed) is that we do rely too much on others. Far too many (in the case of the US) live lifestyles that they only have because they are subsidized on the backs of the rest. More and more things are being considered rights that every person must be given by the government regardless of if they earn them and in many cases, regardless of if they need them for any legitimate reason to begin with. Each time one more thing is added to that list, a large amount of the population receives something that it can only receive by it being taken from the rest of society. This creates a situation possibly more dangerous than large amounts of society living in poverty (I mean real poverty, not what we describe as poverty in the US). When large amounts of society live in poverty, recession needs to be bad enough to cause mass starvation before most would rebel. When a large amount of society has luxuries that they cannot earn themselves paid for by those that do earn, all recession needs to do is reduce the revenue taken from the rest of society enough that these luxuries cannot be paid for. A poverty stricken man won’t rebel until he is starving, but do nothing more than stop paying for the unearned cable TV, computers, cars, and tasty food of a man and he is ready to tear down the system for empty promises of restoration of his unearned lifestyle. A free society must lose their ability to live to rebel, an over privileged society only needs lose their luxuries.
@Coffinshaker
Of course companies who have found efficiency in consolidation won’t return to the inefficiencies that were exposed during layoffs. To do so would be foolishness. If you own a store and find that your one employer can both handle the cash register as well as sweep the floors and stock the shelves, why in heck would you spend $30,000 a year hiring the guy to handle the cash register again when you may not even have that $30,000 a year to give him? “running above reasonable productivity”, anything you can get out of your employees for the paycheck you offer them and they accept is fully reasonable. If you demand to much labor and the supply of work is high enough, they will quit and if it isn’t high enough, they will stay. Supply and demand is the ultimate reasonability.
Capitalism is NOT a dirty word.
Banks invest the money you give them providing capital for other purchases like homes. The money you put in a bank or invest in a company is spent anyway. I think I have adequately gone over the whole “hording money = bad” mentality in my above post so I won’t simply repeat everything I said before beyond that hoarded money almost always means invested money and when a company does actually hoard money (not investing it), it is because external factors make that company think that they can’t make money doing anything with the money and therefore the only logical option is to hold onto it. The company doesn’t make any money but that’s far better than the alternative of losing money if they actually did something with the money. I’ll partially address the reason for this thought that many companies have that they wouldn’t make money if they invested/spent their money later.
Population reduction isn’t a feasible means of fixing the problem as the people who go off to war and die aren’t the old people or the young people, they are the middle aged people who are the ones producing instead of simply consuming. While it might solve the problem of oversupply of labor, you risk reducing productivity to the point that those that only consume overwhelm the capacity of those who produce to sustain them.
We already injected $831 billion into the economy in an attempt to jumpstart it. Unless you want to literally dump over a trillion or multiple trillions of dollars that we truly don’t have without printing them (which most certainly would kick start Carteresque inflation that we have been lucky to avoid thus far), it simply isn’t going to work.
“However, it has to be done well with some sense of finesse, because it’s one thing to build a Hoover Dam and employ hundreds and hundreds of people, and another to hire some company that will buy cheap labor and pocket the excess… One of those methods will have the same results as any of our other fail attempts… guess which one.” If you mean to say that the company that hires the cheapest labor available to it to accomplish a goal does anything beyond show that it makes good business decisions, then I don’t know what you could logically mean. Inefficiency and wastefulness might create a few jobs, but they do not benefit the overall economy.
“Rather than a poll today, lets brain storm some ideas on how we can get things back on track! How do we get people back to work and start the cycle of cash flow once again?” And now the ball is in my court!
1: Eliminate the minimum wage.
The benefits of this are almost without number. Wages would be wholly based on productivity. The amount of jobs that would be immediately created by such an action is staggering. Instead of having to pay one person more than his labor is worth to do a job that must be done to facilitate other work, one can pay his employee an amount comparable to what he actually produces. This will decrease the cost of labor thereby increasing the money available to hire more workers to produce more. The ability to produce at cheaper labor costs or produce more at a similar cost naturally drives prices down as supply increases. This decrease in prices would allow us to manufacture more domestically with our own workers instead of importing previously cheaper goods as the price of domestically produced goods is now comparable to or lower than the price of imported goods. This allows us access to cheaper products as well as opens up the possibility of exporting far more than we currently do. We don’t export now because we manufacture at a higher price than other nations do primarily because of our higher labor costs. If you begin to export these additionally produced goods instead of selling them domestically, the domestic supply decreases and the price of those goods goes up. With an increase in the price of those goods, it is justifiable for more companies and entrepreneurs to hire more workers to produce even more to keep up with both domestic and export demand. The more workers that are hired, the more constrained the labor force becomes. This puts upward pressure on wages as jobs are plentiful. Eventually a new equilibrium is reached in the nation which contains far cheaper products being produced and sold domestically as well as exported to the foreign nations who we can now out produce at a lower price due to our technological advantage even if our labor is still slightly higher priced than theirs. The price of labor now floats at a point where the downward pressure of profit is balanced by the upward pressure of a constrained labor force and foreign demand for goods.
Some will cry that this will harm the poorest among us who can’t live without a minimum wage. This is false. The elimination of the minimum wage has resulted in a plethora of jobs being available to the poorest among us and while they will be paid less for their labor, the products they have access to will also be cheaper. In the short term it will mean a decrease in the standard of living for a portion of the nation. In the long term, it will spur growth to the point that the poor of the future earn far more without a minimum wage being present to stifle growth. The stifling of economic growth that a minimum wage inflicts on a society harms the poor of the future by giving them a minimum wage instead of the higher wages that supply and demand would dictate in a society allowed to grow far faster without a minimum wage.
In short, the elimination of the minimum wage is an investment in the overall economic strength of the present as well as the earnings of the future poor and growth of the future.
2: Eliminate Social Security.
The curse of FRD haunts us eternally. Social security does one of the stupidest things possible, it decentivizes production by taxing it and incentivizes not producing by subsidizing it. At the best, this program in its current state is simply a foolish attempt to plan retirement for Americans. At the worst, it is an everlasting burden on those who produce to pay those who chose not to. This program could be eliminated over the next twenty years or overnight. If done over the next twenty years, it won’t increase the national debt much but won’t give us any immediate boost in productivity. If done overnight, it could decrease the national debt and immediately begin providing a gradually increasing boost to productivity. Anyone currently on the system could continue to receive their benefits with no cost of living adjustment. The SS tax funding this could be lowered yearly at the beginning of the year based on the estimated cost of giving these people already on SS their benefits until they have all died off. Those not yet on SS but near retirement will be somewhat screwed out of the program because they have paid into it their entire lives but won’t get it. This is unavoidable as ending a Ponzi scheme such as SS which requires future beneficiaries to pay into the current program for it to be sustainable requires either a massive increase in the national debt to give these people their SS benefits without taxing to receive the needed revenue, or ending the program before some who paid into it can receive benefits.
In short, ending anything like SS which discourages people from producing while taxing those who do produce, provides a boost to the economy.
3: Tax reform/simplification.
Both sides want it but neither can agree on how to do it. Simplify the federal tax code down to a either a national sales tax or a flat income tax applicable to all income over a set dollar amount, 20% tax on all income over $5,000 for example, with a small charitable giving tax write off, say 30% at most of your taxes up to $100,000 written off at a rate of half of what you give being written off (my numbers on these are examples not a specific proposal). This would kill some jobs of those whose only purpose is to interpret and navigate the tax code freeing up some educated labor for more worthwhile purposes while decreasing the tax burden, increasing revenue, and decreasing spending (wouldn’t need nearly as large an IRS).
In short, elimination of some of the cost of collecting and paying taxes and result in more revenue and less of a burden on the economy.
4: Open up natural recourse exploitation on federal land.
The 2% of the world’s oil that you keep hearing that we have is the tip of the iceberg. We have more fossil fuels (not just oil, fossil fuels) in our soils and under our waters than Saudi Arabia has. It is possible we have many times more than they have but I don’t want to speculate so I’ll leave it “more than”. If you allow exploitation of these recourses that we have enough of to last decades (if not centuries) without importing any foreign oil from terrorist funding states, you kill three birds with one stone. You want money to flow again? This would create a massive amount of jobs along with a massive new source of domestic revenue that could be earned and spent by Americans in America. As it is being spent by American workers in America, it isn’t being sent off to foreign powers and used to fund terrorism against us. The tax revenue from this exploitation (while not something that will solve the ridiculous deficit we have by any means) would also provide more tax revenue to the federal government.
Not really related but I just want to say this before I get the inevitable response to try and counter what I just said about the federal government needing an attitude adjustment. Oil production is up, that is true… BUT it is because of increased production on state and privately owned lands, not federal lands. Production on federal lands and the amount of federal land open to recourse exploitation is down under the Obama administration, so don’t tell me I’m wrong because the federal government is all fossil fuel friendly, they aren’t.
In short, create jobs, provide America with a new revenue source through those jobs and their production to increase the supply of money here, stop sending that money to foreign terrorist sponsoring states, and increase tax revenue. All that needs to be done is for the federal government to chose to open up lands and give permissions to those who need them to access these recourses.
5: End fear of government interference.
As stated above, I now address the prime reason that many companies and corporations are holding back large quantities of money instead of investing it. They fear what the government might do next. In 2010, the federal government passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (colloquially known as Obamacare). This was a bill that, depending on the printing format to be used, was over between a thousand and two thousand pages long. It created a plethora of new regulations with vague language and unclear meanings. It created new expenses for many employers who not only have to comply with the law, but in many cases have to hire additional people simply to interpret the law to be able to comply with all of it. It is government acts such as this that business fears. When the government passes massive and unclear laws that create far reaching regulations that no one understands, everyone has to scramble to make sure they are covered for what the law might mean. This usually means saving money to be able to pay for the cost of complying with whatever the law is later deemed to be mean while altering the business model to absorb the cost of complying with the law without having to slash production and lay off workers to pay for the implementation. Businesses fear what laws already passed might contain as well as potential future laws. The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (better known as cap and trade) is an example of the type of law I’m referring to. This type of law which imposes far reaching and poorly defined regulations on large sectors of the economy is something that all businesses require a buffer against. If any manufacturing or recourses extraction or farming businesses fails to have that buffer in the form of cash savings to be used to alter the business model of the company to conform with new limitations on carbon emissions, that company will be forced to contract to find the money to deal with the new regulations imposed on it.
It is estimated that there is $2 trillion (it’s somewhere between $1 trillion and $3 trillion) in capital being stored by companies and corporations for just this reason. Those companies don’t know what is coming at them next and they feel the need to have this money ready and waiting to be able to absorb any new burden placed on them. Were this fear alleviated by a change in stated policy of the federal government away from attempting to create new regulations for everything to fix existent and nonexistent problems, a large amount of this capital would be invested instead of saved. This would by no means fix unemployment, but it would increase the growth of GDP as well as create a few jobs.
In short, more capital will be available in the marketplace if the government would alleviate the fear business has that it might get screwed over by some new regulation or burden.
6: Overall government reform.
I hate to say it, but the government is bloated, redundant, over regulating, foolishly regulating, under regulating, illogical, and just generally in need of reform. It would by no means be simple or politically profitable in the short term, but overall governmental reform on the federal level and to a lesser extent the state level could benefit this country greatly. Without even eliminating anything the government does, just eliminating waste redundancy and inefficiency while increasing simplicity could reduce government spending by a massive amount. It probably wouldn’t have any immediate impact on the economy, but within a few months if the effort was seen as a successful in general and made some actual headway in making the government easier/simpler to deal with and less pointlessly restrictive, reforms real impact would take place. There would be an increase in investment by companies and corporations as the cost of dealing with the government would be lessened thereby increasing the capital businesses have on hand to use. This might also increase some investment by alleviating a small portion of the current fears of government interference and increased governmental burdens that are causing many companies to hold large quantities of capital in reserve (this wouldn’t alleviate as much of that fear as a shift in public policy as mentioned in 5, but it could have a similar yet lesser magnitude effect).
In short, get rid of waste, redundancies, foolish/pointless regulations, and complexities that make the government very hard and expensive to deal with.
If you read all of that, I congratulate you. That’s all I have off the top of my head for now. I’ll attempt to think of more and make another post. Apologies for spelling or grammar or mistypes, if you see anything that isn’t understandable make a post about it so I can clarify. Also, if this is the longest non spam post ever made on one of your comics Shawn, I want CoffinFamePoints for it ;) .
oh dear lord! lol! looks like I got your cage rattled! hehe, it’s great! good, bad, or indifferent, I like hearing what you folks have to say! and I like to think of this as a safe place to speak your mind. just keep it clean and keep it friendly. >)
I think the issue with war is that it provides a “virtual” benefit to the economy… kind of like a little boost… but it is expensive… VERY expensive to do it. countries go bankrupt trying to be at war. so unless you can raze the opposing country to the ground while diving into a swimming pool of gold that you pillaged from them, you’re likely to see some decline after it’s over. and even then, you can’t go hog wild with pillaging, look at those wrascally wromans! steal too much gold and you just inflated yourself! oops! but like I said, it will give a little boost, but like a rubber band, it’ll have to come back on you eventually.
while I’d love to kick you in the shins and call you sally for suggesting elimination of the minimum wages, that’s actually not a half bad idea! lol! problem with manufacturing and services is that we can send them overseas… well… why not keep those jobs here? I guess the issue would be with normalizing the cost of living so that we aren’t just making some sort of enslaved impoverish class though… so I guess the idea is sound but needs a few tweaks.
social security? oh, you mean that pyramid scheme that I won’t get a penny of when I’m old enough? yeah… I’m with you on that one.
I’m a big BIG supporter of the flat national sales tax. forget income, let me keep what I earn, but if I want to spend my bucks on a shiny new gold plated smart car, then I’d better get hit up the pooper with taxes! it’s a good fair system I think and would probably scale well. people would cry when their things cost more, but I’d guess after a while it’d even out. I mean, just a few years ago I could fill up my tank for around $10… can’t do that anymore, people complain, but they still do it. >)
jesus tapdancing space spider queen! why the hell do we let other nations suck out our resources and why don’t we tap that? say what you will about the BP oil debacle, but at the end of the day, that should have been OUR drilling platform. we got lots of resources in this country… lets get to it! (*in the most environmentally friendly way possible… just want to toss that in there before Al Gore starts breaking my legs in)
lol, amen to that brother!
for number 6, I expect you to join my band of merry bandits to start “thinning the herd”. the government could really use a few things trimmed.
heh, man, that was a long one! a lot of good info there. think you get 2 Coffin Cookies for the work! XD
Wow…just wanna comment before i read this whole entire damn thing, someone went tryhard. Not that its a bad thing :P
And here I was thinking you were going to disagree with me on most of what I said. *munches happily on Coffin Cookies*
While in some ways I agree with you, I think you misinterpreted my post. I didn’t say government spending ended the great depression, at least, not by itself. And I said “governments”, you know, plural (more than one). The post mentions that jobs were created because of the need for cleanup efforts. And as much as you don’t want to admit it, millions of people died, which did mean that there were fewer people available to fill all of the new jobs available in the aftermath, something also briefly gone over in my post. No where do I state that it was solely government spending that ended the great depression. My intention was simply to state that it was war as a whole that did end the most notorious economic depression. My point in this, your post restated most of what I said. Next time read a post before you attempt to point out its deficiencies.
While in some ways I agree with you, I think you misinterpreted my post. I didn’t say government spending ended the great depression, at least, not by itself. And I said “governments”, you know, plural (more than one). The post mentions that jobs were created because of the need for cleanup efforts. And as much as you don’t want to admit it, millions of people died, which did mean that there were fewer people available to fill all of the new jobs available in the aftermath, something also briefly gone over in my post. No where do I state that it was solely government spending that ended the great depression. My intention was simply to state that it was war as a whole that did end the most notorious economic depression. My point is this, your post restated most of what I said. Next time read a post before you attempt to point out its deficiencies.
Also, enjoy your coffin cookies. I do admit you definitely earned them! :)
Gah! Stupid phone, you’re not supposed to freak out and double post!
There have been valid salient points made though I will have to counter that the States, Russia and now China (the lil two timers), specifically are doing quite well getting everyone else’s resources.
At the end of the second world war a lot of the “treasure” that was “Liberated” was Germany’s technology, research, scientists and engineers. Everything from working jet engines that didn’t fly to pieces on the test bench in various designs to rockets, radar, submarines, margarine and colour TV to name just a few.
As for Capitalism, just like socialism, is just a label bandied around but does not actually exist outside of political theory. Russia / china were never communist, they were/are dictatorships plain and simple. Our capitalism is more corparitism? Just point out where there is actual competition and the free market [ie us] has a say on pricing and quality?
My classic example - coffee - Folgers was loosing market share due to poor quality product since they used the cheapest beans they could get and still have it pass as fit for human consumption. Their solution - Marketing - same crappy product but with a new jingle and packaging and intense advertising.
Government - as pointed out - is a bloated bureaucracy pandering to the corporate constituents and is these days regulating for corporate interests and against everyone else.
I love the idea of a flat sales/service tax so they can finally get rid of those temporary tax measures they brought in to pay for the wars - WW1 was income tax - WW2 was property tax.
As for cookies, I can’t afford them …..
Becoming an entrepreneur is also an option. :/
true, but that’s rough as well (as seen with my own Jester Brand).