Politics and the US Economy

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[RightField]

Will I be paying 70% taxes soon?

 

[unregistered]

 

[zipman]

It looks like the Russians can see what all of the Libs here refuse to see...Obama's Marxism:

American capitalism gone with a whimper
Front page / Opinion / Columnists
27.04.2009 Source: Prav******

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people. True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?


http://english.prav******/opinion/columnists/107459-0/

Funny how all of a sudden, right wingers care what other countries think of us.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

Funny how all of a sudden, right wingers care what other countries think of us.

Of all of the other countries, Russia..

 

[unregistered]

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Funny how Obama has put them in the driver's seat when it comes to our recovery...




Funny, funny zip...

Lol zip, lol.

Laugh UD, laugh, you voted for it.

 

[zipman]

Funny how Obama has put them in the driver's seat when it comes to our recovery...




Funny, funny zip...

Lol zip, lol.

Laugh UD, laugh, you voted for it.

Now, now Cap'n A_J. Don't feel bad.

Your posts generate laughter too.

Even if it is unintentional, it still counts.

And just because they're laughing at you and not with you doesn't diminish the fact that it is laughter.

It's all good.

 

[ksmybuttons]

Funny how all of a sudden, right wingers care what other countries think of us.

And that the greed and selfishness and war of the past 8 years left few choices.

I have yet to see an alternative plan set forth by any group of proportion.

 

[unregistered]

 

[zipman]

They don't want to admit they voted for a Marxist. It isn't like they weren't told.

I'm sorry, I must have missed the post where you explain why after years of stating that the opinion of the rest of the world didn't matter at all are you suddenly using the words of a single russian op-ed writer to validate your position?

I'm sure you have a good reason. I mean, it couldn't just be more partisan bullshit coming from you, could it vette?

 

[unregistered]

 

[zipman]

If it were would it make me any different than you Zip?

Where have I posted that the rest of the world is never right? You've mis-characterized my posts of the past, but I do understand the tactic. I'm waiting for you to tell me the Russians don't know how to recognize a Marxist.

Face it Zip, you've been had. Appreciate the fact that I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here.

I didn't accuse you saying that they were never right, just that their opinion didn't matter. Which you have done and you know it. Nice tactic but it didn't work, as do your evasions.

Why is the opinion of that one single russian writer so critical? Have you read anything else by him? Is he always right? Does he speak for their country? Are you starting to get it or should I go on?

 

[Burcham]

Funny how all of a sudden, right wingers care what other countries think of us.

Best post of the day.

 

[koalabear]

Government taking in 44% less in tax revenue. That is all.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Because zip, the world you were worrying about wasn't carrying our debt...

 

[RightField]

So I gather that our dept is skyrocketing even further than the projections since the tax receipts are lower than anticipated.

Regarding the Russian article, It's just an interesting perception that they've made and it's notable because it's consistent with perception that many people have. I guess Reagan only won round one of the cold war and the Russians appear to be winning the second round.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

True Democracies cannot undertake any long-term adventure or policy, especially polyglots, which is why China and Russia both abhor them AND get the support of their people because they can, like North Korea and Cuba, employ xenophobia.

 

[RightField]

Death by Obamanomics?
The president's policies on energy, unions, and health care won't help an ailing economy.
by Irwin M. Stelzer
06/26/2009 12:00:00 AM

Death by a thousand cuts. Or in the case of the efficiency of the U.S. economy, by at least four: energy policy, health care policy, trade union resurgence, and fiscal madness.

Start with energy. The world is awash in it. The wind blows and the sun shines, at least some times and somewhere. Oil and gas wells gush, and substantial oil- and gas-rich areas have never even been explored. Coal abounds. Nuclear power can be had at a cost. So why has Barack Obama made energy policy one of his three top priorities -- education and health care are the other two -- in a country in which inexpensive energy has produced the world's most productive agriculture, a population capable of navigating America's huge spaces in air-conditioned comfort, and permitted the substitution of energy-plus-brain-power for back-breaking labor?

One problem is that oil is largely in the hands of very bad actors. Still another is that almost all sources of energy have significant impacts on the environment: solar panels consume acres of space; wind machines are considered eye sores by those who can spot them; oil, natural gas and coal emit CO2, responsible for claims that the globe is warming; nuclear power generates long-lived and dangerous waste.

Some of these problems are soluble, although not without cost. Domestic producers of natural gas tout their product as a substitute for petrol in trucks, busses and other vehicles. Progress is apparently being made in developing cars and trucks that run on at least partly on batteries. The efficiency of vehicles is being increased, albeit in response to inefficient government edicts rather than to more efficient price signals. Never mind that the infrastructure for these various gasoline substitutes has not been developed, and that the cost of these technologies exceeds that of the gasoline-fuelled internal combustion engine by a good margin. They must be listed in the possible column. That's the good news.

The bad news is that even if these technologies do develop, we will still need lots of oil and gasoline to fuel the existing capital stock, and that oil is in the hands of the bad guys. The Saudis and their OPEC allies control the bulk of the world's oil reserves, and use the proceeds of their cartel-based oil sales to fund the spread of radical Islam and jihadism. Hugo Chávez uses the (dwindling) receipts from his increasingly clapped-out oil industry to fund his takeover of Venezuela's private sector and his anti-American activities. Iran's mullahs survive their disastrous economic policies only because they have oil revenues with which to bribe the masses, pay for their nuclear-arms program, and fund international terrorism.

The problem of the unfortunate location of oil reserves can't be solved by research into alternatives to oil, or by conservation; as far ahead as we can see, we will need the bad guys' oil, and Europe will need natural gas from an increasingly bellicose Russia. Both problems can be ameliorated by diversifying sources of supply. Investment in the oil industries of Canada and Mexico certainly seems worthwhile for the United States, as does investment in natural gas pipelines that by-pass Russia for the EU. And maintenance of a military strong enough to guard supply routes and protect the Saudi fields from falling into even worse hands seems essential.

It is the environmental issues that seem intractable. At one time a united environmental movement was of one mind on important issues. No longer. President Obama and greens favor the development of solar and wind power, but other environmentalists oppose dedicating substantial swathes of desert land to solar panels, and Senator Ted Kennedy is leading the charge against building windmills in sight of his family compound on Cape Cod. Some environmentalists see pollution-free nuclear power as an important part of future energy supply, others oppose new plants because there is no political agreement on the disposal of nuclear waste. If environmentalists in America agree on anything it is that coal presents the greatest threat to the environment, and that the courts can be used to drag out the permitting process until most projects are abandoned.

All of this means that the electrical energy needed to power battery-driven vehicles won't come cheap, if indeed it is available. Industry sources fear that with coal and nuclear more or less off the table, at least for now, we will end up rationing electricity.

Energy is not the only sector that is likely to be less efficient than in the past. It is no coincidence that America's superior productivity performance has coincided with the decline of trade unions. We have seen how union compensation scales and work rules contributed to the bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler -- a fate the non-union car manufacturers have avoided. Yet Congress and the president are preparing to spur union growth by eliminating the secret ballot in union-recognition elections and, rumor has it, by writing advantages for union members into the tax laws, perhaps by exempting them from taxes on their employer-sponsored health-care benefits while imposing such taxes on non-union employees.

There is worse. The president is about to engineer the takeover of the health care sector. Unless Congress refuses to go along with the establishment of a government insurer -- voter enthusiasm for this "reform" is minimal -- competition from an entity that has no need to make a profit and can count on taxpayer funding if premiums prove inadequate will surely doom private insurers. Estimated cost over ten years: $1.3-$1.6 trillion, adding to the upward pressure on taxes, especially on wealth-creating entrepreneurs, created by the administration's runaway deficits.

The administration simply has no credible plan to reduce those deficits, and instead talks vaguely of cutting entitlements or the savings from universal health care coverage -- never mind that more coverage means higher costs, and the proclaimed goal of prolonging live, however admirable, will drive costs up, not down. Obama's huge deficits already have purchasers of Treasury IOUs worried that they will be repaid in devalued dollars, which will eventually force wary investors to price the risk of inflation into the price they are prepared to pay for government IOUs. Interest rates rise, economic growth slows.

Two thoughts pierce the gloom. The first is that the American economy might be large enough, and resilient enough, to remain competitive even bearing the weight of the new inefficiencies. The second is that voters will demand a change of course before Obamanomics is permanently embedded in our system. Voters worry that they are leaving their children a mountain of debt. Already Obama's approval rating among independent voters, whom Wall Street Journal analyst Gerald Seib calls "the canaries in the coal mine of American politics", has fallen from 60 percent to 45 percent. Even if the president doesn't get the message, Congress, faced with an election next year, just might.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Zippy and company love the new economy, it relieves them of the stress of keeping up with the Joneses...

 

[RightField]

Zippy and company love the new economy, it relieves them of the stress of keeping up with the Joneses...

Aren't they all homebound and looking for more handouts?

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Aren't they all homebound and looking for more handouts?

They're steeling themselves for a very long recession because they celebrate the way FDR handled his recession.

During hard times, Washington can increase its grip upon our affairs and Statism, as it did in Europe at the turn of the last century, has come into vogue here.

I still say, blood in the streets if we stand up to the Statist movement just like in Russia and in Germany.

 

[RightField]

Young people voted overwhelmingly for Obama and we told them before the election that their vote for Obama would lead to their loss of employment and they laughed and said something stupid like "At least he doesn't mispronounce words like that idiot Bush". Yeah. The article below (New York Times ironically) mentions that almost half the job losses have been by those under 30 and have been almost 80% male.

No Recovery in Sight (New York Times)
By BOB HERBERT Published: June 26, 2009

How do you put together a consumer economy that works when the consumers are out of work?

One of the great stories you’ll be hearing over the next couple of years will be about the large number of Americans who were forced out of work in this recession and remained unable to find gainful employment after the recession ended. We’re basically in denial about this.

There are now more than five unemployed workers for every job opening in the United States. The ranks of the poor are growing, welfare rolls are rising and young American men on a broad front are falling into an abyss of joblessness.

Some months ago, the Obama administration and various mainstream economists forecast a peak unemployment rate of roughly 8 percent this year. It has already reached 9.4 percent, and most analysts now expect it to hit 10 percent or higher. Economists are currently spreading the word that the recession may end sometime this year, but the unemployment rate will continue to climb. That’s not a recovery. That’s mumbo jumbo.

Why this rampant joblessness is not viewed as a crisis and approached with the sense of urgency and commitment that a crisis warrants, is beyond me. The Obama administration has committed a great deal of money to keep the economy from collapsing entirely, but that is not enough to cope with the scope of the jobless crisis.

There were roughly seven million people officially counted as unemployed in November 2007, a month before the recession began. Now there are about 14 million. If you add to these unemployed individuals those who are working part time but would like to work full time, and those who want jobs but have become discouraged and stopped looking, you get an underutilization rate that is truly alarming.

“By May 2009,” according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, “the total number of underutilized workers had increased dramatically from 15.63 million to 29.37 million — a rise of 13.7 million, or 88 percent. Nearly 30 million working-age individuals were underutilized in May 2009, the largest number in our nation’s history. The overall labor underutilization rate in May 2009 had risen to 18.2 percent, its highest value in 26 years.”

If it were true that the recession is approaching its end and that these startlingly high numbers were about to begin a steady and substantial decline, there would be much less reason for alarm. But while there is evidence the recession is easing, hardly anyone believes a big-time employment turnaround is in the offing.

Three-quarters of the workers let go over the past year were permanently displaced, as opposed to temporarily laid off. They won’t be going back to their jobs when economic conditions improve. And many of those who were permanently displaced were in fields like construction and manufacturing in which the odds of finding work, even after a recovery takes hold, are not good.

Another startling aspect of this economic downturn is the toll it has taken on men, especially young men. Men accounted for nearly 80 percent of the loss in employment in this recession. As the labor market center reported, “The unemployment rate for males in April 2009 was 10 percent, versus only 7.2 percent for women, the largest absolute and relative gender gap in unemployment rates in the post-World War II period.”

Workers under 30 have sustained nearly half the net job losses since November 2007.

This is not a recipe for a strong economic recovery once the recession officially ends, or for a healthy society. Young males, especially, are being clobbered at an age when, typically, they would be thinking about getting married, setting up new households and starting families. Moreover, work habits and experience developed in one’s 20s often establish the foundation for decades of employment and earnings.

We’ve seen what happens when you rely on debt and inflated assets to keep the economy afloat. The economy can’t be re-established on a sound basis without aggressive efforts to put people back to work in jobs with decent wages.

We also need to consider the suffering that is being endured by these high levels of joblessness, including the profound negative effect on the families of the unemployed. Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, warned about the consequences for children. “What does it mean,” he asked, “when kids are under stress because there is no money in the household, or people have to move more, or are combining households, or lose their health insurance? I believe this is going to leave a permanent scar on a generation of kids.”

The first step in dealing with a crisis is to recognize that it exists. This is not a problem that will evaporate when the gross domestic product finally begins to creep into positive territory.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Young people voted overwhelmingly for Obama and we told them before the election that their vote for Obama would lead to their loss of employment and they laughed and said something stupid like "At least he doesn't mispronounce words like that idiot Bush". Yeah. The article below (New York Times ironically) mentions that almost half the job losses have been by those under 30 and have been almost 80% male.
...

What the fuck are you talking about? Even on the campaign trail, as we highlighted, Obama promised his Change would bring pain. His voters heard that and inserted the word Republican before the word pain and they were eager to get it on and get revenge.