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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Credit. Because no one on a large scale--so far--seems much interested in paying American workers much more than enough money to barely keep up with inflation over the last four decades.
There's the real root of our economic crisis--borrowing has overtaken average income. It's the same story in every country that has an economic crisis. And, it's not fixed by more borrowing, (see dozens of IMF loan recipient countries over the last few decades if you have any doubts).
It's fixed by more income to the average worker. And that takes work, as it has in decades and centuries past: demanding it, in other words. It's the reason we have a middle class and labor standards in the West at all--our great-great- and great-grandparents and grandparents demanded as much.
Blah blah blah Government Spending on Infrastructure blah blah blah. Seems like HTWW has posted the same meme ten times in the last month.
logical but not emotionally true... Americans buy based on emotion, not rationale
the mall here is packed daily with holiday shoppers and check the numbers for retail sales, they are not as one dimensional as you portray
Buy From Your Neighbors
As your reader's have explained. Shopping is as much the problem as the "solution".
Obama is going to have to "pull the curtain back" because just pumping money into this dysfunctional economy ain't going to stem the pain. The Feds sending money to local governments and others without a clear plan on how best to spend it (sustainable transportation, sustainable agriculture, appropriate education for future jobs, maintaining social order, etc.) is a TALL task that will require straight talk and enormous luck. (The former being a national fear while the latter is considered our national right.)
We really are between a rock and a hard place. This will certainly thicken the plot, dear reader.
Cheers.
And their control of all banks. Let's get rid of them or at the least outlaw money. Hey that worked for Robespierre and Pol Pot.
Infrastructure spending. And for one, I wouldn't build railroads. We have no engines or rolling freight to run on them. Where would we get those? Europe's the only place still building them.
No, build libraries, schools, good poverty housing, and fix up the existing roads. Build some civic centers and parks with bike trails and dog walks.
But the great evils of the megacorporations will still be there. So break up Wal-Mart. Break up the media monopolies. Take measures to end outsourcing and limit visas for technical workers from other countries.
It isn't as simple as Uncle Sam spending his way out of this mess. It's forcing businessmen to realize that they are not gods, that their fate is the same fate as the people they employ, and that everybody has to start behaving like grownups for the first time in fifty years.
Let it be your one and window on the world
And just become a wastoid.
The multiplier for tax cuts to consumers is reduced in part because its spent on imports which don't have the bang for the buck which buying an American made product would have.
The problem is that globalization and offshore outsourcing and the high dollar (engineered originally by Rubin) have devastated the American job base. That has held down wages. Now (duh!) the consumer is giving up.
Next year will be terrible. The problem is that chasing all the globalization fads has destroyed all the bases of possible job growth (technology, services, manufacturing) and the bubble centers of job growth (construction, real estate, finance) are totally over.
Damm straight. The benefit of new innovations has become far outweighed by the sheer expense and hassle of "upgrading." I have always thought one of the major reasons Microsoft Vista tanked so badly (in addition to it being gruesomely counter-intuitive-:)) is because consumers weighed the benefits of its new bells-and-whistles against having to 1) get used to a new system after finally getting XP to do what they needed; 2) update a bunch of software/drivers-for-hardware on more than one computer; 3) deal with the innumerable bugs that plague every MS release. And once word got out what a pain Vista was to use, said consumers finally decided that no amount of cool-new-tricks was worth several tons of grief. As you noted, with seemingly every single product going that "upgrade or else" route, consuming becomes a time-wasting, aggravating, bankrupting chore. And, honestly, who the hell wants to put as much energy into getting a toaster to work as they do in bringing their computer up to speed?
I think you said it right there! turning the big box shell's of wal mart and other retailers into co-ops in which each one of us could work for ourselves, selling our own stuff instead of running like morons to the " mega-low mart."
Americans are too dumb to spend their own money, so the government must do it for them.
This, really, amounts to the rock bottom of stupidity and arrogance.
While infrastructure projects might be great for longterm economic stimulus, it'll take several years for that money to flow into the economy (a bridge isn't designed and built in a day, let alone a highway or rail network). What this economy needs is a powerful short-term stimulus, preferably one with a powerful longterm impact - both for consumers and for the economy as a whole.
I think Washington should offer up tax credits, up to $1,000 a household, for the purchase of energy-efficient, North American-made durable goods. Items which are in the top 25% of their class in terms of energy efficiency - cars, refrigerators, hot water heaters and so forth.
This would be a great way to stimulate the economy without sending trillions to China, and it would have a lasting impact, both for the country as a whole as well as for individual consumers. It would increase our national energy efficiency virtually overnight, and it would save millions of households hundreds of dollars a year on energy going forward - money they can spend and invest on more productive activities, from education to insulation.
Best of all, a lot of consumers would opt to make those purchases right away, but the tax credits wouldn't have to be paid out until sometime in 2010, after they've filed. So it would function as a hundred-billion dollar, interest free loan to Uncle Sam for 4 - 16 months. Can't get better terms than that.
This would probably do a lot more to bail out Detroit than any handout - and a lot of Japanese, Korean and German cars would also be eligible, if they're made in the United States and are energy-efficiency leaders in their class.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
