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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Before you want to spread the next round of misinformation, why not "snope" your patently incorrect propaganda. Better yet, expand your reading horizons.
Here's what Snopes has to say about your "facts" regarding charitable contributions from automakers.
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/automakers.asp
As a man whose family mined metallurgical coal for steel in WV and whose wife's family worked in western PA steel mills, it pains me to remind you of this, but the fact is, US automakers got exactly what their shortsighted management deserved by producing crap automobiles while oblivious to the future of petroleum costs. And before you cry me a river about how the "health care component" of each US produced vehicle is so much higher than foreign cars, care to explain to me why the Big 3 turned a deaf ear to the Clinton attempt at Universal Healthcare while instead they decided to spend ten of millions lobbying against higher CAFE EPA standards and lower emissions?
Contrary to popular belief the US does indeed have a state religion. Consumerism.
Europe has it's cathedrals, indicative of a land once enthralled by religion. These great monuments now stand empty apart from the tourists that stop by to admire their architecture. Europeans though have wisely decided to abandon religion for the most part. Religious wars which once engulfed Europe now seem like a distant, hardly concevieable reality (aside from the Balkans that is).
In the US we have our great structures too. The shopping mall. These temples to consumerism have sprung up all over the country in the past 50 years, so bound by our faith to purchase it eventually became government policy that we adopt this new religion and become "consumers".
Everyone consumes. But not everyone consumes like an American, I have lived in Europe for the 4 1/2 years. Over here necessity comes before desire and means determine the extent of the desire. Contrasted with American where necessity and desire are given equal weight and means are meaningless (just go get another credit card).
I urge my fellow Americans to abandon their religion. Consumerism is killing us. Consumerism reshaped the American economy to an unsustainable, inbred, capitalist institution.
Keynesian Economics. Dust off your textbooks, Washington.
....is it not possible that the choices that they are making to do so involve identifying what is really important to them, and what is not - differentiating between what they need and what they don't? If so, is it not possible that that $400 billion cash infusion that our economy supposedly is so desperate for actually represents $400 billion dollars worth of stuff that people don't need? That actually seems to be what you are saying in this post.
If so, why do we need to infuse the economy with those $400 billion useless dollars? Can we not view that $400 billion dollar loss in the economy as actually a net gain, in the sense that, the less you need, the more you actually have? If Americans have identified $400 billion dollars worth of stuff that they actually don't need in their lives, are we not, therefore, $400 billion dollars richer for having made that realization? Furthermore, given that the root of our current problem is a credit crisis stemming from a bout of unsustainably overleveraged spending - "We got into this whole mess by using cash extracted from wildly appreciating home equity valuations to buy whatever we needed or wanted, from healthcare to a new SUV to a second home" - would not a $400 billion dollar cash infusion of the type that you are advocating actually amount to the government simply propping up an unsustainable rate of spending on stuff that, as I have previously mentioned, we probably don't need?
The invisible hand has two sides. Ignore this at your own peril.
You must have a different copy of the Constitution than I do............Which one is it; the Pravda edition?
I respectfully disagree with this premise on so many levels.
First of all we ARE the economy. Many of the very people you are, hypothetically, discussing in your article, work retail. So shopping, to them, is crucial. In the current environment it is undeniable that you are saving lower-income retail jobs that almost certainly would be eliminated by no later than the second week of December, if shopping falls off this year. That allows a lower income person, regardless of responsibility or irresponsibility, to do things like pay their bills and, guess what, even pay their mortgage. Hence they stay in the home.
Second of all saving is essential. But it also has to be backed by some level of realism. No human being, no matter how responsible, is going to allow their family to sit around the tree with no presents. Period. That's not the way human behavior works, and certainly not the way parental behavior works, whether it should or should not.
The goal, therefore, should be to LIMIT both the number and price of items obtained for Christmas. The idea then would be to go in when prices are at their lowest which would have been: Black Friday.
Seriously. While I'm fine, I know several people in tight financial situations who were bragging about their self-control on Friday when others showed up at 4:30 a.m. to buy Christmas gifts. You know what they're doing today? Whining about the fact that the deals that were there on Friday no longer existing, complaining about the fact that stores are cutting down on their inventories this year, and wondering how they can find a deal large enough to get what they need.
Black Friday, parituclarly for those with a tight budget, was the PERFECT time to shop.
Furthermore, all evidence indicates, as you well know, the shoppers who did show up on Black Friday knew what they wanted, knew what the price was, bought what they had intended to buy and then left the store.
I'm sorry but that sounds like smart shopping to me. The notion that a bunch of poor, fat, attention-challenged morons went into the stores at 4:30 a.m. on a Friday to shop in the middle of a recession because they somehow WEREN'T thinking about money is a convenient myth made up by those who either: a) enjoy looking down on the lower class or b) simply do not realize just how MUCH planning the majority of those who ARE struggling have put into their holiday purchases.
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"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
