Usa Thread

[dave32]

CW,

 

"I'm sure I will be greatly missed."

 

You will be. Sorry to hear this.

 

 

Yep. You'll be missed a lot Herr Charles. Give KS a little time, seems like he's put in a lot of work trying to make the board better. It's a new app, these things take a little time and trial/error to tweak. I hope there's a way found to list the 'hot topics' from every page.

 

And haven't the politics discussions always been simplistic? Business as usual. I thought you were a hardened cynic who didn't let that stuff irk you.

 

Anyway, to reiterate, you would be missed. Notice the use of 'would,' cause I'm assuming you just need to have a drink and chill, get laid, read some Dosteovsky or something. And then come back with the subtle jabs we all love. So I didn't say 'will,' because that's definitive, I say 'would' as in hypothetical.

 

Cheers.

[Flashermac]

Forget Dosteovsky. Watch some old Peter Sellers flicks.

[Steve]

 

My prediction, the USA will enter a phase of a deep recession, because public spending into education, infrastructure, heath care, e.g. will go down considerably. As a result hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost in the public as well as in the private sectors. In the upcoming years the lower and middle class will have to chose between health care, education for their kinds and consumption, but won't be able to spend money all all three essentials for all people and the country (bad education will have severe impact on key industries for example).

And it will probably have a negative effect on the whole world, but especially on the Western industrialized countries (including Japan).

 

 

Very astute prediction kamui. I'd suggest its already started down that road. Spening on infrastructure seems a no brainer for me. I think in education there should be a social shift in thinking to trade and tech schools that teach plumbing, electrician related jobs, carpentry, car repair, computer programming, etc. We've made a college degree easier to get and there's now a glut. There are many people nowadays who didn't learn a trade because society said get a college degree. A BS is like a HS diploma now. One of my brothers didn't go to college, joined the Navy, learned a trade, got fairly high clearance and makes as much as any upper middle class person. If we invested in infrastructure historically blue collar jobs would be needed. What is more valuable. One more sociology, history or english major or a trained electrician?

 

As far as health care, I've long said, we need to break the stranglehold the AMA, HMOs, big Pharma, etc. have on the Congress before anything meaningful can happen.

 

I have become a liberal of sorts. Its painful to admit it. However, I find myself taking more and more liberal positions. My far right brother thinks so. We not only shared the same room for 17 years but a similar ideology although I was more Libertarian (which as the joke says is a Republican that wants to smoke pot). A century ago liberals were called progressives. I do agree with HH in that liberals have caused some messes. However, many advances in our society has been due to progressives. Whether its a woman's right to vote, killing Jim Crow laws, allowing gays a life, ending slavery, have all been from the progressives of the day. It can and does go too far. Quotas when affirmtive action started out, attempts to end our right to bear arms, etc. However, progress as a society has been via progressives and its the conservatives of that day that fought against it.

[kamui]

... Among the industrialized countries the USA has the most capitalist and brutal darwinist system, with an almost complete disregard for the lower class, controlled by an incestious elite.** ...If you actually knew 5% of what you think you know about the U.S., you wouldn't say that.

HH

 

Ok, tell me another industrialized democracy which has 50.7 million people (16.7% of the population) without health insurance ( Wikipedia ). That would be half of Germany's population.

 

The USA is

- a country where 14% rely on food stamps (WSJ)

- a country, which once flew to the moon, but which is now ranking below average in science and mathematics understanding compared to other developed countries.^[7] In 2008, there was a 77% graduation rate from high school, below that of most developed countries. (Wikipedia)

- a country where the wealth of largest non-white minority groups, i.e. the Blacks and the Hispanics, declined in an astonishing rate (66% for the Hispanics within 5 years) while rich whites got even richer. (My link, My link)

- a country which is on rank 93 in regard to income equality, which means that there are 92 countries in world in which wealth and income distributions are less concentrated. Explanation: in other countries like Switzerland wealth is as concentrated as in the USA, but in regard to their income, even the Swiss high earners pay equally balanced taxes, while in the USA the rich pay much less tax than the poor and middle class. (My link)

 

I wonder were there could be _any_ socialist element in the USA system? It is clear that especially in the past 10-15 years in the USA wealth and income moved from the bottom to the top of the society. There is absolutely no source which says otherwise.

 

 

But of course from the right wings perspective, the best you can do in the current crisis is cutting social security, medicare, education and infrastructure projects, while lowering tax for the rich. Which means the poor have to lose everything (jobs, health, education), while rich get even more.

Vive la US socialism...

[Flashermac]

I think the US opposition to "socialism" is not so much that people don't want to see everyone get a fair shake, but rather that they see some people getting a free ride and believing the world owes them a living. That is exploited by the far right to gloss over the genuine inequalities.

 

And as CS pointed out, the "degree madness" is absurd. A BA or BS degree has become what a high school diploma used to be. Colleges and universities have been dumbed down to become businesses that crank out often underqualified graduates. An engineer friend told me he was seeing new honours graduates in engineering who had to be taught the basics they should already know just so they could do their job.

 

It is getting to the point that many jobs require an MA, MS or MBA - even though it is not needed for the work. Next step will be to force everyone to get a PhD. It's getting close to that now. I got my MA almost 40 years ago, it was like "Wow ... you've got your master's." Now the reaction is "so what"? If I were younger, I have been working on a doctorate long ago just to keep up with the crowd.

 

Thailand is falling into the same "education" trap. 30 years ago a BA or BEd from a Thai university meant an automatic job. Now BA and MA grads are driving taxis in Bangkok. I meet them all the time.

[kamui]

I think the US opposition to "socialism" is not so much that people don't want to see everyone get a fair shake, but rather that they see some people getting a free ride and believing the world owes them a living. That is exploited by the far right to gloss over the genuine inequalities.

 

The fear of free riders is an absolutely valid point. We had these problems until the 1990s as well: whole families, especially with a lot of children, living for years on welfare cheques. Now we have much tighter control and people who don not want the work get their welfare cut. Anyway, in the end it weren't that many people who cheated on the state.

 

Anyway, in regard to social security the ideologies of the USA and the other democratic industrialized countries are at totally at odds. All of these countries, except the USA, believe that the government should make available the basics for human living conditions for people who can't provide it for themselves, while of course all people have to pay tax accordingly. The right wing part of the US populations on the other hand favors a more darwinist approach, were only the strongest survive and the winner takes it all.

 

And as CS pointed out, the "degree madness" is absurd. A BA or BS degree has become what a high school diploma used to be. Colleges and universities have been dumbed down to become businesses that crank out often underqualified graduates. An engineer friend told me he was seeing new honours graduates in engineering who had to be taught the basics they should already know just so they could do their job.

 

It is getting to the point that many jobs require an MA, MS or MBA - even though it is not needed for the work. Next step will be to force everyone to get a PhD. It's getting close to that now. I got my MA almost 40 years ago, it was like "Wow ... you've got your master's." Now the reaction is "so what"? If I were younger, I have been working on a doctorate long ago just to keep up with the crowd.

 

Thailand is falling into the same "education" trap. 30 years ago a BA or BEd from a Thai university meant an automatic job. Now BA and MA grads are driving taxis in Bangkok. I meet them all the time.

 

The problem with good education is that you have to pay for it. And that you have to work on it all the time. Either a country is interested in supreme education and invests accordingly (money and research, human resources) or it isn't. The GOP and a part of the Democrats have decided that that they won't in the upcoming future.

 

In the end the previous and current cuts will have a severe impact on the future of the USA.

The results will become visible in the next two decades, when China (and maybe India) will take over the USA in highly educated, high skilled entrepreneurs, bureaucrats and scientists.

The problem of course is, that erosion will happen slowly. It's not that an industry might go down very soon, but like with the US car industry new developments and with this the leadership in a market will happen more and more outside the USA.

[Flashermac]

[Bangkoktraveler]

One of our founding Fathers was Thomas Jefferson. He realized the benefits of smallpox vacination and got innoculated and then innoculated his family and many of his slaves.

 

If Jefferson was living today, would he want everybody innoculated?

 

.

 

During the USA's 'Wild West' days, towns paid to have their citizens innoculated. The reason why towns and cities paid for the innoculations was it was a lot cheaper then dealing with an epidemic. This is just one of many 'socialist' practices that went on during the 'Wild West' days. Today is not much different.

 

The same wisdom was used to implement education, garbage collection (City scavenger), etc.

 

In many ways these 'socialist' ideas were implemented as a direct result of somebody having or at least using their own 'common scense'.

[Bangkoktraveler]

Native Americans were for the most part 'socialist'. If they had a greater population and had better weapons, the land probably would still be theres.

 

The early Christians were 'socialist'. What probably made early Christianity spread so rapidly was the 'socialist' element of the religion. When Christianity lost this aspect of the religion, I suspect that is when the religion became obusive and a place where nothing good resides.

[Bangkoktraveler]

The news media claims Obama signed into law the plan to extend the debt ceiling, etc.

 

Now both sides can go back to pissing in each other's sandbox.