Jump to content

Usa Thread


TroyinEwa/Perv
 Share

Recommended Posts

..Perv, yes that point comes when you become a multi multi millionaire.

 

Just a wild guess, but I'm guessing that at least 90% of the board members here who are not multi, multi millionaires have had this experience. (Even if only "married" for a ST.) :content: :content:

 

HH

Link to comment
Share on other sites

..Perv' date=' yes that point comes when you become a multi multi millionaire. [/quote']

 

Just a wild guess, but I'm guessing that at least 90% of the board members here who are not multi, multi millionaires have had this experience. (Even if only "married" for a ST.) :content: :content:

 

HH

 

 

Ah, yes, you mean the farang 'baht millionaires' here? Same thing isn't it? Men with the equivalent of a million baht, or many more, compared to the average Thai woman's income? Rather similar, even for just a ST 'marriage'. :content: Makes for a mini 'Hef' experience? 55555 Part of the lure of the LOS isn't it for many? And no pre-nup agreement required.

 

 

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Closing the books on the worst Congress

 

 

 

Americans can give thanks in this Christmas season for an end to the reckless and destructive 111th Congress. This is the Congress that passed Obamacare, against the wishes of a substantial majority of the public, on Christmas Eve of last year. In the dead of night, Democratic lawmakers stuffed the monstrous 2,700-page bill with special-interest goodies and political payoffs like the "Cornhusker Kickback" and the "Louisiana Purchase." As we have learned since, most members were still ignorant of the bill's contents three months later, when it gained final passage in the House. No surprise that its immediate results -- both intended and unintended -- have been almost uniformly bad.

 

Similarly, odds are that not one member of the 111th Congress actually read the so-called "cap-and-trade" bill before it passed the House in June 2009. Even a speed-reader could not have digested House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman's last-second, 309-page amendment, which read as clear as mud: "Page 14, strike lines 1 through 3 and insert the following. ..." It was filed after 1:30 a.m. just before the vote on final passage.

 

There is also serious doubt that any member of Congress understood the 2,000-page financial reform bill that Congress passed this summer. One of its two main sponsors, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn, remarked, "No one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we've done something that has been needed for a long time."

 

[color:red]And Democrats wonder why Gallup found this Congress to be the least popular in the history of its polls?[/color]

 

After suffering a comprehensive and humiliating defeat in the midterm election, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the unfrocked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led lame-duck congressional Democrats on a last-minute banzai charge for more federal spending, debt, earmarks, taxes and regulations. They unsuccessfully pushed for the biggest tax increase in American history, a yearlong spending bill loaded with pork, and a DREAM Act to award amnesty to certain children of illegal immigrants. We hope that voters will remember these misguided initiatives in two years.

 

Our Founding Fathers were always wary of those who wanted government to do lots of big things. That's why they created a system that separated powers among three more or less equal branches and provided each of them with powerful checks and balances. When professional politicians become frustrated with Congress, it is a sign that our system is working as intended.

 

Columbia University historian Alan Brinkley told Bloomberg News recently that "this is probably the most productive session of Congress since at least the '60s." When Congress votes on bills that no one reads or understands, it can be quite "productive." Americans have already rendered a verdict on such productivity and elected a new Congress with orders to clean up the mess in Washington.

 

 

 

Washington Examiner

 

:stirthepo

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And Democrats wonder why Gallup found this Congress to be the least popular in the history of its polls?

Because they have given control of the press to the wingnuts and failed to make the public that the GOp are simply blocking everything using arcane rules? The Dems own fault for failing to get out the message, yes. But the blame lies squarely at the feet of the "Just say NO!" GOP.

 

Plus failing to get out the message that and in April, we saw more jobs created than at any point in four years, the Dems fail in getting out the message that they are doing good.

 

Just like the Dems in LoS, actually. If the message were out here, the red shirts would be just a bad memory.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Dems own fault for failing to get out the message, yes. But the blame lies squarely at the feet of the "Just say NO!" GOP.

 

 

 

55555555555555 LZ, I hear Wearth's group needs a "straight man". Are ya free New Year's Eve?

 

BTW, I suppose you'd eat a shit sandwich rather than "just say no"? How polite of you. :content:

 

HH

Link to comment
Share on other sites

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=24404&zoom_highlight=incumbent

 

This guy says I've got it wrong and China is not a super power and their future isn't as bright as I think it will be. Some very cogent points.

 

However, my take....He is in the minority view. I would even contend 'minority' is kind and he's almost a 'sole' voice against the overwhelmingly vast amount of experts in government, think tanks, etc. that have already factored in what he points out.

 

America surpassed England with the biggest GDP at the turn of the last century but it took WW2 to show everyone. America had a sizeable underclass as well. There were still many poor immigrants living in squalor in America's cities as well as very poor people in the rural areas still using out-houses and a large segment with no electricity. The writer talks of impendng economic problems but that is the norm for rising powers. America went through near economic collapse a few times prior to the Great Depression (1816, 1825, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893 and 1907). A few of those were similar to the one we faced a couple year ago and had a 1930s depression like potential. One in particular was saved by JP Morgan and a group of wall street bankers that brought the country on the brink of total financial collapse.

ALL great nations were to some extent built on slave and/or cheap labor. Roman Empire, British Empire and yes, America. Not saying its right, its totally wrong but it is a fact and China is no different. Their large underclass in some respects follows the same model and gives them a cheap labor force.

Their government will change. Another fact is that great powers always have a civil war or some great divide to determine its future. Again, the Romans, British and America had civil wars during their rise as well.

All the experts back when we were on the rise pegged us to be a major power. The British knew it. Hitler knew it and that's why he wanted us out of the war. The Japanese wanted a quick war because they knew a prolonged war with our resources would work against them.

Many don't know but China owns a significant portion of Africa's resources. Its called ChinAfrica by experts. China has replaced America as the biggest trading partners for South Korea, Brazil, India and Japan. A few of whom the article cites as those fearing China. With economic dominance comes great political influence. Who do you think those sides will choose if push comes to shove and a choice has to be made on some UN vote or some world issue? You go with who pays the bills and its the very same reason why a lot of countries have sided with us. It was in their economic best interest even thought they were opposed.

The U.S. is terminally ill. In 10 or 20 years its China that will be better placed globally than America. Also with the amount of trade between the two countries the old adage of 'when America sneezes (economically) the world catches a cold' will apply to China. Its America that will suffer more than China if/when China has an economic downturn. They buy a shed-load of America's debt and its America that will suffer when trade declines.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Serfing USA: Corporate America Is Robbing American Workers

 

Wednesday 29 December 2010

 

by: Dave Lindorff | This Can't Be Happening | News Analysis

 

Serfing USA: Corporate America Is Robbing American Workers

 

 

Along with the staggering theft in broad daylight of Americans’ assets that has occurred in the course of the ongoing financial crisis, as taxpayers funded multi-trillion bank bailouts and banks stole homes through foreclosures with the help of fraudulent paperwork, American companies have also been picking the pockets of workers more directly.

 

This second round of paycheck theft has come in the form of stolen productivity gains.

 

Historically, the relatively high and rising standard of living of American workers--both blue and white-collar--which once gave the US one of the highest standards of living in the world, has come courtesy of rising productivity, which has allowed US companies to produce more goods with less labor, and to then pass some of the enhanced profits on to workers in the form of higher wages, without having to raise prices. That has been important because, when higher wages are financed by higher prices, it tends to be a kind of zero-sum game: higher wages cancelled out by inflation.

 

But beginning in 2000, the old system already creaky, broke down. (It must be noted that this system was never the result of the capitalists' largess, but rather was because of a tighter labor market and, critically, a powerful labor movement.)

 

The corporate onslaught against trade unions and against the minimum wage, which began with the Nixon administration in 1968, combined with so-called “free-trade†deals that allowed US companies to shift production overseas and then to freely import the products of their overseas production facilities back for sale to Americans at home, by weakening the power of workers to demand higher wages, has led to a situation where companies can just pocket all the profits from productivity gains, leaving wages stagnant, or even driving them down.

 

The recession that began in late 2007 has only made matters worse, giving owners and managers the opportunity to really hammer employees. With real unemployment and underemployment now running at close to 20%, employees are in no position to press for higher wages, even as those who are still working are putting in extra effort to keep their jobs, thus pushing productivity gains even higher.

 

The figures speak for themselves.

 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, productivity gains during the 1990-1999 decade averaged just 2.1% per year. The prior decade, from 1980-1989, the average productivity gain was 1.5% per year. But between 2000 and 2009, when the economy suffered two recessions, the average annual productivity gain has been 2.9%, almost 50% higher than the prior decade, and almost double the rate in the 1980s.

 

During this same period, however, wages have actually declined. According to the BLS, wages in 2010 rose 0.1%, but inflation, running at an official (and grossly under-measured) 1%, more than ate that up. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, for the whole decade from 2000 through 2009, wages actually sank for most people. In 2000, the median weekly wage for a high school graduate was $629. By the end of 2009, high school graduates were earning a median weekly wage, in inflation-adjusted dollars, of just $626--three dollars a week less than a decade earlier. A college degree didn’t change things, either. In 2000, the median weekly wage for a college grad was $1030, but that had fallen to $1025 by the end of 2009.

 

Remember, all during that decade, companies were seeing productivity gains averaging almost 3% per year. If 50% of that gain in productivity annually had gone to workers, as might have been typical back 30 years ago when unions were stronger and before Congress gave away the store by signing onto the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Act and similar trade agreements, that high school grad would have been earning $729 a week in inflation-adjusted dollars by 2009, while the college grad would have been earning $1,195.

 

Of course as a whole, Americans have been doing even worse, because these are just the mean wages of people who are working full weeks. In fact, many companies have been laying off workers, and making the remaining workers, desperate to hang on to their jobs, work harder to produce the same amount of product, meaning that besides not getting any pay increase, they are producing much more profit for the boss. Many workers who are still hanging onto their jobs are actually working fewer hours, and thus are taking home smaller paychecks, all of which goes into that higher productivity figure for output per worker the government is reporting.

 

Indeed, the Wall Street Journal today reported glowingly that US production of goods and services had returned to its 2007 pre-recession level, but this is with unemployment running at an official rate of 9.8 percent, and an actual rate of about 19 percent.

 

What we’re witnessing is a massive national “speed-up†which is enriching the owners of capital, while the workers are getting stiffed. It is the payoff to the ruling class for decades of hammering of trade unions, and also of trade unions cutting deals with the Democratic Party, which in turn has refused to defend workers’ interests. Look at the sell-out of Labor during the first two years of the Obama administration. The union movement’s one big issue--restoring some measure of fairness to the Labor Relations Act, so that it would be at least possible to organize unions and to win contracts and improved wages and working conditions--was dropped without even a fight by the Obama administration and the leadership of the House and Senate. The government, fully in the hands of Democrats, has also continued to sign trade agreements, most recently with Korea, that further shift jobs overseas, thus further weakening the position of workers here at home.

 

A cynic might speculate that this is also why the Democrats have refused for over three years now to come up with any real public jobs program despite the desperate straits of tens of millions of jobless people who have been without work for more than a year. The Democrats, in thrall to corporate interests, would on the evidence much rather spend $50 billion on a program of extended unemployment benefits that leaves those millions of people hungry for any real job, than spend that same sum on providing them with government jobs, as that would actually reduce unemployment and increase the bargaining power of all workers vis-a-vis employers.

 

Meanwhile, the national corporate media, itself viciously anti-union, continue to skew news coverage to portray unions as corrupt and greedy, so that the 90 percent of American workers who are not in a union don’t even realize that any pay gains or benefits they get are because employers are trying to avoid unionization of their workforce.

 

Unless Americans wake up soon to how this process is impoverishing us all, we will see this shifting income and wealth to the top strata of the population continue until most of us are little more than modern-day serfs.

 

A start would be for people to at least recognize that this stagnation and decline in incomes we’re witnessing is not some natural phenomenon. It is, no less than the fat salaries, perks and bonuses paid by corporate managers to themselves, simply another manifestation of corporate greed gone wild.

 

Link: http://www.truth-out.org/serfing-usa-corporate-america-robbing-american-workers66399

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just love that banner on the "Turd-Out" site: "Please consider including Truth-out in your year-end charitable giving". Since when are political hacks considered charities? 55555555555555.

 

If I had time, I'd go through this guy's propaganda paragraph by paragraph and destroy his attempt to criminalize capitalism and spread the word of Marx. But I'd be wasting my time, more than likely.

 

As I only have 3 more hours (here) to make my "year-end" contributions, he's a tad late. I've already done my charitable giving for the year. 55555555555 As for my time, I need to sort my sock drawer and rearrange my pencil cup one more time for 2010.

 

HH

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...