Thanks, exactly SPOT ON !! I said yesterday, the dems keep their electorate under their wings with the promise of "cradle -to-grave" benefits, yet not only have they not been able to deliver, and every other country that has tried it has failed miserably, but they (dems) DON"T EVEN BELIEVE IN WHAT THEY ARE SAYING and they sure don't practice it themselves !! Ted Kennedy feels that everyone should have Free healthcare, PAY FOR IT YOURSELF you fat, bloated, murdering PIG !!! Create an endowment with some of your families ill-begotten means and do some good with it for a change, hell, at least spending the money there would help to keep the sky free of inexperienced pilots and the roads free of philandering, drunk-driving murderers for awhile. Put YOUR money where your mouth is Dems, NOT my money. Spending a ton of money that has been confiscated and redistributed on social programs makes all these do-good libs FEEL good about themselves, but how about THEY contribute. I am so sick and tired of seeing all the nutjobs from the left, especially those of the HOLLYWOOD variety denouncing this and denouncing that. Hey, Tim Robbins, you feel so bad about the troops, how about YOU go over to Iraq with your baggy-eyed, past her prime wife Socialist Sarandon, and you pick up a rifle. Alec Baldwin, I thought you were leaving America? Cher ... well you are so unimportant it does not bear addressing. Back to the original statement, I have not met one immigrant who comes here of any persuasion, Canadian, Mexican, Russian, Romanian, Indian, sub-saharan African countries, and I have done business with all of these people, who votes dem once they get here and see the entitlement, support-laziness mentality of the dems. These people are all SO HAPPY and feel so BLESSED to be here that they work their asses off and realize that the RIGHT has their best interests at heart.
You guys keep saying this but it's a strawman! Clinton signed the welfare to work act and welfare benefits are only available for a maximum of 5 years total in an individual's lifetime. That makes them, on an individual basis, must less costly to society than, say, agricultural subsidies, pollution credits, savings and loan bailouts, insider government contracts, and the like.
It's NOT strawman, are you actually saying the dems do not offer the fantasy of cradle to grave. SS and all the New Deal handouts started with that premise and it has most assuredly created an entitlement mentality in this country that is so PERVASIVE today it's laughable !!! I am NOT saying that paying farmers to NOT grow crops is right, it's BS in fact; I DO NOT believe that bailing out the airlines in 2002 was right, it too is BS, nor was it right for Jimmy Carter to bail out Chrysler; I DO NOT think that we should be offering ANY corporate entitlements at all, and regardless of what party a president is from, if he does it, it's wrong. But you missed my point entirely: The VERY CRUX of the Dem party and it's platforms IS, WAS, and ALWAYS WILL BE: vote for us little boy and we will make sure all is right for the rest of your life, you don't even need to wipe your own nose, we'll be there to do it for you, and when something goes wrong in your life we will tell you whose FAULT it is and who to villify and demonize. When I hear Kerry, Dean, Gore, Daschle, Gephardt, ... (insert Dem name here) et al. say "taxes should be fair and the RICH should pay their fair share, blah blah blah.." Excuse me, are those guys not RICH, or do they not count themselves among the "winners of life's lottery" because in actuality they live in a parrallel Bizarro universe? Straw man my ass, if you want to talk about the rep giving corps breaks, at least they HELP the whole economy by allowing the corps to invest more in R&D, hire,, come up with new innovations, etc. Now, when you have a Ken Lay situation, that guy is a SCUMBAG that should FRY and hang by his testicles in the public square, no doubt about it. But if Ken Lay voted dem (I have no idea how he votes) would his inherent dishonesty all of a sudden disolve as he had his religious epiphany? Crooks are crooks, any party, any color, any day. But guess what, the dems take JUST AS MUCH money from Enron, MCI, Imclone, et al. as the repubs do. You keep focusing on Bush and I am trying to say philosophically, taking individual personalities out of it, the tenets of conservatism are FAR more beneficial to the country than the flag burning, war protesting, ritalin prescribing, racial quota imposing, twinkies made me kill her claiming, frivolous lawsuit initiating, I had my feelings hurt when I got an F and Bobby got an A crying, HYPOCRITICAL philosophy of the left.
Slim.... IIRC the Democrats declared a "war" on poverty about 40 years ago......to quote one of my favorite columnists.......and they talk about quagmires....... I would imagine the Clintonesqe window dressing you spoke of has more holes in it than Uday Hussein's carcass. -------------- ANOTHER PRESIDENT began a war promising a "chance to test our weapons, to try our energy and ideas and imagination for the many battles yet to come." He said that as conditions change, "we will be prepared to modify our strategy." The heralded modifications never came, nor did an end to the war. President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty turned out to be a bigger quagmire than Vietnam. Would that the Democrats would give the war in Iraq as much time to succeed as they are willing to give the "War on Poverty," now entering its 40th year. Instead of poor people with hope and possibility, we now have a permanent underclass of aspiring criminals knifing one another between having illegitimate children and collecting welfare checks. It is an ironclad law of economics that if you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it. But liberals were shocked and bewildered to discover that when they subsidized illegitimacy, they got more of it. The War on Poverty took a crisis-level illegitimacy rate among blacks in the mid-1960s (22 percent) and tripled it to 69 percent. It transformed a negligible illegitimacy rate among whites (2 percent) to emergency proportions (22.5 percent) higher than the black illegitimacy rate when Daniel Patrick Moynihan heralded the War on Poverty with his alarmist report on black families, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action." (Demonstrating the sort of on-the job-training that has so impressed Hollywood elites, the state with the second highest rate of white illegitimacy is Howard Dean's Vermont.) Overall, the illegitimacy rate has skyrocketed from about 8 percent to 33.8 percent. ------------------ The strawman burned down a long time ago under the smoldering truth of Democratic policies.........
I .. I ... don't know what to say, I ... I ... I am in AWE !!! Put that in your pipe and smoke it dems .. oh I forgot, you don't inhale.
I've said this 100 times on this board. Conservatives want equal EQUAL OPPORTUNITY......while Liberals want EQUAL OUTCOME!!!!!!!!! Instead of trying to create conditions that allow everyone to become wealthy, liberals want to bring the successful down to the level of the not so successful. Why the difference in philosophy? Because what the liberals envision is that everyone makes the same and that lazy and unmotivated can stand up and feel proud that they make the same as the hard working person. The conservative vision of equal opportunity doesn't appeal to liberals because it has no positive benefit to the truly lazy and unmotivated who don't want to work hard and succeed when the government is all too willing to give them a handout. Equal opportunity is irrelevant to someone who doesn't want to work hard. And we all know there are a helluva of a lot more unmotivated/lazy people who vote hence the liberals pandering to them. Equal outcome is what the communists preached in the former Soviet Union. Just look at all the quality products they made. Anyone ever see the WWII picture of the Russian soldier in Berlin taking home a COMODE on his back. Seems this great invention wasn't yet thought of in the USSR. Everyone there made the same income and in most cases it was useless because nothing of value was every created there (unless you count 20,000 nuclear warheads and a few million tanks). Most Russian saved up for 25 years to get a car, that I could build with cardboard and chewing gum, and once the order was in it took 10 years to get one, and once it was delivered it didn't work half the time. Same with a TV. The most hilarious thing I ever heard was that the politburo was unsure how to price items in their non-monetary market. Since nothing in the USSR was governed by supply and demand, rather by a few special elite folks, they had to devise an internal pricing model. How did they price things....................... A SEARS CATOLOG!!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry, but the idea that everyone will be equally well off only works if you ALL WANT TO BE POOR!!!!!! Income redistribution is a crime and the people who preach it ought to be ashamed of themselves. And lastly, none of the income ever reaches the poor. Why do you think after 40 years they are STILL POOR. It goes to the middle class because that's who votes and that's the majority in this country. Politicians on both sides bribe two of the three classes in this country. The wealthy get bribed so that they will contribute money to the parties, and the middle class gets bribed so they will vote. The poor have neither the means to buy favor with politicians nor the collective power to make any difference to the vote. Hence they get nothing. Regards, Jon
wealth is a relative term and easily can be portrayed in graphic form as the bell curve. that said, there will always be those at the top and those and the bottom. no matter what level of assets they possess. there is no free lunch, an the dems know it. but they are ready to sacrifice benefits/rewards/opportunities for what they consider "some of the people" to provide a baseline for the many. take healthcare for example, this "free" system would provide many with a minimum baseline of services but the top end innovation would be eliminated. rationing of services/procedures and drugs would result just like it has in every country that employs a national healthcare system. thats why foreigners often travel to the US for procedures. as far as resources being fixed and only one planet. yes, that's true some are (in the short term). but innovation always trumps limited resources. lets look at who are the wealthiest people in to world..... bill gates - no land, water, gold, daimonds, oil here buffet walton family larry ellison mike dell goes on and on. all created value. did donald trump own the land/buildings he used to become rich? no the land was there before. any of this resources can be bought and sold, to be put to productive uses and create value. regardless of who had a chance to "buy it first" the people that got rich be exploiting others are found disproportionatly in the "old world" countries. it is absolutely not true that many cannot succeed here. hard work and innovation have proved that u can. sure some other countries have a bigger middle class. but the problem is their midle class doesnt equate to ours. we have bigger homes, tv, electronics, cable ,dsl, the dish, and toys galore and more. and you could argue all days about culture. we are the entertainment producers to the world. fact is the rest of the world lives off of our innovation. drugs, technology, and other innovations etc. and can therefore get away with their socialist communist systems cause we provide them with out capitalist innovations that they later benfit from.
Do you deny that our system is set up to only allow a certain percentage to rise to the top or stay there? That the system requires huge percentages of the population to work for lower and lower wages? If you believe "many" can succeed here, what is to account for the recently decrease in the number of people controlling the majority of the wealth? Is it that the masses really have gotten more lazy or stupider? Or is it that the system has become harder and harder to come from the bottom in. I believe the later. Yes, most of the world lives off our innovation just as we live off their natural resources and labor. BTW, where exactly are these "socialist communist" countries you describe as being "the rest of the world"?
our system is not setup to deny anyone from rising to the top. you are constrained only by your own ability and vision. you will always only have a percentage at the top because the scale slide upwards all the time. rich is a relative term your speaking on absolute terms and not relative. workers, working for lower and lower wages... compared to what? the millions that oprah makes. sure in relative terms. thats the fixed pie argument. the wealth of everyone has increased, i agree some more than others. but those others have created value/wealth while those on the lower edges have preformed services that don't. labor is not valued added (its a cost). and becoming a commodity forced to compete in the global marketplace of labor workers. if your a US worker, you are overpaid on a global pay scale. the wealth of the US has nothing to do with natural resources, ITS INFORMATION/SERVICES/IDEAS lets go back to my list of wealthy people. bill gates - created software - didnt use any natural resources, employ, exploit workers to make his product. and compare him to an autoworker that puts on lugnuts. the only value created here is the work of the lugnut being put on and is valued only by the cost incurred to do so. i would lump france, germany, nordic countries and such that the lefties idealize for their labor/social/healthcare problems (i mean programs) in my definition of socialist/cummunists.
"if you have a Toyota in your garage, you're part of the problem" Uh.. My Camry was built with US steel, by US workers (in Kentucky), the engine was built in West Virginia (some would argue if that is in the USA, lol), and the only Japanese component in it is the transmission. Seats by Lear, keyless by TRW, etc. the US counterpart is made in either Canada or Mexico. Want to talk SUVs? Pickups? Toyota builds more of those in the US, percentage-wise, than GM. Global economics is WAY too complicated to say something that broad. The "domestic" manufacturers have nobody to cry to about their problems but themselves. Actually, since Chrysler is owned by Mercedes now... Toyota is the #2 automaker in the US after GM. Who would have thought it? Ed
You aren't getting the point. Yes, any single individual may rise to the top. But the masses can not. They are required to be poor enough that the wages they are offered are attractive to them. The only way to get around that is for all Americans to price themselves out of, say, factory and agriculture work and we import Mexicans to do that. Unfortunately for your argument, that is not a popular idea publically for conservatives (but they support it in their actions by hiring them - I live in central california and I see it everyday). The question isn't whether our economic system as currently structured can create winners or not. The question is does it create only a few winners, who are getting more wealth as a percentage of all wealth than ever before. No. If you look at the stats, or just look out the window, you will see that wages have dropped, relative to inflation and the cost of living, compared with the past. "The American People" don't just make less than Oprah: they make less than their parents did. You state this but can you back it up? Take out the top 5% and take out the bottom 5%. Then, are you certain that the wealth of the average American in that middle 90% has actually increased in say the last 20 years? What evidence do you have of that? You might be able to find some. What if we made it the lowest 51%, more than half the population: look at those stats (I'll try to find some) and tell me their wealth has increased in the last 20 years. They may have larger TVs but that's not a result of increased wealth: it's a result of drop in price of those goods. Wealth is what we use to afford homes, education, insurance, medicine, leisure. Is it Bill Gates that is creating the value or is it those working in his offices, factories, trucks and retail outlets that are creating the value? Without these people "on the lower edges" he would be creating nothing. That's your philosophy. Mine is that an idea is worth nothing. As a designer, I like to tell myself that I'm creating value: but until I either put it to paper or ones and zeros, or pay/convince staff to do it for me, I've added no value to the planet. It is only in the realization of an idea into a product or service that benefits the consumer's life that value was added. Who creates the value: the guy who owns the subway sandwich chain, or the guy who builds the sandwich for you as you wait in line? Did Bill Gates create the value by signing the checks, or was it created by the thousands of coders sitting at desks, the thousands manufacturing the disks and printing the packaging, the sailers, pilots, dock workers and truckers who transported those goods to where someone might utilize it? The question arises: are these folks getting their fair share of the value created? I say they aren't. I say the guy on top is taking more than his fair share of the wealth being created by his workers than ever before in this country (since slavery) and it's damn unhealthy. Tell that to the Bush family! Natural resources seems to have done them quite well. The fact that we have our own resources has had, and continues to have, a massive effect on our ability to create wealth in this country. As an aside, do you consider Japan socialist/communist? Because they do a vastly superior job of taking care of their people than the U.S. does. It is also very easy to succeed in Japan. Not as many people want to be entreprenuers, but that's not because it's difficult to do so there. They have no natural resources, are overpopulated, and have other natural handicaps. What's the difference? Personally I think it has something to do with the fact that they aren't as greedy and lean more towards cooperation than competition. Their executive pay is more realistic and tied to performance. Etc. Well, I guess we're getting off topic so I'll quit.
I've read this and tried to stay out of it, but I think I'll finally put my .02 into the mix. Have any of you read "The Bell Curve" by Charles Murrary. Published in the late 80s, drew a lot of critisim regarding his comments about IQ and race. The book was about 800 pages, and I suspect most people didn't get to the back of the book once they bought it. His conclusions were that we were becoming a techo society, and that it wasn't going to bode well for our country. What he suggested was that the brighter people were going to wall themselves off from the balance of the citizens, who would work for lower and lower wages. I suggest that a good many of you have forgotten Henry Ford who made the startling discovery that if he paid his workers a living wage, they'd buy his cars. A good portion of our middle class started from that strange idea. What Ford and his contempories produced was a solid middle class who purchased goods and materials, educated their kids, and in general created our society as it existed in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. We have been changing, and Murrary outlines the changes, and from what I've seen, it isn't for the better. Some people are living a lot better, but a substantial portion are not doing well. The Globalization of manufacturing, of educated jobs, etc, has had an effect upon us, and the results are mixed, i.e., lower consumer prices, but a harder, and harder scramble to survive for a good many people. Now most families survive because both husband and wife work, didn't used to be so, so I guess we've all gotten a littler poorer as a result thereof. I don't know that is a good deal. We may very well be going in a direction that isn't such a good deal for us as a society. Unbridled capitalism is a disaster and if left to its own devices will ultimately lead to great social discourse, and perhaps revolution. To avoid just that end, just about every modern government has always imposed restrictions against just that, i.e., providing a safety net for its less fortunate citizens. To those of you who consider themselves at the top of the food chain and rant to dismantel our protections for those less fortunate, remember what happened to the speaker of these words: "Let them eat cake". My recollection is that the average citizens cut her head off. Even with our modern armaments, they still might get away with just that. A good friend of mine, a very, very successful (8 figure net worth, which he earned himself, without the benefit of getting a starting chunk from Daddie) made the comment: "what we plan to do with the lower classes is jail half of them, and hire the other half to watch them." He was being sarcastic, but there was more than a little truth in his comments. Just remember, be very careful about what you wish, for you may get it. Art
The only problem with your reply Art is that no one here is advocating (as you suggest) that we should do away with the "safety net" for those who are less fortunate. It's the amount of money that is taken and then squandered by all governments, and the lack of "social engineering" that these governments "should" be "ruthlessly" imposing to counter the effects of one's dependance upon said handouts that is the issue. The left wants a free for all.......while the right wants accountability, responsibility, and action, in return for the money that used to belong to "you and me". You can wax eloquently about how it isn't so......but I think there have been enough arguments put forth here to dispel any that can be offered in support of that position. The social and moral fiber of our society is waning with each act of kindness bestowed to those who are unjustly feeding at the "trough of entitlement".
kds: I think you miss the point: What do we do about the working poor. Some of them have two jobs, wife works too, and they can't afford medical treatment for their kids. Unfortunately this isn't uncommon. Do we just, let them eat cake or do we take care of them? Contrary to popular concept, I don't think that we spend a whole lot of fit people who refuse to work. We do spend quite a bit on injuried people, or people with defects, such as retardation, such that they can't work. I don't have the specific break down, but I have seen the numbers, and I suspect that as late as 2000, the money being spent on fit people was less than 10% of what we consider welfare. If you'd like the actual distribution about who gets what I suggest you look at the following web site: http://www.nwlc.org/details.cfm?id=381§ion=child%20and%20family%20support Art
Art, can you please write about what "the left" actually wants? I don't know why the "right" element on this forum feels the need to exagerrate positions so much. Actually, I think it has to do with their choice in news and talk programs and the scare mongering tactics used there to get good ratings. Anyway, is there some website we can send these folks to read exactly what it is the democrats propose and stand for so that they needn't think the democrats advocate the storming of Beverly Hills and free form wealth distribution?
Slim, How would it be possible for "the masses" to "rise to the top". That's true utopian idealism if I've ever heard it. The simple reality is that numbers are going to thin as you rise. I think the fatal flaw of liberalism is the stubborn adherance to the belief that everyone is equal and has equal potential. It's just not true. And I would argue that to artificially elevate people above their potential is dangerous and destabilizing. The irony is that we can only consider these things precisely because the US *never implemented systems like that*. All of the countries seeking some "great equalizer" are well behind us and can't do much other than create excuses for why that is (even though they had 1000+ year head starts). I agree that a compassionate society does not cast aside its down trodden, but I rarely hear the democrats (or any left leaning pundit for that matter), explain just how they plan to provide that assurance other than by "taxing the rich". Oddly enough, they never define rich. As someone with a 6 figure income who works for a corporation, I sure as hell don't feel "rich", but I know that Kerry and his gang are certainly gunning for me. No thanks! There has to be some other way to pay for "the working poor" than by decimating the middle class. Another thing to keep in mind is that we dont have a monopoly on this game anymore. Look at the disaster Europe has become for a lesson. If we all just collectively decided to evaporate Bill G and Warren B's wealth so we could relax and take it easy for a while, China would steamroll us and laugh all the way to the top. If Japan taught us anything, it's that pandoras box has been opened and everyone wants to play. To stay in the game, you have to work hard. You can't just wave a wand and say "hey, lets slow the rat race down and learn how to live again." You'd never get consensus and the world would just leave you behind.
Art..... I didn't realise that you were discussing the "working poor" as you referred to the middle class in the second paragraph of your reply. And maybe I didn't word my answer to address your point more specifically.......which I got......but apparently glossed over......my apologies. So here goes..... Women IMHO are not working because they have to.....45 years ago women finally got what they deserved all along....equal rights, respect and the impetus to forge ahead in the job market as equals (and that word equals is a whole thread into itself...but you'll see my point) which resulted in a whole new second consumer in marketplace. I credit the women's movement for the economic force that they are today....it's not out of necessity IMHO. There have always been the working poor...and there always will be. But women are not working because they have to.....I believe it's because they want to......they are consumers and realise the power and satisfaction that comes from gainful employment and earning power. The two income families and couples with no kids do so because they want the lavish lifestyles and consumer goods that readily available in today's marketplace. I could support my wife and even a kid on my single income if necessary....it would be tought...but it's doable. And, from what I remember of my childhood (I'm 43) it was just as tough back then for my dad to do so as well for me and my sister and my mother who didn't work. Now.....to address the point you inferred that they need to work....well, if that "is" the case...then I put the blame directly at the foot of creeping socialism which was the point of my initial reply. Governments takes way too much, squander it, create entitlement junkies, and as a result it has become tougher for one person to bring home the bread. Labor unions negotiate agreements that are counter productive and overvalued in the marketplace which causes product price inflation...and so on....plain and simple. The US is only partially the way there to becoming what Kanaduh and Europe have become. You still have hope........we don't. Slim..... If you can't elaborate the position you want us to believe is the reality of your side of the political spectrum then I guess it's really not the truth because even you are confused. All the Democratic contenders have sites....and "when" they have a policy....I'm sure that they will state it, but it will only be relative to the group they are speaking to "at the time" and it's unlikely to be publicly re-confirmed for general consumption. History is on our side in that argument.
I disagree with this completely. Once the door was opened for women to work, a lot more productivity was introduced into the system and, as a result, a lot more wealth. As a result, single income couples must now compete with dual income couples and twice as many working singles. In my area, ANY house (including a $hithole) will set you back at LEAST $500,000. As a result, we are relocating as soon as we can to Florida where, while salaries are much, much lower, at least you can still buy a nice house for $200k. How does one compete in the many, many areas in the US with home values heading north of a half a million dollars with one income? And before anyone trots out the easy answer of "hey, move" I'm talking about the NY metro area, the DC metro area, the Chicago metro area, the Bay area, the LA metro area and Atlanta metro here. This is a nice chunk of areas where you can actually get a job. Real estate and cost of goods and services have exploded through the roof in the past 10-12 years. To have your wife stay home you'd have to figure out a way to relocate out of the metro areas and hope you can find a job there. The reality of economics is supply and demand. You can't just make all of those DINK couples vanish. As the poor slob with the kid and the stay at home mom, you basically just have to get out of the way of their purchasing power and go somewhere you don't want to be. Either that, or the wife has to work (and have a pretty damn good job!)
mlambert890.... True....but if women didn't become the second consumer and bread winner in the first place.....would that have still happened ? I am saying it happened just for that reason. We actually agree here. Just because one part of the country is more expensive than another is not the fault of globalism and the other issues that ART355 referred to....in fact it is just the opposite......wealth creation and greater purchasing power.
I agree with that, but the genie is out of the bottle now, and it isn't going back. The "traditional family" is dead. Globalism, on the other hand, was inevitable. I'm surprised liberals seem so opposed to it. It's odd that they wouldn't want the nations of the world to enjoy the benefits of shelter, food, and self-sufficiency! "Globalism" is the only shot these countries would have ever had at a decent life. They sure as heck were *not* getting there on their own for many, many reasons (chief of which may very well have been 500 years of imperialism by elitest Europeans who like to blame everything on the US) Ultimately, I believe these trends eventually equalize when left alone. The US is still the number one consumer market and the corporations of the world cannot bankrupt the US citizens and still have a market for their products. Outsourcing to India (as an example) will feed money back into the economy in the form of lower costs which should stimulate the growth of new business and put more people to work as long as it is done right. The one caution I have with it is that the white collar outsourcing trend is quite different than the manufacturing one. We do have to take care to not allow companies to just outsource everything across multiple sectors en masse or the situation could become critical too quickly for natural equilibrium to occur - after all, the timeframes of these economic paradigm shifts have been compressing dramatically since 1900. In addition, there are real security questions with putting our most trusted data in the hands of foreign nationals with no liability.
Racedeck has a point, Toyotas are made here... I prefer saying I love "labor rights" activists who still want to shop at any department store. Or buy any type of shoe. KDS - LOL. Hey, maybe Rob should hire some India Institute of Technology grads to do the tech work on the board. Ironically to this thread, he could probably sacrifice a daily trip to Starbucks and have a team of programmers on retainer instead. I feel bad for some friends of mine here in Canada who are specializing in programming in their Comp Sci degrees... I was like, "uh, aren't you afraid of Indians and Filipinos and the outsourcing?" The scary thing is that we're well into a worldwide global economy where labor is relocatable at an unprecedented rate. And we're getting clipped because many Indians and Southeast Asians are getting good at what The West does, and they're catching up faster and faster. Automobile production took 70 years to really gain respect from Japan (and 103 for Korea), but now in only 7 years everyone has a Chinese Apex DVD player and internet and databasing infrastructure is gone to Asia. I say fifteen years and Chinese cars will hit Korean quality with far lower prices. They'll make a new sportscar named "Ferari"
That sucks! I didnt realize that... Good luck on the job hunt Rob! One thing I was just thinking about was your notion that much of what is out of whack with our economy may be due to the socialist policies that have crept in. The more I think about it, the more sense that makes actually. In a way, the endlessly inflating real estate prices can be seen as a direct result of government meddling. The govt essentially subsidizes home purchases by offering big tax breaks on mortgage interest. This, in turn, makes real estate a disproportionately good investment during lean years and pushes too much money towards property. In addition, local governments tend to play fast and loose with how they apply property tax in order to stimulate the growth of certain kinds of real estate. Examples where increased govt intervention in economics has worked seem to be few and far between.
Would you say that about Japan? I've mentioned Japan a dozen times already so it should start being clear to you guys that I'm not advocating something more along those lines and not the soviet era socialism I'm being accused of advocating. Japan has many things wrong, trust me. But the distribution of wealth there is much more equal than it is in the U.S. ========= btw... I'm not sure we've discussed just how wealth is distributed in the U.S. Wealth inequality in the United States has a Gini coefficient of .82.[On this scale, 0.0 would be everyone has equal wealth, while 1.0 would be 1 person has all the wealth]. The top 1% control 38% of the wealth, the next 4% have 21.3, the next 5% have 11.5%, the next 10% have 12.1%. So the top 1% has about 40% and the next 19% of people have a further 40% leaving 20% of u.s. wealth for the remaining 79% of the population. The top 1% hold over 50% of all non-house wealth. Despite often quoted stats of stock ownership by middle class folks, it remains true that the top 10% own 85% of all stock and 90% of business assets. The minimum wage in the U.S. is 35% lower now than it was in 1968. Just restoring that would do wonders. It wasn't always this way. Up until the 1970s, even Sweden had a large inequality than the U.S. ========= Anyway... Japan has a much more equal distribution. Why is that? I think it might have something to do with a difference in where they see the "value" being added to a product. U.S. corporations clearly feel the executives should receive the lions share of wealth, even executives who are not risking their own personal capital (i.e. not business owners, just CEOs). Japan does not feel this way. Japanese executives are paid on average 10 times their workers, while in the u.s the average is 25 times. To the Japanese, the corporate success is due to the efforts of the team and everyone deserves credit for its success. They also understand the point Art was making regarding Ford paying wages high enough for its workers to buy the product. Japan has some advantages that the U.S. doesn't have of course so it's not a perfect comparrison. They have a homogenous society that shares the same basic attitudes and beliefs. We will never have that in the states. But another thing they have is a standard of K-12 education that is equally good across the nation: that's something we could do a lot better at. They also have a different attitude towards massive wealth accumulation.
Slim, my coments weren't really directed towards you, but I'm definitely willing to talk about Japan since I have relatives there and spent 5 years working for an enormous Japanese company. It seems that you and I see two different Japans. I see a Japan that is in the midst of a staggering social crisis. I also see a Japan where the price of real estate ballooned out of control to the point where people live in ice cube trays and msguided govt policies destroyed the banking and finance industry. Japan is a great partner, a formidable competitor and a strong ally, but they have some deep seeded social problems there. And consider this... All of that is in spite of Japan being a nearly homogenous population institutionally prejudiced against outsiders! Considering that the US is a hodge podge of all of the peoples of the world loosely held together and incapable of even agreeing on an official language, I don't think we do too badly! I would excersize extreme caution before suggesting that any social experiment tried by the Japanese be tried here. Even if it were a successful experiment (for the Japanese), it would be an apples to oranges comparison. You just can't compare a homogenous population with a shared 2000 year history and common culture with what we have in the US. And as for views on the accumulation of wealth, the only difference I see is that Japanese (and asians in general) revere their ultra successful nearly to the degree of royalty whereas, here in the US, once you've reached the top, everyone seems to want to tear you down. I can tell you this... I have worked directly for (or close to) 3 billionaires in my time and by FAR, the MOST lavish lifestyle I have EVER seen was the Japanese fellow. Far, far, far beyond my current boss who is about as rich as you can possibly get... Japan is ahead of us in many areas, and woefully behind us in many others (treatment of women comes to mind). We surely still have a lot to learn from each other. I will be watching Japan closely to see how much of their tech work *they* send to India. That will be the true litmus test of how loyal they are to any Henry Ford style system they have in place. Will they sacrifice competitive edge by maintaining higher costs vs competitors through sticking to native labor? We know that with auto manufacturing, they did not. Instead, they made the smart capitalist business move and shipped jobs to the US. On the topic of wealth distribution, I think it's unfair to compare wealth distribution stats from the 70's with today (and forget about Sweden!) How much has the US economy grown since then? The bulk of the pie may be shifting towards a smaller percentage, but the pie has grown enormous. It can't even really be compared with any tiny country. The US pie is so enormous that the 27% thats "left over" for the 79% of the population is still well beyond what is allocated to 100% of many FIRST WORLD populations... We're talking about 290M people with a 10.4 trillion dollar GDP... Even Germany, by comparison, is 82M people with a GDP of 2 trillion. Japan is 127M with a 3.6 trillion dollar GDP.
