A Crippling Legacy
By Nicole Belle Wednesday Dec 19, 2007 8:02pmVanity Fair offers a sobering look at the costs that we -- and our children and their children -- will pay for the last eight years of Bush/Cheney economics.
The damage done to the American economy does not make front-page headlines every day, but the repercussions will be felt beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this page.
I can hear an irritated counterthrust already. The president has not driven the United States into a recession during his almost seven years in office. Unemployment stands at a respectable 4.6 percent. Well, fine. But the other side of the ledger groans with distress: a tax code that has become hideously biased in favor of the rich; a national debt that will probably have grown 70 percent by the time this president leaves Washington; a swelling cascade of mortgage defaults; a record near-$850 billion trade deficit; oil prices that are higher than they have ever been; and a dollar so weak that for an American to buy a cup of coffee in London or Paris-or even the Yukon-becomes a venture in high finance.
And it gets worse. After almost seven years of this president, the United States is less prepared than ever to face the future. We have not been educating enough engineers and scientists, people with the skills we will need to compete with China and India. We have not been investing in the kinds of basic research that made us the technological powerhouse of the late 20th century. And although the president now understands-or so he says-that we must begin to wean ourselves from oil and coal, we have on his watch become more deeply dependent on both.
We may not be in a recession...but the signs of inflation are worsening everyday.
No, your eyes aren't deceiving you...this post was up a couple of days ago but got lost when we bumped it for the Dodd filibuster...we just found it again today.
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Recommended reading:
The World Is Flat, by Thomas Freidman
I think we are in a recession.
Stag-flation. Worse than inflation.
The state of the economy is a fiction manufactured by the Government.
They create imaginary realities and then reverse engineer the statistics to fit. Then with these new imaginary realities, they decide social and economic policies designed to keep the wealth moving form the US to the ultra-wealthy.
The unemployment rate is simply the number receiving unemployment benefits multiplied by a magic number. It doesn't show the people that are not eligible for unemployment. It doesn't show who was working a contract job before becoming unemployed and it does not show those that have been unemployed too long to qualify.
The unemployment numbers can be fudged by changing the period of time that people are eligible for benefits.
I sell consumer goods out of China and have for 25 years. For the first time in my life they have begun to not honor price quotes that were given only 5 months earlier.
Mainly due to a weak dollar but also labor and raw materials costs escalating.
And get this, I shit you not, a labor shortage.
I hope all those stupid people who voted for shit for brains are happy...........they sold out everybody.But they were so busy feeling good about themselves....because they beat(yeah,I know) the Dems................13 more fucking months to go........
Call it what it is ,like the Republican free market mortgage meltdown ,the incompetent commander in chief who can't win a war after six years or the Republican bankruptcy reform burn.
I subscribe to VF, but only finished readingthis article (from last months issue) this morning. Quite a coincidence seeing it here today.
One powerful point they make at the end of the story:
Are you puking yet?
It's all Clinton's fault. If he hadn't...
(repeat ad nauseum)
Jharp,
US legislators are pissed that the Chinese aren't "playing by the rules" and will pass legislation to pressure them to (once again since 2005) re value the Yuan (aka devalue the dollar).
What rules? Isn't it a free market these assholes all want?
Ditto Weaseldog at 4.
Don't believe those unemployment numbers.
someone should take the Preznit for a spin on Dealy Plaza.......
Depressing, but not unexpected. The giveaway to the rich by Bush is one for the ages. The only solace to me is his legacy will replace Hoover as the worst. The most corrupt, the most greedy, the dimmest.
The unemployment figures are a lie. (Gee, they wouldn't LIE to us, would they...? WAIT a minute!)
They count only the people who are collecting their 26 weeks of unemployment insurance. That leaves just
about everyone else who has stopped looking, who is over the 26 weeks and who are underemployed to make
ends meet.
Common sense tells you that there can't be 26,000 layoffs here and 30,000 there, and that the unemployment still
stays below 5%.
BULLSHIT.
On the bright side we could always refuse to honor all debts public and private, start an alternative currency and nationalize all private property and start over from scatch.
Just kidding.
Sarik @ 14:
They're sorta true. We lose 30,000 jobs that pay 18.00 and upwards, and replace them with 25000 7.75 p/hr McJobs.
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When is someone going to escort Cheney and Bush to the wood shed and make them pay for what they have done to the country??
It is good to see this issue addressed as I have frequently wondered about the long-term damage to this country at the hands of Bush and all of the people who have enabled him for the past seven years. It will take decades to recover from this -- assuming we will ever be able to regain all we have lost -- not just financially, but in terms of damage to our way of government, the health of our people, the worsening of literally every aspect of life as we know it. It is with a great sense of relief that I am in the last phase of my life due to my age -- not quite 60. I don't want to be around to see the future for it is not good.
May 22, 2001 Scams Away: The Boom Is Falling
Steve Forbes, who probably understands that his political days are over, was also synopsizing the situation the way I did. If George Bush serves a second term, we will have a nation with a debt to GDP ratio of 236% and a debt service to budget ratio of 37%. We will also have an aggregate of $10 trillion, which the Reagan Bush Regime and the Bush II Regime cannot account for.
This is ten trillion missing dollars, which the Reagan/Bush people and the Bush Junior People (which are all the same people) cannot account for. It's money that's "missing" form the Department of Defense, the Treasury Department, the Education Department, Social Security, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, etc. The list just goes on and on.
This is ten trillion dollars, which the Reagan Bush/Bush Jr. people cannot account for. This is money, which will never be accounted for.
The only thing the Bush Administration will do from now until the time it leaves office (whether it has one term or two terms) is continuously seek to expand defense spending with all of its rich revenues going to Republican interests, through contract skimming and offshore shadowy research groups controlled by Republican interests.
When will the American taxpayers wake up? It is almost too late, if Bush is allowed another term in office. The economic damage to our nation's public purse will be so severe that not even a fiscally prudent government coming in after Bush will be able to correct the problem because of the declining economy in the rest of the world.
In Washington, there are no limits now. The covers have been blown off. There are no restraints anymore. There's not even a pretense. It's just naked, raw scams against the public purse. Nobody cares in Washington anymore. It's just grab what you can before it all comes to an end.
I think it's always been a venture into high finance to buy a cup of coffee in the Yukon territory---the same holds true for the outlying areas of Alaska, too.
The Shrub has managed to sabotage the United States beyond any of our enemies wildest dreams. There isn't any aspect of American life where the Shrub hasn't inflicted damage that will take a decade or more to repair. The next president is really going to have their job cut out for them if they really want to turn things around (and the GOPers seem to have no desire to do that) and in that Herculean labor there will be no shortcut comparable to rerouting the Alpheus and Peneus to wash out the filth left behind by the Shrubbies. Things will be better with the Democratic president (and solidly Democratic Congress) but it'll be a long while before they're good again!
This wasn't an accident. How else do you defeat a super power?
How is it that the unemployment rate is so low? I keep hearing the monthly job creation stats and they are always below the number I thought was required to handle the increase in workers due to young workers entering the workforce. Are people disappearing from the unemployment count (i.e., they got so discouraged that they stopped actively looking for traditional work) at an incredible rate?
How come USA is the ONLY place where the rich pay less than the poor?
The richer you are, the less % of your profits do you pay in taxes.
The poorer you are, the more of your income is given to taxes.
http://americangoy.myblogsite.com/entry14.html#body
The Lakota Sioux Nation is pulling out of its treaties with the US Government and is moving towards independence.
Good for them. They have suffered enough under oppression and a system American Apartheid.
americangoy @ 25:
God told Bush that is how it should be.
What would Zeus do? @ 24:
Ernon Style book keeping
L.A. Confidential @ 28:
Enron sorry
When you turn the country over to a criminal gang, what do you expect? I'm afraid the cowardly, degenerate American people with their wink and an "I'm in on the game" nod are the real culprits. The legacy these people are leaving to their children and the whole planet is beyond disgusting.
The VF article is basically right on. But it's only the tip of the iceberg. Were in big trouble.
purvis ames @ 30:
BTW, that criminal gang you speak of includes the Democrats.
For those of you complaining about government statistics, go to John William's Shadow Stats. This site is legit and is used by many institutional bond investors to measure the health of the economy. Essentially the government has changed CPI and employment measurements over the years to make things look better than they are. Williams uses freely available government data to compute the old measurements, so that you can get an accurate picture of how today relates to the economy in the past.
For example, if you use the CPI measurement that the government used in 1980, inflation right now is almost 12%. Inflation-wise our economy is comparable to 1981.
Truth be told, while there may be some good economic ideas on both sides, each party still panders to the masters of finance located on Wall Street. Both bankers and politicians knew that the sub-prime mess would deteriorate over three years ago which is why Wall Street pressured politicians to change the bankruptcy laws. Lawmakers looked the other way as bankers advised that the Federal Reserve and their regulators could more than adequately over see their own industry. Talk about the fox guarding the hen house.
Politicians on both sides agreed with the banking establishment in allowing rates and other finance charges to be increased, so that today if your auto loan is late by just one day, a bank can raise your credit card interest rate which in turn keeps you the card holder an endentured slave.
Who's kidding who here. As the old saying goes, money talks and bullshit walks and I would dare say that the majority of us are in the latter category.
The Federal Reserve was allowed to come into existence by President Wilson along with the I.R.S. The country has gone downhill ever since. The only time in the last century that we ever seem to be doing well is when our government enters into a war, but now things are vastly different. Some would say perpetual war for perpetual peace is what keeps industry going along with job creation and now that we have virtually destroyed our manufacturing base, what else is there to build? How about our crumbling infrstructure, but where will the funds come from? Higher taxes on the people? Closing those wonderful tax loop holes that allow US companies to keep their profits in off shore bank accounts?
Ask any of your friends where they think their tax dollars go and most will say to keep the government runing. Well, the dirty little secret is that the majority of our taxes collected goes to funding the interest on the national debt. The rest is simply printed out of thin air with nothing of value to back it. And you wonder why things are getting so expensive these days? It's because there are more worthless dollars chasing the same number of goods.
To add insult to injury, the Federal Reserve is bailing out the banks here and the European Central Bank just released the flood gate in Europe to the tune of half a trillion dollars to bail out banks like Northern Rock which has the dubious honor of being the first bank in England in over 120 years to have a run on that institution.
The system is broken beyond repair in its present form. Undo the damage that the creation of the Federal Reserve has done by pulling their charter and bringing those banks that make up this private cartel under the rule of the US Treasury as our Constitution never called for a central bank. Jefferson knew it,Jackson knew it, Lincoln knew it. Garfield knew it and so did Kennedy. The time for change is NOW!
moondancer @ 17:
Right. Or they reclassify people who are 'assembling' burgers from service to a manufacturer, suddenly tens of thousands of new jobs are created!
It will take a generation to fix the mess Bush and this administration have foisted on us and our grandchildren. I truly hope the next time people walk in the voting booth in 2008, they will vote for the best canidate instead of a man they want to have a beer with. But, then again, I look at the Republican canidates and I cringe.
this subprime mess isnt even close to hitting bottom stay tuned you aint seen nothing yet i work for an appraiser and shit is going to hit the fan you cant imagine the distruction to home values thats going to happen duck people
handyallen@yahoo.com @ 37:
Your right Handyallen as this is just the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath is over 400 trillion in derivatives that were leveraged against all of this debt and with each day that passes, it become more and more worthless until the entire system implodes in on itself.
The Bushies have created so many disasters, this one can get overlooked. I recently read just paying the interest on the national debt is now becoming a major issue.
Andrew @ 38:
You got it.
Gee, thanks for the article. Just the thing for a burgeoning bout of "Holiday Depression." Maybe Huckabee is right about quarantining people - but we should quarantine the stupid, temporarily. Just through November next year. Start by rounding up any idiot who still has a W-04 oval on his/her pickup, or a "Rush is Right" sticker next to their Not of this World one. Plenty of 'em round these parts, for sure.
Just a thought.
i was born in 1942. My mother and father lived through the Great Depression. But they never even owned a house until they were in their 50s. We always lived on the edge. Paycheck to paycheck. Both parents had to work.
I think what is coming is going to be far worse. Far worse. I weep for my grandchildren.
this government is lying about everything. the numbers on inflation and unemployment are bogus. the new energy bill is insane. 60% of our caloric intake is corn based and they want to increase ethanol production. that alone would make the plan insane but throw in the fact that producing ethanol uses more btu's than the ethanol produces and you have to come away thinking that these people are purposefully trying to destroy america financially. they also cut incentives for wind and solar energy. the soviet union
I'd like to forward this to my reich-wing aunt back east, but she'd just praise Bunnypants for "keeping us safe from the terra-ists" and then lambaste Al Gore for being hysterical about global warming.
Denial is very powerful. And tragic.
Make no mistake: This country is finished.
Hillary will inherit a national debt of approximately $22 trillion.
Just what the chimp hoped for. This guy's legacy is one disastrous mess after another, only this time his daddy won't be able to bail him out.
All of this is going to hit home someday soon, when we have a big celebration for the lighting of the National Holiday menorah, and it doesn't come on because the check to the power company bounced.
sorry for the interruption. the soviet union fell when credit suisse would not lend them money for their wheat purchases and i think america will be put in a similar position. we need to start thinking beyond countries and start looking at the international capitalist conspiracy that destroys countries financially with inside help in the targeted countries. in america, the republican party is mostly responsible for providing the inside help the international capitalists need.
There's only one sensible way out of this dilemma.
After Bush is impeached, and the sentence imposed, he should be cremated, and his ashes distributed to a few hundred pay pissoirs scattered around the country.
If everyone was offered the chance to 'Piss on Bush' at a buck a pee, well...let's see, 300 million times 5 times a day times 365.....with interest, before the year 2084, while we might not have wiped out the debt he left us, we'd have made a good dent in it.
The people running this country got everything they wanted while Bush was in office. Everything. And yes America will pay the price.
George W. Bush is the REVERSE Robin Hood.
He robs the POOR to give to the RICH.
What a great humanitarian!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, sign me up to piss on bush, I will pay a weeks salary. And yes again to Bush being the most successful president in this countries history. He has made billions for the ultra rich and the corporations. Exactly what he set out to do. And we will be paying for it for a very long time.
As far as inflation is concerned have you checked the size of food product packages in the grocery store. We are receiving about 25% less product for 20% more cost for many products on the food shelves. A combination of bottom line for investors and hidden inflation for us.
Gross incompetence or deliberate manipulation?
Rumsfeld 2.3 Trillion Dollars missing Pentagon 1 DAY b4/9-11
2.3 TRillion $$ of the TAXPAYER's MONEY IS MISSING
Gekke @ 53:
Not just deliberate manipulation: years were spent planning for this. Absolutely everything came to a head when their modern-day Pearl Harbor materialized.
It's not over, and I doubt that they (neo-cons) will just leave in 2008, even when we tell them to go. They have taken everything and they own everything, including the power to change our votes.
Larry Kudlow loves trillions added to the debt and inflation so he can suck up to his authoritarian daddy Bush
Old Billy @ 11:
Unemployment numbers are B.S.
Don't forget, one of the reason those numbers are low, is because the business community exploits so many illegals to work for almost nothing; and at a fraction of what they use to pay U.S. citizens to do the same job.
I have some in-laws who are in the building industry, and they say it's pathetic what some contractors pay for some "seriously brutal work". But Bush and the GOP love the fact that they have created an unlimited supply of terrified workers, who have no rights, get no benefits, and will never complain about their condition.
Plus, I also know several professional types who lost their jobs since shit-for-brains took office. Three of them have had to start their own businesses by contracting themselves out - just to survive. They no longer show-up on the unemployment roles, but they sure in hell don't have the same income they did 2 or 3 years ago - not to mention the fact that they can no longer afford health insurance either.
Between being undercut at home, and outsourced oversea's, I'm surprised there is anything left of the middle class. And now we are stuck with this massive debt to pay-off on top of everything else.
GWB, asshole of the century!
Cheer up everyone. There is a very simple fix for this problem and we are going to have to implement it. Reach into the pockets of the scum that have fucking us with no kiss for the last thirty years and take the fucking money back. There are many more of us than there are of them. The top marginal rate is something like 36%.....in the fifties and sixties it was like 80 or 90. Reinstate the estate tax on a graduate basis.....on 3 million it's 10%, over 50 million, it's 90%.......hell we could even go retroactive on both of those.......DISGORGE profits from slimy defense contractors and oil companies. Call it an illicit windfall tax........everyone get the idea?
V V
Lollimom @ 54:
Yup, the populace went to sleep and let hate mongers like the AEI dream up such plans and see them followed though. You can't get rid of that now, they are what americon is, the sleeping masses and the few that have woken up, are just along for the ride.
Dale18 @ 51:
Actually a great implementer of the americon dream, get rich and fuck everyone else. Karma is coming home to roost.
D.G. Bowman @ 44:
I have never deluded myself of anything else. Just have to check world economics for that one to see that its happened, Asia could cash the US into the poor house tomorrow, sure it's not in it's immediate interests. Yet.
crazylikeafox @ 50:
And ameicon will hurt the world as much as it can on the way down as well it seems.
xoites defends Constitution @ 15:
It's one of the better options.
jharp @ 2:
A sunken one at that, economically, socially and most important morally.
the whole point is to be so rich that the general ups and downs of the economy are not your concern, booshco has done their job for the 'base', the 'haves' and the 'have mores'.
Well, I am old enough to have been taught by many people who were well educated professionals and people with tons of common sense. They lived through the GREAT DEPRESSION and among those in the know we are facing another one.
So batten the hatches. This political war has cost us our nation. We are facing at least 10 years of depression and it won't let up unless we get some REAL leadership.
The good news?
We already have the know how to fix it: Bring back the New Deal, refined to remove any problems we learned over the long haul... and never EVER for the rest of our history elect another republican to any office... not even dog catcher.
They are incompetent.... or they are hoodlums, liars, and thieves. Take your pick.
While the state of our economy is something like the Titanic just after it hit the iceberg, the *real* damage this Administration has done to our country is the destruction of basic respect for the Constitution and for Federal and international law, and our reputation in the international community.
If we have our freedoms we can at least hope to put our economy back on a sound footing. But when we have all the political rights of serfs we can hardly expect to have better economic status.
What would Zeus do? @ 24:
Yes. Yes they are. I have been watching the last four years while alternative economies are put into place, centered around bartering goods and services. The worse off the people in my neighborhood get, the more bartering and less actual 'official' work they go looking for. Plus, as I understand it, you only officially count if you apply for unemployment, something a lot of employers do not inform their workers of (or try to scam you into paying it yourself.) I'm thirty and I didn't even know there was such a thing as unemployment until a few years ago, and it turns out the place I had been working had not paid into it, so there you have it. Nada. Moreover, the local homeless shelters are over-flowing.
Think about it this way. As I understand the Great Depression, a lot of the actual surviving took place on the level of barter, because no one had money or enough money, as the case may have been. I think we will be looking at an upsurge, especially in the very poor, or people who either can't or won't enter the system and who are getting by on trade for basic services. I went to apply for Medicaid for my son (not myself. I've only had insurance once, and BCBS spent a year denying a yearly provider visit on an in plan provider), and the security guard at the door (who frisked us and ran a wand over us, making us empty all our pockets; nothing like having to start your experience with being searched) tried to discourage us, the number we finally got was called out super quickly and if you didn't respond, too bad. You had to start over. The system is not easy to get into, (I've only ever had food stamps and Medicaid, and that was bad enough) and once you're in, they keep trying to get you out. So blame some of that on the problems with registering official unemployment.
I'm going to try to find somewhere to grow a garden. I'll be looking for other people with useful skills to trade with; I can veggies and am a pretty decent cook, and so far I know a mechanic, a computer guy, a few artists and weavers, and some people who do construction. Good thing I like beans.
mouthyb @ 62:
I like your thinking.
The sooner people figure out real value and that it isn't about bling / image / money / capitalism / americon dream / etc or any other distraction like that, it's about real honest people and taking care of each other, trading what you can do is a fine example, then values will come back and people will actually care, opposed to just getting angry and doing nothing and letting the cabal carry on.
Thank you! Finally, there are people outside my family who admit that the unemployment figures are B.S.. By my best guess the unemployment rate is at leastanywhere from a half point to two points higher than what is being reported. How can people stand for this!?
Here's a little known fact from the DOL, about the Unemployment's Percentages: You are ONLY counted in the Weekly/Monthly Unemployment Figures, if you draw Unemployment Compensation, and THEN ONLY for the First 6 Weeks! After 6 weeks you don't register in the percentage.
Believe nothing. Trust your eyes. Get a plot of land if possible. Plant seeds.
Yellowbird said,
So batten the hatches. This political war has cost us our nation. We are facing at least 10 years of depression and it won’t let up unless we get some REAL leadership."
That leadership is US, not the other way around.
Getting a bit weary of aged christian men in fishnet stockings on our payroll?
OT but it's always funny to me to point out blatant hypocrisy:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1697442,00.html
Synopsis:
California applied for a waiver from the EPA to implement its own standards for CO2 emmisions from cars (as is guaranteed by the Clean Air Act). The EPA refused on the grounds of, "We don't want a patchwork of state laws when we have some shiny new federal regulations".
Isn't the Rethug party all about the rights of the states or something? Don't let the federal gov'ment tell you what to do...unless it's us!
Read the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klien and it will all the Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield did and are doing , make perfect sense. Corporatist Elites don't give a damn about anyone in any country , let alone their own.
Read the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klien and it will make all that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield did and are doing , make perfect sense. Corporatist Elites don’t give a damn about anyone in any country , let alone their own.
Why aren 't the Democrats screaming about this? They should be educating the country but just fold on issue after issue. We the people should be pushing them (holding them up so they wouldn't collapse?). For suggestions see
randomabsurdities.wordpress.com
Let's get moving.
Truth B Told @ 32:
Yes during the Abramoff scandal , it was revealed that 40 of the 45 Dem Senators were paid Abramoff people.
The lists are out there of the names and the dollar amounts.
They had no excuse for taking his money, it was known who his masters were.
Walker @ 33:
Ah the 80s, deja vu memories of Tory (Conservative) Margret Thatcher MSRIHS (may she rot in hell soon) and her hatchet policies,
Reagan and his ilk learnt a lot from dearest Maggie, she following the orders of WB and the IMF, destroyed traditional British industry (25%) and started the service industry/ junk bond pyramid scams.
Remember the vulture financiers make more money from chaos than they do from stable markets and economies.
mudshark @ 6:
Like the article says, Mudshark: The damage done to the American economy does not make front-page headlines every day, but the repercussions will be felt beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this page.
JerryM @ 63:
What works for individuals also works for Countries, cooperation and free trade of money goods ideas and people.
When people play fair on a level playing field then things work.
Even so called third world producers can play and trade internationally if the west stops dumping subsidized products just for the purposes of crippling their internal markets.
The British Empire was built on free trade, I doubt it was perfect in a modern sense !! but it was an open market for the people invovled, much more moral and free than the post WW2 scene.
ferrofluid @ 73:
Yeah, I miss the days when Republicans were using buzz-words like: Glasnost and peristroyka (freedom and openness). The people in the White House these days have no such words in their vocabulary.
purvis ames @ 30:
As I recall, we did not "turn the country over" to anyone. The so-called "elections" in 2000 & 2004 were rigged and stolen - so Shrub was more or less annointed by the powers that be, not by the American citizens.
This administration hasn't "damaged our nation" by accident, they and their "managers"
(the financial cabal who control most of the wealth in the world) have just been following a plan that was hatched way back by Shrub's ancestors. In fact, his Daddy has done infinitely more damage to our country than he has. Dems and Repugs are all the same, bought and paid for by fascist corporatists and elitists who would like nothing better than to see most of us living in squalor, dying from strange "new" diseases.
We all need to wake up and realize that the normal way of doing business is over - our political system and processes were hijacked long ago. I don't think theres' any way we can avoid "walking through the valley" now 'cause these people have a stranglehold on the global economy/resources. Even if a real leader came forward now, s/he would just be "crushed" (figuratively and, probably, literally). I'd befollowing the advice of the person above who suggested growing a garden - hard to do in the winter in PA.
Andrew @ 34:
JFK paid with his life for annouincing that he would do just that - revoking the Fed charter.
Amitola @ 77:
Don't forget Prescot
ShrubBush, GHWB's father. He helped finance Adolf Hitler.The reason USA's employment figures look good--- We are feeding the war machine with supplies. Just wait when all the military bases in the wold are booted out and comes home---no jobs in the military Arms producing factories. Sell your homes now before it is to late. Take the money and buy a couple of mean dogs , large stocks of ammo,camp supplies--head for the hills.
"We have not been educating enough engineers and scientists, people with the skills we will need to compete with China and India."
I would agree with some of the other things, but this statement does not seem to be true at all, I think there is a lot of competition for these jobs currently and a recent article published in the journal science suggests that there are more than enough qualified graduates to fill the job demand. Perhaps there are less of these jobs in the U.S. than the economists or the public feel is worthy of our ideals to be a leader in science and technology, but technology also replaces human effort, even in the sciences. Perhaps we need more investment of public $ in the sciences or higher education standards, but currently, there are enough folks to fill the job needs. As long as we have to compete with the rest of the world for jobs, products and services, things will only get more competitive as the rest of the world becomes more empowered.
A huge number of scientists are employed through "welfare" systems of grants and endowments, mitigation funds and regulatory compliance requirements, and there is not a great a demand in the real marketplace for the number of qualified individuals available.
I work as a biologists, and great number of my co-workers have moved on to other fields, into business and sales, because there is so much competition and so few jobs, and always new graduates coming up through the ranks. A lot of science and tech jobs are project related, which also makes for more volatility
@77 & 78 ........ I was just about to mentioin JFK.
ferrofluid @ 75:
Indeed, karma dosen't seem to care if it's an individual, a group, a country or a continent etc.
Just need to educate the masses now, though going up against iPods and McDonalds will be fun.
With an Economics degree and MBA from the University of Chicago, I can honestly say that it will take a several decades of sound leadership to correct the damage done to the U.S. economy in the last 25 years of Republican rule.
We are witnessing the destruction of what was once the most powerful economy in the world. If you would like to understand what this means and what recent story symbolizes what is in store for us.......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nerQhIyOwxM
The crippling legacy is a debt bubble that has been growing since 1995. It spawned a stock bubble when Clinton was President and a housing bubble while Bush has been President. Japan had the same in the same in the 1980's. I have read that Britian's housing bubble is larger than ours. The European Central Bank just dumped 500 billion of debt into the system in a 2 week period. China has a huge stock bubble and a huge economic boom. both will end in a bust.
The Great Depresion began in the roaring 1920's boom. The credit bubble burst when Hoover was President and the depression lasted throughout the 1930's.
Every boom ends in a bust. The stock and housing bubbles are part of the same credit bubble.
Shared Humanity @ 83:
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