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A Job Fair For Jobs In India — In California
dcblogs writes "Indian and U.S. companies are holding a job fair at the San Jose Convention Center this weekend for jobs in India. The job fair is aimed at Indian workers in the U.S., but anyone with an interest in working overseas can attend. India is pitched as a 'sea of opportunity' in a PowerPoint presentation about the job fair. That's in contrast to another slide that makes the obvious point that the U.S. has 'barely recovered from a downturn,' with 'signs that it's headed for another.'"
What the FUCK are people smoking when they say the US has "recovered" from its "downturn."
Indian users complaining about the bad English of all those US based call centers.
Or how to scam your fellow man by claiming their Windows has a virus even if they are using a Mac or don't even have a computer.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Less competition for the unemployed here.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I've not heard anyone say the US has recovered, what I've heard is that the recession is over and that is correct. A recession is a period where the economy shrinks. The US economy is no long shrinking, and has not been for some time now. However it has not been growing fast at all, and it shrunk quite a bit during the last recession, meaning that the economy is still quite far off its peak.
So it is not "recovered" as in back to or above its pre peak level, but it is no longer in a recession, though there is worry it could fall in to another one.
Last I read on slashdot, getting a work visa for India is extremely hard, meaning Americans can't as easily go to India for work as the reverse. Anyone have more info?
There are job fairs for jobs in Japan in the US, MIT does one for jobs in Europe, etc. Nothing all that unique about doing one for India.
Monstar L
Unfortunately my experience has been largely negative. It's clear that some of the so-called universities attended by Indian students are paper mills that don't do a decent job of educating them about programming.
There's also a cultural issue. For some reason, many of those I've worked with can't or won't search for internet howto's and help instructions on their own, though they'll follow those instructions if a senior developer sends them a link.
Obviously I've worked with a lot of good Indian developers as well, but there are clearly some cultural differences that can cause friction and frustration.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The answer to the question: "Can you handle the truth?" is given in the moderation of the question.
You can't handle the truth.
I don't think that's the choice.
I think the choice is either to have a completely destroyed economy and to shift to dictatorial/totalitarian government, to lose all freedoms.
OR
The other choice is to allow the restructuring of the economy, have a very hard 2 years, and eventually see the capital return to the US.
But to do that the government must be shrunk, the budgets must be balanced NOT by giving more revenue to the government, but by doing real cuts in spending (wars, SS, Medicare), by shutting down Federal Reserve, FDIC, Freddie/Fannie, FHA, HUD, IRS, FBI, CIA, DHS, dep'ts of education, energy, commerce, agriculture, EPA, FDA, FCC, FAA, etc., abolishing the income/payroll/corporate taxes, shrinking the federal registry.
This is not supposed to be a bad thing - more liberty and more freedom. This is supposed to fix the money, this is supposed to fix the environment for investment capital to return and re-open the production facilities. 1-2 years of this will be very hard.
I would go further than Ron Paul of-course in firing up to 99% of government employees, but I am not running, nor can I.
But this does NOT mean that people will be poorer for it. It means 2 years of real shake down and then it means reopening of production facilities, recreating the actual real economy, not based on vendor financed, debt/inflation financed consumption, but recreating the production, which allows real consumption and real money and real investments and real markets.
You can't handle the truth.
You are more right than you know actually. I work for an Indian outsource company. I was outsourced 3+ years ago. I talk to a lot of the guys over there and from over there. These companies now pay their people the same to stay in India as to come to the US. They used to pay them a lot more to come here. But in the last year or more there has been a pretty major wage war as the different India tech companies pilfer talent from each other at an alarming rate. It has led to a lot of turnover.
But then, I've been approached by recruiters here who want to pay me more than I get now. They are just desperate to oversell my skills (fine, unless they oversell to the point the client thinks they're getting a triple CCIE when they're only getting a CCNP/MCSE), and I currently have the best schedule ever being able to work from home anytime I want. If only I didn't have kids I could be making 30% more than I am now.
Yes, let's get rid of all our protections. Abolish it all. Our economy will prosper from all the dead people.
I lved in India with my family setting up some engineering teams. Best two years of my career... but also the most challenging, simply because you have no idea how hard it is to adjust to living in a foreign culture until you have to do it.
Of course, if you have a crappy boss, it'll completely suck - like anywhere else..
There are no protections. There are no protections in your system. The people are not protected. Where do you see protected people?
The only real protections come from market regulating the behavior of individuals. Individuals are the real owners of property and businesses.
Corporations are not faceless, there are individuals behind the fictitious legal structures built by the government to protect those, who need that protection and are willing to 'share' with the politicians for those protections.
The protections are not to the average people, the protections that exist in your system are to the real owners of your government.
The only protections that exist protect the real owners of your political system and your government from YOU. From you, as a competitor. From you as an independent person. From you as a savor and investor of your own money into your own business and into your own future.
The real protections are only found in real free market - market free of government misdirection and mis-allocation of resources.
Market is the real democracy, with people voting on who is giving them the best value for their money.
--
As to the political system and the government, I think the best change would be to have people serve limited terms in the government, the way they serve in military in many countries. Yes, why not have people serve in government the way they serve in jury?
You can be drafted to serve in jury and you should be drafted to serve in government maybe? Maybe that's the real way to fix the problem of the broken political system.
You can't handle the truth.
We invented languages like PHP and VB because we need many poorly skilled developers for drudge work. If you don't do brain dead easy work, then don't hire people trained for brain dead easy development.
There are *many* shitty universities inside the U.S. too, heck fraudulent education is a growth industry. You'd never hire developers from University of Phoenix though, simply because you already know they suck. Did you ever try asking your skilled Indian colleges which Indian universities are actually good?
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Yes, industrial revolution. The best thing that the free markets did for the people - allowing the people to be more productive by efficiently organizing land, capital and labor to increase productivity to the point, where under 5% of population could actually feed 100% of it. Allowing hundreds of people to work in factories manufacturing all sorts of products that would have taken tens or hundreds of thousands of people to produce purely by hand before that time.
Making the workers so efficient and productive that they didn't have to work 15 hours a day to feed themselves, but instead allowing a man to feed his family on his own income, eventually allowing the children not to go to work at a very young age as they have always done until the industrial revolution. Allowing the women to have to be baby factories to prop up subsistence farming to support the aging parents and thus shifting the role of women in society, actually allowing them to be free. Actually allowing the productivity of a free worker to become much higher of than that of a slave worker (slavery is very inefficient, it requires taking care of people's living and health and food, it's expensive, much more expensive than to hire people).
All those terrible things, like Ford being regulated by the MARKET, doubling the pay of his employees to reduce turn over, allowing them to buy the product they were working on with 4 months of salary, bringing down their working hours to 8 only and their working days to 5 in a week, paying them double what anybody else was, hiring the disabled people nobody else wanted, all because of that terrible industrial revolution, which increased the productivity so much, that even a partially disabled person could work on an assembly line building cars. Oh, incidentally he doubled his production capacity within a year after implementing those changes, paying his workers equivalent of 1.25 ounces of gold a week, which in todays prices is about 2200 USD or over 110K a year. That's without income taxes, that's without SS or Medicare. That's with those workers being able to support a family with a stay at home wife, 5-6 kids, paying for everything (health/education/pension) out of pocket and no debt.
Yes, the terrible industrial revolution, which only was the most innovative and inventive time in history, which allowed the US become the biggest creditor nation, biggest producer of high quality cheap goods nation on the planet.
Terrible thing of-course.
You can't handle the truth.
It isn't about sending them back so there are more jobs here. It is about sending someone you have confidence in back so they can lead a team of low wage developers in India.
FTFA:
Indian companies need experienced people who can step into project management roles up to senior levels, said Bhushan.
The companies are typically looking for someone with eight or more years of experience and specific domain knowledge. The workers ahould have the ability to lead large project teams and run large Web sites, said Bhushan.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Are you telling me there is a difference between your parties and between your candidates? Are you telling me that Clinton was any better than any of the Bushes or Reagan?
Why? Is it all the wars he went into? Is it the US debt refinancing with variable rate short term borrowing? Is it the bubble that was inflated during his time by the traitorous Greenspan's policy of taking price of money down to 1%? Was it NAFTA maybe? Maybe it was the increase in drug war spending?
But I am not protecting any party, they are all corrupt.
Nixon took the world off the gold standard - that's the last beginning of the destruction of US economy. Of-course all the previous destruction (Fed, IRS, FDIC, SS, Medicare,) didn't help. The wars didn't hep. The education dep't and all the loans didn't help.
Obama just pust 1Trillion dollars on the US Treasury books (liability side). Single handedly, like a Boss.
No. None of that works. The only real change can come from people understanding that the government is not supposed to be involved in business regulations, loans, labor, economy, price setting, interest rates, money printing, education, health, insurances of any kind.
All of those things are moral hazards. All of those things end up growing the gov't and destroying the money and the economy and turning you into slaves.
You can't handle the truth.
This is nothing new. The only difference is that the jobs themselves are in India. I get spam job offers every week from Indian companies advertising for consulting positions here in the United States, unfortunately, I am not qualified for them because I don't have an H1-B and I am not Indian. I am a natural born citizen of the United States and that is just not the sort of person these consulting firms are looking for.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
If the US is Marxist/Keyenesian then why hasn't the Gini coefficient gone down? Sweden and Denmark might be called a Marxist/Keynesian fusion, but most of the west is crony capitalist.
Yes, let's get rid of all our protections.
A lot of those protections, protect rent-seekers. For example, some agricultural subsidies might "protect" the US food supply in some useful way, but they most definitely protect the big agribusinesses and food processing businesses.
And as others have noted in the Chevy Volt story, many countries have become nations of cowards. A few less protections would help us recover from that.
The US doesn't need capital ... it needs oil. The US is swimming in capital, the whole world is ... there just isn't anything worth investing it in, except for natural monopolies and governments (to protect your ownership of the monopolies).
The only end result possible of anarcho capitalism in the absence of economic growth is feudalism (rent seeking will keep concentrating wealth more and more). It's not a solution for the modern world of natural resource limits and automation.
After 2 years of "creative destruction" nothing will have changed about the fact that an US worker would be trying to compete with a Chinese worker with vastly lower wages ...
I don't know about Denmark, but Sweden is moving away from socialism towards less regulated free market. They have a long way to go of-course, but at least they are on the right track. If they don't do it, they are facing the same problem as the rest of the socialist world. As to them being 'keynesian', I don't know that for a fact. Sweden at least is an oil exporter. Maybe what they really are is a better way to be an energy exporter economy than say the Saudi Arabia or Russia or most of African exporters, where majority of wealth that is acquired from the exports ends up in very few hands.
You can't handle the truth.
What both you and the OP are missing is that there is a balance between costs and benefits. He is looking only at the costs of those protections, you are looking only at the benefits. I'll disagree with the OP and say that many of those protections are necessary and ultimately beneficial, but realizing that they have very real costs. On the other hand a great many of those protections are NOT worth the cost. If you assert that they are worth the costs you have no standing to complain when the bill comes due in the form of a slower economy and persistent high unemployment.
On thing to remember when evaluating those costs. It's not usually the big bad corporations, the villains of the morality play that usually bear those costs. They have the resources to comply with the regulations and in many cases welcome them as a barrier to entry protecting them from competition. The law preventing BigFoodCo, Inc. from poisoning children (like they really want) is at worst a minor inconvenience to BigFoodCo. They do what's required, file the paperwork, raise the price of milk by a few pennies and turn to some other scheme to fulfill their goal of poisoning children. The people who bear the cost are potential entrepreneurs who look at the costs and decide it's not worth it. Or those that go for it but end up bankrupt because the costs of compliance were too high. Or, those who don't comply and get caught like organic coops and Amish farmers raided by the police and FDA for selling raw milk to the tree hugging hippies who want it. Note that in the California case selling raw milk is legal, but they didn't have all the proper paperwork filed.
You work with RMS?
So if not the EPA who is going to regulate ... you can say they do more harm than good, but we have plenty of object lessons in third world countries of free market inspired environmental destruction to say that some government agency has to keep the externalities under control. Maybe market forces could be incorporated more, but someone still needs to make the regulations and police them.
A factory owner will never have a contract with every person on the planet breathing the air he pollutes, contract law can't solve everything ...
Globalism is failing because of a lack of minimum wage. Rich Republican cock suckers don't give a shit about one countries economy. All it means is wages drop in yet another country and the value of their investments in the global stock market go up. You dumb ass wrong wing radio listening morons can keep regurgitating bullshit from your born again bigot spin doctors or join the fight. Either watch the lying bastards suck down fat paychecks while leading you into the land of indentured servitude while the rest of us "liberals" fight from the land of reality or get a fucking clue. Vote for Perry. He knows how to hand the keys to corporations in other countries while the people that live in his state fall further into abject poverty. Globalism is going to happen whether we like it or not. The way we don't want it to happen, without something to level the playing field ie. minimum wages and expectations, is the way it is happening. Controlling how it happens is up to us people that work for a living, aka "liberals".
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
After 2 years of "creative destruction" nothing will have changed about the fact that an US worker would be trying to compete with a Chinese worker with vastly lower wages ...
I think this needs to happen. US labor is less valuable than it's ever been and with greatly weakened pricing power, yet people still want to be paid what they used to be paid. The faster we adapt to the real world, the less painful it'll be in the long run.
As another example of my previous statement, it's worth noting that capital has kept its value far better than labor has. I think this in large part explains the growth in income inequity over the past forty years.
Perhaps, this is off topic. For that, I apologize. I see no reason that long term, multi-year contracts should not be normal. I am an independent software development contractor and have been for many years. I prefer to work for myself. I also prefer long-term contracts. I have had several. One lasted for 4.5 years. I was there longer than some of their employees.
Are you saying that no government regulation was necessary during that period? For example, without the Pure Food and Drug Act, the meat industry would have naturally corrected itself based on market forces? Pardon the pun, but it seems difficult to swallow after what was (eventually) proven true in Sinclair's The Jungle.
Whether the FDA and other agencies have grown too large is a different issue. Some regulation will always be necessary because the basis of capitalism is growing profit by any means necessary. Having regulations changes that to "by any legal means necessary".
Periodic fairs for jobs in China have been held in the SF Bay Area going back to at least early 2009 so this is nothing all that new. The Chinese jobs usually required fluent Mandarin. The Indian jobs might be more approachable for non-Indians since English is the language of the educated class. Not that it matters much to me. I traveled in India for six months and while it is a fascinating place to visit, I don't want to live there.
So according to a two American political organizations, US is among the top countries chosen by being favorable to American companies? Stop the presses!
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
When are we going to start requiring congressmen to take basic economics before serving office?
Bleatings of a Judas goat.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
There is no such thing as an oversupply. That's just a political ruse to ensure higher prices than should exist (thus franchise licenses are given out for example to utility companies or medallions to cab drivers).
You can't handle the truth.
The US doesn't need capital ... it needs oil.
- this comes from complete misunderstanding of what capital is.
Capital consists of savings that accrue when somebody overproduces/underconsumes and these savings are the result of actual work. I am not talking about worthless currency.
In most primitive terms, if somebody is smelting iron ore, any of the metal that he is not consuming, he is saving. These are real savings, and this is what constitutes capital.
Printing money does not constitute capital, as there is no underconsumption, so nothing is saved from real production.
Savings are only nominally expressed in monetary equivalent, but they represent actual productive output. USA is lacking real savings that results from productive output, this is clear from USA's 53 Billion USD / month trade deficit.
USA is not producing enough to save, thus there is no capital. So no real investment can be made. Without real investment capital there can be no new productive capacity, because tools cannot be bought, machines cannot be bought, labor cannot be paid for, nothing can be done without real savings.
That's why credit is so important to businesses, not to consumers (debt financed consumption), but to producers, who use credit to create productive output that can be used to pay interest and the principle back to the creditor.
But with government eating all of the available credit and setting artificial price on money, the businesses cannot have that credit available either. Only banks have access to the federal discount window, no real business can have that access.
So there is no investment capital, so how is all this new oil going to be extracted? It can be extracted of-course by those, who have real savings and real investment capital - oil firms have it of-course (and their income is huge, but it's that big because of inflation, in real money oil prices are very low.)
As to wages - there are over 20,000,000 people out of work, saying that they must not be allowed to work for lower wages is just suicidal for the economy. You rather see them on welfare?
The creative destruction has to happen, debts have to be restructured and liquidated, credit has to become available to the business, so government must shrink for that to happen. Price on money must go up to the level where markets want to see it, not to remain at the inflationary levels that the government prefers, because it is the largest debtor and counterfeiter.
You can't handle the truth.
That is why Democrats print so much money, it is the best way to steal from the rich.
- out of all the other stuff, I just want to bring out the point, that in reality the inflation tax hits the poor much harder than the rich.
The rich can shift money from asset class to asset class, sure some get hit with inflation, but the only people actually suffering from real rising prices that result from expansionary monetary base are the poor, who have to spend more and more of their fixed income on the same basket of goods.
You can't handle the truth.
I think that's not going to help as long as the basic economic principles that are widely accepted are based on the wrong (and long discredited but very much accepted by the politicians) Keynesian model.
You can't handle the truth.
So why is the economy of the People's Republic of China booming?
- because economically they are the freest market in the world today.
That's true by de-facto, as all the productive capacity shifted there for a reason. You can also ask these people.
You can't handle the truth.
Yep, the classic mo-Ron philosophy. Ron Paul has zero grasp of economics, much less foreign affairs.
Lets say he and the tea baggers win. He pulls the military off the South Korean DMZ, the Navy aircraft carrier groups mothballed, and out of Pacific waters. Great cost savings. Come a few days later, Kim has invaded Seoul. China still has a grudge against Japan so their carrier fleet now is menacing that country. Taiwan becomes red. Now the West is in deeper shit because 1/3 of the total manufacturing capacity we have is now controlled by hostile countries or destroyed.
Ron pulls out of the Middle East leaving any allies (Israel, UAE, Saudi Arabia) to their own devices. Iran starts striking Tel Aviv with rockets, Israel retaliates with nukes, but gets overwhelmed by every country in the region swarming them. Countries friendly to the west or at least not hostile (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey) now have a bloodthirsty mob. Now, nuclear terrorism is going to be a primary threat to the world as a region-wide caliphate expands to threaten Spain and western Europe.
Ron pulls funding from hospitals, Social Security, and Medicare. Now hospitals and charity organizations have to take care of the sick, and we are back to poorhouses that are like African AIDS clinics where a drink of water, much less an IV of useful medication is a rare thing.
Ron sells off government land. Great money maker. Now Yellowstone Park is a privately run resort, with multiple golf courses in between the geysers. The parts of the park that just have animals running around are turned into ranches and deer leases.
The land that isn't turned into resorts gets logged. Ron Paul has been an enemy of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the EPA in general. Can't have people living in a country without acid rain.
So, after a while, the US starts looking like a post apocalyptic hellscape, even though the economy went up for a bit. Any areas that had old growth forests are gone, other land becomes toxic waste pits due to strip mining and contaminated water tables. Classic farmland gets taken away from families and handed to big agribusiness. Soon, the US doesn't even have the ability to feed itself (think the Irish Potato Famine where there was plenty of food, but England took it all.)
Don't forget Ron Paul's stance on national security (or lack of one). Once his defunding policies take hold, the drug cartels wouldn't just be a border menace, but would be happy to set up shop in cities, just like the mafia did. I'm sure local businesses would love to be paying an additional protection payment to the Spanish speaking people with the teardrop tattoos in most US cities.
Wow, what a utopia! I wonder how many people would love to live in a place with no national parks, lead in the water, a nuclear threat from foreign combatants whom we have no intel on due to no troops in the area. Any useful resources (rare earths), we will have to beg a Chinese-Russian coalition for. Of course, national security will be shit because the Army doesn't have enough boots to keep order when some town gets nuked.
I sure want to raise my kids in a country where I have to pay for a symbol on my house so the FD would come, a transponder on my wrist so an ambulance would actually stop, and where I had to pay the police to investigate a crime a la Heavy Metal. Schools? Screw that. The kids can have the luxury of working on farms as migrant workers, mines, or spend their lives in jails if they can't get work. Keeping people in prison for life helps private corrections, so that is important for US business. Literacy? Being able to read a contract and refuse signing is anti-business. Have to stamp that out.
Ron Paul's version of the US is a country full of robber barons worse than Carnegie and Frick. At least they left concert halls and foundations behind. Modern day CEOs leave nothing behind.
Ron Paul appeals to those who have failed economics, civics, and government in high school. I have yet to see someone who has any form of formal education champion his crap.
First, Take out the REAL inflation numbers, and GDP was negative.
Second, the only reason that this depression isn't having the same "misery index" as the first one is because of the greater safety net, and because we caught a lucky break with the weather. Without unemployment insurance and welfare, and the dust-bowl conditions of the 30s, it would already be just as bad as the first one.
The "real" unemployment rate - when you take into account those who are heaping on debt by staying in school because they can't find a job, those who have given up, etc. (the U6 measure), and we're into the same range as the Great Depression. The real rate of unemployment in California, for example, is now 20%. Another 5% and it will be equal to the peak in 1933 ... and it's heading there, as cities and states struggle with their own ongoing debt crisis.
There's almost 50 million people on food stamps. And housing is now already officially worse than the great depression (and it's going to get wors)
Half of all homes now have a mortgage that makes them unsellable - if there is equity left, it's not sufficient to cover the additional costs of the sale (real estate commission fees, etc). Strategic default is a problem, but another problem is that, without jobs (or only part-time or low-paying jobs), even people whose mortgages are now "ok" are in trouble.
The fact is that any rise in GDP is not being seen by the workers, and hasn't been for more than a decade. Ask anyone who's had to take a major pay cut, or simply can't find a job because for every opening, there are 100 or 1,000 applicants.
A few years back, I hired a recent Indian graduate without given him any kind of programming test. This was the first time I hired someone and I guess I was too naive to think what he had on paper could possibly mean he didn't know how to program.
His first day on the job, I was showing him our code base and asked him to do something with a for loop. Granted he's never programmed in PHP but come on, constructing a for loop in PHP is about as simple as can be. He didn't know how to do it, even after reading the manuals
He graduated from USC with a Masters in Computer Science
Invented Almond Joy?
Please spare us the insipid plugs for Almond Joy's! Mounds are infinitely better! Mounds forever!!
Sig?! Sig?! We don't need no stinking sig!!
Sweden has no oil. You must be thinking about Norway.
As for being on a right track, the current craze of de-regulation does not seem to be helping anything.
Yep, the classic mo-Ron philosophy. Ron Paul has zero grasp of economics, much less foreign affairs.
- yet he is the only person in gov't who understands enough of it to build up a portfolio, with minimum gains of 300% and maximum gains of 2000% based on his ... 'misunderstanding'?
He pulls the military off the South Korean DMZ, the Navy aircraft carrier groups mothballed, and out of Pacific waters. Great cost savings. Come a few days later, Kim has invaded Seoul.
- first of all, yes that's a real cost saving, because USA has no money.
Secondly, South Korea is plenty capable of protecting itself. In any case it's non of US's business.
China still has a grudge against Japan so their carrier fleet now is menacing that country.
- all that China needs to do in fact for US to stop its militarism is to stop funding it.
Seconly, Japan is plenty capable of protecting itself.
Thirdly, Chinese rather trade with Japan than fight a war.
Lastly, it's none of US's business.
Taiwan becomes red.
- right. Why don't you attack them preemptively? The failed Vietnam war shows just how misguided the approach of proliferating the 'righteousness' of US ideals is, and now USA is trading with Vietnam.
Now the West is in deeper shit because 1/3 of the total manufacturing capacity we have is now controlled by hostile countries or destroyed.
- maybe it's good for the West. It now will have a perfect reason not to pay the debts back and to re-invent its own productive capacity. There you go - instant jobs.
Ron pulls out of the Middle East leaving any allies (Israel, UAE, Saudi Arabia) to their own devices.
- terrorist attacks against USA stop. USA stops funding people that caused 9/11 (with money stolen via inflation and borrowed from China). That's just terrible.
Iran starts striking Tel Aviv with rockets, Israel retaliates with nukes, but gets overwhelmed by every country in the region swarming them.
- Israel has over 300 nukes. USA has nukes as well, if anybody attacks Israel with nukes it will immediately destroy the opponent and I am sure that Ron Paul would go to CONGRESS and ask the AMERICAN PEOPLE if they are willing to DECLARE A WAR.
What a fucking amazing concept, Anonymous Coward, isn't it? Who are you, Dick Cheney? How is bloodsucking going for you, you heartless prick?
Countries friendly to the west or at least not hostile (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey) now have a bloodthirsty mob.
- Way to mix Saudi Arabia and Turkey into one crowd of 'non-hostile' or 'friendly' countries.
Again, 9/11 was FUNDED by Saudis, you fucking shit.
Now, nuclear terrorism is going to be a primary threat to the world as a region-wide caliphate expands to threaten Spain and western Europe.
- no no, you are Bill O'Reilly, aren't you?
Ron pulls funding from hospitals, Social Security, and Medicare.
- unfortunately that's not his platform, so you are a lying (what else is new).
Now hospitals and charity organizations have to take care of the sick, and we are back to poorhouses that are like African AIDS clinics where a drink of water, much less an IV of useful medication is a rare thing.
- More Bill O'Reilly.
Ron sells off government land. Great money maker.
- BETTER than the status quo, where the coal and gas and oil are extracted from these lands without ANY payments of any royalties. That, of-course, and all the moral hazards of the government setting liability caps and limitations while sniffing crack off toaster ovens and fucking with the company's executives.
Now Yellowstone Park is a privately run re
You can't handle the truth.
You know what, I did think of Norway's oil. Sweden exports stuff, but not that particular substance. The deregulations in Sweden are the only way to keep that economy from falling in some not so distant future. There is no reason to stay there as a company in today's world, even such trademarks as Volvo, Ikea, Ericsson, Scania will outsource and move their businesses and they will be right to do so. There is no reason not to. Thus Sweden is doing the right thing even if you don't see it as such immediately.
You can't handle the truth.
I work in a university (in IT no less) and I can attest to this. It never ceases to surprise me how many students we hire that are computer science majors and know little to nothing about computers never mind how to program one.
That and it seems like anyone can get a masters degree or even a phd if they read enough books and write enough papers.
A race? No. An educational system? Absolutely! There seems to be something badly wrong with teaching in India. There is a huge difference in quality between students I've taught who went to school in India and those who went to school elsewhere. It can't be genetic, because the ones educated out of India seem to have the same spread of abilities as everyone else.
It seems that Indian education teaches you to memorise a large problem-to-solution map, and if the problem is not an entry in that map then it doesn't teach them to think. As far as I can tell, thinking seems to be actively discouraged. It's not that they're stupid, they just seem to have been conditioned not to apply thought to problem solving. It's really painful trying to teach them - they know all of the steps to solve a problem, they know how to fit them together, but something seems to prevent them from doing it. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to be permanent brain damage, because after you've slowly and painfully gone through a few things, they eventually realise that they do know how to think and that they won't get into trouble if they do.
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Indians returning to India is old news. Not all Indians who come to America stay. Many return because they get home sick or they can't adjust. Many also return to India because they can get a better deal in India. For the same set of skills they can live better in India.
Any industrial activity pollutes ... who is going to determine when continuing industrial activity should only require compensation and when it is simple beyond the pale? Is it going to be the judges making pure value judgements every single time? Without a value judgement all you would be left with are absolute property rights, with any single downstream property owners able to close down a factory. In the case of AIR that is everyone, any kind of economic activity (including agriculture) instantly becomes impossible ... there will always be one person not to agree to the pollution regardless of compensation.
So you're seriously saying that a race to the bottom is a good idea? Really? It would be tolerable to work for less if the cost of living decreased in proportion to wages, but it hasn't. Gas is still a rip off and the price of food and goods has gone up because of it. (it costs more to deliver things) It costs the same to live as before the recession happened (if not more so) yet people have less resources to make ends meet.
The recession only ended if you were rich enough to get a government bailout. You can't have a functional economy when most of the working people have very little money. The occupy movement is just the beginning. Things are going to get bad if this keeps up.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
When are we going to start requiring congressmen to take basic economics before serving office?
I used to think like this too. The fact that our current president is supposedly a Constitutional scholar really puts the lie to the idea that basic economics and Constitutional knowledge are in any way supportive of what they actually do once in office.
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
Why is the US labor less valuable?
And why would you think it's better to bring the US down to third-world poverty levels rather than trying to stay a first-world economic base? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding your use of "the real world".
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
So you're seriously saying that a race to the bottom is a good idea?
I'm just saying that it will happen. But we can get a better outcome if we don't wriggle on the hook for a decade or two.
It would be tolerable to work for less if the cost of living decreased in proportion to wages, but it hasn't.
Here's an example of the wriggling on the hook, I was talking about. Rather than let housing prices decline to their true values, society has tried with various stupid ideas to prop up the value of housing. It won't work in the long run except to cause a lot of pain.
The recession only ended if you were rich enough to get a government bailout. You can't have a functional economy when most of the working people have very little money. The occupy movement is just the beginning. Things are going to get bad if this keeps up.
The worst thing that could happen here is if the Occupy movement ever becomes credible. Sure it sucks, if you don't have wealth, but the reason the wealthier are that way is because labor is declining in value. Destroying the value of other parts of society, such as capital or knowledge, isn't going to help.
The problem for most of the "socialist" world is that they don't have oil ... they require austerity for that simple fact ... no amount of capital,free marketets or deregulation will fix that nearly every facet the productive economy is dependent on oil. They can only produce luxuries while other countries sell them necessities, a poor position to be in. Redistributionism or social darwinism are really orthogonal issues to that of the real problem of the modern world ... peak oil (it doesn't matter if peak oil isn't global).
You didn't answer my question though ... if the US is Marxist/Keyensian why hasn't the Gini coefficient gone down?
cs in indian universities is a huge joke. hell, even other engineering degrees are usually shit. they don't tell you anything about the person than the fact that this guy can work real hard and follow orders. that's the way it is here, i'm afraid. for eg, i'm studying electronics in an indian university (its one of the better ones), and i know more and have more experience in programming than most of the cs faculty here.
i dunno what kind of an issue this is. people here (in my uni) are very smart, they do exceedingly well when they do something on their own (for eg, our uni was in teh top 13 list of colleges in the world that added most number of students to gsoc 2011), but anything course related is just neglected until the last moment. also, there is a severe lack of good teachers. anybody who is any good is out there actually doing stuff.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Unemployment was upwards of 50%
No it wasn't.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
Both China and North Korea are nuclear-capable countries with 1M+ strong armies. US army can't defeat a handful of towelheads in Afghanistan. It's completely useless against North Korea or China.
So according to a two American political organizations, US is among the top countries chosen by being favorable to American companies? Stop the presses!
Regardless of the messenger's origin, the message describing the disparities between the US and India is still true. Talk to any random Indian living permanently in the US or in Canada, or Germany, or Japan. They love their country and the relatives they left behind, but they'll tell you that this is true, and that they have chosen to stay abroad permanently so that their children do not grow and/or get educated there because of those disparities.
Economics is not the only factor middle-class, college educated Indians leave their country. Ideological disagreements with the cultural status quo in India is a great motivator for many as well.
I explained this in many of my posts and journal entries. Look up the original comment for reference.
What USA has now is a growing difference between the incomes of the top and the bottom earners, and this is very easy to understand if one looks at when it started to grow - which almost exactly 40 years ago now. That's the time when Nixon took the world off the gold standard.
Find the graphs and look carefully at what happened - the cost of borrowing was becoming lower, as the federal reserve pushed the discount window interest rates down to allow banks to borrow more currency, which became at that point baseless.
The inflation - counterfeiting of money is the reason for the calamity USA finds itself in. Everything - from the impossibility to save and invest money at a decent interest rate (and now with negative interest rate), to impossibility to get a credit line for business because of how low the rates are, nobody allows businesses to get credit. This credit is really only available to the largest banks, who turn around and buy government Treasuries.
This is done on purpose - on one hand the banks can appear to be solvent (they are all bankrupt by the way), by arbitraging between FREE money and Treasury bills and the government can 'borrow' money from the Fed (indirectly), through the banks. This is money counterfeiting.
The government started growing faster than ever once the gold link was severed, at that point nothing was standing in the way of growing the number of regulations that destroy businesses, nothing was stopping the government from any growth. It was borrowing and printing like a drunk maniac, and obviously the productive capacity shifted to other places, because you can't invest in an economy like that - huge government spending, huge number of regulations, very high taxes (and it's a ruse that taxes used to be higher than today, today the effective taxes are the highest in US history as people cannot deduct what they could even when nominal rates where above 90%, nobody was paying that ever).
The problem with the monopolies is that they enjoy government support globally, all around the world they enjoy government support, and so there is very little competition. Obviously with little competition the prices are near monopolistic, and thus the top earners can set as high prices as they want.
So the problem is government - it's big, it's expensive, it's growing, it destroys competition, it prevents people from starting competing firms, it prevents credit from being available to the potential entrepreneurs, it creates regulations that benefit monopolies, because it prefers monopolies, because monopolies have the most cash to dole out to politicians. Government destroys the money, and this is a huge problem as well.
The Fed doesn't even admit that their interest rate manipulation is all about lowering the cost of labor! That's right, when they say: we lower the interest rates to heat up the economy, it means they CREATE INFLATION, which destroys the purchasing power of the salaried workers, which basically lowers their salaries, that's all there is to it.
The economy would have been so much better off without all this nonsense, without money counterfeiting and without the inflation.
People don't think about VALUE of money, they just see a nominal dollar amount and think that that's value. It's NOT value.
Dollar is falling in value all the time, that what they do not teach in schools, because it's basically anti-government knowledge.
You can't handle the truth.
Invented Almond Joy?
Please spare us the insipid plugs for Almond Joy's! Mounds are infinitely better! Mounds forever!!
That all depends. Becaaauuuuussseeeee...
Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don't.
This space unintentionally left blank.
No, you really haven't ... the thing about redistributionism is that if government really wants to do it, it can. Monetary policy is just a side show, they have the guns ... and if they want to redistribute they simply do it. FDR did it, the French revolution did it .... the current US government simply doesn't ... they go through the motions, they keep old inefficient build to fail wellfare systems going for now, but they are not redistributing wealth faster than it is concentrating ... they are just towering debt on debt, preparing a way for a collapse which will leave the 0.1% with all the collateral underlying it.
Not very Keynesian and certainly not very Marxian.
1. It's Marxism that allows the government to gather the power that it is not authorized to have - that is my point. I am not saying that gov't is Marxist ideologically, only as a matter of convenience to have a mousetrap that works with 'free' cheese in it.
2. The policy is very much Keynesian in terms that people believe that government must spend money in a recession because people aren't spending. Nobody cares to ask: why are people not spending and nobody cares to realize that spending is the disease, the cure is savings, underconsumption, deflation and debt restructuring.
As to redistribution - that's just stupid. It never solves any problems, it only destroys capital that is held privately and is invested. Any capital that a person is underconsuming is invested.
Any rich person who spends only a tiny fraction of his yearly income doesn't need to work to sustain his lifestyle. He can kick back, relax, do nothing. Enjoy life. Why did Steve Jobs work until 6 weeks before his death? He didn't have to work another day since 1985.
Stealing his money (that's what 'redistribution' means), doesn't do anything good for the economy. It doesn't create any more business. It doesn't create any business that can SURVIVE on its own without government just pouring money into it. Solyndra went bankrupt at the exact moment when the government money ran out.
There is nothing good about taking money away from a person who is not spending it and instead is investing it and giving that money to anybody else, especially to the government. The only thing that government can 'redistribute' is poverty.
Revolutions show this very well actually, as they destroy private capital and production capacity and the revolutionaries are left poor and without jobs. Then they have to go down the chain, taking the money from the next people in line, whoever has the money after the richest people. Then they have to go down the chain again, because they just consume the money.
Like in the former USSR in twenties-thirties, tens of millions of Ukrainian farmers were killed by gun and famine, because the revolutionaries needed to take away the fruits of their labor. Literally.
Systematically stealing money is wrong not just because it's immoral (that too), but it's BAD BUSINESS.
As I said - the real problem is NOT income inequality. The real problem is poverty - and that's direct result of government destruction of economy.
You can't handle the truth.
Wow, seeing your (you as in roman_mir) reply to this AC has made me decide to check the "post anon" button, because I can't believe I'm replying to someone who just wants to shine to the world their ignorance.
Dude, have you heard of the concept of "balance of power"? This is something that presidents fret over throughout their own term. But since you don't have a clue about geography or history, it flies over your head... WHOOSH.
Japan does NOT have the capability to defend itself. There is a little thing called a treaty. Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security to be exact. In return for the US protecting this California sized island with her ships and nukes, Japan keeps their forces small. Ron Paul has stated that he wants to break this treaty by leaving Japan to its own devices. Japan is a smart nation; they will immediately militarize once they realize the US doesn't protect them. Now we have a Pacific Rim armed and tense. Compared to the Middle East, having Asian nations go at each other would be comparing a cup of tea to an ocean. Left to its own devices, Japan can turn on the US, especially with pressure from China. You have proven yourself ignorant of this fact, which has been instrumental in keeping peace in the most populated areas of the world.
Now for Israel: You contradict yourself. You say that Israel doesn't need support, but now you say that the US will defend them. If RP leaves them to their own devices (which you stated), yes, Israel has 300 nukes, but there is a lot of territory that angry people are on that is far greater than 300 nukes, and if Iran is viewed as "martyring" itself, Israel isn't going to be able to stand up to the combined armies in the region. Think the US will come back in to a hot war in the ME? Not when China starts reinforcing what is left after the nukes and states that a hit on Bam or what is left of Tehran will be an active hit on the Chinese mainland. The result will be a Middle East essentially unified and hell-bent on destroying Europe and the US.
You think moving the army back to the US and ignoring allies will make threats like Iran and North Korea go away? I would recommend lessening the intake of psilocybin because they are not going anywhere, and would strike at the US with another 9-11 if given the chance... and no US intel or presence will give them plenty of chances.
You state that businesses have to obey property laws. However in a previous post, you state that those laws need to go. Contradicting oneself is pretty pathetic. You can't argue one side, so you have to start arguing two.
You fail to understand the difference between a terrorist cell acting in a country versus the country. Saudi Arabia is a grudging ally (which if you have actually studied history from WWII forward, you will understand why), but of course, they have elements that hate the government. You fail to understand the difference between an insurgent and a citizen.
As for the loss of parks and US areas, can you come up with a rebuttal? It shows that you are obviously champing a wholesale destruction of protections of clean air, clean water, public parks, and small farms -- stuff one can say is truly American.
Calling people Bill O'Reilly repeatedly isn't an argument. You have done that to the other AC in multiple posts. It shows nothing, and reminds me of a recent COPS show where this belligerent woman kept calling someone who complained on her, "the Klan". It did not help her arguments in the slightest.
So, in the exchange of posts with people who are obviously of better education and intelligence:
You have resorted to ad hominem attacks, the last resort of the clueless.
You have contradicted yourself numerous times on core points.
You HAVE to CAPITALIZE every OTHER word JUST like the TIMECUBE guy AND other RANTERS. This by itself indicates mindless fanaticism and little interest in dealing with rebuttals, which are commonplace.
You have showed little to no knowledge of matters economic
"the cure is savings, underconsumption, deflation and debt restructuring."
So ... where exactly are jobs supposed to come from in that scenario? The service industry after minimum wage is removed? (ie. more servants.)
Ad hominem is not a tool of cognition.
The essence of capitalism is production and trade for profit. Governance is an edge constraint, it is not part of the central mechanism. And conflating governance with government is dishonest.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
There is such a thing as oversupply, but it's not common because it's a problem. At one time, overproduction and hence oversupply of Hula Hoops put the Whamo Corporation in financial trouble (i.e. they couldn't sell enough of what they made.) If there weren't oversupply, there wouldn't be surplus and overstock stores, liquidation sales, and junkyards.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Opinion presented as "truth" always smells like shit.
I am all too familiar with immigrants spending the rest of their lives trying to convince themselves that moving to US improved their lives. Most of them are full of shit.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I suggest you to read this:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2442898&cid=37491808
Affirmative action is what keeps efficiency low. All department in our university requires to carry x amount of international students as workers, and as a IT job most resumes comes from Indian graduate students. The only chance to bypass this requirement is when you have a budget issue, and this year our department has a chance to get rid of all lazy int'l student workers and keep the hard-working, more motivated domestic undergrads.
New Economic Perspectives
and they already have a single-payer health care like Europe.
New Economic Perspectives
A lot of Indian folk who work in the States have studied there, as well. You never know until you see their LinkedIn profile.
"a completely destroyed economy and to shift to dictatorial/totalitarian government, to lose all freedoms"
Not really. A national socialist democracy is possible after transition. Look at the Arab Spring uprisings.
A national socialist democracy will get rid of the Zionist pigs which land us in this situation in the first place.
Twitter: @dainsanefh
Let Iran stay strong. Fuck Isreal. Without those Zionist bankers the world will be a better place.
SIEG HEIL FUR DUR REICHSFUHRER! HEIL HITLER!
Twitter: @dainsanefh
Not if there is some food rationing program in place that does not require you to use money to get food.
New Economic Perspectives
The only real change can come from people understanding that the government is not supposed to be involved in.... money printing....
Umm, no? Then who is supposed to mint money? Are we supposed to barter with beads and oil? Money is pretty darn nice to have. Why wouldn't you want a government making it? Who else would print it?
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
the US North East, and California have been doing so well all these years! lol
The US north east and California have been doing just fine. They have some of the highest standards of livings in the world and they aren't feeling the current economic downturn nearly as much as the rest of the world. They have some of the same problems that everywhere else in the rich world has, like the housing crisis, but they are by no means examples of bad societies. A better example of places that are doing bad are Michigan and Mississippi/Louisiana/Arkansas.
That is why Democrats print so much money, it is the best way to steal from the rich.
Wooooah, woah, woah. I don't think you're being serious in your post because it's a lot of hyperbole (or actual craziness), but to anyone else reading this, let me respond because this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. The "democrats" have been a party of tax and spend for a long, long time. The republicans have been a party of borrow and spend since Reagan. In other words, the Democrats don't need to print money or borrow money, they paid for their spending. The party which prints money without paying for it is the Republicans. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these methods, but the facts are clear about which party tends to do which. There was a recent one time instance in the past few years where both the administrations of GW Bush and Obama spent a whole lot of money for bailouts/stimuli, but that was for a unique scenario, which was to prevent the "great recession" from turning into another "great depression" - that was done by both parties and is not indicative of what the Democrats have been doing for the past half century.
And when you print money, you cause inflation. Inflation, understood by even the most basic economic theories, is a tax on the poor, not the rich.
tl;dr the Republicans, not the Democrats, print so much money, and it fucks the poor, not the rich.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
LOL. You can blame a lot of the causes of the recent economic downturn on "liberals" and "democrats", for the right reasons. But you went the crazy route. Do you really think approximately half of this country voted for Obama because he was "historical" (black)? I don't even know what you mean by historical. And do you actually believe that the worldwide economic downturn was caused by investors who stopped investing and instead began hording? There's lots of explanations for the downturn, but nothing credible involves "because investors feared that a Obama was going to win the U.S. presidency". Most people at the time thought Hillary Clinton was going to win the U.S. Democratic nomination anyways.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
That's okay - I don't live in the states, and I'm talking about undergraduate students.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
In a free trade situation if you can not afford Chinese goods you certainly can't afford American made goods until America has comparative advantage in it's production ... which means similar labour and environmental standards. You have to take into account that even though the US kind of sucks at production, it's still massively subsidized by foreigners in the form of the suppressed oil price. Without debt and the trade deficit it makes possible the oil price in the US would shoot up and cause massive inflation across the board (cue conspiracy theories of artificially suppressed oil production and massive reserves).
Why would anyone invest when consumption is dropping? Left to it's own devices economies will seek hard bottoms in a depression, ie. minimum levels of employment necessary for pure necessities with for the rest only luxury/service industries for the monied class ... it's what makes sense. It makes no sense to invest in supplying the bottom 99% if they have no money.
The 99% also can't form an economy amongst themselves, because even if they all personally default they will still need somewhere to live and work. That means going back into debt ... because there is no more land to homestead, all land is owned and without government all the fruits of their labour above subsistence level will tend to go towards paying rent until full employment is reached (which it probably won't be, automation and all). Henry Ford was the exception, not the rule.
If you didn't get the news, USSR was dissolved in 1992, and at that point its former members adopted Libertarian ideology provided to them by US and its local sycophants. It triggered the worst economic devastation the whole area had seen since WWII (and one may argue, worse than WWII).
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Actually it did improve my situation -- at least until 1998-2000 I was in a far better situation here than I would be dealing with a massive 90's crisis over the whole ex-USSR. However I happened to be an unusually capable and well-educated engineer who left a country while it was going through the total devastation of its economy.
It taken those both conditions to make it somewhat worthwhile for me.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
still same guy, posting as AC, account is locked.
1. Yes, Americans cannot afford Chinese goods without debt financing that consumption.
2. Yes, American goods are even more un-affordable to US consumers than Chinese goods, because there is so much less American produced goods.
3. Oil and other commodity prices are only going up relative to USD, which is being destroyed, I have a comment on that.
Why would anyone invest when consumption is dropping?
- it's not consumption that's dropping. It's production that dropped off and that's why consumption cannot be funded, so it's all debt financed. Consumption that is debt financed cannot be sustained given the fact that there is no production.
You have to PRODUCE something to consume something. Given that US cannot produce enough for its own consumption, it means it cannot consume. It means it must under-consume, over-produce, save and re-invest in order to rebuild production, so that consumption can happen again.
There is always demand - this is proven by the 53Billion USD/month trade deficit. Demand is not disappearing just because the means of payment are disappearing. But eventually this debt financed consumption will stop, and the only way to have consumption again will be by restarting production. What do you think will happen in the middle of that?
In the middle of that there will be a period of very low consumption and high level of poverty, because these poor people won't be able to pay for those products with anything for a year or two at least. There will be very limited consumption and standard of living will be very low.
Why would anybody invest in that environment? Because people can't all take off and leave from USA. 330,000,000 people can't all move to China. It's not possible, so you'll have over 300 million people and they will be sitting there, waving their dicks in the prairies or what?
They'll be producing again. People will go fishing again. They will go farming and mining again.
90% of US sea food is bought from Asia. That makes no sense - USA is surrounded with oceans an it has plenty of lakes and rivers. It makes no sense. So there will be more people fishing. Farming.
They won't have enough capital and tools especially the first year, so they will be saving all of their fish to sell it on the global market and to buy some better tools to improve their efficiency.
Everybody will have to do this. USA WILL be under-consuming, there is no question about it. The debt financed consumption WILL run out.
It's not about just money, it's about work. The 99% will have to do work that will allow them to underconsume and overproduce and to acquire some capital and tools in order to restart their economy. That's going to happen whether you want to or not, because there is no choice.
So far the choice was: will the US Congress approve another debt ceiling increase? (Now Obama just uses executive order to put another 1Trillion on the Treasury liability, whatever).
But soon the question will be: will the creditor BUY US debt or not? And once the people stop buying that debt, that's it. It's over. There will be no way to consume with more debt and production will have to restart.
And if you think you can't do anything about it - too bad for you. If you think the 99% of people can't start over, can't form new businesses to overproduce and underconsume and to save and restart production, well that's too bad.
I think you are wrong, you just don't understand that people will rather do that than starve to death. And it's not like you can tax the 1% 'rich' to keep the charade going. That's not possible, they already moved much of that capital outside of US into production capacity in other countries because of the way the government treats the productive class and investme
You can't handle the truth.
I have a modest 4 year state-university education. I did not fail any classes in highschool.
If you think there is any value in standardized tests, I'll mention that I always rank in the top 1 or 2% in all of them I take. So by that problematic metric, I'm not the dumbest person in America.
I agree with everything Ron Paul stands for. While I happen to think he is right regarding the increased prosperity,and peace we'd see with his plans, that's not the primary reason for engaging in them.
I beleive his policies are simply more ethical than what anyone else in government is suggesting. Less compulsion of the individual via a violent state is a more moral basic premise than any other system that posits a more interventionist role for the state.
What Paul critics who ascribe to him all of the ills of the standard republican party often fail to realize is that Paul in his way is a much stronger advocate for the "little guy" than anyone currently in major office.
Paul rightly concludes that government all too often colludes with the "private" sector, and that instead of government working to rein in corporate malfeasance, government often encourages and rewards it.
The approach then is not to blindly distrust the private sector, as many on the American political left seem to, but to intelligently distrust the government, as Ron Paul does, and to view the intersection of public and private affairs with great scrutiny and concern, and to the extent possible, minimize it.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
There's other things you can do with money than investing into production, you can simply sit on it (in the absence of monetary expansion) or you can purchase rent generating assets ... which is what people in a free market will do until the hard bottom is reached, without a realistic avenue of growth there will be no investment.
Farming and mining tends to take oil and owned natural resources, both of which will require people to go into debt to acquire (at which point they're fucked again, even if they defaulted previously). Everything takes oil, unless you go back to third world methods ... certainly possible, but not exactly the great future you described, back breaking work with near infirmity from physical wear and tear long before you reach pension age.
I think austerity is necessary, I think the population can run a self sufficient economy ... I don't think automation is going away, I don't think full employment is possible any more without work week reductions, I don't think an economy can run well when all capital is owned by 0.1% of the population extracting all fruits of labour of the 99.9% in the form of rent.
It's very hard to remove capital (ie. refined natural resources and means of production) out of a country ... all that has been moved out of the country is paper. The top end creditors leaving the US is hardly a huge brain drain either, entrepreneurs are important ... old or dynastic billionaires? Not so much. They provide something to aspire to perhaps, but they don't really do much productive any more ... just rent seeking.
The purpose of redistributing money at the moment is to keep the country from tearing itself apart ... usually it's to provide a social safety net for the weakest in society and run services which can not be efficiently run by the private market (energy/water distribution, defense, roads ... that sort of stuff).
Again, not all investment goes towards production ... rent seeking is an extremely powerful force only opposed by taxation. Good taxation/regulation drives capital towards investment rather than rent seeking when growth is possible and redistributes work when it is not (the 1970s and work week reductions for instance).
There's other things you can do with money than investing into production, you can simply sit on it
- very few people with enough money to invest just sit on it, and it's proven not to be a problem in USA, out of all places, 19 century USA had a constant rate of deflation. By 1913 the USD was worth twice the amount it was worth in 1800, and so what? In that time period USA became the largest creditor nation on earth by starting most of the businesses, allowing most of the innovation and invention because there were no artificial barriers to entry imposed by a government, because government was mostly insignificant (as it is supposed to be) at the time.
Government is evil by definition, because its primary role is to occupy the power vacuum that exists without a force of that type, and so criminal organizations form to occupy that role (like in post-Soviet Russia in 1990s,) and these criminal forces just want to extract revenue from whatever companies/people that exist around simply to 'protect' them - protection racket.
(AFAIC it's actually better not to have any government and even to have this industry - protection racket, to be a competitive industry, but even though I do have this believe, I don't normally argue for it, people are not ready for that at all.)
But USA became the largest creditor nation and exporter of high quality cheap goods, increased the efficiency of US worker because of high investment capital, which is a direct contradiction of your (Keynesian) premise, that during a deflation people don't want to generate more revenue by actively investing.
People sit on their money during INFLATION, but they sit on their money the way I do for example - by owning assets that protect against inflation. I also invest into my business, but I don't trust any other business and any government, so I don't buy bonds, I don't buy stocks (with rare exception of some mining stocks). If there was deflation and SHRINKING of government, I would have been inclined to invest into production capacity because there would have been a real chance to make money due to absence of government intervention and protection of monopolies that government prefers.
Farming and mining tends to take oil and owned natural resources, both of which will require people to go into debt to acquire (at which point they're fucked again, even if they defaulted previously). Everything takes oil, unless you go back to third world methods ... certainly possible, but not exactly the great future you described, back breaking work with near infirmity from physical wear and tear long before you reach pension age.
- The depression caused by the inflationary policies of the Fed caused a huge depression in 1921, but it was over quickly because government cut spending by up to 70%. By 1923 the economy was back to full employment.
I don't KNOW how much time precisely it would take to regenerate the economy, but I KNOW that the course USA is on right now is not it. Expanding the monetary supply, debt financing consumption, fighting wars, supporting the welfare state, regulating businesses out of US market, none of this helps, it all destroys the economy further.
IF it takes such a long time to redo the economy, say 2-3 decades (which I don't believe would be the case, I think it would be under 3 years), then USA is in much more trouble than I ever thought.
But what you seem to completely misunderstand is that I am not advocating something that US has a CHOICE in. There is no choice on this matter.
There is no choice. You think I am telling you: you have a choice?
No. I am telling you that you have no choice. You have no choice in how this will be fixed, it's going to be the way I described.
But you DO have a choice where it concerns the time-span within which the problem is solved. USA had a choice back during the Clinton era not to get into variable rate, short term debt and not to expand the spending of go
You can't handle the truth.
The US hadn't hit peak oil in 1921, also the major cut in government spending came in 1919 ... preceding the depression. In 1921 local spending actually increased to more than offset any reduction in federal spending (much smaller than 70%).
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1910_1930USk_13s1li011mcn_F0xF0fF0sF0l
Well, I know you are not 'roman_mir', because you are replying to my comment there.
The 100 Billion was produced initially, yes, but there is an actual multiplier effect, as that's the money that was not going to be consumed, but was consumed instead of being used for more production by the people who made that money.
OTOH the people who consumed it didn't offset that consumption with any production of their own, thus the multiplier effect is that 100 billion wasn't used for more production, but it was used for consumption that is unjustified with production by people who used that money to buy the goods from the Chinese.
What is lost is the opportunity of more production, had that money stayed with the original producers and the opportunity of production that the spenders would have had to do, in order to consume 333 dollars worth of goods. The Chinese get screwed in that transaction, as the people that transacted with them didn't produce anything that can be exchanged for that goods back for the Chinese goods that they bought with that money.
You can't handle the truth.
The GDP hasn't been seem by workers for ages. Since 1960, the inflation adjusted GDP/capita has increased sixfold but income has been stagnant. It all goes to the 1%.
:-) Have you considered the possibility that toppling enemies without installing your own puppets has a strong potential to produce even worse enemies? And puppets eventually lead to worse enemies too. Saddam was Rumsfeld's boy, Osama was a CIA operative. Maybe we should just mind our own business here in the US? Besides, why was Saddam and "enemy" of the US in the first place? Enemy of Israel, that I would (borderline) agree, but the US? And Osama has been in Pakistan for the past 8-9 years or so, but we for some reason did not declare war on Pakistan. Why? Because Pakistan has the nukes. Iran doesn't have the nukes, but it's armed well enough to make any military action against it an extremely costly and PR-disastrous endeavor. Aircraft will be shot down, ships will be sunk, thousands of troops will be killed each day. This is not going to go over well here at home. And once they build the nukes, it's game over pretty much.
On the account of China, all they have to do to topple the regime here is stop their exports for a couple of months, stop buying US securities, and start selling whatever they already have. That'll fuck the US pretty good. It'll fuck them pretty good, too, but they're not used to living in luxury anyway, so they'll survive.
What can be said is that the more that return home for employment, the more jobs that open up stateside. This is *NOT* a bad thing.
Is it? Keep in mind that the guy who returns to India will likely end up working on some outsourced project, except that he'll ask for a salary that's good for India. If he's in US, he'll ask for a salary that's good for US. You'll be competing with him in either case, but when both of you are in US, price disparity is lower.
We're talking about completely different conflicts here. Any conflict with China or NK would be a conventional war, and U.S., as any other conventional army, is well prepared to fight those. The "towelheads in Afghanistan" don't wage war like that, however. What's worse is that no-one actually knows what "victory in Afghanistan" should even constitute - and when you don't have a well-defined objective that leads to victory, defeat is the only available option.
He's a Russian, albeit in U.S.
I don't know what it is about my fellow countrymen who emigrate - we also gave the U.S. Ayn Rand, and I'm truly sorry about that one. This guy, at least, is just a lunatic raving on /. rather than a cult leader.
I've always said I'd rather compete against H1B's a few cubes over, each making maybe 60 to 80 percent of what I'm making
Depending on where you actually work, that myth - that H1-Bs are paid lower - may or may not be true, actually. It's definitely not true in the big three software corps (Apple, Google, Microsoft) - at least not from first-hand observation and comments from other people I know in those companies.
In addition, when H1-B is on a track to green card / citizenship, as soon as he gets it - meaning that he can now change jobs at will, and therefore has leverage against his employer to negotiate his salary, same as any other American - he'll be asking for more $$$. The sole reason why lower wages are tolerated is because it's seen as a kind of "stay in U.S. tax".
In U.S., at least, laws regulating visas for skilled workers require their salary to be "above the prevailing market wage" for the position they're hired to fill. Now there are many sleazy ways in which one can fudge that number, but definitely not to the point of $10k/year, or less than minimum wage (why is the latter even legal?). Don't you have something similar in UK?
For God's sake, the man is dead. Let him rest in peace.
>> Any conflict with China or NK would be a conventional war, and U.S., as any other conventional army, is well prepared to fight those
That's exactly the line of thinking Hitler had when invading the USSR. Three years in, he probably regretted it, as his troops were freezing to death and fighting the insurgents (in addition to conventional war). Wars are only "conventional" in the beginning.
What the US is not prepared for is fighting the enemy which actually has somewhat contemporary defensive weapons in abundant quantities, including anti-aircraft and anti-ship systems. This is the sole reason why Iran hasn't been invaded yet. It is one thing when a thousand soldiers die in a year, it's another when thousands die each day.
That's exactly the line of thinking Hitler had when invading the USSR. Three years in, he probably regretted it, as his troops were freezing to death and fighting the insurgents (in addition to conventional war). Wars are only "conventional" in the beginning.
This is only true when fighting an aggressive war followed by occupation - then, yes, you have to deal with guerrilla fighters from the entire populace, unless you have popular support. And even then, despite the vast scale of Soviet guerrilla movement, the war itself was won by the USSR by more conventional means; underground resistance behind enemy lines shortened the duration of the march to Berlin somewhat, but it would have happened even without that eventually.
A war with North Korea in defense of the South, or a war with China in defense of Taiwan or Japan, would be a defensive war, and would enjoy considerable popular support on the territories in question - so it would be the enemy who'd have to worry about guerrillas on captured territories.
What the US is not prepared for is fighting the enemy which actually has somewhat contemporary defensive weapons in abundant quantities, including anti-aircraft and anti-ship systems. This is the sole reason why Iran hasn't been invaded yet. It is one thing when a thousand soldiers die in a year, it's another when thousands die each day.
Logistically, US is perfectly prepared to fight just such a war - that is, after all, what it was preparing to do for many decades now, and has only started to change its ways in the last decade. Politically, it's a different issue, but it would largely depend on public perception of the war. After all, in WW2, American casualties were considerable (relative to other wars US had then and now fought), but there wasn't any significant anti-war popular movement. Ditto for Korea. I think that, if it really came to an attack on one of the allied countries, popular support in US would be vehemently in favor of the war, even once the bodies start coming in.
Article 1, section 8:
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
- US Mint can take YOUR money (gold/silver) and make a coin for you and they can punish for counterfeiting the coin, that's the extent to which gov't is allowed to deal with creation of money.
LOL! No, that's not the correct conclusion of the first sentence. It says that Congress can make money and regulate the value of it. It does not say anything about allowing or preventing of making it from the U.S. citizens' precious metals.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
Yes, because the only other option to his kind of lunacy is the Soviet kind of lunacy. Ron Paul and Tea Party, or Stalin and Bolsheviks. No middle ground.
I prefer the stuff that actually works, you know. Like, regulated capitalism with a social safety net - where people can realize their potential and pursue their passion, and yet live without fear of ending up under the bridge. The kind of society the West has actually had for several decades now.
Actually it did improve my situation -- at least until 1998-2000 I was in a far better situation here than I would be dealing with a massive 90's crisis over the whole ex-USSR. However I happened to be an unusually capable and well-educated engineer who left a country while it was going through the total devastation of its economy.
It taken those both conditions to make it somewhat worthwhile for me.
So, spoke for yourself then when you said this?
I am all too familiar with immigrants spending the rest of their lives trying to convince themselves that moving to US improved their lives. Most of them are full of shit.
Stop projecting. If you are such a capable individual, I'm sure you can fix the conditions, here or abroad to make them more worthwhile. Until then, you are the one full of it. The arrogance of criticizing others' self-measure of happiness or well being is repugnant, arrogant, sour and a little bit disturbing to say the least.
Your experience, and perhaps the collective experience of the social group you belong to, they aren't the norm. Keep that in mind next time you say "most of them are full of shit".
If you didn't get the news, USSR was dissolved in 1992, and at that point its former members adopted Libertarian ideology provided to them by US and its local sycophants. It triggered the worst economic devastation the whole area had seen since WWII (and one may argue, worse than WWII).
Yeah, but those conditions are no more. Granted, there are still problems, but the conditions are better now, reap with opportunities for Russians ex-pats with the know-how and the heart to go for it. I came from Nicaragua, and I know what bitterness of seeing your country turn into a pile of crap (or more of a pile of crap in my case) feels like that. But you can't control those things.You can only control what you do. You either build your life here well, or you go back and try to reconstruct things. Anything else is just self-indulgent whining.
Granted, there are still problems, but the conditions are better now
Conditions are worse. Spin is more aligned with American ideology, and technology was advancing for two decades after that event in a manner that had nothing to do with politics or Capitalism, but those are the only thing that are "better".
reap
ripe
with opportunities for Russians ex-pats with the know-how and the heart to go for it.
"Opportunity" is an invitation to fight and gamble. Neither me, nor any sane person on Earth actually wants that. I want a peaceful, prosperous society, enabling people to perform useful and fulfilling work that helps other people in dignity and -- I repeat -- peace. With all its flaws 70's-80's USSR mostly was such a society -- you had to be a professional revolutionary to actually be flatly denied that. Modern US and modern Russia are nowhere close to this, and have a snowflake's chance in Hell to ever approach it without being turned into rubble first.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
So, spoke for yourself then when you said this?
It's possible that this is the case. Personally I think, I have some valid reasons to see myself as something different:
Most immigrants into US that I know or knew, had to resort to lies to get a refugee status, claiming whatever political and religious leaders who "helped" them wanted to hear. I got an H-1B visa after arriving as a visitor, and finding a job entirely based on my then-current education and work history.
Most of those immigrants happily gobbled up tons of brainwashing for no other reason but getting assistance and money -- not just political but also religious crap that they would never touch with a ten foot pole otherwise.I started with genuine interest in US culture, and ended up rejecting its foundations as a direct result of obtaining knowledge and understanding of it, but being unable to internalize those foundations.
Most immigrants accepted US citizenship as a kind of yoke that permitted them to work for Americans without offending or threatening them. I got a permanent resident status, however I kept my original citizenship because I would rather let Cthulhu rule and represent me than a bunch of corporate lackeys that Americans supposedly elect every few years. And I can assure everyone that despite similar deficiency in diplomatic and communications skills and nearly infinite inferiority in performance arts, Lukashenko represents me much better than Cthulhu ever could. I still think that it would make sense for me to accept US citizenship if politicians better than Cthulhu (not necessarily better than Lukashenko or whoever would be in power in Belarus at the moment) ended up anywhere close to power in US, but alas, Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations, along with the whole Congress over all those times, still scored far below my betentacled arguably Chaotic Evil reference point.
Most immigrants abandoned their original profession, and jumped into either demeaning kind of work, or some questionable get-rich-quick (or, more often, get-not-poor-quick) scheme, usually of dubious legality, and accomplished nothing. I, despite my fundamental disagreement with foundations of American ideology and society, never did anything more illegal than speeding of farther removed from my profession than Windows GUI software development (and only went that far in an extreme situation where it was somewhat rationally justified).
Most immigrants who managed to find a job somewhere related to technology, ended up becoming either:
1. A walking cost-saving measure -- a person who, through some great ingenuity and heroic effort, maintains hopelessly broken equipment because it's cheaper for employer to pay him peanuts than replace, repair or properly service said equipment.
or
2. Professional charlatan. At least 80% of "programmers" are in this category regardless of their country of origin.
I currently do embedded systems development, and my previous work history includes large numbers of successfully developed projects -- though occasionally ruined by things far beyond my control.
So I think, I can place myself among large, but nowhere close to majority, category of immigrants who actually had a valid reason to move here while escaping a unique and serious economic crisis that coincided with my graduation. It also helps that when moving to US, among all hope and expectations, I clearly understood that I am coming there to be oppressed, and that even if I ended up liking the place and being perfectly aligned with dominant ideology and taste, I will never be accepted as one of the locals. Surely, disappointing me was a tough task, but American society accomplished it in the most successful way possible.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
That's the point of the Mint. You bring your metal and they will mint a coin for you. They can mint a coin from metal they have from collecting taxes as well, but you can request a coin to be minted from your metal. There is nothing to "lol" about there.
You can't handle the truth.
1. That's not the point of a mint, even if they can do that. Mints have never been a service to press coins for private people with the metal they collect, they have been a way of coining money for a government.
2. There is something to LOL about... He said that the US Constitution prohibits the government from making money. Absolute bullshit.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.