Right now we have no viable alternative. The Teabaggers aren't it. Most of those people are just Republican activists trying to push us even further to the right.
Sadly, I have to agree. My local tea party has remained loyal to the original concept of the modern tea parties, which is just to protest government intrusion in general, but many of the larger ones have become extensions of the neocons. Basically, if they create a formal organization or elect a leadership, they're in opposition to the spirit of tea parties. Without any formal leadership, the opportunity for corruption is practically nil; with leadership, practically guaranteed.
Huh? Where are the Democrats fighting for privacy? This isn't aisle issue, it's an establishment issue. They all support warrantless wiretapping and every other form of privacy intrusion.
And people in general have nominated the government as their representative by voting in parties that defend such policies.
That statement is misleading. When you have 700,000 people per district, you cannot have representation. This was discussed by many of the state constitutional conventions leading up to the ratification of the Constitution. In fact, there was only one last-minute change that resulted in the only smudge in the original ratified document, and that was to change the minimum district size from 40,000 people to 30,000 people (the number '4' to '3'), because they felt 40,000 was simply too many people for a district. Nowhere in the U.S. can you find any homogeneous geographic group of 700,000 people, which is what gives us our plutocratic de facto state.
I didn't like any of the joysticks they were selling at Fry's that day. Also, I had a super nice force feedback joystick buried in a storage tub, but apparently it wasn't a top seller as I couldn't even find drivers for the old thing. I picked up the 360 wireless USB adapter for computers and that worked just fine for my needs.
I had actually bought the game as therapy to help understand flying. I had an experience with severe turbulence on a 747 while descending into Hong Kong. The game actually helped out a lot because I understood, at least on a conscious level, that turbulence doesn't take planes down. In Flight Sim X you pretty much have to be in a hurricane to actually go down, although I imagine the flight would still be terrifyingly unpleasant.
Just don't mix the two on games where one has an advantage over another. I don't imagine people playing games like Uno, Poker, or pinball are going to be any better because of the platform they're on. Heck, on old arcade games and shooters like Geometry Wars the controller may be an advantage. I know I have a much easier time flying in Flight Simulator X with my 360 controller connected to my computer than when using the keyboard (although I'd probably do even better with a stick, but never bothered to buy one).
Actually, I would state my position as fiat currency bad, non-fiat currency less bad.
When you stated that gold is not perfect, you seemed to suggest that because it is not perfect it is not a viable option.
Historically, fiat currencies always destroy the wealth of a nation's citizens. The only example of the gold standard doing such things is when Spain discovered huge amounts of gold in the new world. This seems measurable to me.
Gold is currently a speculative material because it is not used to back currencies. If it were used to back currencies, it would become more of a financial tool. We can actually see right now that gold is becoming a financial tool in a sense as people are purchasing it to be a store of wealth for the severe inflation they believe we will be experiencing.
I believe deflation is preferable to inflation. Probably neither are 'good'. I prefer to look at it from the perspective of the average worker, whose labor may be his only form of investment. The average worker's 'investment' should not be devalued to grow someone else's investment (e.g. stocks, bonds, etc.). We should be able to save our money and have it be worth at least its original value. Inflation reduces the value of the labor in a most insidious and immoral way.
Art Laffer said 20%, although I can't find the quote written on the interwebs, I did hear him say it.
He supports his claim with quite a bit of data. Next year the U.S. will experience an historic increase in tax rates. I believe tax revenues will fall. We'll see.
Deflation does not cause a loss of jobs nor a shrinking economy. In the 19th century the U.S. went from being a bankrupt 3rd-world nation to an international superpower, all while experiencing deflation
Centrally controlled economies have failed time and time again. Compare East Germany to West Germany. People were risking their lives to flee the terrible conditions of centrally controlled East Germany, where they had complete control of the economy and currency. There are mountains of data which support the conclusion that poor monetary policy has caused decades of problems for the U.S., including the problems we have right now.
I never stated that all investing is malinvestment.
I am in my mid-30s. I own a growing business. My net-worth is in the positive.
As a young man with debts, you will never repay them because our economy is not going to support your doing anything but going further into debt. If the dollar truly crashes, then you will have difficulty not only finding work, but finding food, and you will probably be burning that stack of cash to keep warm at night.
Yes, I am registered as a Republican, but I feel these party affiliations are mostly used to divide people. I'm not a 'team player'. In the recent primary election I wrote in "Donald Duck" for the majority of the offices because none of the candidates held any interest for me. I never voted for anyone named "George Bush", I have been opposed to every war, and I was also opposed to the $500 billion Medicare Part B package the Republicans passed in 2003.
The devaluation of the dollar also has the effect of destroying our nation's wealth. This is what truly causes capital to dry up. Savings is what expands an economy.
Since in the last 150 years we have only had a few years of modest debt repayment, we have never actually paid anything off; just rolled it forward. We are still paying interest on the debts incurred from the Vietnam War.
If a population is derelict in its duties to police its Government, then for sure lots of heinous laws will be passed, such as banning gold. This law clearly violated the Constitution, at the very least the 4th amendment.
I think I can invoke the Nirvana Fallacy here because whenever we are evaluating social policies, there is not going to be a perfect solution. This is definitely the case with monetary policy. Gold is certainly not perfect, but it is measurably better than fiat currencies.
I actually do not argue for gold, I argue that the market should be allowed to choose what will pass as currency (i.e., people should be allowed to offer goods and services in exchange for whatever they are willing to accept).
In general, agrarian economies suffer greatly from many factors, not the least of which are polices such as the Homestead Act, which encouraged people to put farms on land that is not suitable for farming. Other issues such as a few years of inclement weather can send the entire economy into shambles.
Anyone taking a loan at a 20% rate is bound to have problems paying the loan back, regardless of any market condition outside massive inflation. Lenders typically charge such rates when the loan is very risky, so the farmer facing such conditions probably needed to find a new occupation anyhow. Additionally, the amount of deflation over the period of 100 years was practically negligible, unlike our experience on fiat currency which has render the dollar to 1/48 its original value.
I never stated anything about 'massive deflation'. I did state that in the history of hard currencies there has never been 'spiral deflation'.
What is the problem with deflation? In the U.S. we had deflation for over a century and it worked out quite well. (Spiral deflation is only theoretical - it has never happened.) Hard currency has been used for thousands of years and there are no indications that any economy has resorted to mass saving or hoarding. People generally enjoy spending money and growing their wealth; it's human nature.
Inflation, on the other hand, is the root of much evil. It has utterly crushed economies and created conditions ripe for mass-murdering, genocidal tyrants to come to power. Deflation has never done such a thing.
Money makes trade between two parties much easier because without some form of currency we would have to rely on a Coincidence of Wants. It also acts as a method of informing producers what consumers are desiring, generally in a way that is much more efficient than centralized control.
There is nothing wrong with interest, per se. It allows those with capital an opportunity to increase wealth and those without capital an opportunity to create wealth. Both parties win.
Increasing taxes generally has the effect of reducing economic activity (Laffer Curve). Using taxes to control the money supply would have the effect of destroying production.
The concern of the solvency of the lender should only be for the interested parties. However, in your example of fractional-reserve lending this can really only be practiced with paper currency. In order to make a loan, the currency must be provided. If a bank has $10 of deposits and wishes to make $15 in loans, it must find the extra $5 from some place. In the case of a hard currency, it must find another party to provide the $5, but in the case of a paper currency, it simply gets the money from the central bank at some interest rate that is probably at a rate below what the market would demand for that money.
Inflation, even a 'small' amount, has the effect of encouraging malinvestment. When people know that come time to retire, that $10,000 they added to their savings this year is only going to be worth $5000 when they retire, they know that they must put this money some place to protect it from inflation. But people are generally poor at choosing places to invest their money, and they are downright awful when they feel pressured to do so. They invest in stocks that don't give dividend yields; they invest in real estate and have no idea why. In short, they invest in things that are beyond their understanding because they feel pressured to do so. OTOH, if there were instead a small amount of deflation, convincing people to part with their money would be considerably more difficult. Since the average person could be confident in knowing that a penny saved is truly a penny earned, not some fraction thereof, they would stick with what they know, and the economy would grow more efficiently.
It is the paper currency that is the root of evil. Many try to speak of it as if is some new concept; the next evolutionary step after gold, but fiat currency systems have been around for thousands of years, and every society that ever engaged this policy has gone bankrupt, including Ancient Rome.
In what way does that make anything "the Government"'s fault? If I had the resources and the lack of regulation to farm a state to destruction over 10 years, why would a top-up from Sam be anything but a welcome bonus to something I was going to do anyway? In what way would a lack of subsidy stop me doing it, assuming I had the resources to start the operation?
In what way does this counter my argument that the dust bowl was a Government created problem? Farmers put farms where they shouldn't have. The Government told them what to farm, and those were the wrong crops to grow. Small farms are forced to sell farms because of the death tax. Do you have something to debate these points with?
On immigration we are truly in agreement. I attempted to make a blog post on my homepage which discusses this very issue, but it was in haste and not well edited.
The often overlooked portion of the dust bowl is that the Government caused these problems. Many people chose their crops because the Government gave subsidies to growers of those crops. The Government also had a program to encourage people to become farmers, regardless of the soil type. So people set up farms on land that was not truly arable. Death taxes was and is one of the biggest killers of small businesses, especially farms.
Mercantilism is not an option in the U.S. because you have to pay real estate taxes with Federal Reserve Notes. Otherwise, I'm sure there is a plot of land somewhere for you to subsist from.
You are correct that the President and Congress cannot 'peg' our currency, but it is not our currency that is pegged. It is the Chinese currency that is pegged to ours. The reality that the Chinese are poorer because of this policy. Now that the RMB is floating, they're going to see their incomes effectively rise as the costs of products produced in China remains the same and imported products fall in price. This will also encourage more overseas investment by Chinese investors.
There are a few assumptions you are making which are not correct.
The reason I cannot produce the product in the U.S. is because I simply don't have the finances. It has nothing to do with the sale price; I just haven't got the money. The cost of doing it in the U.S. is literally thirty times higher. I was blown away by the cost difference.
Every business owner I know is very cognizant of the damage they are doing to the economy, but we are subjects of the same forces that everyone else is. We must make decisions that keep us alive. It is not out of malice nor with ignorance that we take such actions.
If you really want to see my opinion on how to repair our failed manufacturing sector, check out my blog post at my home page. It was written in haste and mostly just to elaborate a discussion I was having with some friends in an email, but the concept is there.
I have been to China many times and I have friends, some not Chinese, who own businesses there. I am certainly planning on investing in their economy when I can afford it.
I have designed a widget. I need a factory to make the widget-making tool and then produce x number of widgets. Where is the profit flowing out of the country? My widget did not exist before and now I am making a profit.
Long-term total (not per-country) trade deficits are bad, but taxing does not repair the problem.
The following is from my own A.C. post. Obviously it was before the current Euro crisis, but given the Euro's rapid increase against the dollar since the recent market crash, we can see that the dollar is actually in bigger trouble than the Euro.
At the end of WWII the industrialized world had been literally blown to pieces, except in the U.S. because the war hadn't reached any of our industrialized regions. Additionally, major powers such as China and Russia began to experiment in earnest with Communism. The U.S. was able to supply the world with what it needed and it prospered greatly, with 1950-1965 being one of the most prosperous periods in our history. From the wealth gained out of this temporary position we decided that we would build a 'Great Society' that would guarantee minimum standards for all citizens.
However, Communism failed, and its leaders knew they had to make changes or suffer a revolution with them on the receiving end, so they began to embrace certain aspects of Capitalism to increase the standard of living and gainfully employ the citizens.
China was one of those countries. It had the most people, the most unemployed, uneducated, impoverished people and loads of land worth next to nothing, with lots of resources to boot. It employed its capitalism through free-trade zones. These zones were actually as difficult to leave and enter as the country's border itself, with fences and checkpoints the whole way along, although this policy would change later, it illustrates how they did not truly embrace Capitalism.
As if the advantages of a huge population of desparate workers and millions of acres of available land weren't enough, the Chinese Government drew up a clever scheme to make their production costs even lower on an international scale. They required all foreign transactions to be transacted in U.S. dollars. Since they had a huge trade surplus, especially when considering this was for all transactions with customers from all countries, they could quickly amass a significant number of U.S. dollars. They then used the dollars to purchase U.S. debt. This debt could then be used to maintain an artificially low exchange rate on the Chinese currency (called Yuan or Renminbi (RMB)) with respect to U.S. dollars, conveniently the only currency the factories could use.
Meanwhile, the cost of doing anything in the U.S. increased substantially, spawning from things such as the Great Society initiatives, laws to encourage unionizing, and various other policies that made sense only for a nation with no industrialized competitors. For all intents and purposes we stopped allowing legal immigrants to come to our country, cutting off a key labor supply used throughout the Industrial Revolution.
(I always like to point out that "Made in America" all too often really means "Made by Illegal Aliens").
So with high costs to employ people, a nearly non-existent bottom-end production workforce and deficits to build and maintain pegged currencies, substantial amounts of production has moved offshore, with much of it going to China. China is really just the most visible because of its size. Many people talk about all the things they purchase that are 'Made in China', but the real test is to look at all the things people purchase that are not made in China. After posing this question to a friend he declared that the only thing in his house that was Made in America was the house itself. China is often just the final assembly point for a manufacturer, who probably gets chips and other components from Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. The very, very bottom product
You are flat wrong. The freedom of speech was created by the Constitution. The people who worked in factories and slept in those beds worked voluntarily and made more money than they did on the farm. These jobs lead to growth in industries that lead to the cushy office jobs we all enjoy today. It is more than one step from agrarian society to industrialized society.
I travel to China regularly and visit several factories, and I see first-hand what is required to grow an economy with labor. Most people in the U.S. can't even fathom what this is like, and this is why we are on the unsustainable course we now find ourselves. That horrible lifestyle they are currently living is keeping them on the path to becoming our master.
Another baseless, rhetorical argument that meanders on to unrelated claims of purgatory. I suppose our current course of increased regulation, spending, and taxing is going to lead to some bright place?
Slashdot Mirror
Right now we have no viable alternative. The Teabaggers aren't it. Most of those people are just Republican activists trying to push us even further to the right.
Sadly, I have to agree. My local tea party has remained loyal to the original concept of the modern tea parties, which is just to protest government intrusion in general, but many of the larger ones have become extensions of the neocons. Basically, if they create a formal organization or elect a leadership, they're in opposition to the spirit of tea parties. Without any formal leadership, the opportunity for corruption is practically nil; with leadership, practically guaranteed.
Huh? Where are the Democrats fighting for privacy? This isn't aisle issue, it's an establishment issue. They all support warrantless wiretapping and every other form of privacy intrusion.
And people in general have nominated the government as their representative by voting in parties that defend such policies.
That statement is misleading. When you have 700,000 people per district, you cannot have representation. This was discussed by many of the state constitutional conventions leading up to the ratification of the Constitution. In fact, there was only one last-minute change that resulted in the only smudge in the original ratified document, and that was to change the minimum district size from 40,000 people to 30,000 people (the number '4' to '3'), because they felt 40,000 was simply too many people for a district. Nowhere in the U.S. can you find any homogeneous geographic group of 700,000 people, which is what gives us our plutocratic de facto state.
If you care, you can read more about this topic at Thirty-Thousand.org.
I didn't like any of the joysticks they were selling at Fry's that day. Also, I had a super nice force feedback joystick buried in a storage tub, but apparently it wasn't a top seller as I couldn't even find drivers for the old thing. I picked up the 360 wireless USB adapter for computers and that worked just fine for my needs.
I had actually bought the game as therapy to help understand flying. I had an experience with severe turbulence on a 747 while descending into Hong Kong. The game actually helped out a lot because I understood, at least on a conscious level, that turbulence doesn't take planes down. In Flight Sim X you pretty much have to be in a hurricane to actually go down, although I imagine the flight would still be terrifyingly unpleasant.
Just don't mix the two on games where one has an advantage over another. I don't imagine people playing games like Uno, Poker, or pinball are going to be any better because of the platform they're on. Heck, on old arcade games and shooters like Geometry Wars the controller may be an advantage. I know I have a much easier time flying in Flight Simulator X with my 360 controller connected to my computer than when using the keyboard (although I'd probably do even better with a stick, but never bothered to buy one).
Having listened to it again, how could I forget this more applicable line:
Don't leave false illusion behind.
The sun in your eyes made some of the lies worth believing.
Actually, I would state my position as fiat currency bad, non-fiat currency less bad.
When you stated that gold is not perfect, you seemed to suggest that because it is not perfect it is not a viable option.
Historically, fiat currencies always destroy the wealth of a nation's citizens. The only example of the gold standard doing such things is when Spain discovered huge amounts of gold in the new world. This seems measurable to me.
Gold is currently a speculative material because it is not used to back currencies. If it were used to back currencies, it would become more of a financial tool. We can actually see right now that gold is becoming a financial tool in a sense as people are purchasing it to be a store of wealth for the severe inflation they believe we will be experiencing.
I believe deflation is preferable to inflation. Probably neither are 'good'. I prefer to look at it from the perspective of the average worker, whose labor may be his only form of investment. The average worker's 'investment' should not be devalued to grow someone else's investment (e.g. stocks, bonds, etc.). We should be able to save our money and have it be worth at least its original value. Inflation reduces the value of the labor in a most insidious and immoral way.
Art Laffer said 20%, although I can't find the quote written on the interwebs, I did hear him say it.
He supports his claim with quite a bit of data. Next year the U.S. will experience an historic increase in tax rates. I believe tax revenues will fall. We'll see.
Deflation does not cause a loss of jobs nor a shrinking economy. In the 19th century the U.S. went from being a bankrupt 3rd-world nation to an international superpower, all while experiencing deflation
Centrally controlled economies have failed time and time again. Compare East Germany to West Germany. People were risking their lives to flee the terrible conditions of centrally controlled East Germany, where they had complete control of the economy and currency. There are mountains of data which support the conclusion that poor monetary policy has caused decades of problems for the U.S., including the problems we have right now.
I never stated that all investing is malinvestment.
I am in my mid-30s. I own a growing business. My net-worth is in the positive.
As a young man with debts, you will never repay them because our economy is not going to support your doing anything but going further into debt. If the dollar truly crashes, then you will have difficulty not only finding work, but finding food, and you will probably be burning that stack of cash to keep warm at night.
Yes, I am registered as a Republican, but I feel these party affiliations are mostly used to divide people. I'm not a 'team player'. In the recent primary election I wrote in "Donald Duck" for the majority of the offices because none of the candidates held any interest for me. I never voted for anyone named "George Bush", I have been opposed to every war, and I was also opposed to the $500 billion Medicare Part B package the Republicans passed in 2003.
The devaluation of the dollar also has the effect of destroying our nation's wealth. This is what truly causes capital to dry up. Savings is what expands an economy.
Since in the last 150 years we have only had a few years of modest debt repayment, we have never actually paid anything off; just rolled it forward. We are still paying interest on the debts incurred from the Vietnam War.
If a population is derelict in its duties to police its Government, then for sure lots of heinous laws will be passed, such as banning gold. This law clearly violated the Constitution, at the very least the 4th amendment.
I think I can invoke the Nirvana Fallacy here because whenever we are evaluating social policies, there is not going to be a perfect solution. This is definitely the case with monetary policy. Gold is certainly not perfect, but it is measurably better than fiat currencies.
I actually do not argue for gold, I argue that the market should be allowed to choose what will pass as currency (i.e., people should be allowed to offer goods and services in exchange for whatever they are willing to accept).
In general, agrarian economies suffer greatly from many factors, not the least of which are polices such as the Homestead Act, which encouraged people to put farms on land that is not suitable for farming. Other issues such as a few years of inclement weather can send the entire economy into shambles.
Anyone taking a loan at a 20% rate is bound to have problems paying the loan back, regardless of any market condition outside massive inflation. Lenders typically charge such rates when the loan is very risky, so the farmer facing such conditions probably needed to find a new occupation anyhow. Additionally, the amount of deflation over the period of 100 years was practically negligible, unlike our experience on fiat currency which has render the dollar to 1/48 its original value.
I never stated anything about 'massive deflation'. I did state that in the history of hard currencies there has never been 'spiral deflation'.
What is the problem with deflation? In the U.S. we had deflation for over a century and it worked out quite well. (Spiral deflation is only theoretical - it has never happened.) Hard currency has been used for thousands of years and there are no indications that any economy has resorted to mass saving or hoarding. People generally enjoy spending money and growing their wealth; it's human nature.
Inflation, on the other hand, is the root of much evil. It has utterly crushed economies and created conditions ripe for mass-murdering, genocidal tyrants to come to power. Deflation has never done such a thing.
Money makes trade between two parties much easier because without some form of currency we would have to rely on a Coincidence of Wants. It also acts as a method of informing producers what consumers are desiring, generally in a way that is much more efficient than centralized control.
There is nothing wrong with interest, per se. It allows those with capital an opportunity to increase wealth and those without capital an opportunity to create wealth. Both parties win.
Increasing taxes generally has the effect of reducing economic activity (Laffer Curve). Using taxes to control the money supply would have the effect of destroying production.
The concern of the solvency of the lender should only be for the interested parties. However, in your example of fractional-reserve lending this can really only be practiced with paper currency. In order to make a loan, the currency must be provided. If a bank has $10 of deposits and wishes to make $15 in loans, it must find the extra $5 from some place. In the case of a hard currency, it must find another party to provide the $5, but in the case of a paper currency, it simply gets the money from the central bank at some interest rate that is probably at a rate below what the market would demand for that money.
Inflation, even a 'small' amount, has the effect of encouraging malinvestment. When people know that come time to retire, that $10,000 they added to their savings this year is only going to be worth $5000 when they retire, they know that they must put this money some place to protect it from inflation. But people are generally poor at choosing places to invest their money, and they are downright awful when they feel pressured to do so. They invest in stocks that don't give dividend yields; they invest in real estate and have no idea why. In short, they invest in things that are beyond their understanding because they feel pressured to do so. OTOH, if there were instead a small amount of deflation, convincing people to part with their money would be considerably more difficult. Since the average person could be confident in knowing that a penny saved is truly a penny earned, not some fraction thereof, they would stick with what they know, and the economy would grow more efficiently.
It is the paper currency that is the root of evil. Many try to speak of it as if is some new concept; the next evolutionary step after gold, but fiat currency systems have been around for thousands of years, and every society that ever engaged this policy has gone bankrupt, including Ancient Rome.
In what way does that make anything "the Government"'s fault? If I had the resources and the lack of regulation to farm a state to destruction over 10 years, why would a top-up from Sam be anything but a welcome bonus to something I was going to do anyway? In what way would a lack of subsidy stop me doing it, assuming I had the resources to start the operation?
In what way does this counter my argument that the dust bowl was a Government created problem? Farmers put farms where they shouldn't have. The Government told them what to farm, and those were the wrong crops to grow. Small farms are forced to sell farms because of the death tax. Do you have something to debate these points with?
If I were a child and were given the choice between your photo and my photo, I would choose your photo.
On immigration we are truly in agreement. I attempted to make a blog post on my homepage which discusses this very issue, but it was in haste and not well edited.
The often overlooked portion of the dust bowl is that the Government caused these problems. Many people chose their crops because the Government gave subsidies to growers of those crops. The Government also had a program to encourage people to become farmers, regardless of the soil type. So people set up farms on land that was not truly arable. Death taxes was and is one of the biggest killers of small businesses, especially farms.
Mercantilism is not an option in the U.S. because you have to pay real estate taxes with Federal Reserve Notes. Otherwise, I'm sure there is a plot of land somewhere for you to subsist from.
You are correct that the President and Congress cannot 'peg' our currency, but it is not our currency that is pegged. It is the Chinese currency that is pegged to ours. The reality that the Chinese are poorer because of this policy. Now that the RMB is floating, they're going to see their incomes effectively rise as the costs of products produced in China remains the same and imported products fall in price. This will also encourage more overseas investment by Chinese investors.
There are a few assumptions you are making which are not correct.
The reason I cannot produce the product in the U.S. is because I simply don't have the finances. It has nothing to do with the sale price; I just haven't got the money. The cost of doing it in the U.S. is literally thirty times higher. I was blown away by the cost difference.
Every business owner I know is very cognizant of the damage they are doing to the economy, but we are subjects of the same forces that everyone else is. We must make decisions that keep us alive. It is not out of malice nor with ignorance that we take such actions.
If you really want to see my opinion on how to repair our failed manufacturing sector, check out my blog post at my home page. It was written in haste and mostly just to elaborate a discussion I was having with some friends in an email, but the concept is there.
I have been to China many times and I have friends, some not Chinese, who own businesses there. I am certainly planning on investing in their economy when I can afford it.
I have designed a widget. I need a factory to make the widget-making tool and then produce x number of widgets. Where is the profit flowing out of the country? My widget did not exist before and now I am making a profit.
Long-term total (not per-country) trade deficits are bad, but taxing does not repair the problem.
The following is from my own A.C. post. Obviously it was before the current Euro crisis, but given the Euro's rapid increase against the dollar since the recent market crash, we can see that the dollar is actually in bigger trouble than the Euro.
At the end of WWII the industrialized world had been literally blown to pieces, except in the U.S. because the war hadn't reached any of our industrialized regions. Additionally, major powers such as China and Russia began to experiment in earnest with Communism. The U.S. was able to supply the world with what it needed and it prospered greatly, with 1950-1965 being one of the most prosperous periods in our history. From the wealth gained out of this temporary position we decided that we would build a 'Great Society' that would guarantee minimum standards for all citizens.
However, Communism failed, and its leaders knew they had to make changes or suffer a revolution with them on the receiving end, so they began to embrace certain aspects of Capitalism to increase the standard of living and gainfully employ the citizens.
China was one of those countries. It had the most people, the most unemployed, uneducated, impoverished people and loads of land worth next to nothing, with lots of resources to boot. It employed its capitalism through free-trade zones. These zones were actually as difficult to leave and enter as the country's border itself, with fences and checkpoints the whole way along, although this policy would change later, it illustrates how they did not truly embrace Capitalism.
As if the advantages of a huge population of desparate workers and millions of acres of available land weren't enough, the Chinese Government drew up a clever scheme to make their production costs even lower on an international scale. They required all foreign transactions to be transacted in U.S. dollars. Since they had a huge trade surplus, especially when considering this was for all transactions with customers from all countries, they could quickly amass a significant number of U.S. dollars. They then used the dollars to purchase U.S. debt. This debt could then be used to maintain an artificially low exchange rate on the Chinese currency (called Yuan or Renminbi (RMB)) with respect to U.S. dollars, conveniently the only currency the factories could use.
Meanwhile, the cost of doing anything in the U.S. increased substantially, spawning from things such as the Great Society initiatives, laws to encourage unionizing, and various other policies that made sense only for a nation with no industrialized competitors. For all intents and purposes we stopped allowing legal immigrants to come to our country, cutting off a key labor supply used throughout the Industrial Revolution.
(I always like to point out that "Made in America" all too often really means "Made by Illegal Aliens").
So with high costs to employ people, a nearly non-existent bottom-end production workforce and deficits to build and maintain pegged currencies, substantial amounts of production has moved offshore, with much of it going to China. China is really just the most visible because of its size. Many people talk about all the things they purchase that are 'Made in China', but the real test is to look at all the things people purchase that are not made in China. After posing this question to a friend he declared that the only thing in his house that was Made in America was the house itself. China is often just the final assembly point for a manufacturer, who probably gets chips and other components from Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. The very, very bottom product
You are flat wrong. The freedom of speech was created by the Constitution. The people who worked in factories and slept in those beds worked voluntarily and made more money than they did on the farm. These jobs lead to growth in industries that lead to the cushy office jobs we all enjoy today. It is more than one step from agrarian society to industrialized society.
I travel to China regularly and visit several factories, and I see first-hand what is required to grow an economy with labor. Most people in the U.S. can't even fathom what this is like, and this is why we are on the unsustainable course we now find ourselves. That horrible lifestyle they are currently living is keeping them on the path to becoming our master.
Another baseless, rhetorical argument that meanders on to unrelated claims of purgatory. I suppose our current course of increased regulation, spending, and taxing is going to lead to some bright place?