20 Reasons Why The U.S. Economy Is Dying And Is Simply Not Going To Recover

The Business Insider ^ | 2-4-2010 | Michael The Patriot Blogger

[blam]

20 Reasons Why The U.S. Economy Is Dying And Is Simply Not Going To Recover

Michael The Patriot Blogger
Feb. 4, 2010, 10:26 AM

Even though the U.S. financial system nearly experienced a total meltdown in late 2008, the truth is that most Americans simply have no idea what is happening to the U.S. economy. Most people seem to think that the nasty little recession that we have just been through is almost over and that we will be experiencing another time of economic growth and prosperity very shortly.

But this time around that is not the case. The reality is that we are being sucked into an economic black hole from which the U.S. economy will never fully recover.

The problem is debt. Collectively, the U.S. government, the state governments, corporate America and American consumers have accumulated the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world. Our massive debt binge has financed our tremendous growth and prosperity over the last couple of decades, but now the day of reckoning is here.

And it is going to be painful.

[snip]

[Toddsterpatriot]

now if we could get rid of odorous enviromental laws

The odorous laws stink. They're almost as bad as the onerous laws.

[blam]

I saw this posted earlier on FR but the thread was pulled.

Do you know why?

[blam]

"Rush had an interesting comment from a mathematician listener of his."

That was good...I heard it too.

[M. Espinola]

The next 'stage' is now underway. It's not as though we did not warn them -- again.

May the put options excel even better than before :)

[stephenjohnbanker]

“Making wealth off of money is what the real estate bubble and Wall Street securitization & derivatives mania was/is all about”

Thank you.

A country that makes nothing, and creates nothing will not survive. We are asking for it.

[Justa]

Largest manufacturing nation: America.

Nation with the most patents: America.

Nation with the biggest Takers: America.

[stephenjohnbanker]

I have been in finance all of my adult life. Forget about the long term liabilities like Medicare, for now. There is no way to pay them. Obama’has had one main goal since day one; to destroy our economy in the SHORT term. He is winning too. His new budget will finish us off....no need for O’care, or crap n fraud. They would merely be icing on the cake. This alone will do it.

[stephenjohnbanker]

“Nation with the biggest Takers: America. “

Yep ;-)

[stephenjohnbanker]

Now to just put those into action ;-)

[Big Horn]

You can not borrow yourself rich.

[dennisw]

Toddster always says that we are a superpower when it comes to imports. You look to be from the same school

And is “manufacturing” Twinkies and Cheetos included in your boasts about US manufacturing? We may manufacture more than anyone else but we obviously don’t manufacture enough of the right things...Otherwise we would not always be running trade deficits more specifically merchandise trade deficits

Germany and Japan are near the top when it comes to manufacturing but they don’t run trade deficits. They rarely rarely run trade deficits

[Toddsterpatriot]

There's good old Dennis, talking out of his ass again.

Feel free to subtract the bad manufacturing numbers from the totals and let us know what you get.

If you know how to subtract.

[JasonC]

Money is just one asset whose demand fluctuates like that for any other, it is not wealth, nor does it have any stable relation to income or wealth my any mechanical gearing. The errors of non economists on the point go back to the 18th century, and at bottom it is always the same error. They think that money merely represents other goods without being another good itself, but they are wrong.

"just because a thing can be treated as if it were another thing"

No, "economic goods" has a definition, and money falls within that definition. It is not "another thing". It is like objecting to the statement that 2 is a number.

And yes, congress can and does bind its predecessors in procedural ways. The cloture rule in the senate may stand as an example, but entitlement legislation is another. Such laws require new votes to change a pattern of spending but none to continue that pattern. Since it is harder to pass new laws, this does bind successor legislatures somewhat. Not totally, as I said myself - with a sufficient majority any of its own rules can be changed. The same is true of all law and indeed, every social practice imaginable.

[JasonC]

There were too many houses not too few. Prices don't just go up, they also go down, that was rather overlooked by the inflation brainstorm crowd. But even in the face of massive deflation that wiped out $15 trillion in asset values, they can't get off the ideological hymn sheet and admit we are in a deflation, not an inflation. But we are.

[JasonC]

Take an income stream of 20% out of $14 trillion per year, that rises 6% per year. Now determine its present value when discounted at an 5% rate.

Right, infinity. Your cited source can't do math.

[JasonC]

Pretending that people between 65 and 70 are invalids is ridiculous. Pretending that everyone has to be a bodybuilder to work is more ridiculous. There are grown ups here discussing serious issues.

[ichabod1]

Are they worse than odious ones?

[Toddsterpatriot]

Yes, but better than the Oedipus ones.

[dennisw]

A country that makes nothing, and creates nothing will not survive. We are asking for it.

What we need are targeted tariffs on imported oil/energy and on imported manufactures
We must extract and burn more coal for heat and electricity and we drill more for gas and oil

We can make our way to balanced trade and not run trade deficits
But even if we revive our manufacturing we will still have employment problems because manufacturing is so automated and computerized these days. The USA simply doesn't need a lot of workers these days to grow our food and manufacture what we need. We have a surplus of working age adults. What do we do with them? I would get them out to the rural areas via incentives. They just fester in the cities

What we actually have been doing with our surplus labor is giving them more and more education and over-credentialize them and while this is going on they are not in the labor force for the most part. When they finally graduate they teach crap and unnecessary subjects in our schools and universities. They become laywers and gum up the works. They become fake scientists stealing from the taxpayer via grants like the global warming researchers we have

It was better 100 years ago when the labor of every single citizen was needed
We allowed large waves of immigration to bring more workers here
We even had slavery just like the ancients did because there was simply not enough free citizens to do all the labor

[stephenjohnbanker]

“The USA simply doesn’t need a lot of workers these days to grow our food and manufacture what we need. We have a surplus of working age adults.”

It sure as hell doesn’t help to have 20 million illiterate, poor slobs who jumped our borders.