Posted on 12/24/2009 7:26:31 AM PST by FromLori
When America was first created, it was a completely new experiment; nothing like it had ever existed. If the Founding Fathers can start from scratch, I don’t see how those of use who have the benefit of hindsight can’t do it again.
It may be only a few states, it may only be a few towns, but there are enough people with the logic, intelligence, and willingess to defend it to start it again.
Thank you for the information, I do take multi-vitamins every day, so I’ll keep stocked up on those. I’ve got lots of rice & beans put back too!
I read economic blogs all of the time and I’ve never heard of him. What econ blogs are you talking about?
You’re welcome. I’ll get ask them to put up some good pictures of the unit and the contents.
Rolfe Winkler Reuters uses them, Zero Hedge, The Market Ticker, Naked Capitalism, the business insider and tons of others.
Layter
Lehmans (no, not those guys) has their Non-electric catalog with all kinds of hand pumps, well pumps, cisterns, water purification stuff, you name it. If you want to live like it’s 1880, you can buy it through Lehmans. Cool catalog too. There are limitations on how deep you can pump water by hand, (it gets pretty tough around 200’ or so, apparently, but it’s doable.)
Yes, it happened. And worse. There isn’t any warning by the authorities. “Yes, tomorrow your bank deposits will be worth nothing.” Doesn’t work that way. “We are well capitalized” is the song, till it’s over.
“It was horrible.. horrible! Like lightning it struck..”
“Because hopefully the higher prices stay here, where workers have more disposable income and increase the demand.”
Why should I pay more money to buy the things that I need? Why is it right for me to pay more for bread, just because you want a higher wage?
What people benefit from is an increase in productivity, in making more for less, or from time-saving, in being able to do more in the same span of time.
Protectionism circumvents the normal operation of the market to find the best way to do things.
There are many things that the US does poorly compared with other countries, simply because of her natural resources. The best way is not to prevent the import of cheaper products, but rather to use these products to build other things.
Why are American workers idle? Unions, hostile work environments make them inefficient.
Get rid of the unions, lower business taxes, and watch America be the factories for the world.
Libertarian economic philosophy is killing us:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16639
parsy, who thinks we need to reinvent America
“the quality of products and services delivered by American companies had been outstripped by foreign competitors.”
Why do you think this is so? Could it have something to do with the fact that there were no incentives to improve the quality? Look at Detroit. Why is it that Detroit did so poorly for so many years, and let the Japanese automakers eat their lunch? Because they had inefficient, high-cost workers, they had terrible, unresponsive management and they committed the cardinal sin of the free market, by failing to deliver what their customers wanted.
The world of global competition is a reality. If the American worker is unwilling to adapt to the new reality, than he will be left behind. We can attempt to shutter ourselves behind the wall of tariffs, but what will that acheive?
I’m going to tell you a story, that has to do with an industry near and dear to my heart, the forestry industry. Up here, Forestry is one of the cash-cows of the governments, such that they charge high prices and taxes. Now, due to economic downturns, it has forced the remaining producers to become the most productive in the entire world.
My father worked with an engineering firm to do upgrades of these mills. They often received business from american firms as well. Now, their stated policy was to provide high quality services to Canadian firms, and less high quality services to American firms. Why? Because the American mills were 20 years behind ours. They would be satisfied with the incremental improvments, and they were unaware as to what their true competition has acheived.
America has massive lumber tariffs on our wood. The only thing this has achieved is to make our producers compete not only with your local businesses, but with a handicap of the tariff. This has forced them to become even more efficient in order to be competitive.
The end result is that the American mills have been left behind. If you are an American mill owner, the answer isn’t to hide behind a tariff, but it is to come up here and see for yourself, why we are eating your lunch.
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