Posted on 04/01/2016 12:14:48 PM PDT by central_va
In recent years the U.S. has been steadily traversing down a path of destruction. While many Americans have begun to open their eyes to America’s plight, most are still oblivious to the factors that led to our downfall. Recently, the media has been touting recovery, but there are numerous urgent changes that need to be implemented before the U.S. can even think that we are emerging from today’s recession/depression.
The New Depression
The economic decline in the United States began long before the official beginning of the recession in December 2007. The U.S. is not merely experiencing a “down cycle.” Very simply put, we are no longer producing wealth. Our balance-of trade deficit is constantly on the rise, Americans individually are living beyond their means and the government has followed suit. We are forced to live on imports and debt at every level as we no longer produce enough in our own factories to support ourselves. To make matters worse, we are losing over 20,000 jobs a day as our factories are closed, sold or bankrupted.
“Free Trade” is Destroying Us
The American media favors “free trade” almost unflinchingly, despite the fact that even a cursory overview of global economies shows that no nation is being more adversely affected by this practice than the U.S.
The U.S. is oppressed by the chains of “free trade” through treaties like the North America Free Trade Agreement, undemocratic and secretive trade regimes like the World Trade Organization and border tax inequities allowed by the WTO, such as the Value-Added Tax, which is utilized by 150 of America’s economic competitors.
(Excerpt) Read more at economyincrisis.org ...
A lot of us have been on the long and slow learning curve of this reality with you!:
“I do believe it; I have believed it since I first learned what NAFTA is (circa 1996, as I recall).
While I have listened extensively to “right-wing” pundits like Limbaugh over the years, I have inexorably become more and more distrusting of both their conservatism and integrity.
I recall how Rush and others denounced someone like myself as a radical leftist for opposing NAFTA. Now, that we see the destruction before us, where is Limbaugh (or Hannity, or anyone else, fill in the (___________) admitting that he was wrong, and that he helped damage true conservatism by promoting such a globalist agenda.”
If any of them has admitted his complicity, then I missed it (and I have listened for it).
More and more, I regard them all as crypto-neocons - and neocons are only cons in the criminal sense.”
I would add all or most of the so called conservative news letters and their tv/radio spoke mediots, who live a great life in the DC area have been preaching that lie.
Wealth is created by making stuff. Or more correctly making stuff other people would like to have. The more (good) stuff you make the more wealth you have created. Cars, corn, casinos, whatever were all made by somebody or a group of somebodies. While gold bars or barrels of oil were not "made" they were discovered and processed into a usable product by somebody so I am going to throw them into the same bucket as the (good) stuff somebody made. There is no other way to create wealth other than making stuff. Everybody not involved in making stuff is just getting a slice of the wealth created by somebody making stuff.
A doctor maybe preforming a valuable service by saving your life but he has not created any wealth. Dido the bartender that hands you a beer after a hard day of bashing Trump.
Does our trade policy encourage us make more stuff here or does it encourage our producers to produce else where?
Ok lets do the math. Making stuff produces wealth our trade policy encourages our producers to produce else where. Ergo our trade policy is causing us (USA) to lose wealth. Put another way we are getting poorer while the productive nations (China) are getting richer.
:) logic is your friend.
Yes there are other reasons manurfactoring and jobs are fleeing the USA but trade our policy is not helping producers here at home in the least.
Anyone not directly involved in those things is only adding value at the margins and not creating anything. If another country is exporting those durable things to you and you are not doing those wealth creating activities anymore then your country is growing poorer by the day.
You may not care but just so you know what is happening....
Great Britain was the first country to commit suicide by de industrializing. They are the example to NOT follow.
Funny how they don't teach this in bidness skool.
>>The Donald didn’t even pass the test on being Somewhat Conservative, Somewhat Pro-Life or Somewhat Evangelical much less the “Perfect” one of any of the three. Of course he thinks he’s Perfect on everything so I guess that’s all that matters.
You are a ideological purist, so from your perspective, almost everyone is too far from perfect to be acceptable. From the perspective of most Americans who don’t live in this particular echo chamber, he is Somewhat in all three.
He is also the ONLY candidate who knows why Americans don’t have good, secure jobs. He is only one who talks about that elephant in the room. You say that you are Pro-Life, but you don’t give a crap about what happens to the baby after it is born. You demand cuts in education, social services, and health. You insist that the Bottom Line be improved by outsourcing jobs to foreign nations. When the poor, who used to move up from burger flipping to a factory job in the past, can’t find better work, you scoff at them and call them losers. You offer the baby that you want so much to save nothing to help it grow up in better circumstances that its mother other than easy credit and cheap electronics.
Trickle-down economics worked for a decade or so, but it doesn’t work anymore. Today. every American is constantly told that they must do more work to receive the same money that is worth less than it was a year ago, or they will lose their job. Is that the American Dream or is it the basis of serfdom?
bkmk
I know all that and have been the business of making stuff for decades. In retirement I still am but on a much smaller scale.
You misunderstand the most important part of the process.... getting paid. You can make all kinds of stuff but if you can’t sell it and then most importantly, get paid, making is for naught.
Rather than create wealth, you have lost it.
I would recommend you to visit local craft show where makers and artists have stuff they have made for sale. It is a small but illustrative market. Some vendors are selling stuff very well. others are not and have lots of unsold and unsalable inventory. The point is regardless of the size of the enterprise, you can make stuff but the business will fail if the stuff can’t be sold.
Many many formerly prosperous companies found they could make stuff but couldn’t sell it...... too expansive, not competitive.
My retirement job involves visiting companies both very large and very small that make and sell stuff to export customers. They make it and get paid.
I also visit on behalf of clients abroad, dead companies that are selling their still usable equipment and machines to buyers overseas. The Americans could make stuff but couldn’t sell it or get paid so they ceased operations. The foreigners are buying the machinery to have a crack at making the stuff on a different cost basis. I visit the dead factories and be sure the bones being sold are the bones being bought. It is depressing to see
The task for America, that is BTW well underway, is to create new stuff to be sold. We are not going to ever resume making the old stuff. We are after all America, and creating and making is what we do.
Anyone who thinks like this is WAY behind the full picture.
We are so deeply in trouble as a country on so many fronts. Agenda 21 is emerging on the West coast to begin the forcing of stack and pack housing and eliminate single family zoning.
The BLM and EPA have become jack booted thugs. The Sierra club and friends are using the myth of climate change to support rewilding, and in New Mexico children wait in wolf-proof cages at bus stops because the introduction of a new wolf from northern Alberta is making life hell for rural residents - which is the point.
Then the destruction of the middle class, NAFTA, Ford and everyone else leaving the country, globalization, the slow destruction of property rights...
It’s years too late to care about how conservative a candidate is. The only thing that will save us now is a candidate who is not part of the process only partially detailed above.
Ranches in the west are shutting down daily. Here in northern Michigan huge farms are about to go under from EPA strangulation. You like beef or potatoes? Hopefully soon we can get them from China.
Anyone who cannot overlook the stupid things Trump comes out with now and then or his failure at “true conservative” is part of the problem.
Better learn to garden. We’re 23 trillion in debt.
My husband and I have prepared as well as we could. The end is near, without an uprising. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see our banana republic days are already in place.
Or more correctly making stuff other people would like to have. The more (good) stuff you make the more wealth you have created.
Yes you have to make stuff that other people will pay for.
To create wealth you must extract, grow or build something, and sell it to someone who has wealth, or use it for your life.
We do precious little of that anymore.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Entrepreneurs stay where they can control product. Our rush to the IPO helps cause our outsource problem.
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