Posted on 02/18/2010 4:36:23 AM PST by radioone
Economists have given us all the usual diagnoses of what went wrong in a now bankrupt Greece — high taxes, tax cheating, too generous retirements, unsustainable entitlements, government corruption, and anemic demography.
(Excerpt) Read more at pajamasmedia.com ...
Overseas, thanks to the “free trade” movement.
This is a brilliant VDH article on the state of our economy.
Please PING!!! to the usual crowd.
So for a while longer, we need the miner, the oil pumper, the farmer, the fabricator, the carpenter, the road-builder, the railroad guy, the cement layer, the chemist, the computer engineer — and the system that allows them all to create wealth unimpeded by government and in an environment in which the citizen who benefits from their labor appreciates their industry.
Finish the obvious thought, VDH. It's our moronic trade policies that have stripped away our real wealth, policies that have since WWII opened our markets to any and all comers while allowing competitors to keep their markets closed to US. Free trade, and the pretend free trade the US has practiced for decades, are nothing but formulas for averaging down the US standard of living and national wealth.
He has good stuff in here about wealth creation. If the Republicans were smart, they would hammer Obama on that. Deficit spending and hiring more government workers cannot create wealth. Obama has done nothing to create wealth. Accessing natural resources, cutting taxes, cutting government spending -- these things create wealth. If some services to the poor end up getting cut, we'll have to live with that -- we need to get busy creating wealth.
On the contrary: America is in trouble not because of Free Trade, but because it can't compete. Its industry is weighed down with taxation, over-regulation, unionization and an increasingly poorly educated or tax-demotivated workforce.
Shutting down Free Trade and forcing Americans to buy their stuff from feather-bedded internal suppliers would solve these problems how?
The only reason you guys have any standard of living at all is because other people make stuff well and cheaply.
Don't like it? Try reducing your internal barriers to wealth-production. Don't whine about the competition.
Well said. Wealth creation has been all-but-shut down in America. That’s what needs to change.
bflr
Lol, can you be serious? You think the trading arrangements we have with China and Japan and most other nations are free trade???
You don't have a clue, but China appreciates your lobbying efforts.
A culture which breeds a population into the below is a major factor.
From “Welfare Ain’t What It Used To Be...
http://www.jimbyrd.com/welfare-aint-what-it-used-to-be
Sharon Jasper has been victimized. Sharon Jasper has been rabidly wronged. She has become a Section 8 carcass, the victim of ever changing public housing policies.
Sharon Jasper has spent 57 of her 58 years dedicated to one cause and one cause only, and has nothing to show for her dedicated servitude. She has lived in Section 8 housing all but one of her 58 years. This legacy was passed down from her parents, who moved into Section 8 housing in 1949 when Sharon was six months old. She has passed the legacy down to her own children, but fears they may have to get jobs to pay for the utilities and deposits that Section 8 is now requiring. She laments about her one year hiatus from the comfort of her Section 8 nirvana: “I tried it for a year… you know… working and all. It’s not anything I would want to go through again, or wish on anyone in my family, but I am damn proud of that year.”
After hurricane Katrina, Sharon moved out of the St. Bernard housing project and into a new, albeit substandard, quarterage. As can be noted from the above photo of her new Section 8 home, it is repugnant and not suitable for someone of Sharon Jasper’s senior status in the system. “Don’t be fooled by them hardwood floors,” says Sharon. “They told me they were putting in scraped wood floors cause it was more expensive and elegant, but I am not a fool–that was just a way to make me take scratched up wood because I am black. The 60 inch HD TV? It may look nice but it is not a plasma. It’s not a plasma because I’m black. Now they want me to pay a deposit and utilities on this dump. Do you know why?”
She has held her tongue through years of abuse by the system, but it came to a head at the New Orleans city council meeting where discussions were under way about the tearing down of the St. Bernard projects. When a near riotous exchange between two groups, one opposing the tearing down of St. Bernard and the other wanting the dilapidated buildings torn down and newer ones built, Sharon unleashed verbal hell with her once silenced tongue. The object of her oratory prowess was an acquiescent poor white boy in attendance. The content of her scathing rebuke was, “just because you pay for my house, my car, my big screen and my food, I will not be treated like a slave!” and “back up and shut up! Shut up, white boy! Shut up, white boy!”
Recapping from the mental log of the city council minutes in her head, Sharon repines, “our families have been displaced all over the United States. They are being forced to commit crimes in cities they are unfamiliar with. It is a very uncomfortable situation for them. Bring them back, then let’s talk about redevelopment.”
To try to bring notice to her tribulations, Sharon has graciously allowed parts of her slummy abode to be photographed for documentation of her abuse.
dining-rooms.jpg
Shown above is the dining room that the housing authority pawned off on her. Sharon will acknowledge that it is nice and all, but the “man” knows she has 25 family members to feed and the size is inadequate. She believes she is the recipient of malevolence by “the man.”
bathroom-10.jpg
Above is her bathroom, intended to taunt her because “the man” knows she is going to have to start paying her utility bills and wants to run-up her water and towel bills. Once again, she is the recipient of malevolence by “the man.”
restaurant_wine_cellar_larg.jpg
Above is the stocked wine cellar that came with her new Section 8 house. Sharon states that this is another example of the white man taking advantage of poor black women. “Look at all these bottles of wine,” she said. “They are worthless. Just another example of thinking I am stupid. All this wine is at least 10 years old and some of it is 20 years old, you know the white man kept all the fresh stuff for himself. I ain’t that stupid.”
Sharon directs the reporter’s attention across the street to Duncan Plaza, where homeless people are living in tents, and states that, “I might do better out there with one of those tents.” She further lamented about her situation, “I might be poor, but I don’t have to live poor.”
Sharon Jasper is not going down without a fight. She is the head of a tenant association that works with the AFL-CIO’s Gulf Coast Revitalization Program, which is working closely with the Congressional Black Caucus, which is working very closely with Rev. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to get a bill, operation Section 8 Time Share, passed in Congress. The bill would allow people of seniority, like Sharon Jasper, who have been loyal recipients of Section 8 housing for a minimum of 20 years, to be able to use a special Section 8 permit for a time share vacation home two weeks out of the year in a tropical location.
(snopes indicates the top half of the story is true, but the bottom half is satire beginning with the wine cellar (heck everybody knows the man doesn’t build cellars in Louisiana.))
He does, in the next sentence beyond your selection.
So for a while longer, we need the miner, the oil pumper, the farmer, the fabricator, the carpenter, the road-builder, the railroad guy, the cement layer, the chemist, the computer engineer — and the system that allows them all to create wealth unimpeded by government and in an environment in which the citizen who benefits from their labor appreciates their industry. [emphasis added]If you think VDH is going to come out of the protectionist closet and say, "the road to prosperity is for the the government to randomly make stuff more expensive," then you are projecting Pat Buchanan.
The Greeks are in trouble because of too little government interference in their economy? Because their taxes are too low?
I think we're in trouble because of bad public schools and poor reading skills (ahem).
Lol, can you be serious? You think we have free trade agreements with China and Japan and most other nations???
You don't have a clue, but China appreciates your lobbying efforts.
You don't have a clue, but American unions and liberal Democrats appreciate your lobbying efforts.
There is a great deal of sound and fury about government impeding industry, but the problem with that is those impediments have largely been in place for forty or fifty years. And corporate tax rates are actually lower than they were a few decades back, the top rate going from 52% to 35%%.
What’s changed is US markets have been opened to cheap labor nations for years so the place people now look for lower domestic costs is corporate taxes and regulation. But why not actually look at what’s happened to corporate taxes since the 1960s:
VDH neglects to discuss all the impediments he decries. There is no making up the advantage cheap labor nations have when their labor costs and labor overheads can be as little as 10%, or less, of what they are in the US.
Right down the toilet.
Just to highlight the fact that VDH props his entire column up on that sweeping generality, an easy thing to do. But just what are the specifics that he would change to restore the competitiveness of the categories of worker he mentions?
He could have at least mentioned the obvious possibilities in increasing domestic oil and gas production, but he just gives us a big generality, maybe because he has no specific solutions.
All of these guys with the possible exception of the last do physical work of some type with physical matter.
Is VDH saying that intellectual labor, the type he himself performs, does not create actual wealth? That development of internet systems such as Google, Youtube and Amazon do not create wealth? How about the entertainment industry? It generates things people desire and are willing to buy. Is it not "wealth" because it isn't physical?
This sounds a lot like the old physiocrats, who thought "real" wealth could only come from agriculture, while industry only moved already existing stuff around.
I'm not trying to be sarcastic, I really want to know. Does no part of the service industry produce real wealth?
Again, we can surmise that VDH generally does not believe in governmental solutions to problems caused by government. Which makes the typical protectionist response, more government, out of his ballpark.
In short, how will an entitled society react when the money runs out and it learns that it must change or wither away — and all the whining rhetoric about “social justice” and “a green future” and “spread the wealth” and “redistributive change” won’t bring another barrel of oil or bushel of wheat or Douglas fir 2” x 4”?
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