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    US Economy Thread

    TR1
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    Post  TR1 Thu Aug 01, 2013 1:50 am

    There is an undeniable problem in the distribution of wealth in the US, and no it is not just due to "poor people whining about the clever rich".
    The past 30-40 decades the middle and lower classes have seen little adjusted income increase despite the nation gaining in wealth.
    Off-shoring is raping the middle class as well.
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    Post  As Sa'iqa Thu Aug 01, 2013 11:24 am

    The US does have significant problem with wealth distribution. 400 wealthiest individuals own more than 1,5 TRILION $, 50 wealthiest alone own more than 700 bln $. The causes were outlined by me in my last post.

    Obama has just announced that he wants to lower taxes for corporations and raise taxes on small businesses... do you know why?

    As a libertarian I think that taxes should be low for everyone and that the government should be in charge of only a few areas such as the military and the judicial system. The rest should be privatized because a healthy market competition always brings lower prices and higher quality at the same time. We can see this in that sectors of the economy which are free of state intervention.
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    Post  GarryB Fri Aug 02, 2013 11:17 am

    The rest should be privatized because a healthy market competition always brings lower prices and higher quality at the same time. We can see this in that sectors of the economy which are free of state intervention.

    That is funny... have you never heard of price fixing?

    Where independent companies in a market will decide on a price for their product and set prices based on profit rather than value for money.

    In this case there is no real competition you just end up paying more.

    What exactly do you do when rich people from overseas come in and buy up all your banks and telecommunications networks and electricity supply and delivery infrastructure?

    Lots of things are critical to a countries sovereignty the power grid is one. education and media is another.

    When everything is for sale then expect it to be foreign owned very shortly.

    The real problem is the fair payment of tax... most people pay their taxes properly, but rich powerful companies can get away with paying almost nothing. Rich people put assets in their childrens names so they don't pay tax on them. They buy failing businesses to get most of their tax back.

    look at how much the big accountancy firms cost per hour... you don't actually think they are hiring their services to make sure they are paying enough taxes... for every dollar they spend on accountants they are likely saving 10 dollars in money that would otherwise go to taxes... which is why they do it.
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    Post  As Sa'iqa Fri Aug 02, 2013 11:37 am

    GarryB wrote:Where independent companies in a market will decide on a price for their product and set prices based on profit rather than value for mo
    Such a monopoly of a few companies can exist only if it's supported by the state. In a free market such a situation is impossible, because competition will show up almost instantly, when it senses an occasion to make money for selling something for a cheaper prize.

    I think that an dieal example of how free market works can be seen in IT and telecommunications. Look at cell phones for example - in just 30 or so years they went from being a luxury for a few to being ubiquitous to the point that models from just 7-8 years ago are treated as waste. There are no government regulations regarding what a cell phone should or shouldn't have or any other socialist bullshit. And the market thrives and shows no signs of slowing down.

    That's almost a law of physics that a more free society will always prevail over a less free one. Since Middle Ages the richest and fastest developing countries have always been the ones with the most free economy.
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    Post  BTRfan Fri Aug 02, 2013 8:52 pm

    That of course is the end result of the sort of marxist programs enacted by President Lyndon B Johnson, his so-called Great Society. Instead of lifting the Blacks up, they just made Whites as poor as the Blacks and destroyed the Black middle class and the family structure in Black society.
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    Post  BTRfan Fri Aug 02, 2013 9:01 pm

    In some instances, poverty is self-inflicted...

    Let us read between the lines...


    Salyers' daughter, Renee Adams, 28, who grew up in the region, has two children. A jobless single mother, she relies on her live-in boyfriend's disability checks to get by. Salyers says it was tough raising her own children as it is for her daughter now, and doesn't even try to speculate what awaits her grandchildren, ages 4 and 5.




    A jobless single mother who relies on her live-in boyfriends disability check... From this we can gather that she had two kids by different men, or perhaps two kids by the same man, but the boyfriend is not the father [hence she is called a "single mother"] and it seems reasonble to assume she tossed the man out of her life. She does not appear to be disabled but she doesn't mind receiving mone from her live-in boyfriend's disability check. Maybe he is legitimately disabled, maybe he is not, but it seems she does not have any urge to work, so she's trading her body for part of that guy's monthly check.

    Most men don't want anything to do with single mothers, so perhaps the man is legitimately disabled and he has to take what he can get.
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    Post  BTRfan Fri Aug 02, 2013 9:04 pm

    Smoking a cigarette in front of the produce stand, Adams later expresses a wish that employers will look past her conviction a few years ago for distributing prescription painkillers, so she can get a job and have money to "buy the kids everything they need."
     
     
    So this trashy woman has money for cigarettes but talks about lacking the money to buy the kids everything they need. She also committed felonies [which were probably plead down to misdemeanors] and I can almost guarantee you she's probably still abusing painkillers and probably selling a few along the way. She's also probably covered in tattoos.
     
     
    Poor people never have money to buy healthy food for their kids or decent/clean/new clothing for their kids, but they always have money for cigarettes, alcohol, and lots of tattoos.
     
    Your typical smoker in America will probably spend about $300 dollars per month on cigarettes assuming they smoke two packs [40 cigarettes] per day.
     
    When you some poor person, covered in tattoos, smoking a cigarette, moaning about how they don't have enough money to buy their kid a new pair of shoes and how their kid has to eat ramen noodles and spam, it is important to realize that they had ample money, they simply decided to allocate it for tobacco and their tattoo lifestyle, instead of spending it on their child.


    Last edited by BTRfan on Fri Aug 02, 2013 9:16 pm; edited 1 time in total
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    Post  BTRfan Fri Aug 02, 2013 9:15 pm

    Only in an industrialized Western nation [such as America] can somebody who weighs 300 pounds, lives in a government provided house, receives $200-$300 dollars per month in government food stamps, has the government pay for his cellular phone, provides him with 400 minutes per month for his cell phone, has the government pay for his internet connection, has the government pay for his electricity bill, in addition to receiving free medical care, be considered poor.


    If you want to see poverty, go to India or Brazil and look at some one-legged blind man living in an alley, look at a man in a 10x20 metal shack made from the remains of a shipping container who has to chase and catch rats to eat while he watches his kid die from tuberculosis.


    The West hasn't known poverty since the Great Depression in the USA and since Weimar in Germany.



    Americans consider themselves poor if they are unable to afford a new car every four or five years.
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    Post  As Sa'iqa Fri Aug 02, 2013 9:20 pm

    The title of this topic is misleading. The article says that 4 out of 5 US adults struggle with poverty and joblessness for at least part of their lives. So it includes all people who were unemployed/poor at some point of time, even for a week or so.

    But the article itself is right, the situation is dire.
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    Post  BTRfan Fri Aug 02, 2013 9:44 pm

    As Sa'iqa wrote:The title of this topic is misleading. The article says that 4 out of 5 US adults struggle with poverty and joblessness for at least part of their lives. So it includes all people who were unemployed/poor at some point of time, even for a week or so.

    But the article itself is right, the situation is dire.


    Most of the problem is that hard-working middle class individuals, skilled laborers, technicians, etc, are being burdened with incredible taxes that go to pay for programs such as that woman who has kids she cannot feed, refuses to work, and yet has money for cigarettes.


    People who work are expected to shoulder ever-increasing burdens on behalf of those who are content to live off the disability check of a live-in boyfriend and let their kids go without clothing and healthy food so they can buy cigarettes.
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    Post  As Sa'iqa Fri Aug 02, 2013 10:18 pm

    That's what I was saying in another thread about USA. Nobody wanted to listen to me.

    Another problem is outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to other countries.
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    Post  medo Sat Aug 03, 2013 10:19 am

    I read some predictions for America, that US government have time window only to the end of 2014 to make true reforms of the system and start rebuilding true economy and repay debt. If not, US will face in next decade new revolution and civil war, where US government will have to face 300 million armed citizens. In next years we will see if US government will also use drones to kill US citizens from kill lists like around the World. This will be good indicator for civil war.
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    Post  GarryB Sat Aug 03, 2013 11:20 am

    Such a monopoly of a few companies can exist only if it's supported by the state. In a free market such a situation is impossible, because competition will show up almost instantly, when it senses an occasion to make money for selling something for a cheaper prize.

    On paper you are correct. In practise you are wrong.

    Using my example of petrol stations... no company is going to look at a small market at the far ends of the Earth and say... they are paying too much for fuel... we can go in there and make some money by offering it for a much more fair price. For a start the infrastructure needed to sell fuel is expensive... you have to buy the fuel from the local companies who will be your competition.

    Each fuel company in NZ brings in its own fuel so unless you can do the same you will need to buy from them... do you think they will give you a fair price?

    It is the same with telecommunications... if one company owns the lines do you think they will sell line time to rival companies fairly?

    I think that an dieal example of how free market works can be seen in IT and telecommunications. Look at cell phones for example - in just 30 or so years they went from being a luxury for a few to being ubiquitous to the point that models from just 7-8 years ago are treated as waste. There are no government regulations regarding what a cell phone should or shouldn't have or any other socialist bullshit. And the market thrives and shows no signs of slowing down.

    Cell phones are like bottled water... a tremendous waste.
    Most Cellphones here in NZ are expensive to actually use unless your company pays for it... if we actually had real competition it would be much cheaper... but who is going to pay for cell phone towers... most companies don't want to spend money on infrastructure so the prices really only go down with the technology... the service cost remains roughly the same.

    That's almost a law of physics that a more free society will always prevail over a less free one. Since Middle Ages the richest and fastest developing countries have always been the ones with the most free economy.

    Hahahaha... free? Have you not been paying attention to the laws passed in western countries over the last decade or so?

    My favourite would have to be the anti social behaviour laws in the UK where non illegal behaviour can become illegal if someone complains several times about it... and proof of reoffending can lead to the purpetrator going to jail for offenses that are not actually illegal. The tests to determine if the offending is continuing are not to criminal standard and can just be a judgement with no level of testing required.
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    Post  As Sa'iqa Sat Aug 03, 2013 11:46 am

    Ehh... I meant ECONOMIC freedom. Read something about libertarian concept of freedom, where does it begin and where does it end...

    Economic freedom has been the driving force beyond the success of many countries, including USA. If it erodes - so does prosperity.
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    Post  GarryB Sun Aug 04, 2013 9:31 am

    I am sorry, but free market does not work... we are seeing it now... continuous growth leads to bubbles and failures... occasionally catastrophic failures.

    If any country other than the US was to try to solve its debt problems by printing money... we all know what would happen.

    Why one rule for the US and another for everyone else?

    Obviously because the US makes the rules and is allowed to break them because no one else can see an alternative.

    Hopefully BRICSA and a long make she keep adding letters, will become strong enough and united enough to form a new alternative system based on something more substantial than US government promises and try to create something more realistic and stable.
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    Post  NationalRus Sun Aug 04, 2013 10:43 am

    you mean corporatism/fascism doesnt work and the keynesian-marxist economy experiment trying to mix free market with big goverment, corporatism and welfare state

    ther are no free market countrys in the world, singapour/hongkong/liechtenstein are the last ones out ther, some US states a bit also like delaware, NZ and australia a littel bit, the socialist experiment of debt, goverment spending, from the top down has failed, politcians and not economist deciding what to do, bribing the electorate, with favours an walfare checks, they will all burn like greece and spain etc. and ther are all not done burning yet

    printng money, who prints it, the free market? fat pig beurocrats in D.C deciding somthing pulsating as interest rates like the sovietunion decided bread pirces, who they think they are? fascist US regime will go down without a question, ther ponzi sheme will collapse

    yeah the BRICS opened up quite good and refuse to go trough the road of artificial growth trough debt-spending but still are fare to socialist yet and strangle the economy to much when will people learn that only free people decide best whats good for them or not, and never will a pig goverment bureaucrat decide it for them better, we russian learned the lassion (thank god) putin mead it qite clear that we will never, ever again go trough the fatal road fo trying to creat artificial growth by borrowing and printing money, nothing blown up artificialy and kept alive artificial will ever last and we russia are going a good road of dismantling goverment influence and privatization, only our insane soviet beurocracy and coruption is still eating us all russia 
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    Post  As Sa'iqa Tue Aug 06, 2013 9:16 pm

    Today no country i the world is close to such level of economic freedom that USA had during XIX century. There was no income tax until 1910 or so, no concessions for resources etc. And it was the greatest period of American economy, with prosperity unrivaled elsewhere in the world. Then it gradually befggan to shift to an interventionist economy, first by creating The Federal Reserve and then during FDR's times (FDR also loved Stalin)
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    Post  NationalRus Tue Aug 06, 2013 9:38 pm

    As Sa'iqa wrote:Today no country i the world is close to such level of economic freedom that USA had during XIX century. There was no income tax until 1910 or so, no concessions for resources etc. And it was the greatest period of American economy, with prosperity unrivaled elsewhere in the world. Then it gradually befggan to shift to an interventionist economy, first by creating The Federal Reserve and then during FDR's times (FDR also loved Stalin)

    amen!

    if we continue our path russia will teach the world one day the world what free people in a free market can accomplish
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    Post  Hannibal Barca Fri Jan 17, 2014 2:30 am

    You gotta love this. It sounds like a white flag to me by the Americans. Watch especially the second part when he admits a tremendous, irreversible, decline of US.


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    Post  SSDD Wed Feb 26, 2014 7:19 am

    US will not collapse because in Soviet Union it was more like an empire, where people from Russian ethnicity was most important. Soviet union collapsed because it was a multi-ethnic country with many languages unlike US, in US there is only 1 culture and 1 dominant language, so US is not going to get splinted.

    US should rather decrease it's MD stock and should close bases of Europe.
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    Post  Werewolf Wed Feb 26, 2014 7:58 am

    SSDD wrote:US will not collapse because in Soviet Union it was more like an empire, where people from Russian ethnicity was most important. Soviet union collapsed because it was a multi-ethnic country with many languages unlike US, in US there is only 1 culture and 1 dominant language, so US is not going to get splinted.

    US should rather decrease it's MD stock and should close bases of Europe.

    Yes because in US you all only speak english, everybody, there are no latinos who speak spanish, no big part of asians, no europeans who didn't forgot their heritage all speak only english.

    Wrong again, there is no such thing as american culture, cultures you have are different from spanish,asian,european and FYI Soviet Union had also one dominent language and unlike in US, everybody was capable of speaking russian in Soviet Union.

    And your reason why Soviet Union has failed and why US will not, is such utterly ignorant nonsense. Soviet Union collapsed due economical reasons and not language or culture and same will happen to US, it is already a failure and will collapse in your very own lifetime and noone in rest of the world will feel pitty for US empire it will be a holidy for many people.
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    Post  macedonian Wed Feb 26, 2014 10:10 am

    This is an interesting topic, and one that merits a longer, more thought-out reply...unfortunately I'm pressed for time at the moment, and will have to get back to it later.

    A little teaser though: I think things in America are 'going south' and FAST!
    So much so in fact, that I expect Washington state and Oregon to soon border Alabama... Laughing
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    Post  SSDD Thu Feb 27, 2014 5:34 am

    Werewolf wrote:
    SSDD wrote:US will not collapse because in Soviet Union it was more like an empire, where people from Russian ethnicity was most important. Soviet union collapsed because it was a multi-ethnic country with many languages unlike US, in US there is only 1 culture and 1 dominant language, so US is not going to get splinted.

    US should rather decrease it's MD stock and should close bases of Europe.

    Yes because in US you all only speak english, everybody, there are no latinos who speak spanish, no big part of asians, no europeans who didn't forgot their heritage all speak only english.

    Wrong again, there is no such thing as american culture, cultures you have are different from spanish,asian,european and FYI Soviet Union had also one dominent language and unlike in US, everybody was capable of speaking russian in Soviet Union.

    And your reason why Soviet Union has failed and why US will not, is such utterly ignorant nonsense. Soviet Union collapsed due economical reasons and not language or culture and same will happen to US, it is already a failure and will collapse in your very own lifetime and noone in rest of the world will feel pitty for US empire it will be a holidy for many people.

    It is not like this, people of other ethnicity in Soviet union were oppressed, Latinos are not. Latinos are not an ethnicity, the whole America continent is of immigrant background, unlike Russia.

    Soviet union was a country under dictatorship where free will was not allowed, if any one speaks that of that immediately they were labeled CIA agent, Traitor etc, US is not like this. The language based partition happened in USSR because it's economy was very weak, thus language based separatism arrived.

    Language based separatism was always in Russian empire or it's successor Soviet Union, it was only fueled by economic collapse.

    For Russian speaking I am saying USSR was basically by Russians. Thus USSR collapsed, I am sure US's power will go down with arrival of India, China and Russia but it will not get splinted like USSR. USSR was successor was Russian empire, US is not like this.

    In US where all people have immigrant back ground apart from Native Americans, is not going to collapse.

    Despite various Capitalist and other US is still a democratic country, where free speech is allowed.
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    Post  GarryB Thu Feb 27, 2014 8:07 am

    Despite various Capitalist and other US is still a democratic country, where free speech is allowed.

    Except it isn't.

    I have already mentioned the case of a respected reporter who was recorded off camera saying she had sympathy for the Palestinians and that the Israeli treatment of them was bad. She lost her job over night... is that really free speech?

    I don't think so.

    Ask the Dixie Chicks about free speech in the US...
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    Post  TR1 Thu Feb 27, 2014 9:14 am

    Well it is certainly more free than it is in Russia today.

    Sad but true.

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