Curious, as a couple of years ago I replaced all the fluorescent tube lighting in my house with American designed LED Chinese manufactured fixtures at a cost of about $5.70 per 50 cm fixture and $10.85 per 1 m fixture. They consume half the power and are as bright or brighter than the previous lights. Has anyone priced similar fixtures in the U.S. noting that I reside in Asia? I have zero problems with capitalism, and apply collectivism as I see fit.
exactly, if someone cuts their prices we normally think of it as a good thing. Liberals would be happy if the Chinese raised their prices and charged America more.
why encourage a poverty level of life?? you end up like Cuba where the entire country is lazy and does not like work. - - - Updated - - - so where does collectivism fit best??????????
It shows their lack of understanding of basic economics - how can anybody think that artificially increasing the price paid by US consumers for Chinese goods possibly be net beneficial to the US ??
Providing for nothing in return no more than a poverty level of life should encourage individuals to expend some effort to improve their level of life. How many people might leave the work force were government to provide a median income level of support to those not working, or as another has suggested a $15 minimum wage for working and $14 an hour equivalent for not working? At the community level and lowest levels of government. Good government begins with consent of the people at local levels and spreads without imposition or force, but most easily by others through recognition of the results achieved.
Charles Murray has proposed an interesting "Plan to Replace the Welfare State" in with every citizen 21 years old and greater is given a $10K annual cash grant. This replaces the welfare state entitlements. Negative incentives are eliminated but when income increases starting at $25K to $50K the grant is gradually lowered to $5K. "In Our Hands" - Charles Murray - 2006
I oppose any form of government welfare exercised at the Federal level, but would support it most strongly at the local level with State level government assistance with the consent of a majority of its citizens. Any Federal level assistance to a State(s) should be in the form of a loan to be repaid with some interest, with the possible exception of natural disasters which are beyond human control. As a note, I recall a news story from some years ago where a flood along the Mississippi river resulted in destroying a small town and the town wished to rebuild on higher ground to avoid a future recurrence, but Federal government would not provide the aid unless they rebuilt in the same location. Who, in that case was the more pragmatic thinker the local government or the Federal government?
Define wealth? Without clearly defining what wealth actually means, that kind of formula might not underscore the accuracy in the reality behind the creation of [financial] wealth. America has now long since been a consumer based economy. We stopped being a nation that conserves a very long time ago. We now have an entire nation that knows nothing other than Spending & Consuming. In such an economic "reality" the notion of real wealth will always be defined as the capacity for spending and consuming. My vision wealth is the creation of sufficient abundance in the aggregate such that worries over not having enough are removed from all levels of society. The question is how do you go about doing that. You can get there in a free market economy but only if all participants remain ethical and moral. Probability of that happening? Very low. You can also get there by the intentional and social redistribution of wealth, but again, the only way that survives outside of totalitarianism is if everyone involved remains moral and ethical. Probability of that happening? Very low. We are stuck not because we lack the ability to produce wealth, but because we lack the moral and ethical backbone to do it fairly, such that inherent inequality is of no concern. There will always be disparate levels of success in life. There will always be various economic strata in life and there will always be some who have more by way of consequence than others. But, having access to meeting the fundamental basic needs of life should be the hallmark and privilege of being an American. This is the failure of our nation and has been since its founding. There needs to be a balance struck between Socialism and free market economy Capitalism. There needs to be an absolute bottom floor below which no American should be required to go below in terms of their standard of living. Their hope and expectation should be lifting themselves off that floor and joining a well [smartly/wisely] regulated free market economy that expands room for everyone at every level.
sounds childish and stupid for sure. We've had a balance or mixed economy for 200 years but the balance has always been shifting toward socialism as socialism has failed. We have more socialism than ever now and yet all Bernie and Hilary want is more crippling socialism because they are far too stupid to see that past victories have led to the current failures. 1+1=2
Like my post implies, when you learn enough about how our economy works and the founding principles upon which the country was established, you'll have the ability to address the matter more eruditely and with less error. You never had 200 years of "balance" in the US economy and anyone knowing anything about economics understands that much. You've had dominant forces rise and fall through corporate manipulation for eons in this country which eventually brought the nation into an era of industrial monopoly and the poor treatment of the working class as a direct result. The term "Working Poor" has always had meaning in this country and for good reason. A poorly regulated corporatocracy, greed, bad working conditions and a social pallet of toxic psychology among the working class sufficient to induce people to drunkenness, alcoholism and wars of prohibition. We struggled in this country to find "balance" but have never truly committed to it and you can take close look at the Industrial Revolution to figure out why/how that happened. Guaranteed results are not what America is all about, but real "balance" would ensure that a level playing field remained extant for all. However, you can't have a real conversation about Capitalism without also talking about Equality of Access. We don't have that now, nor have we ever had it in this country. Some have been born into a very privileged paradigm in which society handed them certain protections and levers virtually on a silver platter. Others have been born into a world very violent to their physical existence, and certainly not pliable, amenable or supportive to their upward mobility in society. Some can go out and get a loan to start that new business while others, probably more qualified cannot and for reasons that go to the heart of Equality of Access - itself function of "balance." Balanced? Of course, not. Anyone paying attention already knows that for a fact. Capitalism evil? Of course, not. We can see the benefits of a free market economy everywhere we look. Should there be a Minimum Floor in standard of living below which no American should reside? Some would say, yes. They would tell you that Inspiration is the mother of Invention and the more your back is against the wall, the more likely you will innovate your way to a level of success. Quite frankly, I have a hard time arguing against adversity being one of the mothers of invention because that's how I built a multi-million business on my own - through massive adversity. At the other end of the spectrum, I know that many people just don't have the strength to go through what I went through to become an economic success. However, that does not mean they are worthless, deserve less or somehow don't want to bootstrap themselves. It means that circumstances in their life presented them with challenges they could not overcome at the time they were dealing with them. This is why I call for some kind of minimum floor, as it would encapsulate the greatest number of people at the bottom and at least be a staging area for potential growth absent the rigors of worrying about eating real food the next day. I know adversity and I know how inspiring it can be. I also know that not everybody has the kind of disposition to tolerate enormous pain and suffering while being innovative enough to create a successful business model at the same time. It is not easy to accomplish when everything is handed to and certainly no easier when you don't know where your next meal is coming from. However, I can now generate over $100k a day because of that adversity and have designs on being able to generate $1mln a day as a direct result in the future. Still, I understand that most will not be able to simply bootstrap themselves they way I did - so they need a reasonable bottom where they don't lose all hope as they boot themselves. That's "balance" and we don't have that right now across the board. Right now, the wealth cap is increasing. People like me are getting richer while the poor get poorer. You can't shove success down someones throat. You cannot force someone to be successful. Not everyone has the ambition to even want massive levels of economic success, but at least everyone should have a reasonable opportunity for the same, if that's the road they wish to follow. There is nothing wrong with wisely regulated Capitalism. There is also nothing wrong with society taking note of the fact that it is no stronger than its weakest link and making sure that those least capable among us have a viable path to thrive as well. My goal is to become the first independent Trillionaire on record and I don't see myself as needing another tax break or offshore gig. I do see myself as eventually having a moral duty to do something about the Poverty Mindset and that will include doing something about the system that perpetuates it. I chose not to be the selfish bastard who made out good for himself, but who could give a damn about anybody else.
liberals are simple bigots who think they are morally superior because they support welfare without having the IQ to know how crippling it is. When Clinton ended welfare as we know it (thanks to Newt) by making it workfare fully half decided they no longer needed welfare. What does that teach the liberal??
why doesn't the liberal point out the biggest error and say why it is an error, instead of writing a novel to cover up that he cant????
the liberals call for it out of compete ignorance. Bush introduced the first $2 trillion budget and the first $3 trillion budget, and now Barry has taken it to $4 trillion and $20 trillion in debt. Will the insane liberals call it a minimum floor when budget is $10 trillion and debt is $50 trillion?? No of course not. The more they cripple people with their programs the more money they need to fight the affects of their anti American welfare programs. Its never enough for the libcommunists! Read the book "Never Enough" if you want to understand how the libcommie mind works.
Followed by: So, either you did not read the why and therefore don't understand it, or you read the why and yet still do not comprehend it. Either way, it is still your error. And, by the way - if you had ready anything I've written here you would have learned by now that I am not a so-called liberal or a so-called conservative. I don't fit the traditional mould or orthodoxy of either platform as neither will do anything to solve America's problems. You should read my thread on why political parties are the problem in America and what the fix actually looks like, if you really want to begin solving problems in this country. Or, you can sit and pretend that you are going to elect your way out of the mess that both parties have put the country into. Of course, that will do nothing more than prolong the problems, extend more pain and suffering for most and guarantee that future generations of Americans have no better opportunity to repair the damage that stubborn, ignorant and foolish generations before them created. Now, do you actually have anything intelligent and problem solving to say? Because, if it comes from either party, I can guarantee you it will neither be intelligent nor problem solving and it will only maintain the status quo, which does absolutely nothing more than enable the "elites" to play you like a fiddle while you ignorantly cheer them on for having done it.
dear, a long, brain dead rant in court does not establish the truth it gets you thrown in jail for contempt. You have to ask and answer brief questions. Do you understand these basics? imagine truth in court being decided by two fools ranting rather than by questions and answers??? Think!!!
you want more welfare so you are standard libcommie. Terms of debate were defined as liberal and conservative 2000 years ago by Plato and Aristotle and are nicely reflected in the modern voting booth. We don't need an illiterate imagining he represents a 3rd way
In reality we are only faced with a choice of big government or bigger government in the voting booth today. And in actuality there are many more ways than two or three, but Centralized government results in greater collectivization of the people and their State and local governments and even communities and neighbourhoods as well as defined by a majority of elected politicians, not voters.
And, a brain dead moron without a clue about what he pretends to understand will not earn points among those who do. - - - Updated - - - Unfortunately, too many people are crippled by party dogma and never really do the research to figure out that it is the entire system that is broken, not only the liberals and not only the conservatives. In 1790, the national debt outstanding was $71 million. In 1863, the national debt outstanding reached $1 billion or the first time. That means that in 73 years or just 7 decades the national debt rose by 1,408%. We don't have reliable data on GDP until about the early 1900s, but what we do know is that real GDP could not have possibly grown as much. That's 19.2% absolute flat line straight linear growth per year. Now, we can use any statistical projectile for measurement we want to play with the numbers but when looking at the organic performance of my business, I look to pay attention to flat line absolute performance. Putting this into context and using a reduction factor of 10% along the X-axis for time, if my company starts out its first 7 years with increasing its debt by 19.2%, I know that I am headed for some serious trouble and that whatever I am doing to produce those numbers, I won't be doing it for long or I will go bankrupt in a heartbeat. But, let's take a look at what the Democrats and Republics managed to do with an even bigger organization, the United States of America. From 1863 to 1918, we struck another milestone. National debt rose from $1 billion to its first double digit billion level of $14.5 billion. Two very interesting things to note here. First, this came after Congress created the private banking called the Federal Reserve and the increase took 55 years to transpire. That's an ironic 1,450% increase in just 5.5 decades or 26.36% absolute flat line increase in debt. Yet, in 1913, the year the Fed was ratified, national debt was down at $2.9 billion. That means the five year period between 1913 and 1918, debt rose by 700% in less than 5 fiscal years. That was the absolute biggest single five year increase in debt our nation had sustained. This debt legacy would become the hallmark of the creation of the Federal Reserve Banking system. But, did Democrats and Republicans learn anything? Of course, not. Let's continue. Notice what happens next. From 1918 to 1943, just 25 years later the national debt rises from $14.5 billion to its first triple digit grand slam of $136.6 billion. That's 80 years and an increase of 1,915% absolute or 23.93% flat line linear growth in debt per year. When has the United States of America managed a 23.93% increase in GDP to offset its debt each year and that does not include interest on that debt. But, it get so much worse for the Democrats and Republicans. This two party disaster in Washington rolled the dice and between 1943 to 1982, our national debt struck 13 digits for the first time in our miserable fiscal history at $1.14 Trillion. This represented an increase of 8,397% over 39 years absolute or 215.3% straight flat line per year. This period in American fiscal history saw the biggest growth in national debt ever recorded not merely in US history, but in the entire known Universe. But, that was not even the starting point of our troubles. It would get much worse. Between 1982 to 2008, we hit the staggering double digit trillion mark of $10 Trillion. That means in just 26 years we increased the national debt (unresolved) by another 877% absolute or 33.73% straight line annual. Between 2008 and 2015, we took things to a whole new level of stupid by increasing our debt to $18.1 Trillion on the books. This means that between 2008 to 2015 national debt grew by 181% absolute and 25.85% straight line linear. That is the history of our nation's national debt story and though it does not include our GDP growth story, you can see that by any math used no single year maximum GDP growth, even if it could be sustained, would have been sufficient to draw down unresolved principle let alone make a dent in the never ending interest. This is what a Bankrupt Company looks like, folks. If I had run my business this way 10 years ago, I would not have been in business 10 years later. You cannot run a company this way. You cannot run household finances this way. What makes either Political Party and those who support those insane parties believe that we can run an entire country this way? Our saving grace? China, Germany and Japan. Our biggest failure? Republicans/Democrats and the Federal Reserve. The numbers don't lie. We know what's killing America. We just don't want to own up to it. All OPEC has to do is shift from the USD to the EUR and that will completely implode the United States economy permanently. Wake up, Smart Guy. Your card has just been pulled. What do you know about the subject of economics, fiscal and monetary policy that causes you to put your faith in the current system to provide a solution to the problem that it and it alone has created for us? Explain the economic model, fiscal and monetary policy combination that will resolve what I have just outlined for you as the real underlying problem, if you dare.
Don't wait for the translation, Ted. Let me answer the question for you. You don't have an answer. Case in point. You cannot solve the problem that I outline above with more elections of more criminals to either the White House of the Peoples House. The only solution here is Revolution. The People going to Washington and simply saying enough is enough. And, if you don't understand that, if you don't have the stomach for that, if you don't have the balls for that, then turn in your uniform and stop calling yourself a Patriotic American, will ya. Because, obviously, you don't know the first thing about either being a Patriot or being an American, if you can sit here and continue to vote for these clowns that are utterly destroying our nation and its future. Now, what are you going to do? Are you going to seek a new government that honors the Constitution and conducts itself with fiscal sanity. Or, are you going to pour more fuel on the fire by participating in yet another charade dressed up to look like a genuine election? Whatever the hell you do, make up your own damn mind and stop allowing this fraudulent system make it up for you, if you truly have one to make up on your own. Unreal.
That's been done. It's the 4% Solution which includes privatizing Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security and additionally the Taylor Rule. Of course there would be tax reform to reduce the rates and broaden the taxable base or preferably eliminating all taxes on production and only tax consumption. And self reforming our education system via competition by granting vouchers to every K - 12 student in the US.
Privatization of the three Cows based on what as a normalization factor? I spent years developing my ability to grow capital and not lose it, but I would not trust another money manager to do the same with even my capital, let alone that of an entire federal program on the scale of the three Cows. I'm all for tax reform, but not without spending cuts. A consumption (flat) tax is regressive for those below a certain income threshold as their net/net realized expenses will easily be grossly higher than those in my income bracket. I can personally benefit from a consumption tax tremendously, but that won't pay the bill long term and it will hurt many more than it benefits. Personally, I'd like to revamp the entire educational system in America, so I'm with you on that score. I think a High School education can be obtained by age 15 and the equivalent of a BS/BA degree by age 18-19. I think "college" should launch the Masters level of education and PhDs in America should be as common place as McDonald's, only far healthier for our citizens. If we are going to develop a new energy technology based economic model then we need a lot more creative minds working the many problems we now face in research, design/development, production and distribution of that technology. A new energy technology based economy needs to be our generation's Moon project, but done in a far more economically feasible manner and with a billion times the spinoff effect. We have to get back to real science, mathematics, engineering and focused research. I remember when being a EECS major was cool, or when being a MEP major was common. We developed IBM, DEC, Intel, AMD, Sun Micro Systems, Apple, Oracle, HP, Compaq, PeopleSoft, Hyperion, Microsoft just to name a few of the greats. Today? Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Groupon. We can do better. We have done better. We can do for new energy technology what we did for enterprise technology, only this time it will have lasting legs for generations to come. By the way, Clinton/Gore offered new technology start up incentives which helped to fuel the 2nd technology wave in this country. The 1st wave was instantiated with the Moon project. A new Energy Technology strategy would be the 3rd and biggest technology wave in US economic history by light years. But, who is thinking like this today. Instead, we are talking about Hillary's emails and Donald's sanity. We need to get our act together. Donald wants to build tunnels, roads and bridges. Ok, that's all fine and good, but that's not the future. The future is New Energy Technology and the massive spinoff that it will produce, so that we will have the revenue to build tunnels, roads, bridges and high-speed rail. At the core however, the current two party system has to go. We've outgrown that nonsense and we can do better. Party politics are for corrupt officials, corporate pimps and sheeple who don't really want to take responsibility for self governance. We must do better and we can do better.
The nation of Chile and the three Texas counties where the gov employees elected to implement a privatized system instead of the social security system. The Texas plan provided a return of ~ 5% whilst the current social security system returns only ~ 1% (and nothing if you die before age 62 after contributing for all your lives). Insurance policy vouchers are far superior to the single payer Medicare and Medicaid systems that we currently have. And implementation of these reforms results in very significant spending cuts. I'd take these privatized systems in a heart beat if they were available. Ryan's Roadmap is a good baseline starting point. If a new energy supply system is the goal which is cost competitive and has 24/7/365 available the fed gov should offer a very substantial prize for the development by private companies instead of picking the wrong winners (current solar and wind technologies) and thus wasting resources and time.
Maybe we should "goad" the Chinese into paying their citizenry to be couch potatoes instead of having them come over here and make us look bad with a Second World work ethic and not a truer, Third World, work ethic. That would increase their wages and enable them to buy more goods and services.
