What's Wrong With America?

No, asinine blaming the government is no different to the asinine blaming the victim bovine excrement.

The PROBLEM is that hardworking Americans are NOT being paid LIVING WAGES because all of their increases and bonuses are going to the GREED OBSESSED!

The effective hourly rate has not changed in DECADES while the COST of everything else has INCREASED.

Look up the figures for yourself if you don't believe me but please stop regurgitating the debunked pablum.

 

30 years .. into a 50 year cycle - puts us 5 years past the 25 midpoint. We are on the same page either way.

Yes .. this a probability ratio .. and a prediction of sorts. This wave seems to follow - mirror - the demographic cycle ... for which Dent is famous - and has described in significant detail.

The boomers hit their high spending years in the mid 80's. If one was born in 53 rough midpoint between the boom (45-62) one is 28. Buying house - having kids .. High spending years.

If one was born in 53 .. you will have your 67th birthday in 2020. These folks are in their low spending years but high health care cost years.

It is a bit of an ugly coincidence. There are numerous other waves hitting the shore. Check out the action in the REPO markets .. "fear".

Overnight lending rates spiked to 10% in September - forcing the fed to inject liquidity into the markets to the tune of 120 Billion. (We are supposed to be reducing the Fed balance sheet)

Interest rates are trying to rise but are being kept at bay by market intervention - messing with the invisible hand - eventually the invisible hand hits back.

There are other nasty waves that seem to be converging - I am in risk off mode.

 

Merely 500 years ago, the wealth was not much different than it was 2000 years ago, save for population growth. What happened 500 years ago (something important)?

In any case, it is futile to extrapolate from a relatively short time window of a few 100 years, which is a blink of an eye on the time scale of humanity, or evolution as a whole, that wealth is infinite. We will all see that reversal to the mean is a powerful force.

 

Some good points, and, yes, we are on the same page. You are one of the few posters on here who can think about the big picture, rather than the daily grind of partisan politics fights. It is refreshing to see that big picture thinkers still exist.

 

Yes - thank you for not crying "prove it" for claiming that 1+1 = 2 Makes it easier to talk about the big picture.

 

Americans have not yet fulfilled the ideals upon which the US is founded because those ideals are more akin to east and west than they are to north and south. The ideals upon which the US is founded do not prescribe an outcome; they describe a self-direction.

 

The universe and weath are finite to the exactly same extent and wealth is even less so because wealth can be as little as an idea or as large as an ocean liner and anywhere in-between.

 

The littlest tiny idea still uses resources. So do 1 million of littlest tiny ideas, or 100 million of them -- 100 million times the resources of one. Thus, your argument doesn't hold up to physical reality.

 

They could build very nice less expensive houses, except for zoning and HOAs.

I had a neighbor down the street who built his own house in his spare time in a couple of months. It is about a thousand square feet. He said he spent less than $15k. This is in an area with no zoning.

 

They don't

Wealth and money are totally ficticious concepts. Their only relation to reality is what we have all agreed to.

As with all conceptualizations, wealth and money can grow or shrink as we choose to agree upon either of those.

 

There are various reasons. But in my opinion, tens of millions of Americans are basing their personal economics on a model that was more appropriate 50 years ago than today.

For example, most people still buy into the idea that you get a job, work hard, and stay with that SAME JOB for decades. Buy a house and put down roots in an area...for decades.

Now, work flexibility is the name of the game. Being willing and able to uproot yourself and take on new opportunities in the next town or in the next state whether you've lived in the same place for 10 weeks or 10 years.

Another major reason (though I'm sure you will call it blaming the victim).
Divorce.
No matter the reasons, it is a lot easier to pay for one home (purchased or rented) with a combined household income of $60,000 a year than it is to pay for two homes on $60,000 a year.

 

From my experience, monthly rent is more expensive than a mortgage payment. So if people are renting, then it suggests they can afford a mortgage, but choose not to? Also, judging by the size of Americans nowadays, maybe they are eating their discretionary income rather than saving it for a down payment on a home.

 

That is exactly the problem. Conservatives want to live in a nice country, but do not want to pay for it.

 

Why would we do that, when by simply redirecting our selfishness we can fight to take what others earn?

 

The basis of capitalism is the *smart* individuals making their individual decisions on individual subjects. It's not 'Paying for it' so that retarded (but exploitative) government bureaucrats get to decide. It's not something familiar to most leftists outside a few in Silicon Valley as statistically, they stack up on the former end.

 

Living life in the womb (University) and Big Picture are a misnomer. The concepts are completely and totally opposed to each other.

 

The single biggest problem in America is people believing they deserve other peoples stuff.

 

This is completely wrong and you can not show any mathematics that show it to be so.

Thomas Jefferson wrote quite a few letters on the subject. In England at the time, by law, the oldest son inherited a father's entire estate. This is how England was able to hold wealthy households together, like the type seen in the TV show Downton Abby. Jefferson thought this arrangement wrong, the stratification of society, as he envisioned a classless society.

He thought, that by law, a man's wealth should be divided equally among his heirs, to prevent the build up of excessive wealth. He also thought that the wealthy should pay taxes, and progressively more the wealthier a man man becomes. While the poor should not be burdened with taxes. His reasoning was two fold. On the one hand, the wealthy can afford to pay them, whereas they are a burden on the poor. After all, if someone is making tens of millions a year, a million dollar tax is no big deal. The second was to help prevent an excessive build up of wealth. He feared that if certain individuals or entities were allowed to accumulate too much wealth, that it would allow them to wield undue influence over the political process and commerce.

If one looks at the data, one finds that when the top marginal taxes were high, the middle class arose and blossomed. Since Republicans began their campaign, under Reagan, to reduce those top marginal rates, the rich have gotten richer and the rest have stagnated, and the homeless have become a thing. Add some Bush tax cuts and more inequality, more homeless.

I know ya all like to pretend it was something about Democrats giving loans to poor Blacks, but the fact of the matter is, by the end of Bush's presidency, the tax cuts had allowed the wealthy to suck so much out of the economy that there wasn't enough money to go around for the rest of us.

Now we have the Trump tax cuts which have resulted in a massive increase in the deficit and debt, and a stagnation of the economy. It is mostly being propped up with loans. The Dow Jones is about where it was 22 months ago.

There are more homeless people under Trump's leadership than any other president, ever. Like the homeless, vote for Trump. Besides, a good deal of them are Trump supporters. After all many do little more than sit around, inject drugs into their arms, consume alcohol, and listen to right wing talk radio.

 

Kind of like some people wanting to have nice schools, roads, and fire departments but not wanting to pay the taxes to pay for them.

 

We already pay taxes for those things but bad people take that money and spend it on other crap.

 

Have you read the preamble to the Constitution? "We the people.. ...in order to form a more perfect union,..." and all that. It is how do we make a country that is good for all of us. Not just you, not just your kind, but all of us.

 

That's not a good summation of the preamble.

The country is great for everyone now.

 

I come from Boulder Colorado and saw first hand how government and business working hand in hand made for an atmosphere that makes Boulder one of the wealthiest cities in America.

From the beginning, the people organized a campaign to bring the University of Colorado to the city, with the idea of being the Athens of the West. They even raised the money amongst themselves to build the first building. The city lobbied to bring national laboratories, which helped attract the budding high tech industry.

It is a symbiotic relationship. The city and county, mostly via property taxes, provide the children a top notch education. On the latest round of tests, Colorado eighth graders scored first in the country, in math and science. Colorado has smarter children because they put in the effort.

The National Labs do a lot of basic research which provides plenty of knowledge that private business can draw from. The University is a research university, with much of its research related to the local National Labs and high tech companies. A lot of college students work in fellowships with the companies and labs. There is like a circuit, where engineers and scientists, bounce from company to company, and to the labs. There are companies that design and build the scientific instruments that the labs use. Much of which involves developing technology that can be applied commercially.

A similar dynamic occurs in the Bay Area.

Ever notice that the more intellectual one is, the more likely one is to care for the environment?

 

Yes you love boulder we get that so what?

Ever notice the more intellectual one gets the stupider their ideas become?
Ever notice how the more people who say they care about the environment the worse the environment gets?

And did you ever notice the more people hold themselves up as the proper example of how to be the more totalitarian government becomes.?

 

Quite the opposite. If the state provides the platform to from which to excel, one has more freedom.

The state establishes rights. With no state, there are no rights, or freedoms for that matter.