Doom and gloom or hope?
- Thread starter medicineman
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CrackerJax
New Member
That post is inane and untrue. the DIFFERENCE which is HUGE is one sets of monies are lost at the private level, for which there are checks and balances, and the other is PUBLIC monies, which have no checks and balances. If you have been paying attention, u might realize that the govt.s interference in financial and real estate PRIVATE markets have gone greatly to creating this debacle. The PUBLIC's monies are now being funneled out not to create jobs, but to payoff cronies and donors and unions. About 12 cents of every dollar of this abortion of a stimulus will be applied to job creation. Of those 12 measly cents, most of the job creation will be for WHO?...?? why Government employees, where unemployment is about 2%. 2%!! ... I think that number should tell you, you've been had.
CEO's will go into other positions away from the targeted firms and industries, just like the ebb and flow of tidal activity, the job market is always in flux. So when a WHIZBANG Business person is produced (BWIP!!), they will not go into those targeted positions.... they will be filled by "lesser" people.
By the way, there are always loopholes.... you may very well read in three years that the janitor at GM takes home 13,000,000.00/per. It's all in the name...
"Who me? No Im nobody, I just do the floors." 
Hi Miss (waves)
out.
Spitzered
Well-Known Member
Under Coolidge, marginal tax rates were cut from the top rate of 73% to 24%. The economy rewarded this policy by expanding 59% from 1921 to 1929. Revenues received by the federal treasury increased from $719 million in 1921 to more than $1.1 billion 1929. That's a 61% increase (there was zero inflation in this period). Growth averaged more than six percent annually. We are currently growing at 2.5%.
Under Kennedy, marginal tax rates were cut from a top rate of 91% to 70%. In real dollar terms, the economy grew by 42%, an average of 5 percent a year from 1961 to 1965. Tax revenue to the U.S. Treasury increased by 62%. Adjusted for inflation, they rose by one-third.
Under Reagan, marginal tax rates were cut from a top of 70% to 28%. Revenues (from all taxes) to the U.S. Treasury nearly doubled. According to the Budget of the U.S. Government, FY 1997, Office of Management and Budget. Revenues increased from roughly $500 billion in 1980 to $1.1 trillion in 1990.
http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=676
ProfessorMembrane
Well-Known Member
Taxes are the least of your worries, gentlemen! 60% of the electricity you use, 90% of the calories you consume, and more than 70% of Nitrogen used in Argiculture are only made possible by oil & petrochemicals!
Why is this a problem? Fools! Don't you see oil is running out quicker than anyone is willing to admit? According to publicly distributed figures from the International Energy Agency , our situation is dire! When oil was discovered as an energy resource, two trillion barrels of this substance was locked within the Earth, unfortunately even this massive supply is not enough to sustain the world's energy needs, because our usage has skyrocketed in the past several decades! During the year 2001, we reached the halfway point, 1 trillion barrels of oil had left the ground, but our usage for that year alone as a planet was 84 billion barrels! With 1 trillion barrels remaining in the planet, 84 billion barrels per year would result in recoverable oil for only 11.9 years! Oil demand and usage rises daily, so every year brings us closer and closer to inescapable doom!
Why is this a problem? Fools! Don't you see oil is running out quicker than anyone is willing to admit? According to publicly distributed figures from the International Energy Agency , our situation is dire! When oil was discovered as an energy resource, two trillion barrels of this substance was locked within the Earth, unfortunately even this massive supply is not enough to sustain the world's energy needs, because our usage has skyrocketed in the past several decades! During the year 2001, we reached the halfway point, 1 trillion barrels of oil had left the ground, but our usage for that year alone as a planet was 84 billion barrels! With 1 trillion barrels remaining in the planet, 84 billion barrels per year would result in recoverable oil for only 11.9 years! Oil demand and usage rises daily, so every year brings us closer and closer to inescapable doom!
misshestermoffitt
New Member
I am looking for a suitable home in the country. I intend to invest in a wind / solar hybrid for most of my power.
I am expanding my garden and am learning home canning to get away from the chemicals in foods that are killing us all.
There are forms of nitrogen available for agriculture that aren't from petrochemicals. Planting legumes adds nitrogen to the soil. Legumes are also food.
I am expanding my garden and am learning home canning to get away from the chemicals in foods that are killing us all.
There are forms of nitrogen available for agriculture that aren't from petrochemicals. Planting legumes adds nitrogen to the soil. Legumes are also food.
CrackerJax
New Member
If ANY of the oil producers felt that there is only a decade of oil to make a profit it off of....they wouldn't be selling it at 40/per barrel.
Plenty of oil.... but don't worry, Obama is going to slow the economy down so much, I;m sure our consumption will drop. That should make everybody happy.
out.
ProfessorMembrane
Well-Known Member
The current price of oil is a result of artificial deflation! This has been brought about in order to force Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries to produce more oil to meet skyrocketing demands, when they have otherwise been stepping down production in order to hide their shortfalls in reserve replacement. Through this tactic, the large energy conglomerates can purchase up huge amounts of the last cheaply available oil on the planet without anyone being the wiser, because their gasoline dropped below $2 / gallon for a few months.
An Ever Shrinking Supply Amidst Rising Prices
Oil Companies meet to discuss Peak Oil
Oil Extraction Costs increase 80% since 2001
Exxon-Mobil's Peak Oil Ad Campaign
Exxon-Mobil CEO Russ Tillerson on MSNBC denying Peak Oil
Shell's Peak Oil Propaganda Work
And if you examine how publicly traded oil companies work, things become even more frightening!
An Ever Shrinking Supply Amidst Rising Prices
Oil Companies meet to discuss Peak Oil
Oil Extraction Costs increase 80% since 2001
Exxon-Mobil's Peak Oil Ad Campaign
Exxon-Mobil CEO Russ Tillerson on MSNBC denying Peak Oil
Shell's Peak Oil Propaganda Work
And if you examine how publicly traded oil companies work, things become even more frightening!
Revolutionary measures are our only hope for survival!LifeAftertheOilCrash.net said:
Bongulator
Well-Known Member
If government revenues under Reagan increased so much, why did Reagan pass on an enormous debt burden to Clinton? Ah yes, because Reagan gave enormous tax cuts to the rich, while screwing over the poor. So, if there were greatly increased revenues, Reagan funneled it all to rich folks. It took Clinton eight years to fix that and get the CBO reporting surpluses again. Clinton achieved this by profligate use of the veto stick. I don't think Bush used the veto stick at all in his first term, because he was rolling over for Congressional Republicans and feeding them expensive pork. Now the rest of us get to pay for all of that, as will our children, and their children.
FDR screwed up not with the New Deal, but by letting his foot off the economic pedal too early. He'd brought unemployment down to 10% from 25%, but then budget hawks convinced him that he needed to reign in spending and raise taxes to bring down the national debt. That brought unemployment back up, and a second 'bounce' recession began in 1937 because of that. Had he left taxes low and government spending high, we'd not have had that second recession and would have coasted into WWII. Instead, WWII became the government spending program that we needed. Clearly, Obama has learned from that mistake, and he is very unlikely to repeat it.
As to whether things will get worse: for the average person in the U.S., yes, things will get worse. We waited too long to get government spending going on a big scale, so there's now an enormous gap between what we CAN produce and what we ARE producing. That means massive systemic job loss for the forseeable future. These kinds of things have momentum and have to be stopped early. Too late for that now. It's like a badly bleeding cut. If you catch it early, you aren't too weakened. But if you wait and bleed heavily for an hour, well, that's much harder to treat and get back to health. MAYBE we'll be on the road to recovery in four years. Much depends on how much government spending there is to fill our production gap. If we just let things go, then there will be a massive economic contraction, and we may end up stuck in a nasty deflationary state for a decade or more.
The signs of deflation are already there if you've been paying attention. Wages are lowering, benefits are being cut, prices for things are going down. Doesn't sound bad, right? Well, it is bad, very bad. Why buy a car, if next year they'll be $2k cheaper? And in two years maybe they'll be $5k cheaper! So people put off buying things, which contracts the economy even more, leading to more job losses and more hard times. And on and on it goes. It's very difficult to break a deflationary trend. Japan's been trying to break theirs for more than 15 years, and just as they were beginning to come out of it, boom, the worldwide economy tanks, and now they're back to where they were in 1993 or so.
On the plus side, if you've got assets and little debt, and stable income, then deflation is kind of a mixed blessing. I'm actually doing better than ever, personally. Got some gold, some silver, some jewelry, the house is paid for, the new car is paid for, very little debt (and it's all at 0% anyway), and I'm accumulating piles of rarities to sell later when the market improves. Now is simply an awesome time to buy things. People are selling stuff now that clearly they do not want to sell, and under normal circumstances never would, but now they have to in order to stay afloat. I'm doing *so* well that it's affecting my diet: my refrigerator is simply stuffed with boxes of filet mignon from Omaha Steaks. We stopped ordering more not because we can't afford it, but because we have no more room in the freezer to store it until we eat some.
Nevertheless, despite how well I am doing, I am still preparing for the worst. I've been improving my bugout boxes steadily, just in case the shit really hits the fan. If we have to flee for some reason, I want to be able to throw a couple of footlockers in the car and we'll be okay for a month or so, and longer if we start using up some of the gold/silver/jewelry as barter tools. I don't think things will reach that point, because that'd basically mean a complete collapse of government, and a world thrown into anarchy. But I can't completely rule out the possibility, so I'm preparing for it anyway.
FDR screwed up not with the New Deal, but by letting his foot off the economic pedal too early. He'd brought unemployment down to 10% from 25%, but then budget hawks convinced him that he needed to reign in spending and raise taxes to bring down the national debt. That brought unemployment back up, and a second 'bounce' recession began in 1937 because of that. Had he left taxes low and government spending high, we'd not have had that second recession and would have coasted into WWII. Instead, WWII became the government spending program that we needed. Clearly, Obama has learned from that mistake, and he is very unlikely to repeat it.
As to whether things will get worse: for the average person in the U.S., yes, things will get worse. We waited too long to get government spending going on a big scale, so there's now an enormous gap between what we CAN produce and what we ARE producing. That means massive systemic job loss for the forseeable future. These kinds of things have momentum and have to be stopped early. Too late for that now. It's like a badly bleeding cut. If you catch it early, you aren't too weakened. But if you wait and bleed heavily for an hour, well, that's much harder to treat and get back to health. MAYBE we'll be on the road to recovery in four years. Much depends on how much government spending there is to fill our production gap. If we just let things go, then there will be a massive economic contraction, and we may end up stuck in a nasty deflationary state for a decade or more.
The signs of deflation are already there if you've been paying attention. Wages are lowering, benefits are being cut, prices for things are going down. Doesn't sound bad, right? Well, it is bad, very bad. Why buy a car, if next year they'll be $2k cheaper? And in two years maybe they'll be $5k cheaper! So people put off buying things, which contracts the economy even more, leading to more job losses and more hard times. And on and on it goes. It's very difficult to break a deflationary trend. Japan's been trying to break theirs for more than 15 years, and just as they were beginning to come out of it, boom, the worldwide economy tanks, and now they're back to where they were in 1993 or so.
On the plus side, if you've got assets and little debt, and stable income, then deflation is kind of a mixed blessing. I'm actually doing better than ever, personally. Got some gold, some silver, some jewelry, the house is paid for, the new car is paid for, very little debt (and it's all at 0% anyway), and I'm accumulating piles of rarities to sell later when the market improves. Now is simply an awesome time to buy things. People are selling stuff now that clearly they do not want to sell, and under normal circumstances never would, but now they have to in order to stay afloat. I'm doing *so* well that it's affecting my diet: my refrigerator is simply stuffed with boxes of filet mignon from Omaha Steaks. We stopped ordering more not because we can't afford it, but because we have no more room in the freezer to store it until we eat some.
Nevertheless, despite how well I am doing, I am still preparing for the worst. I've been improving my bugout boxes steadily, just in case the shit really hits the fan. If we have to flee for some reason, I want to be able to throw a couple of footlockers in the car and we'll be okay for a month or so, and longer if we start using up some of the gold/silver/jewelry as barter tools. I don't think things will reach that point, because that'd basically mean a complete collapse of government, and a world thrown into anarchy. But I can't completely rule out the possibility, so I'm preparing for it anyway.
misshestermoffitt
New Member
Reagen proclaimed that people needed to "tighten their belts" and then his wife went out and spent 100 thousand per dress that she only wore one time. Reagen can eat my ass with a spoon.
The Ramones made fun of him a lot. Check out Bonzo goes to Bitburg (and went out of a cup of tea and as I watched him on TV somehow it really bothered me)
The Ramones made fun of him a lot. Check out Bonzo goes to Bitburg (and went out of a cup of tea and as I watched him on TV somehow it really bothered me)
Bongulator
Well-Known Member
The thing that Reagain did that really pissed me off was this: he killed three years of social security for me. (I was getting it because my mother died -- and she worked hard to leave me that.) What he did was, he made it necessary to be fulltime enrolled in college by April or May of 1982 if you wanted to keep your social security until you turned 21. I was a senior that year, and had not graduated high school, so that was impossible. For anyone in my age bracket, he stole three years of hard-earned paid-for social security.
Now, that alone pissed me off, because I was poor, and that unexpected out-of-the-blue financial hit basically killed my college plans. But then he made it worse by ordering a new set of china for the White House, that cost $250,000. Outraged, I wrote him a letter on a paper plate asking him to sell just one plate and give me back my social security. I folded the plate in half, flattened it, taped it, stamped and addressed it, and mailed it to the White House. At the same time, a rich friend of mine got a tax break! Basically, Reagan took social security money from poor people like me and gave it to rich people in tax breaks. I guess the rich folks needed it more to buy a second BMW than I needed it to, like, eat. Or at least that was Reagan's ideological stance. Which is why I consider him a dick and shed no tears when he went gibbbering and drooling into the long night. Karma? I prefer to think so.
Now, that alone pissed me off, because I was poor, and that unexpected out-of-the-blue financial hit basically killed my college plans. But then he made it worse by ordering a new set of china for the White House, that cost $250,000. Outraged, I wrote him a letter on a paper plate asking him to sell just one plate and give me back my social security. I folded the plate in half, flattened it, taped it, stamped and addressed it, and mailed it to the White House. At the same time, a rich friend of mine got a tax break! Basically, Reagan took social security money from poor people like me and gave it to rich people in tax breaks. I guess the rich folks needed it more to buy a second BMW than I needed it to, like, eat. Or at least that was Reagan's ideological stance. Which is why I consider him a dick and shed no tears when he went gibbbering and drooling into the long night. Karma? I prefer to think so.
misshestermoffitt
New Member
My mom died when I was 17, I got 2 months social security and then was on my own. She paid in her whole life, and the government basically stole her money. The money they paid out was less than a thousand dollars. She most likely paid that in during 6 months time.
I was 18 years old, with no home and no job. I couldn't get a student loan because the government required me to show my fathers income and he didn't care if I lived or died. I was left pretty much screwed. I learned at a young age to hate the goverment and that hate has blossomed over the last 23 years.
I was 18 years old, with no home and no job. I couldn't get a student loan because the government required me to show my fathers income and he didn't care if I lived or died. I was left pretty much screwed. I learned at a young age to hate the goverment and that hate has blossomed over the last 23 years.
Bongulator
Well-Known Member
I don't hate government. I just hate those who use their position IN government to give money to the rich. Especially when that money originates with the poor. Government is a tool, and like any other, it can be used for good or evil. Getting 4 million children health care, that's good government. Giving money to those who not only don't need it, but who scoff at the very idea, is stupid government. Bush's big tax breaks for the rich made Warren Buffett cringe, because he KNEW he was taking money from middle class folks, and why would a guy with $50 billion need that? He called it 'welfare for the rich'. It was a big transfer of wealth from those without much money to those with more than they could ever spend. Funny how the Republicans always cry 'socialism!' when the money flows from the rich to the less-rich, but aggressively advocate a socialistic 'transfer of wealth' when it's going the other way. That's partly why the Republican Party is basically just a weak regional party now -- rich people only get one vote each, just like poor and middle-class people, and there are a whole lot more people who aren't rich than there are who are rich.
I don't think I could have come up with a better way to emasculate the Republican Party than the way they came up with themselves: electing an incompetent, then supporting him vigorously as he destroyed the country. They'll be as long recovering from Bush as they were recovering from Hoover. Which is to say, they probably won't be much of a factor in my life again.
If they want to trot out Palin in 2012, that would be awesome. More SNL skits! Eighty percent of the Republican Party really do want her to be their standard-bearer. (Which makes me wonder about their intelligence levels.) And 100% of Democrats want the same thing.
I don't think I could have come up with a better way to emasculate the Republican Party than the way they came up with themselves: electing an incompetent, then supporting him vigorously as he destroyed the country. They'll be as long recovering from Bush as they were recovering from Hoover. Which is to say, they probably won't be much of a factor in my life again.
If they want to trot out Palin in 2012, that would be awesome. More SNL skits! Eighty percent of the Republican Party really do want her to be their standard-bearer. (Which makes me wonder about their intelligence levels.) And 100% of Democrats want the same thing.
TheBrutalTruth
Well-Known Member
Wow, that's even less than I pay in taxes in a month, you got shafted Miss.
Bongulator, I hate the government, I fail to understand how the hell it is in my interests to have my money stolen from me, when I would be more than happy to spend it on things that I want, which would go towards providing jobs for everyone. You know, now that I think about it, I'm wondering if there isn't a correlation between taxes, and a desire for cheap goods.
Seems to me that a rational person would imagine that due to government's insistence that it should be taxing individuals (and kissing the asses of globalists by signing onto idiotic agreements like WTO, NAFTA, GATT, CAFTA, ...) and not taxing imports that we have seen a consistent deteriation of the quantity of consumer goods produced in the United States.
We have also seen, that due to high taxes on personal income, and low taxes on foreign goods that much of American Industry has fled overseas.
Ironically, much of this change has come during the last 60 years, which was completely, and thoroughly dominated by Democrats in Congress and in the Presidency.
DEMOCRATS SUCK
Due to their short-sighted-hugnfucknlove-everything-that-moves policies we have seen the United States slide from being the pre-eminent industrial power in the world that was producing millions of more engineers than it needed through a top rate educational system focused on real education instead of fake toilet paper degrees to a country that has more drastically more lawyers (also known as piss suckers for their habit of sucking up the piss of people that produce) than it needs, and is on the decline.
...
I wish I had some cushy teaching job where I could take a leave of evidence to research a paper, because I'm curious about how liberal Rome was when it fell. I'd imagine that it was pretty damn liberal, free bread and circuses for the poor, oppressive tax rates that punished production to the point of discouraging it, and a bunch of pansies that were too pussified to fight for themselves and thus forced it to rely on mercenaries, leading directly to its collapse. (Luckily the United States isn't that far yet.)
It was also openly accepted that Men could have sexual liaisons with boys (Roman NMBLA?).
Liberalism is the disease that destroyes empires, kingdoms, and countries.
It destroyed
Rome,
and is in the process of destroying Europe and the United States
Though, there is a quote that probably applies to this situation from a book that I read.
"Hard places breed hard people, and hard people rule the world."
Though it can be added onto that
"Soft places breed soft people, and soft people are everyone's Bitches"
CrackerJax
New Member
Only the Govt. is allowed to run a Ponzi scheme (social security).
Look, I can help anyone out if they are under 35 here.
1.) Dump out of Social security (you can) The net return on your SS paymants is 2%.
2.) Apply that money you would have sent the Govt. to something simple like the Dow index, which has returned an average of 7%/per year since 1950.
3.) You have now increased your return by 250% and it cost you absolutely nothing extra.
I can get a bit deeper into it, but this is an extremely easy solution for laymen.
out.
Look, I can help anyone out if they are under 35 here.
1.) Dump out of Social security (you can) The net return on your SS paymants is 2%.
2.) Apply that money you would have sent the Govt. to something simple like the Dow index, which has returned an average of 7%/per year since 1950.
3.) You have now increased your return by 250% and it cost you absolutely nothing extra.
I can get a bit deeper into it, but this is an extremely easy solution for laymen.
out.
IheartKeif
Active Member
I hope I am completely wrong. The worlds elite do not fly by the seat of their pants. There has been and is now an agenda that is in process. Squeeze the middle class to a point of surrender, open the borders at Mexico/Canada and establish the north American union. Trade the Amero against the euro, African union and Asian union because the value of the dollar will be so low. Its "change". My problem with it is that politicians are making the decisions for us and they have not proven themselves to be responsible at all. So no we are not going to get better anytime soon. To me Republicans and Democrats are like two mafia groups looking out for themselves except when it benefits them both they manage to get together. Very few of them are looking out for us. We are along for the ride. If they cared what we thought the decisions makers would listen. To them we are all to stupid to understand. The responsibility rests in the hands of Americans to find character, principles, and values that got lost along time ago. No person, administration, or government will do that for us. They love the fact that Americans are sitting back and waiting for them to make it all better because it makes it so easy for them to do whatever they want. A society that spends more effort on American idol than politics is going to get what it didnt even know it asked for.
medicineman
New Member
Social security has treated me well. I already have recieved more than I paid in. I'll be long dead before SS runs out of loot, so I am well satisfied with my return. Those younger than 35 may well find a better deal, but uncertainty in the financial markets as we have just witnessed may be a sobering view of that path. I'm glad that I have lived through both the worst of times and the best of times. I don't see good times for the proletariat in any future scenario. There will be good times for the rich and the elites, but the workers are screwed.
CrackerJax
New Member
The only way to pull out of this mess is to go back to Reaganomics. that is not going to happen so.... just buckle yourself in and watch the assets fly out the window.
They just had 200 economists plus three or four Nobel laureates put out a full page ad in hundreds of papers calling the stimulus a big DUD. They didn't call the butchers bill to pay for it a dud however. That's going to be an atomic blast when it goes off down the road. At this point the Govt. is simply piling on.....
Change.... so easily misled we are.
Hey, when does that Idol show come on Iheart?
out.
They just had 200 economists plus three or four Nobel laureates put out a full page ad in hundreds of papers calling the stimulus a big DUD. They didn't call the butchers bill to pay for it a dud however. That's going to be an atomic blast when it goes off down the road. At this point the Govt. is simply piling on.....
Change....
so easily misled we are.Hey, when does that Idol show come on Iheart?
out.
OregonMeds
Well-Known Member
How would someone opt out of paying social security? How's that possible?Only the Govt. is allowed to run a Ponzi scheme (social security).
Look, I can help anyone out if they are under 35 here.
1.) Dump out of Social security (you can) The net return on your SS paymants is 2%.
2.) Apply that money you would have sent the Govt. to something simple like the Dow index, which has returned an average of 7%/per year since 1950.
3.) You have now increased your return by 250% and it cost you absolutely nothing extra.
I can get a bit deeper into it, but this is an extremely easy solution for laymen.
out.
CrackerJax
New Member
Always thinking about yourself aren't you Med Man....
How enlightened of you.Of course you are not under 35 so my formula won't save you. SS is about to go bottom up....wake up and dump it. save urself, the Govt. can't.....it barely even tries (2%? my dog can get 2%).
out.