Ron Paul has a lot of ideas I love and a few I don't. A breath of fresh air in American politics.
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What is wrong with the USA?
- Thread starter Duster929
- Start date
I don't know how seriously a person takes their religion if they can't be bothered to go to church.
When I was younger most of the people I knew went to church.......now hardly anyone and I doubt they care about it.
The USA is different, it's hard to compare to Canada. In the USA, although a smaller proportion of people regularly attend church, those that do are much more serious about it. And the biggest and most influential churches are no longer the mainstream Catholic/Protestant ones. The most influential churches that have the most powerful member tend to be literal and evangelical, and view politics as a means to achieve their religious objectives. It's totally different from Canada.
He's just the kind of crazy wingnut that I imagine would have been welcome among the founding fathers. He has radical ideas that challenge the status quo and conventional thinking. Some of it is idealistic, general, and very possibly wrong. But I don't think he's stupid, and he's one of the few candidates that seems to operate on some kind of principle or set of values.
I often wonder what a guy like Benjamin Franklin would say if he was around today. Likely he'd be dismissed as a totally impractical idealist.
Dear USA,
Stop spending all your money on homeland security, building weapons to kill people, and lawyers.
#1 - kill the lawyers.
#2 - bring your sons and daughters home from all over the globe
#3 - spend the military budget on education and lead the way
#4 - take care of your people
#5 - don't be afraid
Stop spending all your money on homeland security, building weapons to kill people, and lawyers.
#1 - kill the lawyers.
#2 - bring your sons and daughters home from all over the globe
#3 - spend the military budget on education and lead the way
#4 - take care of your people
#5 - don't be afraid
I lived in Indiana, Michigan and Ohio and never found that. Maybe if you lived in the bible belt.
Deimos
Well-known member
Gore Vidal had some interesting things to say about his native US of A on the Sunday edition this past weekend. Really entertaining old man IMO!
Skip to 25:25
http://www.cbc.ca/video/news/audioplayer.html?clipid=1912342115
Skip to 25:25
http://www.cbc.ca/video/news/audioplayer.html?clipid=1912342115
bobjohnson
Well-known member
This is such BS, the US can never win when it comes to deploying their troops.
Option 1, bring all their troops home and not participate in conflicts in any way, and be criticized for not helping **** countries with their problems. Option 2, send troops to help support **** countries and protect american interests, get criticized for intervening.
Same goes for sending foreign aid, send nothing and get criticized for doing nothing to help. Send aid and get criticized for wasting money abroad when there are problems at home.
The US is not in nearly as bad shape as people suggest. Yes during 2008/2009 things were not great. However, the economy really is rebounding even if its not obvious to the average person yet. The banks and the large corporations see that it is, and they will release more of their money, which wont mean instantaneous growth, but it will mean growth over the next few years. Spending is also opening up, large corporations are now buying things that they put off during the worst of the recession, and a lot of companies took the opportunity in 2009/2010 to refinance their debt at favorable rates or raise capital at favorable rates.
As far as the national debt, yeah, the way its going now they wont pay it off. However, remember Clinton in only, what, 4 years? created a multi-trillion dollar surplus. When **** finally starts going completely smoothly, the national debt will also subside... you cant start cutting programs and incentive plans now otherwise, yeah, you will undo all the progress made towards economic recovery and then **** will really hit the fan.
People calling out the end of America as a world superpower really have no idea how influential America is... They have their hooks in everything. No one with the power to make actual decisions wants to see America fail, theres nothing to gain from that. China may match and surpass America, but it wont be for a while yet. And as for saying that these days its all the wealthy and bankers running everything... Obviously you have never looked at American history... its always been that way. The elite have always run america, going back to its founding days. Nothing at all has changed and the same cries were heard during the great depression, about how bankers ruined everything and the super elite were driving the country into the ground... they rebounded fine from that and the recent recession was no where near as bad.
Are there things they can fix? For sure. American education is fairly lacking. Their healthcare is **** compared to other first world countries. And there are many other issues as well. But overall? America has some of the smartest people in the world and its still producing some of the most inventive and creative people in the world. And its still one of very few countries in the world where you can actually go from having and being nothing to being incredibly successful based on pure ingenuity, work ethic and skill. Can everyone do that? No, and you shouldnt reward mediocrity. Does everyone have the ability to do that? Yes, and if anyone tells you different, theyre an entitled moron and exactly the type of person who caused the issue. People making 30k a year do not deserve to own a BMW and a 700k dollar condo. If you want the best things in life, you need to work to get them, and that does not mean taking out 60 year variable rate mortgages, it means working 2 jobs and taking night school and improving your station in life if thats your only option for achieving your goals... And to say this is strictly an American problem is putting blinders on. The same thing happens here in canada and every other first world country where the sense of entitlement has gotten out of control. I had a friend who took out a 7 year loan to buy a WRX STi while working at a gas station part time making 14k a year. Can you blame the banks for giving him that loan? No, I wouldnt. I blame the person who felt that they deserve a 50k dollar car without having to work hard to earn it.
Macroeconomics doesn't work in that manner. Interest on national debt is not paid to "banks", it is paid to whoever buys government bonds (US terminology "treasuries" but it's the same thing). Anyone - including you or I - can buy government bonds; just set up an investment account at a brokerage and you can do it. (Why would you, is quite another matter - but you can.)
Organizations with cash to spare, buy bonds (effectively, lending money) from organizations that need cash. It doesn't have to be governments; corporations can and do sell bonds as well. In order to encourage this to happen, bonds pay interest. The interest rate is effectively set by auctioning the bonds to whoever wants to bid for buying them. In the case of governments, it has largely been China that has been buying US government debt, effectively subsidizing the US government deficit.
If China loses its appetite for buying US government debt ... or even worse, starts regarding it as a poor investment and hits the "sell" button ... look out below, for the US dollar. Of course, China knows that hitting the "sell" button would crash the US dollar which would first devalue what they could get for selling that debt and then stifle China - US international trade; China does not want a weak US dollar and a strong yuan, which is a strong disincentive for them to do it and I doubt that they would try. But there is the possibility that China's economy will slow down (whether it is an engineered slowdown, or otherwise), resulting in a smaller appetite for all that US debt. It is not a pretty picture.
Back to the original question; effectively the question is whether the government can free-issue money, and the answer is that it can and it does. This is the "money supply". The problem is that doling out cash freely is strongly inflationary and de-values the currency. Doling out too much money is asking for hyperinflation and hyper-devaluation.
I'm thinking it will be a whole lot sooner than that.
aLiveandiNsane
Active member
YouTube "money as debt" and watch the animation. That's where it all starts from. PM me for more documentaries that'll help piece the puzzle.
Maybe you are right, it's kinda confusing:
http://almostm.com/2009/10/religion-increasing-and-decreasing/
Not the brightest bulb in the box, eh?
I agree with the point that no matter what the US does, it gets criticized. However, I don't agree that it has to be this way. Everybody wants the US to intervene when there's a humanitarian or natural disaster. What I think bothers people is the inconsistency of US foreign policy. In many parts of the world, they back one side, then the other. Or they back a group to overthrow a government, then 20 years later they're fighting with the people that they installed. The foreign policy isn't transparent or consistent, and this leads to mistrust. When the US does something somewhere, people doubt their intentions or their long term plan. They've lost the moral high ground, because they've played too many games in too many places. South America, Africa, the Middle East, the Eastern Bloc, Southeast Asia. America has gotten deeply involved in the politics of these areas, but they've engendered a lot of suspicion because they haven't always operated in good faith.
I don't agree with this. The US is in bad shape, probably worse than most people suggest. Clinton was able to create a surplus during a period of enormous economic prosperity. It was also a time before Homeland Security, 2 full-blown wars, bank/auto bailouts, a stimulus package, and a new health care bill. Take a look at some of the numbers. Debt and spending today is very different from the Clinton Era. Some very harsh proposals to cut spending and balance the budget predict that, at best, the budget could be balanced by 2040, and that's only if they get employment to 2.7%.
A lot of people rely on the history of the USA, to say that the future will be more of the same. They see that America has been resilient, so it will continue to rebound and lead. But the world has changed. The distribution of incomes is much different - the spread between rich and poor is much larger than it was in the past. The last 30 years has seen a huge transfer in wealth in the USA. Its strength has often been its middle class. Look at some of the numbers - this has changed dramatically from other periods in American history. The other thing that has changed is the competitive landscape. The USA was able to rebound before, because they had advantages. Following the great depression, Europe was a disaster in so many ways, and America took advantage of that. They didn't have to compete with China, Southeast Asia, Africa, or Latin America. That's all changed now.
This is the disconnect that I'm talking about. You can't continue producing the most inventive and creative people in the world, if your education system is lacking. Start looking at the leaders of business and creative divisions at places like Apple, Google, Facebook, etc. Yes, they're American companies. But often the drivers within these companies are immigrants from other countries, the products of better education systems.
You make some good points, but my fear is that people will put so much weight in the traditional strength of America, that they'll miss the opportunity to change direction before it's too late.
One other thing that's different today from prior recoveries. The huge age imbalance in the population. There are currently 5 working people for every senior citizen. In 15 years, there will be 3 working people for every senior citizen. Think of the implications of that for health spending, education spending, and finding the political will to make changes. Not good.
Sorry. I'll cut that out. Didn't realize it was so long till I had to read it.
until there is a re-emergence of a middle class, the u.s. is stuck in their downward spiral.
the u.s. has a walmart economy that is self-perpetuating:
middle class jobs disappear, can't afford shopping anywhere but walmart. buy made in china products from walmart, heighten the trade deficit. demand of made in china products increase, more manufacturing jobs in north america are lost. more manufacturing jobs are lost, more people have to shop at walmart. guess who's hiring? (and paying mcjob wages, while ensuring that wages are low by aggressively union-busting?)
it's a vicious cycle.
it will happen here if harper doesn't stop bj-ing the oil industry and start paying serious attention to the manufacturing sector of ontario.
How so? Most of the major banks and companies that were around prior to the bust are around now. The US hasn't completely fallen apart. I fail to see your argument.
And it's actually not the "too big to fail" argument. It's the "too intertwined to fail". Global economy has too much vested in the US to let it completely fall apart. Will their dwindling economic leadership force them to co-operate more? Yes. However, it's not going to "fall apart".
If you look at the way the UN is SUPPOSED to function, when a country is forced to enact peacekeeping work in another country during a UN sanctioned war (e.g. Afghanistan not Iraq) they are supposed to receive funding from said country. The whole idea falls apart because invariably the countries that need help are too poor to pay. I hate to say it but Trump has it right on the Iraq front. If the Iraqis keep wanting help, (and btw the government there DOES want help), they need to start paying for it.
There's also the other major issue that the US dollar is THE global currency. It has been the global currency since WWII. This has put enormous pressure on the US dollar. The EURO was SUPPOSED to help take some of this pressure off, but the Europeans with a typical "**** America" stance have placed such constraints on that currency that it hasn't done this.
Did you know that we actually had the 4th largest standing military in the world post WWII? Most people don't. The goal of the Canadian military historically has been to have a strong officer core(we have a LOT of officers, both non-com and commisioned compared to other countries' militaries), which could train civilian militia to defend the nation in very short order. Sadly, 60 years of cutbacks makes this largely unviable. In both manpower and equipment terms.
Lastly, this country is actually eminently defensible. Harsh terrain on the coasts, harsh climate 6-8 months a year and the country is FRIKKING HUGE. You may be able to take this country, but it's going to be ***** to hold it.
George Bush Jr said in an interview once that he reads the Bible every day. Didn't cause so much as a flutter within the rank and file of America, but let Harper say the same thing up here and watch what happens. Americans generally are more religious than Canadians; the further south from the Mason-Dixon line you travel, the more and more of those three cross tributes you see by the roadside.
Actually had a religious question for the Rev if he's still reading this thread.
I come from a Christian background and one of the biggest tenets of the Christian faith is tolerance right? Love thy neighbour, turn the other cheek,etc. While I am a non-practicing Catholic, that message was quite prevalent when I was growing up.
Given the highly religious nature of the southern states, how do you think it is that this message is lost...resulting in the racial intolerance we see in those states? Is the Baptist version of the Christian faith less explicit in this? (I think that's the dominant sect down there)
I come from a Christian background and one of the biggest tenets of the Christian faith is tolerance right? Love thy neighbour, turn the other cheek,etc. While I am a non-practicing Catholic, that message was quite prevalent when I was growing up.
Given the highly religious nature of the southern states, how do you think it is that this message is lost...resulting in the racial intolerance we see in those states? Is the Baptist version of the Christian faith less explicit in this? (I think that's the dominant sect down there)
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