The Kids Aren't Alright

Originally posted by David9176
reply to post by Geeky_Bubbe

 

Name ONE country... JUST ONE... I DARE YOU... where protectionism made for a prosperous population?

The United States. That was easy. Tariffs protect a country's wages and industries.

That was tough.

[edit on 11-6-2010 by David9176]

Really? Not.

Here's a little snippet via Heritage.org from Jan09:

Buy American Hurts America

The devastating economic effects of such protectionist measures are well-documented. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, for instance, raised U.S. tariffs on more than 20,000 imported goods to record levels. Introduced as a means to reduce imports and protect American businesses and jobs,[1] Smoot-Hawley did cut the amount of imports between 1929 and 1933 in half. At the same time, exports dramatically declined,[2] and unemployment grew from 3.2 percent in 1929 to 8.7 percent in 1930 and peaked at 24.9 percent in 1933--the heart of the Great Depression.[3] Large majorities of economists and historians now say that Smoot-Hawley played a significant role in worsening the Great Depression.[4] While not the same, the expansion of the Buy American program represents a step toward the same type of destructive protectionism instituted by Smoot-Hawley.

Entire article found at link

You post a link to the Heritage Foundation...and you expect me to accept it?

How about I give a rebuttal from the Huffington Post?

Cripes.

Our trade laws and the unions have been taking massive hits since Reagan was elected...and both parties have had a hand in doing it....it's still happening now....OUTSOURCING.

I find it amazing that people defend this crazy notion when nearly nothing we buy is made here anymore...yet they complain about borrowing money from CHINA to buy CHINESE PRODUCTS which is economic SUICIDE.

Come on man!!!!! THINK.

reply to post by David9176


Hummm... actually, I find a lot of useful info on Huffington :0

I'm not such a Kool-aid drinker that I only believe information from sources with "a certain political leaning." I find information that is factual most helpful irrespective of the party politics of the outlet or even the person. A *fact* does not depend on politics.

As for unions: Well, I suppose I will leave that little bit alone with the exception of stating that *I* believe that the Unions are what RUINED this country. I HATE THE UNIONS. Thugs every one.

reply to post by David9176


I disagree with you. If there is a large change coming, it will come from the right, not the left. The politicians have done a fantastic job creating groups of people, pitting one group against another. They do it with issue politics, focus-groups and the like. The challenge and ultimately the failure of the left/socialist mentality is that it creates a lowest common denominator and has too many people in the wagon and too few pulling it. The emotional state of our society does not conform to a leftist tide because a leftist tide has as an essential component a lack of group identity and group identity is growing stronger in this country all the time. Its not a good thing, but it is a fact.

There is already a significant anti-imigrant sentiment in the country and that will grow. The minority groups, heavily invested emotionally and politically in Obama are going to pull no punches in the next two elections and should Obama lose in 2012, the country will be deeply balkanized along racial lines. You will see such a disparity among regions and groups that it will be astounding.

There is going to be a blacklash against the entitlements, the welfare state, the subsidizing of unproductive lifestyles and behavior. Subsidizing people outside of your group. The taxpayers are going to revolt against the incompetent government that has grown steadily more incompetent since the 50s.

Unions/tarriffs/protectionism are not a solution, they will only accelerate the decline.

Ultimately I think we will have a constitutional crisis when California goes bankrupt. Our federalist system will become severely challenged to deal with that I hope will lead to an era of significantly greater state autonomy and states rights. There will certainly be states attorney generals suing the federal government should the federal government seek a collective solution to a California bankrupcy.

The left has failed. It is a utopian ideal that has NEVER worked. Regimes from the left have always relied on the jackboot. There is a reason and that is that a collectivist, socialist system robs from the productive to pay the unproductive something they have not earned. That is morally wrong.

Ultimately the reason that there will not be a move to the left is that the burner has been turned off under the melting pot. The country is too fractured to get behind that kind of movement, unless that movement is driven by the jackboot of the state. It will be a topdown, not a bottom-up deal

Can anyone link me to a part of the Constitution that states we have an inherent right to a job?

Thought not.

You have the right to Life, Liberty and Property.

The instant some government official or some leftist POS tries to releave me of my TRUE rights, they will meet my 2nd rights laid out by the Constitution.

Your emotional rhetoric and insanity is beginning to show, pull up your slip.

By the way, if everyone is insane and I am sane, who goes to the asylum?

reply to post by endisnighe

Your emotional rhetoric and insanity is beginning to show, pull up your slip.

Ah...good...at least we can be on even ground now. The air smells great up here eh?

Want to add anything else? How about adding another one of your overcharged emotional posts? (which ironically you just accused me of LOL)

You strike me as someone who likes to be equally PISSED OFF and PISSED ON.



[edit on 12-6-2010 by David9176]

Cool thread, I don't have anything to add other then to commend your love for offspring.

Bring it on I say!

reply to post by David9176



The kids are definitely not alright, and that is because nobody is alright.

Since all sense of decency has broken down, nobody has been alright.

I think we need to show kids love and compassion which a lot of people don't, and we have to show them that they are valued and we have to end war and we have to stop hating each other. We also have to feed starving people, which no government in the world does, which makes the human race a total failure. We just have to love each other and especially our kids.

I was sure someone was going to post this ... since no one did, I had to

I believe the unemployement rate among the 18-25 age group is over 50% now, which is worse than Great Depression levels. The young have been particularly hard-hit by this. Most of them are already saddled with 3-, 4-, and sometimes 5-figure debt. If they have gone to school and gotten loans that cannot be discharged, they cannot hope to live what past generations considered a "normal" life for many years. Even if the economy bounces back within the next few years, many in this generation will be permanently "crippled" career-wise because they will lack experience to get hired. Even those lucky enough to have jobs are often very low-paid temps or service workers with no job security, living with their parents, etc.

Its all well and good to quote platitudes about how life is hard and nobody owes you a job and so forth, but the truth of the matter is that there is no way to have a functioning society with 50% of the workers in a generation unemployed. Meanwhile, the pontificating baby-boomers are now retiring and will need to be supported by the younger generation, since most of them have little or no net worth. They will be dependent on the young for their pensions, investments, and taxes. But how can you get blood from a stone?

This will end badly.

If something is not done to give the kids some future and some hope, I agree with the OP that there will be horrific consequences. Only I would say it would totally transcend "left" and "right." Is an intergenerational bloodbath "leftist" or "rightist?" And once the dust settles, what kind of society will emerge?

reply to post by silent thunder


It is all good to dismiss the reality that jobs are not owed to anyone as platitudes while rattling off statistics of unemployed youth while pointing out that entitlements such as Social Security will have to be paid for by taxes, but all of this just simply misses the point. You seem to realize that what jobs are being had today are gotten with no security and very low pay, but ignore the fact that the economy will not get better simply by demanding jobs be got. Jobs are created by successful businesses, but if the majority of people forgo going into business for themselves and instead insist on getting a job, then it is no wonder the economy is in the mess it is in.

If the 50% youth you cited as being unemployed simply refuses to look within themselves and find out what they can do to profit in the market place without relying on employment from others then you bet your sweet patatootie things will not end well. Who taught these youth that the best they can hope for is finding a job working for someone else? Who taught these youth that the American Dream was just a silly platitude?

The fact of the matter is that life is hard, and it takes effort and sometimes many failures before one finds success, and even then, sometimes that success falls way short of the dream, this is the reality of life. Too bad there aren't many jobs out there that pay for prognosticators of doom and gloom relying on unemployment figures to support their predictions, because then there are many who would be happily working today.

Success isn't found by finding reasons why it can't be had! Success doesn't come easy, but nothing in life worth having does. If people want jobs, then there must be people willing to succeed in their own businesses so these jobs can be created! That is not a platitude that is just the simple fact of the matter.

reply to post by endisnighe


If FDR would have survived his fourth term you wouldn't be saying what you just said.

Ever hear of a little something called the Second Bill of Rights.

Roosevelt's stated justification was that the "political rights" guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights had "proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness." Roosevelt's remedy was to create an "economic bill of rights" which would guarantee:

A job with a living wage

Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies

A home

Medical care

Education

Social security

Roosevelt stated that having these rights would guarantee American security, and that America's place in the world depended upon how far these and similar rights had been carried into practice.

We could have a country even better than the one we have now, and the Right would not be allowed to take away our inherent rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. And as of now none of these can be met other than life. We don't have our liberty, we don't have anything left to pursue other than watching corporate CEO's getting filthy rich by sending our jobs to China.

Then we have people come and tell us that the problem is too much government, the Unions, and workers rights. But ever notice that when we had all of those things we went through the period of massive expansion known as the Golden Years. From 1945-1973 we exploded with exponential growth across the world, and in the USA we used a system known as Keynesian Economics, where the government spends money to stimulate the economy. Labor Unions covered 36% of workers and we had an income tax of 91% on the rich.

Then we backed Israel in their wars and that started the oil embargo that led us to the end of Keynesian economics. And from 1973 - 1983 we suffered through deflation, inflation, unemployment, and economic loss. Then Reagan came in and strip the income tax to 25%, shipped jobs overseas, crushed Unions, and begun rapid privatization. And that has continued from then through now, it's still happening and it will continue t happen and we will continue to hear the right say we need to move further right and that will solve our problems.

I think it was moving right that put us in this situation, wasn't it under the left-wing Keynesian system that we were growing massively and unemployment was down to 1%? But I guess a stagnant economy, skyrocketing income inequality, corporate takeover, and unemployment of 10% is better?

I guess you people fell and hit your #ing heads.

[edit on 6/12/10 by Misoir]

reply to post by Misoir


Regardless of your view of any political system, regardless of what you believe the government can and can not provide for you or what the government should or should not provide you, when you seek the government to give you happiness, you've lost the game, my friend.

That government which believes that they have the charge or ability to grant people happiness are among the most repressive in the whole of human history. Happiness can only be defined by the individual and therefore "happiness" supplied by the government is manufactured happiness, manufactured to the whim of government to create the happiness the government believes the citizen should have.

Regardless of what ever noble intensions, that is the ideology that has created killing fields from Russia to China to North Korea to Cambodia.

Those of you who are hungry for the days when CEO's are not getting "rich" at the expense of the "common man". Need to do a bit of reasearch of how the senior members of the regimes who's ideology was to create happiness lived in relationship to their charges. You'll find that the upper echelon of those governments lived every bit as high a life as our current CEOs do now.

FDR was a patrician who had contempt for the "common man". He had no faith in people, nor in their ability to chart a successful future for themselves absent the guiding hand of the government. FDR was a disaster who took the first step down the road to socialism in this country by creating the entitlement mindset. Sure, he was an effective politican, but without question believed in a maximum role of government that was based on a foundation of contempt for the citizens of the country.

[edit on 12-6-2010 by dolphinfan]

[edit on 12-6-2010 by dolphinfan]

Originally posted by captaintyinknots

Originally posted by David9176


It's been 30 years since Reagan. Our trade laws have been destroyed....anti-trust laws are now ignored and no longer relevant.....unions have been broken.....yet somehow business is who we should trust and F the American worker.

Good post, but I dont understand your point about Reagan. Reagan was no better than either of the Bush's, or Clinton, Or Obama. They are all just a processing of shills, chosen by the same people, furthering the same agendas. Reagan is a MAJOR reason why this country is in the position it is.

The kids were no better off with him, than they are with any of the others.

the real reason Reagon was such an Icon (to today's standard's) is because he ended what was the begining of another depression and, to everyone's eyes, ended the cold war, would hold great merit to his popularity. He also spoke from the heart, and that is what American's relate to... matter's of the heart. We Americans, we feel it, then we think about it, then we do something about it. WE ARE the revived 'Roman Empire' without even trying to do so. Or, did we?

Conspiracy is the foundation of this website. Politics is the main conspiracy chatter in this forum. Correct me if I am wrong. We all have our own opinions and ideas on how to run this country. Yet, there is one thing we cannot deny...our leaders throughout the presidential terms, have gotten shadier and shadier. Bush Jr. wash a beacon hiding in a shadow. Clinton was numbers in result of science. Bush Sr. was Too quick to fight and Reagan was humble in many ways...a fine and angel like figure who lead our country in the right direction with a wife to follow. I cannot, at the drop of the hat, name the presidients before him in exact order...you see...I was raised in the 80's and President Reagan was the first president who interfered wtih my life and let me know what he was telling us was very important. In 1989 I turned 18 and it was my time to vote.

Bush Sr. was vice president for 8 years and prepared for any challenges the president had/or would face. Bush Sr. was a 'shoo-in.' the quick gulf war and apparant win put Bush Sr. in the high approval rating nationwide. Yet, that was all he did as president and by the time re-elections came around, the public wanted more/demanded more from their leaders.

President Clinton was the most harmoneous replacement in the times...ecspecially with Hollywood such a big influence in the 'Big Picture' ideal set for the elite. Anyway, President Clinton, received all the praise in the country's economic turnaround during the "90's Boom," forgetting that he was only benefiting from the Reagan Economics which took a few years to take effect. Now, we have forgotten that stradegy.

He knew, that if you give tax breaks to the rich, it gives them the incentive to generate their gains abroad, while motivating the workers, getting word to us, the consumers, gaining trust of the originator. This is a circle and works in any aspect of life.

By taxing the poor...and I am talking to you Obama...you only keep them poor, but by cushioning the rich then, the rich are no longer threatened by the poor, causing the poor to become rich without hurting the rich and all are happy. It makes total sense to me. Let the rich be rich, but by keeping them rich you make it possible for all to be rich. Then again, the rich must learn to be happy with what they have and not always seeking more...but that is another mystery I cannot contain. You see, I was blessed to be poor.

I just like to say "keep it simple"

reply to post by captaintyinknots

Reagan is a MAJOR reason why this country is in the position it is.

A truer post was never made, but most people still don't realize this piece of wisdom.

Part our homeless problem is Reagan - this cold hearted bastard closed down 90% of the Mental institutions and his tax breaks for corporations and the elite rich really screwed the middle class.

But, the average person knows it all and refuses to realize that most of our politicians in DC are all under one master agenda and it's no longer for the people and by the people.

Today Approximatly 1 in every 150 children in the US are born with Autism. wiki.answers.com...

and folks, that number is growing.

Don't care, think this won't ever affect you - think again.

reply to post by ofhumandescent


Sorry, I think it's disingenuous to blame a problem on a man who has been dead for 6 years almost to the day and out of politics for over two decades.

Just when does something cease to be the fault of Republicans? Did President Clinton change anything re the walking wounded that comprise a lot of our homeless population?

Actually, as broken as the system to deal with the chronically mentally ill is, it is better than locking someone up in an institution and throwing away the key.

An interesting book on the issue[s] has recently come out: Robert Whitaker's Anatomy of an Epidemic. It is in my stack of books to read but I have not yet reached it. I look forward to reading it though as the author seems to have a great deal to offer the debate of how this country handles mental illness.

I have the right to

LIFE

LIBERTY

PROPERTY

I do NOT have the RIGHT to

sponge off another
to your hard earned labor
to your RIGHTS
to your liberties

I tell you what, the instant someone tries to take my liberties and rights, they will meet my INHERENT right to self preservation. Hear that?

Emotional rhetoric? How bout this for emotional rhetoric?

Come and TRY and take my rights leftist freaks. JUST TRY!

I am not afraid to die for my rights and for YOUR rights. AT ALL.

I am not afraid to die for the very right of self preservation, how bout you? Come and try to take my rights.

Going to take my right of property?
Going to take my right of life?
Going to take my right of liberty?

TRY!?

reply to post by endisnighe


Nah... I'll let the government handle that.

Who pissed in your cheerios? You left for a while now you come back blazing. Ever think you're just a wee bit to strung out and paranoid?

Originally posted by Misoir
reply to post by endisnighe

 

Nah... I'll let the government handle that.

Who pissed in your cheerios? You left for a while now you come back blazing. Ever think you're just a wee bit to strung out and paranoid?

Wee bit?

What the HELL are you talking about?

WAY paranoid and WAY strung out.

That is just me MISOIR. I have turned the corner. I have had it with being cerebral and trying to teach. Frell that, time to just tell people the way it is.

There is no Santa Claus, there is no Tooth Fairy and GOVERNMENT will NEVER be there to help you.

Can anyone else see the idiocy in believing they can? Do you also believe in the Pot O Gold at the end of the rainbow, with the Leprechaun?