Revitalize America or we are in deep trouble

Indeed both parties are indulging in politics while ordinary people suffer. They are not dealing with issues that will rescue this country from doom that the anti-social capitalists are leading us.

A little about me
I came up in the Carter Reagan era when there were good jobs for young people.

I easily got a job working on the highway for the state, then in a kitchen in a hospital, then a great high paying job for GM in the 70’s. Today a young person coming up can’t get any of those kinds of jobs today. I feel for the future of the youth in this country.

There was a time in the late 70’s and early 80’s when we in the UAW were seriously talking about going to the 35 hour work week, 20 year retirement and trying to do for the American worker what many European countries have done for their workers.

Then came Ronald Reagan, who set back the middle class thirty years.
Now today IF ONE CAN GET A JOB . . . to survive one has to work 2 or 3 jobs.
Is that progress?

Later after Reagan started bashing unions, and helping corporations go oversees, [and taking down controls on corporation that has led to things like what is going on in the Gulf now], for huge profits at the expense of the American work-force and the Japanese began their inroads into the American auto market, I decided to go back to school [seeing the writing on the wall that the elite were slowly strangling our economic infrastructure through globalization and exporting American jobs] and got degrees in Computer Technology.

For a time we could command high wages and employers were beating down our doors to hire us. That all ended in around about the y2k fiasco, then the elite stepped in again to ruin the life’s of the lower middle class and the middle class when the IT giants moved overseas and the IT engineering jobs for Americans were gone!

I worked for HP when Calry Fiorini helped annihilate the IT industry for Americans
When you call for support on your HP pc you will get an Indian tech support rep.

Dont get me wrong, I love Indians and India but they are being exploited and we Americans are being denied decent jobs.

So I have lived and experienced twice when the elite drove good jobs out of our country and leave the industries in question, depleted. . . . First in the auto industry and now in the IT industry.
My point in all this is to say that we are in this country and the world in very serious trouble.

Believe me we are going down, down, and down.

The Republicans and Democrats are both beholden [though the Republicans are worse] to the corporations who don’t want to do what’s right for the American people that includes:

Getting control over the monetary policy of the country, from the banks, and the FED.

Then reigning in the corporations from driving American industry overseas that has ruined the middle class, and lower middle class


Having a national plan to revitalize, through massive public works programs, the countries infrastructure: bridges, parks, streets, highways, subways, high speed rail, and sane energy policies.

And pursue many other developmental programs that will revitalize the spirit in America, in economic and spiritual terms.

Then reorganize the economy around human interest and wrest control of the economy from the Military Industrial Complex.

If these things, or somthing similar are not done then I fear for the next generation.

The time for bs is over folks
We must begin to seriouly think about real change in America.

Yes. All too sad and true.

For three decades now, the good people of the American middle class have been fleeced of their wealth and their means to produce it.

Once having been defined by their savings wealth, after 1980 their world was turned upside down. Held upside down by their bootstraps, their wealth was shaken out of their pockets and picked up to line the pockets of the businessmen and politicians who let this happen.

It was the hard work and income of the middle class (whether as employees or small business owners), that made this country prosperous for 30 years post-WW2.

An economy based on goods was turned into an economy based on services. We ended up "washing each other's dirty laundry", becoming financial advisers, dog groomers, swimming pool cleaners, barbers/hair stylists, manicurists, etc., which are exactly the kinds of jobs that suffer when people lack the income to afford services.

The Home of the Brave became the Land of the Cowardly, the populace being terrorized by those in political and media power, who conditioned citizens to wail and gnash their teeth on command. And those politicians and media powers shouted loudly, Let Corporate Freedom Ring!

For example, if those service jobs had been green collar jobs, producing the goods and infrastructure needed for the 21st century, and not a continuance of a 20th century energy plan based on fossil fuel, we (and the world) would have been better off today. Instead, cowards that we've become, kowtowed to the media and politicians. Van Jones was a Communist!! OMG get rid of him!!

OMG don't let your children read this scary stuff!

And, another thing, the "small people" don't need a new group like the TPM to feel like they can do something. This one has been around for years! If all the citizen anger and action of the TPM could be put behind, for example, this group, then there would be real change.

I can still see work projects today done by citizens of the Great Depression. If instead of handing out unemployment dollars, the govt gave green works jobs to citizens, we would be a helluva lot better off, individually and nationally. Instead, my grandchildren will see NO SIGN of a nation's greatness...but they just might get a job cleaning up the lingering effects of today's GOM oil disaster.

Yes, enough bs from media and political fear mongering terrorists. But maybe this time we do need to listen to military voices. Support these troops

I propse we have been in "deep trouble" since the mid-80s.

Americans need to give up distractions and get in the game.

End social networking and talk to real people in real time.

Stop watching 6 hours of TV per day or playing games for 8-10 hours per day.

Understand that the physical infrastructure is falling apart (dams, roads, wells, etc.)

The economy is based on consumption. There are less consumers making money. What happens when there are no working consumers to drive consumption?

Originally posted by zroth
The economy is based on consumption. There are less consumers making money. What happens when there are no working consumers to drive consumption?

Correct. This is precisely what has helped get us into this Great Recession. Since the 1980s, American workers were told to take less/tiered wages and use what was left to pay more for medical, housing, education, energy, transportation, retirement expenses, in effect de facto wage reductions, working more for less income than they'd had since WW2. This does not even address the increasing numbers of part time workers or multiple job workers to earn the equivalent of the one job-40 hour workweek, but w/o the benefits.

With this downward pressure on wages, in order to continue to make corporate profits remain the same, Americans in the middle class found a car to be affordable only if leased, and a house to be affordable to buy only if "creative financing" or interest only mortgages were obtained. If they wanted anything else that their parents once bought with cash, no problem, there was all this easy money called credit.

Combine this with homeowners told to use their personal wealth locked up in their homes, for medical bills, college education, retirement, emergency expenses, the middle class went from good savers to huge borrowers. Loss your job, lose your house.

By the 1990s even the poor and downwardly mobile middle class were financially being rescued by the growing pay day loan business. More people to drain away what little wealth they had.

Interesting, but around the1980s, Americans went from being called citizens to being called consumers. To the point where when we were attacked on 9-11, we were told to do the patriotic thing and "go shopping". And by then, that meant go into debt more.

I can remember my parents telling me of their experiences of the Great Depression. My mother said that there were things to buy, but nobody had the money to buy them.

Corporations cared less if American consumers could buy, because in this global economy, they could sell their goods elsewhere in the world, like the growing Chinese and Indian middle class. As long as wealth was transferred upward, who in power cared? We now have a third world economy trying to fit in with a first world nation.

We won't necessarily have children scrounging in garbage dumps to survive, but on the scale of a first world nation, we'll have our permanent, wealth-denied underclass (most of us) to make money for those already holding the most wealth.

I think, how can a new college graduate starting off holding $130,000 of education debt pay off the debt earning $10 an hour and go on to help the consumer economy? They can't, Welcome to the world where Americans are left to scrounge for trash heap jobs.

Debt and consumerism is the MAIN problem with our economy.

People actually use to save their money and use CASH to make purchases.

Really quite frightening to people nowadays.

OH NO, how am I going to pay for that NEW Iphone that I JUST HAVE TO HAVE.

In the past the people use to purchase the debt vehicles of this country and save for the future. Now, no one has any money to invest in this, plus of course our government has become the stereotypical debt monster on steroids.

Debt creation is and has always been the fortay of the the federal reserve control technique of those behind the curtain. We need to ELIMINATE debt creation and living off the next generation. Sorry, but I came up with an idea just yesterday and I am going to break it out here.

What percentage of a slave are you. What effective tax rate do you pay for the sustenance of your government? Is it 25%, 50%, 75%?

We are SLAVES to our government by the direct cause of consumerism and debt creation. These debts are created to control and enslave us to the government and those that control the government.

Last breakdown I did on my effective tax rate I was paying while working, was 75%.

So I am a 75% Slave. What percent slave are you?

reply to post by endisnighe


In line with the OP I thought it might be a good idea to bring up Jim Marrs latest book "The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy.

I just finished it and believe me it will scare the hell out of you.

I'm an aussie, and considering the book is mostly about US politics, the first 50 pages should get Americans ANGRY.

Jim Marrs tells it like it is, do youself a favour and get a copy, read it then pass it around, it is SHOCKING to say the least.