And yes, when a nation is driven only by profits and individualism it is doomed to fail, because it is people that make a nation work.
A nation relies on cohesiveness and were loosing that. Were loosing trust in everything because there are thieves in the financial sector, thieves in the government and thieves in the mega corporations.
There is no reason for patriotism or supporting your country on the current premises when its every man for himself rather than what can we do for our country.
This also sounds like evolution in work where what does not work will fail.
We made it this far as a species only because of adaptation and working together, but where this country is headed is the opposite direction.
Picture what a futuristic world would be like.
Does the picture every man for himself come into play?
If you want to see why conspiracy theories pop up, and why there are many calling corporations evil, or why many are anti government you need to study what is taking place.
Just like after 911, I went to many Islamic forums and wanted to see and learn what their take on it was.
There were die hard Jihadist that insisted in the end of days they will take over the world and Islam will spread from sea to sea. Just like some rabid christians that preach the same message. They were a minority however.
The majority just wanted Americans and the west out of their countries.
How hard is that to understand? I would not want Chinese soldiers invading North America, even if it was only Canada while I live in the USA. It seems we put only blinders when it is us dishing out the pain to other countries.
The same applies to the discontent among many Americans. The government lies, which it always has, but the mega corporations now control that lying government and have become a part of that as does Wall Street, and that will never change as long as there is a connection between them.
http://www.cjr.org/resources/?c=ge
“Who Owns What”, a site by the Columbia Journalism Review,showing what corporations own in media The tentacles are far reaching. Just type in GE or Comcast and look how many different interlocking media companies each owns. The facts are undeniable. There has been an enormous concentration of wealth and power.
GE owns lots of media companies and lots of defense contractors. Wonder how much anti defense spending info gets on their stations?
No, your annecdotal story doesn’t refute anything.
I hear the same bullshit about automobiles. How cars in the 50, 60s and 70s were so much better than modern cars. It’s bullshit. By any objective measurement, modern cars are safer, more fuel efficient and handle better.
And why would you want products to last forever anyway? Ideally a product should be built to last just long enough as people want to use it and then recycled.
No, I would say cars are actually better built today, but the reason is because of the technology we have now that they did not have then.
Not all products were better in the past, but many were. Furniture is another item that was sturdy and lasted a long time while you would spend a fortune to get the same quality furniture as you had then. Why, because its mass produced rather than hand crafted as it was back then for more profits.
The important point I am trying to get across is that there were things made in the past with better quality when the technology was there versus today where the same technology exists.
I recently had a stereo quit working, so I opened up the case and one of the capacitors was leaking. Turns out, the whole system board was full of cheaply made capacitors with a low reliability. I paid the same amount as I did for my Pioneer which I have had for years, which is full of high quality capacitors.
The limitation was not technology in this case but mass producing cheaply designed and cheaply built for maximum profits.
Here is an article on the shoddy workmanship and cheap design going into some of these things.
The real enemy of the American people is not someone in another country but right here in our government, mega corporations and banks, sending people off to die for profits
Is that a fact? I don’t know a single person with a fridge that old.
What a load of hooey. Stuff back then sucked just as much as it does today, and many things sucked far, far worse. The majority of fridges made in the 70s are long since broken.
You also need to consider the concept of inflation; I think you will find a lot of stuff back then was, in fact, more expensive.
Not the current government at least. But previous governments were heavily influenced by those protesting and rioting now. And even if they aren’t in the current “government” (in the political sense) they still wield enormous political power.
Similarly many corporate leaders are probably opposed to the current government but it does not stop claims that they wield political power.
I have a friend that is still using a 1972 Sears Coldspot fridge in his garage to keep his beer cold. He has gone through 3 refrigerators in his house over that time frame.
If your in an area where everyone must have the latest and greatest, then I doubt you would see one anyhow or as msmith pointed out, why would you want to. Some people do.
Since most people need to have the latest and greatest, and have long since done away with the old, I doubt there is any data significant enough to collect to show some of the older stuff lasted longer.
Still, I did find an interesting website where users were asked what the best appliances they had were, and does not mean old, though there are many people saying they still have such and such running from many years ago.
What appliance(s) far exceeded your expectations?
Also, using TV’s as an example, prices today despite outsourcing are not cheaper using an inflation calculator even.
In order to actually compare the cost of an item today and yesterday, it should follow the same protocols
For example, it does no good and is inherently dishonest to compare a 25" Color Television made in 1960 to a 25" Color Television today.
Why? Because for one, Color TV did not come out till 1954, and even in 1960, only 1% of households owned one. While 99% own one today.
If we wish to compare a color tv in the 1970’s which most people did not own, and was fairly new, then we should compare an HD Plasma screen of today to a 25" color tv then, adjusting for inflation as well.
What we need is an example of something mass produced in this country then and now, where the majority owned it.
A black and white tv would be a good example, since most households had one and was the biggest seller.
B&W: Console
'77 Sears: $1647 (22")
'77 Sylvania: $1719 (22")
'77 Motorola: $1862 (22")
'78 GE: $1647 (22")
When comparing two products from two different era’s, they should be similar in nature, mass produced as today, and range from the bottom to the top of the line as those in 1970 were.
Looking at todays prices from the bottom end to the top end of tv’s available as then.
Looking at today’s prices, I don’t see much difference between then and now, except someone is pocketing the difference and it isn’t the consumer.
Also, the life expectancy of the product should be taken into account then and now.
If you shell out a $1000 dollars for a fridge now, and it dies in 2 years due to crappy quality and need to buy another, versus the older more reliable fridges, did you really save money?
Really? Because from $465 - $1862 in 2010 dollars you would be able to get a crappy-ass 12"-22" B&W heavy-as-shit CRT tube with rabbit ears and those stupid UHF/VHF dials that always fall off.
By comparison, for the same price today, you can buy a 36" - 40" 1080 HD flat screen that can watch a thousand chanels.
In other words, in every conceivable way, TVs today are a thousand times better than ones 30 years ago, for about the same price.
Do you think they could be made as cheap as they are using 70s manufacturing processes?
No, but then they also couldn’t be made as cheaply as they are if they were being made in the US. Part of the cost savings is technology, but a huge part is labor, and virtually all TV components are sourced from Taiwan.
My argument from the above post was that were paying the same since 1950 adjusted for inflation each year for the latest and greatest of that year. The only difference is, a lot of this has been outsourced, even though we are still paying the same adjusted for inflation for the latest and greatest. Someone is pocketing the difference and it is the CEO-Shareholder model, which have been raping in record bonus and profits.
From 1950, when it was an all american workforce making these, on the low end of available choices, you paid $129.00 Dollars for a 1956 American made 14" GE BW TV
In 1970, when it was an all american workforce making these, on the low end of available choices, you paid $230.00 Dollars for a 1978 American made 22" GE BW Console TV.
In 1990, when it was an all outsourced or made overseas on the low end of available choices, you paid $1200.00 Dollars for a 1993 RCA made 31" Table top Color TV.
Note: Black and White was slowly being phased out in the early 1990’s so can’t be used in the latest and greatest calculation.
Adjusting for inflation between the two
Using 1956 as the base year
In 1978, $129.00 was equal to $309
In 1993, $129.00 was equal to $686
If we look at todays prices, they also mirror the same prices as in 1950, adjusting for inflation.
Yes, the quality and technology has improved, but thats despite outsourcing.
In the 1950’s when TV became popular to the 1970’s there were technological changes each year from consoles to then color tv’s, when it was americans making them.
The American workforce was paid better wages and the cost of the new technology remained the same each year, once it became mainstream.
Of course I am referring to widely owned as well, because, when Color Tv’s first came out, they were very expensive, just as Plasma TV’s are when they first came out.
I’m comparing like technology in its stage to like technology.
So, once it becomes mainstream, we pay the same as 1950, but minus the expensive American workforce making them, the CEO-Shareholder model is pocketing the difference, having slave labor make it, and it shows from the record bonuses and profits their raking in.
The data is there in the TV Prices chart, and using a inflation calculator, you can see for yourself.
You fail to prove that. All you’ve shown is that over 50 years we are paying the same price for a device that has constantly increased in quality and technical complexity.
What has increased in the past 50 years is CEO compensation and bonuses for Wall Street investment bankers. But you don’t show that though. And in fact, I would be interested in seeing how CEO compensation has increased as a function of corporate profits.
But of course anyone who speaks of “profits” as if they were a negative thing immediately loses all credibility with me. You want to punish companies for being successful?
This sort of thinking comes from a deep rooted learned belief that for some reason “rich” = “bad”.
No reasonable person wants to begrudge anyone fair profit, but people do have a problem when they feel exploited, and trapped by those economically more powerful, as many do these days.
The majority of the companies in this country are small business, whom employ the majority of the people in this country, whom I support 100%! They don’t have the money nor power like the Mega Corps and Investment Banks do that use our government to socialize their riches via policies and backroom deals.
There are 4 financial lobbyists for the big banks and Wall Street per congressman.
If the white-house is not full of profiteers from the big Corporations, like Haliburton, then its full of Ex Goldman Sach boys. Gee, look at the profits their raping in, imagine that!
What we have now is an Oligarch that many complained about with Russia.
What I am pissed at is not the money they make, but how they make it.
To give you an inkling, if a Bank Robber went into a bank and killed everyone in the bank and took the money, this bank robber would be a saint compared to the crooks in the whitehouse and on Wall street, where through their greed driven policies have destroyed the lives of millions in this country. There is no courthouse on this planet that could judge them appropriately. What I feel is disgust for these cockroaches.
This is what we need to do:
Lets bring back all 761 military bases throughout the world that socialize their welfare for economic and financial stability and beef up our national guard for our own protection. They can send their own sons and daughters to fight their wars and pay for it themselves.
Get rid of lobbyists all together because as it stands right now, on every policy, the fights in the past have not been between the PEOPLE of this country and the government, but the mega corps, investment banks and the government, with the small business and small people being what is for dinner.
All special favors and all loopholes should be closed, and all regulations that hurt the small business that is a pittance for the big guys, should be done away with, because it only eliminates competition for the big guys for them to grow bigger.
Bring back Campaign Finance Reform so that it is publicly funded and the mega corps and investment banks can’t fund both sides so that they win either way.
If your too big to fail, then your too big to exist and a danger to the country. Break them up into smaller pieces, or let the government take over if it poses that much of a risk. Their choice.
Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, and regulate the derivate market, and shine a light on every nook and cranny in Wall Street. Though I think they already have that in progress, not without a fight from financial lobbyists however.
We also need to throw Larry Summers out of the whitehouse, because he was one of three, Greenspan, and Reuben the other two that fought Brookely Born in 1998 from regulating the OTC Derivates market. At least when Greenspan had the courage to admit he was wrong, that the free market would not correct itself if fraud was involved.
Thats just for starters.
Yeah, it makes me long for the good old days when we dumped human waste in the street, got cholera from a communal water pump, used arsenic to kill agricultural pests and died of raging plagues or malnutrition prior to the age of 40, before the Corporations could get us.*
Nothing new about conspiracy theories. In olden times before the Mega Corporations it was witches, Satan, Catholics, Masons, Jews, the Syndicate and what have you that ran everything. Now, thanks to the miracle of modern media** we have far greater means of disseminating bullshit than ever before.
*See, this is part of the really scary stuff they don’t want you to think about. While the conspiracy dingbats are warning us that chemtrails, vaccination, fluoridated water, prescription drugs etc. are part of a Corporate/New World Order plan to depopulate the globe, the real conspiracy is to keep people alive and buying shit we don’t need for as long as possible. Don’t allow increased life expectancy to make you a tool of the Man! Die prematurely and thwart their evil plans!!!
**which our Corporate Overlords somehow haven’t gotten around to censoring the Truth of.
What are the odds that randy054 is a big fan of Ron/Rand Paul?
***back in 1962 we had an Admiral portable black and white TV whose channel changer knob fell off and we had to change channels with a pair of pliers. One day I was doing this and an electric shock knocked me halfway across the room. I think you see my point.
