This thread kind of reminds me of the analogy of the bear chasing the 2 guys.
The gist of the story is that between the two of them only one has to outrun the other, they don’t both have to outrun the bear.
With that out of the way, if people feel the need to re-train, they need to re-train themselves to be the best at whatever they want to be. If they are the best (chef, engineer, CEO, Mcdonald’s burger flipper) they will always be employed. This trickles down as people aren’t as good as others in some desired field.
I guess bottom line is: If you want to be employed, you need to be good.
Economic policies, and changes in economic policies benefit some people at the expense of others. Keynesian economic policies shifted wealth, power, and prestige from the business community to the government. The heroes of the New Deal were not businessmen but intellectuals, civil servants, and labor leaders. That is why businessmen and those who identify with them continue to argue that the New Deal failed. They argue that America’s entry into World War II did end the Depression, because in addition to businessmen they like military men.
People with genius level IQs and professional degrees from elite universities will always get good jobs. If they are the only people who do, our society is in trouble. The Republican Party may win elections by making clandestine appeals to the racial, ethnic, and culture animosities of white blue collar workers, but that will not be good for the health of American society.
No, you’re missing the point, there are now FEWER bears!
Wait, I think they are 16 million more bears. No, that doesn’t sound right.
There are 16million more people to out run, yes, that’s the problem, there are now more people to outrun from few bears. More bears, what ever, the world is going to end and their won’t be enough bears to feed us all.
By many accounts our level of debt puts us less than a decade away from a loss of confidence by the international debt market. By almost all accounts the two largest factors in that are growth interests on the national debt and health care costs.
2/3 of the budget is medicare/medicaid, interest on the debt, social security (which pays for itself and then some) and veteran’s benefits.
2/3 of what is left is defense and national security.
The remainder or about 1/9 of our budget is everything else, from the courts to the EPA, to the Department of whatever. Republicans are trying to cover a 1.5 trillion dollar deficit by cutting from a 450 billion dollar slice of the budget. It can’t be done even if you eliminate ALL of the rest of government, you would be more than a trillion dollars short of balancing the budget.
If you took the further step of eliminating our military and national security, you would STILL be a hundred billion dollars short of balancing the budget.
Unless you are willing to default on our obligations to our bondholders or our obligations to our social security and medicare recipients you have to look to tax increases to cover at least some of it.
Now a lot of this goes away when the economy improves but it goes to show you how retarded it is to focus on the deficit without focusing on military spending and increasing taxes.
That’s a great survival tip in nature; it is a piss poor way to run a civilized society.
Everyone needs to be good. But what we’re seeing here is the world is splitting into the very best, who get jobs, and anyone else who falls short of #1, who get the unemployment line.
“First place takes all and everyone else gets zilch” is great in betting but, again, 100% bad economics.
It is also bad for a healthy society. A true conservative, that is to say, one whose conservatism is more profound than a hatred for taxes and gun control laws, should be concerned about what winner take all capitalism is doing to this country.
Conservatives should ask themselves what it is that they are trying to conserve.
There was a lot of pressure on him to be “responsible” about the deficit - just like today. As an excuse, they certainly didn’t understand the model as well as we do.
Which makes the Republicans inability to understand the things you pointed out in your post about Medicare and military spending all the more surprising.
That is, however, true only if you think they care more about balancing the budget than destroying the effectiveness of government. If that is their real goal, then it all makes sense.
Joe the Plumber can tell you. They are convinced that even if they have nothing now, someday they will be rich, and that when they are rich they don’t want big, mean government taking anything from them to support the riffraff. Joe didn’t even have a plumber’s license, and was confused about billings versus profit, but was sure that someday he’d have to pay a lot of taxes which bugged him today.
I’m no conservative. I’m all for higher taxes on the wealthy. I’m all for extending unemployment benefits. I’m all for true universal health care.
I’m just not a pessimist when it comes to the overall economy and employment picture. I’m still getting calls from recruiters asking me to consider switching jobs. I have to turn them down; I’m very happy where I am.
I think they already know what they’re trying to do.
Conservatives know what winner-take-all Capitalism is doing - they want it to happen. They are plutocrats. They believe in survival of the fittest - or, the richest. They believe in the Golden Rule - he who has the gold makes the rules. They’re social Darwinists.
If you go with this, you will know everything the Conservative movement is going to do next.
During the War in Vietnam, when the New Left flourished on university campuses - although nowhere else - many New Left radicals had lurid fantasies of a fascist dictatorship in the United States.
This is highly unlikely because most Americans are too individualistic. What is possible is a partial restoration, as you say,of the Gilded Age. This was the period of American history from the end of Reconstruction in 1876 to the beginning of the Progressive Era, which can probably be dated from the inauguration of Teddy Roosevelt in 1901.
During the Gilded Age the Republican Party and the Democrat Party made a tacit agreement that the Republicans would not hinder Democrat efforts to harm blacks in the South, and the Democrats would do nothing to hinder Republican efforts to help the rich nationally. The government limited its economic intervention in the economy to tariffs, business subsidies, and the violent suppression of trade union activity. In the South blacks were restricted to second class citizenship and subdued with the terrorism of the Klu Klux Klan.
Understandably, they did not foresee the subtlety of its comeback. The outright dictatorship of one man telling x00 million Americans to STFU or DIE!!! isn’t the kind of dictatorship that we have now. It’s a series of oligopolic supercells merging into one giant plutocracy. Outright dictatorship or not, the people still don’t get what they want, what they demand and scream for. They vote for a politician to do something and that politician doesn’t do it, because the plutocrats - the campaign contributors and lobbyists - make sure they don’t. Plus the media is in cahoots, too - notice how very little has been said about the Wisconsin and US Uncut rallies? Yet as soon as the Tea Party sends a few people up to protest the emerging budget deal, it’s all over everywhere.
We’re moving into the age of Plutocracy. Economically this is even worse than the Gilded Age - because workers are being made obsolete. Permanently. I can show you about 212 million examples of this right now, according to the U.N.
Hmmmmm. And now Arabs are the new Black. If you took out all the administrative paperwork restraints from Homeland Security, and gave them white sheets in place of 3-piece suits… ok, I’m kidding about that… but it’s worth a laugh or two… unless you’re the innocent Muslim caught in their sights. :eek:
Granted, this is not as bad as the Gilded Age because the aforementioned Muslim victims of modern racism aren’t being found swinging from trees… it’s all about subtlety nowadays. Racists who violate human rights still get away with their crimes, like the KKK did - they just find new ways to make it legal.
