I don’t think the individual banks were too big to fail, Lehman Bros. being an example. The financial industry as a whole had to be saved or we likely would have been fighting for a spot in the soup line, so in that regard, the bailouts were a benefit to everyone, not just the bankers. The bailout maybe could have been administered better but I think it was necessasry.
Otherwise, I think Ms. Huffington has a point. The U.S. isn’t a third world country now, but it is trending that way. Money, and thus power and influence, is being more concentrated in a small group. American democracy was supposed to be a check against that, but when money is allowed to influence the electorate like it is now, and when lying becomes an acceptable campaign strategy, “one man, one vote” becomes an empty concept.
This is possible, although how likely is hard to say. But if the US goes down in flames, the rest of the world is coming down as well. Plus I don’t think the EU is going to be any more responsible about spending than the US.
In other words we may end up with a Third World America, on a planet where there is no one else any better off. Including China and India, BTW - they lose US markets and they are going down hard.
If I’m reading the linked articles on education right, the US American school system comes in 17th out of 30 countries tested by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), but that’s okay because a whole lot of students in the US aren’t white?
Esox, thanks for reminding me of one of the most important points that I forgot - the way the lobbying system in the US is set up means that money, power and influence are making the decisions for politicians.
John, I’m in Canada - my infrastructure here is irrelevant. Shodan’s point about the US taking the rest of us down is what alarms me - Canada is strongly tied to the US, and if you guys don’t get your shit squared away, you’re going to ruin it for all of us.
I don’t think anyone thinks it’s okay, but the US is a more diverse country than many others, and this may explain why our results look like they do.
And one need not drag in genetic explanations or the idea that minorities are inferior. Assume the differences in test scores are entirely due to racism, or cultural differences. It still stands to reason that a country with fewer minorities to be disadvantaged in their test scores by racism and cultural differences is going to do better overall than a less homogeneous one.
The great thing about hitting yourself in the face with a hammer is that it feels so good when you stop.
So now that we’re winding down the hundreds of billions of dollars poured down a rathole blowing up mud huts and camels in central asia, we’ll have a bit more money to service the national debt.
As I mentioned in a previous post in this thread, manufacturing in the US is not dead yet. Here’s an article in today’s San Jose Mercury New about how some types of manufacturing are actually moving back to the US from China:
I guess the point I was working towards was that if you have low test scores for students overall because of a diverse population, it would make more sense to me to take that into account when setting up your educational system, rather than just shrugging off the test results and chalking it up to demographics.
What if the US military claimed that it needed $2.2 trillion to effectively protect the US from outside threats but had much less budgeted? Would you be worried?
There is a lot of money being made in the US, in part because of the wonderful infrastructure. If businesses started losing much money due to crumbling infrastructure two things would happen:
They’d ramp up the pressure on the government to fix it.
They’d fix some of the problems themselves (similar to what Google is doing with internet access in some areas).
I’m not sure what your point is - that the US army isn’t being given enough money? Haven’t the Oil Wars cost the US a whole lot more than $2.2 trillion?
That’s interesting - I can’t see the US ever not being a Core country. The tagline for the book is, “How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream” - maybe she buried the lead. The American dream was work hard and get ahead; now it seems like it is work hard and stay still or slip backwards (from this outsider’s perspective, of course).
What it shows is that the public education system itself works perfectly well. Asian Americans outperform Asians in Asia, european americans generally outperform europeans in europe etc. So the schools themselves are actually effective.
That’s the same everywhere. In Denmark around 15-20% leave 9-10 years of primary school without being able to read, add two numbers together, or much of anything else. Some people are just too stupid to learn and there’s not much that can be done about it.
American manufacturing output was the largest in the world as of 2010.
The reason why we have lost so many manufacturing jobs over the last 20 years is that they are no longer needed. Machines can do their work much more efficiently.
What? I’ve never heard this, although it sounds like some version of old fashioned dependency theory (metropole, satellite).
Generally what you here is “Developed/industrialized countries, rapidly developing/industrializing countries and developing countries.” You may also get blocks of countries like G20s or BRICS. Another term that is sometimes used is the “Global North” and the “Global South”
The US Military has reason to inflate the amount of money they think they need and they always want more. The ASCE probably has a similar incentive. I was trying (poorly) to compare the similarities. You also mentioned that the money is needed to “bring it [the infrastructure] up to a passable level”. I don’t know if those are your words or the ASCE’s but at worst I’d say the current level is passable. It all sounds to me like hyperbole.
Depends. Overall spending, it’s true that they never want a decrease. However, often they are opposed to specific huge programs that will only line politically connected pockets and provide only a limited help to military capabilities, because those dollars could have been better spent on effective programs.
Shodan’s point about the US taking the rest of us down is what alarms me - Canada is strongly tied to the US, and if you guys don’t get your shit squared away, you’re going to ruin it for all of us.