Quote:
Originally Posted by austin_voy
This is not your father's recession (or grandfather's, whatever). The 20's, 30's and 40's the US economy was the US economy. Now everything is global.
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Guess again.
The economy of the 1920s was also global, and it was the banking crisis in the US linked to the banking crisis in Europe that created the world-wide depression.
That's why so many people admired the Nazis in the 1930s --- because when the rest of Europe and North America were bankrupt the Nazis created an economic miracle in Germany...top that! When people are in bread lines RESULTS MATTER. The Nazis simply ordered the banks to create more money and make it available while the rest of the world sat on their hands and did nothing whatsoever to help business have access to credit [sound familiar].
The major difference today is that the US has shifted it's trading partners from other industrialized democracies to tyrannical third-world sh**-holes where the workers are slaves and their owners undercut the our labor costs. When our partners were other democracies trade was regulated, measured and taxed. Today trade with tyrannies like Mexico and China is a free-for-all under the rationalization of a "market system." It will never be a market system when our partners are not democracies and we're competing against slave/plantation hives.
Let me make two final observations....
1. Free Trade Theory
If it were valid as some argue then the US would not have huge trade deficits for the entire period of this experiment. Comparative advantage stipulates that trade imbalances are only temporary and correct themselves, but this isn't what happens in reality. What really happens is that wealth is sucked out of our country continually and then we have to borrow some of our own cash back from our despotic, communist trading partners at interest. They own us.
2. Education and an entitlement society...
Your darn tootin' we're entitled! We're Americans, not Salvadoran, Honduran or Sri Lankan SURFS!
We have every right to expect that our standards of living will increase like the generations before us. We are a democracy and should expect that our leaders are not going to allow our system to be penetrated by despotic, tyrannical third-world moguls flooding us with slave-made goods.
If you think we're just lazy than think again. The American worker works longer hours and is more productive than labor in any other democracy or industrialized country. I've worked in manufacturing and observed how our managers SQUEEZE AND SQUEEZE every last bit of labor productivity out of our workers. We also have fewer vacation hours and benefits than any of other democracy. The minimum wage in Australia is 11 dollars an hour!! This is the standard everywhere where the people rule instead of billionaire robber-barons like Senior Carlos Slim of Mexico, now richer than anyone in the US...all at the expense of the Mexican population.
In terms of education...INCREASING IT WILL MAKE MATTERS WORSE.
If we train even more workers for the remaining high-skill jobs available we'll only DILUTE THE MARKET VALUE OF THEIR SKILLS. Look at what's happend to IT compensation in the last ten years since everyone got on that ride...
