The Goat Pen

Is This Recovery The Best in 20 Years, Or The Worst in Modern Times?

[answer: Depends on the politics of the one giving the answer...and what statistics they choose to use]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/arc ... rs/258503/

Statistics are like that for anything. The Global Climate change is a perfect example. You can find 50 "smart people" on each side of the PRO/CON to debate this and they will all have stats that contradict each other.

Use your eyes to judge the economy. Do you know people that have been affected by layoffs? job loss? etc?? Are they better NOW than they were 5 years ago? 2 years ago? 1 year ago? Are you better now than you were 5 years ago? How is the value of your house compared to 5 years ago? 10 years ago? How about gas / oil prices over the past 2, 5, 10 years? How about unemployment rates over that same time period?

Both parties can piss and moan all they want about what cause this and what caused that. This is very simple in theory but I guess it is a pain in the ass to practice because they can't seem to grasp it:

If people are working in jobs/careers that are safe and secure, people are happy. Happy working people pay taxes that go into the revenue stream. Happy working people spend more money on televisions, eating out, houses, cars, etc.. Cheaper gas makes happy people even happier and spend more money.

And because some dude got a job at McDonalds/Wal-mart making 8.00 hour after losing his job at the factory that closed for any reason and was making 14.00 hour is not a recovery. That is the dude doing what he can to feed his family and survive. Now granted, it is his personal responsibility to make sure to change his lifestyle to match it to make ends meet but that takes money out of the system (he doesn't eat out, he doesn't buy that new tv, etc...). And I'm not saying that Wal-Mart should pay him 14.00 hour either because that will just trickle down to all of us by higher prices.

I guess my point is there are way to many empty factories and office buildings setting around our entire country while the jobs are sent off to another country for cheaper labor, regulations, blah blah blah. We have the power to make people want to stand in line to get in this country to open factories and do stuff here with tax breaks and whatever nugget you want to give them. It can be done if they want to do it.

I'm not happy when I'm working...

BigRedMan wrote:
We have the power to make people want to stand in line to get in this country to open factories and do stuff here with tax breaks and whatever nugget you want to give them. It can be done if they want to do it.

the "nugget" that "people" want in order to "open factories" here is called slavery. until we have slavery, the "people" will continue to "open factories" in China and places like it (unless gas goes so high that it's cheaper to pay non-slaves and avoid the trans-ocean transport costs).

I'm intrigued by this "slaves" idea.

Coincidentally, this article came out today talking about our biases and how it is impossible to overcome biases.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/f ... udies.html

Psht...that article is biased.

actually I think Wal-Mart should pay people $14 or whatever it takes to get them off the poverty scale where they can no longer apply for government aid.

And actually America opens many factories, the problem is we are highly productive and highly efficient so manufacturing is actually growing in America (at least faster than it has been) but with fewer workers. And many of those workers need to have high math and skills as well as being able to pass a drug test (by screening hair). That eliminates a huge percentage of factory level workers.

The magic pill is having the majority of Americans working at jobs that pay a living wage. Since the majority of those people who are paid at low levels work at service jobs, we must work to raise the service sector pay.

That is why I am pro union.

The problem is that even service sector jobs can be eliminated if you raise the cost of a worker.

I already go through the self pay aisle in every store its available in where there's one checker keeping an eye on about 4 to 10 self check machines. If service grunts cost more, Wal*Mart will find more ways to reduce the number of service grunts needed to run a store.

Start electing people who actually care about the people they serve instead of the people who elect them and their $ and interests and things might just turn around. If Romney wins its gonna be another generation before things turn around because we will only be going backwards towards what got us here in the first place. Id rather keep trying to fight back instead of going back.

Won't matter anyway. Obama gets another 4 years anyway. Maybe but 2016 the Repubs will finally come up with an actual candidate. Doubt it though. Daughter needs a new Lexus.

eCat wrote:actually I think Wal-Mart should pay people $14 or whatever it takes to get them off the poverty scale where they can no longer apply for government aid.

Believe it or not eCat, that is what Ann Coulter said and why she loves Romney so much.

http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2012-04-25.html

The GOP likes cheap labour for business and Romney does not. Mitt paid people at Bain Capital, BIG BUCKS! Cheap labour = criminal migrant labour = not cheap at ALL (because they all end up on the welfare.)

First Wife Ann Coulter wrote:If you're not sure how you feel about illegal immigration, ask yourself this: "Do I have a nanny, a maid, a pool boy, a chauffeur, a cook or a business requiring lots of cheap labor that the rest of America will have to subsidize with social services to make up for the wages I'm paying?" Press "1" to answer in English.

If the answer is "no," illegal immigration is a bad deal for you. Cheap labor is cheap only for the employer.

Today, 70 percent of illegal immigrant households collect government benefits -- as do 57 percent of all immigrant households -- compared to 39 percent of native households.

Immigrant households with the highest rate of government assistance are from the Dominican Republic (82 percent), Mexico and Guatemala (tied at 75 percent), based on the latest available data from 2009. Immigrant households least likely to be on any welfare program are from the United Kingdom (7 percent).

British immigrants aren't picking the tomatoes Karl Rove doesn't want his son to pick. (That's how he justified Bush's amnesty proposal.)

You can either pay a little more for tomatoes picked by Americans or you can pay a lot more in welfare to the illegal immigrants who will pick them as well as to generations of their descendants.

Yes, many illegal immigrants work hard, but it's not our responsibility if their employers don't pay them a living wage. This is known as an "externality," which we hear a lot about in the case of greedy businesses polluting the land, but not when it's greedy businesses making the rest of us support their underpaid employees.

aTm wrote:The problem is that even service sector jobs can be eliminated if you raise the cost of a worker.

I already go through the self pay aisle in every store its available in where there's one checker keeping an eye on about 4 to 10 self check machines. If service grunts cost more, Wal*Mart will find more ways to reduce the number of service grunts needed to run a store.

no I don't believe that because that would operate on the premise that they just keep excess workers employed because they are affordable. Wal-Mart isn't keeping people on the payrolls standing around.

I think IB likes taking acid.

Jungle Rat wrote:I think IB likes taking acid.

And I think that what angers liberals the most about Mitt Romney is that there is no intelligent argument against Mitt Romney being our President. David Axelrod has done all that he can to dig up whatever skeletons exist in Willard Mitt's closet and he found out that Mitt was a bully in high school almost 50 years ago. That is the best he can do. Shit, moderates don't even care about the LDS thing anymore. What, you want to make fun of Mitt's time at Bain or that his dog took a ride on the roof of his car in 1982, National Lampoon's Vacation style?

I'm sorry Rat, with all due respect to President Obama (thank you sir, for executing OBL but any President would have ordered that) he has not done a good enough job to warant his re-election. Things are far worse now then they ever were for President Carter in 1980. I can't believe you want this man re-elected. I just can't. There is no rational, lucid reason (not one) to justify re-electing this man, not when we have such a successful, intelligent, proven leader waiting in the wings for the GOP. Mitt Romney is 100 times the man that Senator McCain ever was. Hell, even President Clinton can't come up with any reasonable argument to not vote for Mitt Romney.

sardis wrote:Problem is we don't have the stomach to bomb the shit out of anything. We've proved we can not occupy and impose our will on certain people. See Korea, Vietnam, Irag, Afghanistan. We have to eliminate them, and when I mean eliminate, I mean eliminate their villages that harbor them. Not precision bombing and then send our guys in there to police, I mean utterly destroy.

One vote for genocide.

Thank God Op Ed wasn't in charge in WWII...

is that there is no intelligent argument against Mitt Romney being our President.

yea but equally disturbing in the Romney camp is there is no intelligent argument for Mitt Romney being our President. 60% of his own party doesn't want him.

Electing Romney isn't choosing between the lesser of two evils, its choosing between the lesser of two liberals.

Romney is a man of character, devoted husband, family man and generally comes off as being moral. Obama - same thing.

Both are trying like hell to appeal to their party's base while hiding their true self.

Obama is the most efficient killing machine against terrorists we've had or will likely have as president in the next 20 years and he strikes me as the type who wouldn't lose a minutes sleep initiating a good ole CIA coup against a banana republic or assassinating a dictator. His generous use of drones in countries we are not at war takes balls the size of church bells and is the kind of big stick policy that Karl Rove masterbates in the shower over. That isn't appealing to the modern democratic base, especially as the nobel peace prize winner. And to the disdain of the GOP, his tactics against the terrorist are all generally low cost and don't line the pockets of sole source military contractors like Haliburton.

Then you have Romney preaching the virtues of small government while implementing a 59 step economic policy that has only marginal cuts on future spending increases and vague promises of department reductions he knows will not pass congress mainly because they think think he isn't serious about it. His only foreign policy move is to outwar Obama so he preaches against ending the Iraq war on one hand (like saying "who likes ice cream?!) and talks about arming Syrian rebels on the other - knowing full well once we choose a side, we are in it to win it.

If you are a serious conservative, the only compelling reason to vote for Romney is that in the short term the markets will react favorably to his election, but in the long term he will be embattled in congress, not only between democrats but his own party just like John Boehner is dealing with now because the Tea Party candidates may run as republicans but the vote for an ideal, not a party line - and Romney will have to face the same issues Obama has with limited options to deal with them. He will have to appeal to congress to raise the debt ceiling, cut military spending, fall into the quagmire of immigration, do his best to gut the uprising of states rights, and figure out how to tackle the debt while battling the no tax pledge of his own party. Given that his own party doesn't believe in him, he'll have a foundation built on quicksand to start. Unlike President Bush in his second term, he'll have no political capital to spend.

For me, I am concerned about an Obama second term, especially if his VP has no chance of being president. I'm afraid Obama will be scorched earth in his approach to enacting his vision of government, and honestly, I don't even know what that is.

Gary Johnson - President 2012

yeah the yippee kiyah motherfucker policy is doing it for me. throw in the fact he is smart enough to announce the surge, not close gitmo, etc etc and he has my vote.

hopefully he addresses socialsecurity and medicare his next term and death panels while spounding morbid actually need to be explored. at least he is opening the door on that discussion. throw in the gay miltary issues which for the most part they have been smoothly transitioned into policy, an attempt to neuter some of these financial instituions whil strong in word--impotent in delivery which all govt seems to be impotent in controlling

I think as a whole after a worldwide near depression looking overseas and elsewhere we seem to have weathered better then anybody he deserves 4 more years.

eCat wrote:

is that there is no intelligent argument against Mitt Romney being our President.

yea but equally disturbing in the Romney camp is there is no intelligent argument for Mitt Romney being our President. 60% of his own party doesn't want him.

Just because 60% voted for other candidates when 4 were running for the GOP, doesn't mean that 60% of his own party doesn't want him. By that rationale, 80% of the party didn't want either Newt, RIck Santorum, or Ron Paul. When it got down to two, only 10% of the party didn't want him.

eCat wrote:Romney is a man of character, devoted husband, family man and generally comes off as being moral. Obama - same thing.

Not the same.

President Obama is an example of the Peter Principle. He was promoted way above his head. He should not be in the job he's in, simple as that. Mitt is a proven leader who has succeeded in saving things that needed to be saved.

eCat wrote:If you are a serious conservative, the only compelling reason to vote for Romney is that in the short term the markets will react favorably to his election, but in the long term he will be embattled in congress, not only between democrats but his own party just like John Boehner is dealing with now because the Tea Party candidates may run as republicans but the vote for an ideal, not a party line - and Romney will have to face the same issues Obama has with limited options to deal with them. He will have to appeal to congress to raise the debt ceiling, cut military spending, fall into the quagmire of immigration, do his best to gut the uprising of states rights, and figure out how to tackle the debt while battling the no tax pledge of his own party. Given that his own party doesn't believe in him, he'll have a foundation built on quicksand to start. Unlike President Bush in his second term, he'll have no political capital to spend.

For me, I am concerned about an Obama second term, especially if his VP has no chance of being president. I'm afraid Obama will be scorched earth in his approach to enacting his vision of government, and honestly, I don't even know what that is.

Gary Johnson - President 2012

Romney will veto any and everything that isn't conservative. Unlike the Massachusetts State House, there aren't enough Dems in Congress to override his vetos. The GOP goes from 46 to 50 Senators and they get the White House, there may be hope yet for this country. Otherwise, more of the same, trillion dollar deficits so states can continue to fund public sector pension checks to civil servants who retired at 48.