very interesteing article, but statements like this tell me that the author has never been to a 3rd world country. hell, were not even as bad as mexico yet!
I just saved a bunch of money on car insurance. But then I spent 51 dollars to fill up my tank on the way home.
While a college education is great for a person, it doesn't help much in terms of creating jobs. I think it was a mistake to push college on people when it should really be a decision between college and trade schools. I'm sure many would rather go to trade school and have a pretty good chance to get a middle class income as opposed to paying for college and possibly getting nothing monetary back and a lot of debt.
If all the energy, goods and services were spread equally over the world's population of course the standard of living would be lower than what we enjoy in the United States. That's sort of what's happening in the new age of free trade. Propriatary information and technology, the primary elements that separate the haves from the have nots, is less controllable when the information can be transferred cheaply and instantaneously. For most of the world this egalitarianism is a move up, but for the masses to move up the elite must move down. It sucks for us but we are the ones promoting world wide democracy and capitalism. Maybe colonialism wasn't so bad after all.
Good post. I wonder how much of our purported GDP growth can be attributed to the same things. Dubious got it right. When you trade with a poor nation that is not near full employment, this is going to happen. What concerns me is the exodus of some high-tech jobs. I suppose the phenomenom of a poor country with high-skilled labor pool is relatively new. To blame this on Bush is just plain stupid. Didn't Kerry support NAFTA and GATT - and didn't Clinton sign those things? I suppose I can blame Clinton for signing those bills then - who cares if they got bi-partisan support.
He was just cutting-and-pasting his standard response to any thread, no matter the forum. Cut him some slack.
The economy's not crumbling for everyone. Hell, there are people prospering right now. A very, very, few people.
I would suggest that our parents (the one wage earner/household generation) were also less materialistic than we are. It's not anyone's fault - there were far fewer consumable luxury items back in the 50's 60's and 70's. It was in the 80's that materialism really took off and people had to "keep up with the Jones." Even today if you live moderatly you can be in a single wage earner/household family and live just fine. Most all of my friends do VERY well and their wives don't work (which is a family choice they've made - all the wives could work if they wanted to and most will go back to work as soon as the kids are in high school). But my friends chose their jobs wisely to allow them to have all the modern luxuries and still have a single wage earner in the house (they are mostly in accounting or sales or law). My parents had a single wage earner/hosehold income and they did just fine. But they always bought used cars. They didn't constantly try to "upgrade" their house or buy a bigger and better one and they weren't flashy with clothes or jewerly. Most of the people that I know today HAVE to have a new/nice car and a big house decorated with Pottery Barn or whatever furnature and it gets expensive REAL quick. If you want to live that way you better have a great job (pick your career wisely) or have both spouses willing to work. But if you are willing to live modestly you can get buy pretty cheap these days. As a matter of fact, the only reason my wife and I need (at least one) full time job is to keep health insurance. We purchased a nice but small house in an older neighborhood for less than 100K and buy new cars once every 10 years of so. We don't buy expensive things on a "whim" but instead wait for Christmas or a birthday. If you live within your means and are satisfied with what you've got you can still live pretty affordably.
Not hiding.....just don't want to play in the litter box with the rest of you cats, that's all. By the way....what is your opinion of this article that came out last year? Agree with the economic report, or disagree? Is outsourcing good for the economy? Just curious as to where you stand, that's all...... http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04041/271362.stm Bush economic report praises 'outsourcing' jobs Tuesday, February 10, 2004 By Warren Vieth and Edwin Chen, Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON -- The movement of U.S. factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocation, the Bush administration said yesterday. The embrace of foreign "outsourcing," an accelerating trend that has contributed to U.S. job losses in recent years and become an issue in the 2004 elections, is contained in the president's annual report to Congress on the health of the U.S. economy. "Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," said N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, which prepared the report. "More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a good thing." The report, which predicts that the nation will reverse a three-year employment slide by creating 2.6 million jobs in 2004, is part of a weeklong effort by the administration to highlight signs that the recovery is picking up speed. Bush's economic stewardship has become a central issue in the presidential campaign, and the White House is eager to demonstrate that his policies are producing results. In his message to Congress yesterday, Bush said the economy "is strong and getting stronger," thanks in part to his tax cuts and other economic programs. He said the nation had survived a stock market meltdown, recession, terrorist attacks, corporate scandals and war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and was finally beginning to enjoy "a mounting prosperity that will reach every corner of America." The president repeated that message during an afternoon "conversation" on the economy at SRC Automotive, an engine-rebuilding plant in Springfield, Mo., where he lashed out at lawmakers who oppose making his tax cuts permanent. "When they say, 'We're going to repeal Bush's tax cuts,' that means they're going to raise your taxes, and that's wrong. And that's bad economics," he said. Democrats who want Bush's job were quick to challenge his claims. Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, supports a rollback of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and backs the creation of tax incentives for companies that keep jobs in the United States -- although he supported the North American Free Trade Agreement, which many union members say is responsible for the migration of U.S. jobs, particularly in the auto industry, to Mexico. Campaigning yesterday in Roanoke, Va., Kerry questioned the credibility of the administration's job-creation forecast. "I've got a feeling this report was prepared by the same people who brought us the intelligence on Iraq," he said. "I don't think we need a new report about jobs in America. I think we need a new president who's going to create jobs in America and put Americans back to work." In an evening appearance at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., North Carolina Sen. John Edwards mocked the Bush administration's economic report. Edwards, also a Democratic presidential nomination candidate who also supports repealing tax cuts for the richest Americans and offering incentives to corporations that create new jobs in the United States, said it would come as a "news bulletin" to the American people that the economy is improving and the outsourcing of jobs overseas is good for America. "These people," he said of the Bush administration, "what planet do they live on? They are so out of touch." The president's 411-page report contains a detailed diagnosis of the forces contributing to the U.S. economic slowdown and a wide-ranging defense of the policies Bush has pursued to combat it. It asserts that the last recession actually began in late 2000, before the president took office, instead of March 2001, as certified by the official recession-dating panel of the National Bureau of Economic Research. The report repeats the administration's contention that the Bush tax cuts must be made permanent to have their full beneficial effect on the economy. Social Security also must be restructured to let workers put part of their retirement funds in private accounts, the report argues. Doing so could add nearly $5 trillion to the national debt by 2036, the president's advisers note, but the additional borrowing would be repaid 20 years later, and the program's long-term health would be more secure.
That all depends on how you look at choosing your job wisely. If you are choosing your job to ensure that you make enough money so that a spouse doesn't have to work, but end up being miserable every day at work, because you can't stand the work you are doing, then it may not really be wisely. If you choose to work at a job that is fulfilling, and is in community service but you don't make enough to not have your spouse work, you might also have chosen your job wisely. I think Rhestor's point is still valid, you used to be able to live moderately in those types of jobs even on one income.
Some of his tax cuts for corporations were only applicable if you outsourced. Bush cut taxes for firms that outsourced, accelerating the process.
Could you point out those cuts please? Which ones were they? How big was the incentive? Thanks in advance.
