blueblood

Based on the number of goods and services produced, not what some ivory tower buffoon decides how much money should be created. That's how you impoverish people.

And the price of oil at 147 dollars on the NYMEX did even more than that. Remember hummers? People don't like paying 1.50 per litre of gasoline, hence we have demand destruction and consumers moving to smaller cars.

How about we throw out the criminal code while were at it and crime will disappear because there's nothing to be able to send people to jail with and the criminal court wont need to exist. Here's a better idea for solving crime, how about people who want to commit criminal code infractions and cdsa infractions take their ass hats off and knock off their entitled attitude. If we legalized all drugs, we as a society would be like the downtown east side of Vancouver and a lot poorer because everyone is sky high all the time.

August, what your describing is creative destruction, and that's a natural healthy part of the economy because it allocates resources when technology grows. We are not in that situation with the growth of emerging markets. It is a healthy part of the economy and many more people worldwide will benefit than not benefit. However, this is not creative destruction you are describing with postmen and horse traders. This is resource reallocation to where it is most cost effective and efficient to manufacture products. Unfortunately it's becoming less and less north America.

Or by producing goods and services that match that value and pay off said debt. You cannot just print money at a whim or it's worthless which is far worse then prices dropping.

That works when everyone in he USA is still employed. However, USA labour costs too much and therefore investments are made where labour is cheaper, hence the rapid growth overseas. The problem is that the wealth of the average American has been shot full of holes by inflation, and loss of employment. Their living standards are not what it's going to be in the 90's. If someone is unemployed in the USA, they are poorer. When the Americans are convinced that they need to take a haircut on their checks so they have jobs, then your premise will be accurate. India/china aren't at the point of being the same level of consumption as the USA.

Success in slavery is subjective. I don't view it as successful because I look at the opportunity cost of poor productivity. Is your "empire" still working? I'm sure the Brits thought that way when they opened the massive govt tax and spend/regulations spigot and watched the empire collapse. That debt monster from rapid govt expansion is what does successful countries in throughout history. The cheap migrant labour at least has willing labour and management. Slavery did not.

Which is why the regs. Wages, and Size of govt have to come down in order to compete with other nations. Your taking a page out of post Victorian England's playbook and England amounted to a big pile of monkey crap compared to the USA at that point In time and going forward. I don't know why you guys want to copy something that ends up not working. Slavery didn't work well because a slave is only going to work as hard as he can to avoid punishment, which results in a massive opportunity cost because of a lack of motivation, and I can't blame them. However realistic wages that both parties agree on is what does work. The south learned that lesson the hard way.

So has china and all the BRIC countries growth. Too much regulation and tricky tax code plus high labour equals bye bye money. It's a thing a lot of north Americans are ignorant of. What worked for an extremely longer time was limited govt, competitive wages, and few regulations during the 17 and 1800s when the USA began to leave the UK in the dust. The innovations that happened today were built on that foundation.

It doesn't work like that. The economy in the USA grew substantially in the 1800s yet they didn't touch the money supply. What happened was prices for goods fell and their dollar got more purchasing power. It all depends on the money supply. The Germans tried creating money after world war one to get their economy going, do you know what happened? We had people pushing wheel barrows full of cash to the store to buy bread! A contraction isn't a bad thing. It allows for debt to be paid off and allocates resources to projects that are useful. Not only that it brings down prices to attractive levels in order to get consumers buying again. Why do you think the price of oil jumps around constantly. If it kept rising every single day, nobody would buy it. Prices rise and fall to allocate resources in the most efficient manner possible. By printing money it sends a false signal as to what the prices are truly worth, and what's worse is if your borrowing that debt and it has to be paid off, the price falls are more exaggerated.

Except it's not a small piece of the pie, it's a sizable piece, the same as high labour costs and excessive regulations. The American empire isn't falling, it's echoing what happened to England around a hundred years ago. Get ready for stagnation. Unfortunately the Americans have to decide if the path they are on is working for them, I'd say no. Simplifying the tax code slashing regulations and have a set in stone govt policy about the economy would be a great start. The way of big govt from both republicans and democrats hasn't worked. I think unfortunately the middle class of the USA is going to have to wait until the BRIC countries get their middle class going and buying their own products. That takes time.

No that means debt gets squared away, which results in more valuable capital to be used in future projects. You can't keep printing out money to get people spending otherwise it becomes worthless. That's an even bigger problem. If people hold onto their money then prices come down to an affordable level to start spending again. That's like going out and maxing out your visa card in one day! It still has to be paid. Better to pay a small bill than a large one.

Ah but in a way they are, why is so much money being invested overseas in emerging markets rather than in the USA? When the cost of business gets too high, business looks elsewhere to operate. Money follows the least path of resistance.

When your country is "the most popular kid at school" chances are they're going to be talked about whether its anyone's business or not. Cest la vie.

And china, brazil, mexico, Malaysia, thailand, Vietnam, Argentina, chile, australia, etc. Are benefitting from the increased cost of business in the USA. Just set the lawyer to stun and the IRS will take a settlement.

And unfortunately some people have the choice of either working under x conditions or not work and take their chances. It's cruel however it's a choice, just like the entrepreneur, he can work 6 or 7 days and make more money or he can work less and take his chances. A company is also taking a risk by offering lower than market value compensation. If the worker sees a better job elsewhere, that first company can either provide better co ditions or go under from work not getting done, You are right about GMs management, they made a bad business decision by overcompensating their employees what the market would bear and they are in a mess partly because of it.

And what would happen if they said screw you guys I'm moving to bermuda, Dubai, Luxembourg, Malaysia, etc. No future tax money. Who's to say they'll pay it, they'll have their high price lawyers set to stun and it would be akin to a bankruptcy negotiation to creditors. The main worry is if you put punitive taxes on the wealthy, what's to stop them from punishing everyone else. What's wrong with somebody becoming rich? Is it a problem when person a makes x money and person b makes x+y money? Both are still making money. I think a bigger problem is govt trying to fix economic corrections by printing money and essentially screwing person a over because his money is worthless and since person b has more is a bit more flexibility.

The laws of economics are extremely fair, people get twisted in a knot when a correction comes because they won't have as much as before. The problem is that politicians try to bend the laws and it ends up causing problems in the long run as the economy balances out. For example you can't build all those houses in the USA and expect them to all ways increase in value when demand runs out for them.

Not much differences from the same nut bar who went off at eatons centre in T.O. You can't defend against nut bars. If they want to kill someone bad enough, they'll do it. Civilized people don't pack heat in public who'd have thunk it.

It wasn't dumb luck, you have to get the resources out of the ground, figure out what to make what people want. Every continent has resources in one form or another, yet some are rich, some are poor, and some had a light bulb go off and are becoming rich. Doesn't sound like dumb luck to me.

And here we are at the other end and industries are saying whoa whoa that's too much I'm leaving. Lots of entrepreneurs work six or seven days a week, safety conditions? Work for an up and coming fishing boat, logging outfit or farm. Yet people do and it's very risky. You can't mire things in red tape or else the business chokes. However businesses also have to be realistic in what expectations they have out of their workers and that working them like dogs isn't a good way to get max productivity. The ideal mix is somewhere in between, but when you have unions forcing GM to pay workers Cadillac retirements for them is it any wonder why they pop up factories in Mexico?

If you want to be the big dog on the street you have to back it up. Would you work for 30 cents on the dollar? Why should he rich? What's to stop them saying screw you guys I'll take my money elsewhere? The way to pay off that huge deficit is to slash spending and provide an environment for the business class to do business in. The USA is already partly there by scaling down their military adventures. Pillaging the top 1% does nothing but engage in class warfare and sca re away investment. The big bulky portion of Americans who don't pay anything would raise far more revenue in the long run then playing robin hood

That's still not good enough, the world is a far richer place tha. It was 20 yrs ago, there are more options for rich Americans to do business and unfortunately they're learning that lesson the hard way.

I believe that there were enough loopholes in the tax code that nobody was paying 90% of their income in tax. If you think that all those rich people would work for 10 cents on the dollar and not raise a stink about it your dreaming. Let's bust that myth right there. As for fastest growing USA economy that would be the 1880s My link In the page it explicitly states that the 1880s were the fasted period of growth.

Would that be during the 1800s when the USA turned into a superpower. That time was very successful