blueblood

That's what happens when gov't gets too big...

Why does a flat tax scare you? He's the only one with an original easy to digest plan for the voters. What do the other guys have?

That incentive started in the fifties/60s. Look at the GDP growth history of Japan. The jobs are either here or will be coming. He'll have you seen some of those "campuses" that google and apple have? Then there is biotech, energy production, agriculture, workers will have to retool and may have to relocate to where the jobs are. North Dakota must be looking good for some people right now...

So Indonesia isn't forecast to grow at over 6% while Japan only sees 2% or less? Even when you get shown figures of that.

Indeed, he didn't envision a gov't that large spending like that and debt everywhere.

The manufacturing jobs came about because of market conditions and a growing economy. Organized labour only inflated the wages and helped increase the cost of labour which provided the incentive to look at Asia. The well paying jobs will return when the cost of production allows them to return. This isn't the mid 20th century where the USA was the only kid on the block. If your talking about the stereotypical factory jobs, then yes they will be fewer and harder to get, but energy production, agricultue, and tech will be more plentiful.

except there are hi salary jobs out there, just not what the status quo used to be.

Judging by the video with the banker going to OWS, I'd say your right there, some people are still clinging to the shock factor of market readjustment and aren't familiar with that. And can't blame them, it's been good time Charlie in the USA since Reagan took office. Those tax cuts take time to work through the market, and that's what I think left of centre people get frustrated with - the time it takes the market to adjust to change. Those same people vote in other people who believe they can use gov't power to make changes in the market quickly, but that doesn't work or has unintended consequences I.e. Housing bubble. I think the tax cuts will work, just not at the speed that you would like.

Now what is your metrics for middle class? I think that question needs to be addresses first. How does a poor person in the USA stack up to one elsewhere in the world? I see Americans working for the Same wages, yet being able to acquire more goods for cheaper. Look at the fifties for example, Tvs used to be expensive and a person could only afford one. Now lots of people have tvs in their kids rooms. If that's middle class, they're better off than they were in the fifties providing they steered clear of too much debt. Or is your issue that there are not enough people cracking 6 digit salaries and not in the 1% club.

Jesus and santa were used as people that other people believe in. I think your right in that people should talk about bachmanns apparent nuttiness, but I don't think it's fair they bring up her faith in doing so, I'm sure there are many evangelical Christians who don't behave like she does. I think most rational people will look at Bachmann when she says those things and think she herself is a buffoon. However, unfortunately some people will tie what her religion is and how it "influences" her and in the end it makes rational evangelicals look bad. I don't think what she believes in influences her. If she really believes that she's a bigger fool than you think, I think whatever idea comes out of her head influences her. I think newt is a fool for saying that. If he thinks saying that is going to win him the republican primary, he's done. Romney keeps a disciplined message, and his issue is the healthcare plan he put in place in a very liberal state.

It's a big part of it. That debt is about 14 trillion and we have 1 trillion deficits. That big war in Iraq didn't even go over a trillion. If you look at the USA budget entitlements make up the bulk of it. Then there was the gov't being mr. Do gooder and providing cheap money to anyone who would take it to blow on trinkets. Europes economy is broken. They are in massive debt and on the verge of a financial crisis because tax and spend has caught up to them. Europe has essentially a stagnant economy and comparing Norway to Italy is like comparing Alberta and Quebec. Those countries you named decided to spend on consumption, but are watching how they spend, unfortunately there is an opportunity cost at play on private investment in production as that is eaten up in taxes. It's why Asia has sky high GDP growth and we and Europe don't. You seem to forget that rich people during that time also enjoyed loopholes and according to Peter schiff in his OWS video, they enjoyed more loopholes in the 50s and 60s than they do today even with the higher rate. It's always been a spending problem, that's why people go broke is because they spend more than they earn. Cut the spending and even though you have less, you won't be broke. Yet in the 1970s we had stagflation and gas lineups. Good thing volcker ran the fed reserve to crank up interest rates and allow the private sector to get the USA out of that mess in the 1980s. Simply put there is not enough wealth created to allow for the gov't programs you want. Jacking up taxes cuts into output and leaves everyone poorer. No the Europeans are not smarter than the americans, their economy of massive tax and spend has them closer to the cliff than the USA is. The Americans of post civil war USA were smarter than any gov't today. Asia is undergoing rapid growth and extremely disciplined gov't spending and as a result is winning the GDP growth race. They did that by letting their private sector flourish without hindering them.

The market is reallocating those jobs based on demand. Lots of jobs in ag, silicon valley, coal mining, bakken oil field, etc. The monkey wrench manufacturing jobs are going to Asia where the cost of production is lower. The middle class isn't disappearing, the rest of the world is joining the American middle class.

Ho hum! My link My link Like I said, Japan wishes they were indonesia right now My link Lost decade anyone? Ho hum!

Go read the wealth of nations, its a bit dry and written in old english, but have at it. Japan wishes it was indonesia,indonesia is one of the leading asian economies in terms of gdp growth. Hell japans govt intervention has killed its gdp growth to the benefit of its neighbours, thank you for that example!

Uh, in the end the rich won't be paying more, they already pay their fair share. This isn't the fifties anymore when the usa was the only kid on the block. Hike up the taxes and the rich job creators haul ass out of there or shut down. If anything its regulations are going to be coming down allowing the rich to "pay more" in terms of investing, hiring, and spending/saving.

And you win the award for ignorance on the subject. Bravo!

Is collecting deductions off of paychecks and forcing all workers at said workplace to join part of freedom to associate? Nope, that's a govt power granted to unions. The model works because there is a labor market. For example when I have hired help I have to pay wages in the same ballpark as a grunt gets on the oil rigs or the potash mine because if I don't that's where the worker goes! Same goes in the1920s and 1950s, everybody was employed and were thus able to obtain higher wages by manipulating a labor shortage to their advantage. The market at work

That reason is that some people want more than the market is allocating, thus they use their influence on gov't to create regulations and union powers. Companies in the late 1800s didn't bet on workers doing this and got complacent. How the workers got away with it was because employment levels were almost at maximum and there would be no workers to replace the ones who would get fired, and plus their voting numbers heavily influenced govt. So now we get more and more costs and regulations and now we're paying the price for that. In Japan, they saw this and the management of companies compensated their workers better to head off a situation like that. The market at work again. Management has to pay wages to workers what the labor market is demanding otherwise there is low productivity, labor strife, and labor works elsewhere, at the same time workers have to accept wages management is supplying according to labor market realities or the firm shuts down or finds a more attractive labor market. A firm cannot operate without profit or there is no incentive to operate. The market of fords workers to buy his cars was insignificant to justify ford investing heavily in a state of the art assembly line by 1920 standards. The high wages were to ensure he kept his workers and tried to make them happy. They joined unions because at the time everyone else was.

It isn't hard to throw left wing ideology under the bus when your broke, ask Paul Martin!

People wouldn't have starved to death, there was market panics before the depression, hell in 1920 there was double digit unemployment and guess what the gov't did? Nothing! I bet you didn't know there was double digit unemployment in 1920-21 because the gov't did nothing and allowed the market to correct itself and nobody starved! If everyone takes a hit on income there isn't as much money floating around and as a result prices drop because producers don't want to be stuck with inventory which costs money. So you think that people would keep prices high when there is little available money in the economy to purchase their products? If I'm selling something and there's little money available, I'm dropping my prices so that person will be able to buy from me. Corporate taxes should be low so that in the good times they have more incentive to produce more, hire more, spend more, and invest more.

I don't have buses where I'm from, so I'm not too familiar with how bus advertising works, only what i hear in the media.. I hope I can communicate this clearly for you, I'm not as articulate as others here, but I'll try. I do have those annoying billboards with the right to life slogans with a nun's face on them. THe only frigging billboards in the sticks. Now these people have the right to buy advertising and so on and so forth, but I think they are absolute jerks for buying advertising to force a belief system on somebody, the same as the atheist bus ads. To me buying advertising and putting a message concerning something so polarizing and close to home as concerning a person's belief system is in my opinion shameful, and that goes for all of them. I think your atheist message is controversial because its like the jerk kid who goes and tells a younger kid that there's no Santa. That's obviously the case, but why take a person's belief system and shatter it. That also goes for some Christians going to athiests and saying if you don't go to church your going to hell or something like that. I mean really, why can't people leave people to believe what they want to believe and not judge them on that or make them feel bad for believing something. I know people who have beat cancer who were religious and used religion as part of dealing with cancer and using positive thinking associated with it to help beat it, why be the jerk and take that away from them by saying its all a hoax and your dumb for believing in it. I'm pretty sure those atheist bus ads were a shot back at the christians for their church slogans on advertising wherever, to me that's petty. I'm in agreement with you in the banning of prayer in the schools, they either have to have none or let them all in and letting them all in would eat up school's time. I do think there is more and more as time goes on a situation regarding the PC of Christmas time and people getting in a tizzy one way or another. I don't think its fair that Christians have to keep a muzzle on at Christmas time in the media. I think we both have different lines in how a public figure can display his belief system. I think the public figure should be able to proudly idneftify that he believes in such and such and that should be the end of it. If he/she idenfitifes with a belief system and says mine is better than yours because such and such and you should become like me, then I think that's a problem. I don't know where your line is and I'll let you fill that blank in. The theme in my debate with you is that yes the republican candidates are religious. So what? I don't think that their religion makes them "crazy" I think they do that on their own. I think there are more metrics to a person's nuttiness than what they believe in. I mean we have dre saying that because Romney is a mormon we should be watching him closely because he may have judgement issues because he follows mormonism. Yah mormonism might be a little out there, but lets look at how Romney's judgement really is; he's worth almost 100 million bucks, runs companies, ran the olympics, and was elected governor in a liberal state; I think that says he has pretty good judgement, and why should I care that he believes Joseph Smith's story? Now we have Newt Gingrich making that statement, I think he made that statement because he's a fool, not because of his religion. I meant to say that shouldn't the religious people get input on who becomes president? These people have a right to vote in the primaries, and if someone wants a shot at president, they have to accommodate these people.

Did they end the depression? All they did was create a moral hazard for the gov't to tax and spend which results in everything being more expensive, and hurting the country as a whole with a large bloated debt. All these things made the depression longer, and ended up hurting far more people than it tried to help.

And look where we are as a result of that, all the regulations and do-goodness sent your precious jobs overseas. Many people still die on the work place, have you looked at the stats for alaskan crab fishing, forestry and agriculture? Henry Ford realized that workers were starting to get upset, he looked at labor market conditions and decided to pay his line workers unheard of wages and improved working conditions as technology would allow so they wouldn't unionize and drive up his costs further.

You brought up the constitution, not me. You seem to forget that the gov't has the legal right to use force and unions don't, that's why we pay taxes and go to the clink if we don't. Oh yes the unions protect the middle class from crooks, lets break people's legs for having an independent thought, lets raid bank accounts. If the boss is a shitty boss, all the workers will quit and go work somewhere else. How is that diminishing union membership nationwide doing these days?

Oh just like black people in the south during Jim Crow were free to go to a black only restaurant/laundromat/water fountains/etc. You do know they had an entire movement so that a race of people were free to work/eat/do laundry/etc. wherever they wanted to. Who's forcing anybody indeed...