Recession isn't over

[Aquagraph]

The following statistics are from the US unless otherwise noted.

Obama administration has accumulated more nominal debt (note: inflation not accounted for) than all the presidents from Washington to Clinton.

Consent of the governed.. Yeah right. People like TSA better than the Congress.

Employment is almost back in the levels when women were not expected to work:

If you happen to find yourself a job, you also get less paid in comparison to the economy:

War on Poverty started in 1964 when the poverty had been lowering steadily for a few years already:

This is basically the sum price for social programs by the government:

But don't worry, federal government is coming to the rescue:


Also 20% of all jobs in 2000 were manufacturing jobs which has traditionally been effective in climbing to the middle class. After the recession only 5% are such jobs.

During the last recession 60% of jobs lost were midwage jobs. 58% of the jobs created after are low-wage jobs.

United States has lost approximately 50000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the WTO. The government doesn't let you compete with those with lower wages than the minimum wage which bars entry to the job market for many unskilled young people.

55% of small business owners say that they would not start a business in the United States of today and 71% of them still believed in 2013 that the US is still in recession.

23% of the Americans believe that the "government is the solution to the problem" and 64% believe that "the government is the problem". Wonder why this isn't reflected in politics. Or maybe the other party is just the "wrong kind of government".

The average federal worker earns 60% more than the average wage in the private sector. This is of course seen in the taxes of today or paid with debt which will be taxed from the future generations. As a thumbrule, government jobs don't create wealth, but they do ensure votes for the expansionist government.

The US share of global GDP has fallen from 31,8% in 2001 to 21,6% in 2011.

In 2013 every fourth American worker earned less than 10 dollars per hour or less. Not to worry, Obama has already suggested raising the minimum wage to 10,10$. Maybe the inflation will make it more sensible.

In 2013, 33% had less than $10.000 saved for their retirement and 28% don't have any money saved for emergencies.

US has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage jobs than any major industrialized nation has.

About one-third of Americans aren't paying their bills on time.

Average debt of the households that have credit debt was an average of 15,799USD in 2013. Total credit debt of Americans is more than 800 billion dollars.

Between 2001 and 2007, 66% of the income growth went to top 1% of the wealthiest Americans.

Corporate profits are at an all-time high and so are the percentages of the Americans living in "extreme poverty" according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Every 6.5 American is on food stamps and 49% of Americans live in a home where they receive financial assistance from the Federal Government.

Around 57 percent of children are living in homes considered "low income" or impoverished.

The way to calculate the Consumer Price Index from raw data is not available to the public and is probably being tampered with in order to keep the social program costs that are tied to inflation down. Official yearly inflation is around a bit more than 1 percent.

Also, over the last 30 years government has changed the way they calculate the CPI over 14 times. Source, page 3.

According to The World Economic forum, the wealthiest one percent in the US captured 95 percent of post-financial crisis growth since 2009, while the bottom 90 percent became poorer. Globally, the 85 richest own as much as the bottom half of the world.

As of 2011, bank bailouts were almost twice the US GDP: 29,000,000,000,000 dollars.
Twice the GDP of the USA. That's more than 90,000 dollars per every American. As with all government spending, if you won't pay it, your children will.

[Not A Communist Shill]

"Obama administration has accumulated more debt than all the presidents from Washington to Clinton."

pretty sure that I remember reading that this statement is complete bullshit

[Aquagraph]

"Obama administration has accumulated more debt than all the presidents from Washington to Clinton."

pretty sure that I remember reading that this statement is complete bullshit

My source is the US Department of Treasury. Go ahead, look it up.

[willekeurig]

Holy shit. I knew the US wasn't exactly a success in terms of financial equality, but I'd no idea being poor was this mainstream. Makes the whole "american dream"-mentality seem even more gross.

[ashlesha]

WHAT SHOULD WE DO

riott??!?!??!?! vote ron paulomg ?@??!@?@

[willekeurig]

WHAT SHOULD WE DO

riott??!?!??!?! vote ron paulomg ?@??!@?@

I wish I knew. All I can think of is get educated about these things and spread the knowledge. And do your best to support the freedom of internet & other means of communication that help the people to inform & get informed about the truth, organise counter movements etc. And have a survival plan for youself & your loved ones in case you lose your job etc.

[Aquagraph]

WHAT SHOULD WE DO

riott??!?!??!?!

Protect your propertah from Uncle Sam, he doesn't know what to do with. Arm yourselves and join a militia. Don't vote, it only encourages them. Avoid dollars and invest in precious metals (they are steady during economical crisis), land and/or cryptocurrency, dollar won't last. Participate in shadow market. Grow your own food. Drink raw milk because it's illegal. Put Claymore landmines around your house and watch it from the porch with your unregistered AR-15 assault rifle like a boss. Don't let a government employee near your lands, not even a postman (they are socialists anyways). Homestead Federal lands, become a rancher and farm tobacco. Learn to cite the Constitution with a hefty Southern accent. Know your rights. Homeschool or private schooling will keep your children away from the statist indoctrination. Smuggle Cuban cigars. Dump some tea to the ocean. Troll every government agency imaginable. Don't listen to hippies, they are pacifists. Learn to hack and then fuck up .govs. Hire illegals to your ranch, they are among the best kind of Americans. Sell your TV and buy yourself some solar panels, live off the grid. Found a distillery and produce whiskey, it will look great with your porch fortifications. Before that, you can drink moonshine. Use an outdoor toilet and fertilize your crops with your manure. Rally your local Native Americans, they are just hiding, waiting for the right time to strike. Find a hairy man who wet shaves with a straight razor to piss around to assert territory around your lands, socialists hate the smell of testosterone. Break horses and commit train heists to redistribute "govt property". Yell "No Representation, No Taxation" and say a prayer in the name of the Newfounding Fathers.

[Aquagraph]

I wish I knew. All I can think of is get educated about these things and spread the knowledge. And do your best to support the freedom of internet & other means of communication that help the people to inform & get informed about the truth, organise counter movements etc. And have a survival plan for youself & your loved ones in case you lose your job etc.

Getting informed is never useless but the means of change through voting will be useless since it has been proved that the average voter's opinion doesn't matter.
This is a fact.

[Aylen]

This is an area where I can say I have been almost oblivious to the external reality of things and focused more on creative ways to not let external factors limit me. I wonder if there is a term for this in socionics. I am not insensitive to others effected if they bring it up to me but in general I have not worried about the recession at all and not because I am rich because I am far from it. I may be naive but I believe things will just work themselves out.

[Aquagraph]

This is an area where I can say I have been almost oblivious to the external reality of things and focused more on creative ways to not let external factors limit me. I wonder if there is a term for this in socionics. I am not insensitive to others effected if they bring it up to me but in general I have not worried about the recession at all and not because I am rich because I am far from it. I may be naive but I believe things will just work themselves out.

Put your head in a plastic bag and don't pull it away for ten minutes. Don't let the external factors, like lack of oxygen, limit you. Your body will work out its need of oxygen shortly.

[Aylen]

Put your head in a plastic bag and don't pull it away for ten minutes. Don't let the external factors, like lack of oxygen, limit you. Your body will work out its need of oxygen shortly.

That suggestion is so over the top ridiculous to me and has nothing to do with my perception of the economy. I shared my perspective even though I knew it would hit some trigger points for others.

Edit: I was raised to believe you make use of what you have and not worry about what you don't have. If you want something enough you will find a way. I always find a way to get what I need and want. If I don't I didn't want it enough. The economy or anything else cannot stop me when I am determined. Just my mind set.

[rat1]

If you're healthy and in a good location you'll probably be fine through the recession economic collapse. If you're sick and you need medicine, or you are in an urban area where crime or riots is a likely issue, you may be somewhat fucked. But I'm glad to say the retirement benefits of the baby boomers are about to vaporize, and there could be no greater justice. Now we just have to take care of them, which is gona be hard for our fucked up generation to handle ...

[IBTL]

Holy shit. I knew the US wasn't exactly a success in terms of financial equality, but I'd no idea being poor was this mainstream. Makes the whole "american dream"-mentality seem even more gross.

Yes. And if you ever step foot into a community pharmacy, you will see this. Poverty is everywhere.

You'll see this play out as people stop and start medications, take them sporadically at times for various reasons, refuse to take them altogether, or survive because there was a cure.

[Not A Communist Shill]

(February 2012)

This is a preposterous comparison to begin with, for two reasons:

In good economic times, presidents have paid down the national debt. In 1834 Jackson paid it off entirely. In fact, most presidents in the 1800s paid it down, as did Harding and Coolidge in the 1920s. And from 1946 to 1981 the debt was consistently reduced in real terms, though not in nominal terms. It's unfair to add together all those positive and negative contributions, then compare them to a president who inherited two wars, hemorrhagic tax cuts, and a massive recession.

From 1800 to today, the dollar has inflated by 1270%. Comparing nominal dollar values makes past debt increases look insignificant, even if you isolate them from debt reductions.

Yet even on those incredibly skewed grounds the comparison is false.

FactCheck.org has a detailed analysis, based on the same source Rachel McGilray used (Debt to the Penny). Here's an excerpt:

And it’s also untrue — as claimed in a graphic widely circulated by email and in social media postings — that the debt has increased more under Obama than under all previous 43 presidents combined. In fact, as of Jan. 31, 2012, the rise under Obama had yet to surpass the rise under his predecessor, George W. Bush.

The figures in that graphic are pure fabrications, as anyone can easily confirm by plugging Obama’s inauguration date — Jan. 20, 2009 — in the Treasury Department’s handy “debt to the penny” website. That shows the nation’s total debt stood at $10.6 trillion on the day Obama took office (not $6.3 trillion), and it had increased to nearly $15.4 trillion by the end of January 2012 — a rise of more than $4.7 trillion in just over three years (not $6.5 trillion).

That’s a huge increase to be sure — 44.5 percent. And the Congressional Budget Office now projects that it will grow to more than $16 trillion by the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30. At that point, the debt will have increased by more dollars in Obama’s first four years than it did in George W. Bush’s entire eight-year tenure, when it rose by $4.9 trillion. The rise under Obama would then be the biggest dollar increase for any [single] president in U.S. history.

That's still nominal dollars. Let's compare the total debt increases of the last five presidents in present dollars:

Obama: $4.89 T
Bush II: $5.73 T ($2.40 T in first term, $3.33 T in second)
Clinton: $2.21 T
Bush I: $2.54 T
Reagan: $3.82 T

To adjust for inflation, I used the average CPI values from the presidents' terms. Notably, under Obama the total public debt has increased by 38% in real terms, versus 54% under Bush II and 108% under Reagan.

So —

Obama has not “accepted more debt than all previous U.S. presidents combined,” or even half that. Nor has he raised the total debt more than the previous four presidents, or even half that. But during his tenure, the total debt has risen faster than at any other point in U.S. history.
Bush II holds the record for raising the debt more than any other single president. Obama will break this record in nominal terms at the end of the fiscal year and in real terms at the end of his term.
Reagan is the only president out of the past five to have “accepted more debt than all previous U.S. presidents combined.” In real terms, he doubled the total debt. In nominal terms, he almost tripled it.
Before that, FDR raised the total debt in real terms almost sixfold and in nominal terms eightfold. Lincoln raised it in real terms 20-fold and in nominal terms 30-fold.

.

[Not A Communist Shill]

Surely it is not tenable for Western countries to compete for general manufacturing jobs anymore? True, it may mean that many people are being deprived of jobs at the expense of the wealthiest people getting more profits, which is something which should be done about, so at least people are able to buy cheaper toasters and so on.

The US having a lower proportion of GDP now I would would be mostly down to the rest of the world's productivity rapidly improving compared to the U.S., in a way that cannot...and shouldn't be controlled. I don't think that is a bad thing in itself.

Private debt (and public debt, sure) must be the real worry because it's unsustainable for individuals to rack up such debts and just generally not live beyond their means.

There's a recent stat about the world's 85 richest people owning wealth equivalent to the world's poorest 50%...which is an awful stat if true (it may be misleading or flat out wrong...depends on how they quantify people who are in debt)...most of those are probably Americans too! A few people could bring about a lot of positive change, essentially.

[FDG]

There's a recent stat about the world's 85 richest people owning wealth equivalent to the world's poorest 50%...which is an awful stat if true (it may be misleading or flat out wrong...depends on how they quantify people who are in debt)...most of those are probably Americans too! A few people could bring about a lot of positive change, essentially.

Bear in mind that this statistic is partially "sweked" by the presence of a vast chunk of people with negative equity i.e. larger debts compared to own wealth.

[Not A Communist Shill]

yeah.
..............


According to this, in 2010, the richest 1% of Americans made up 35.4% of the US's wealth, and the next 19% a further 53.5%.

According to 2012 figures, the richest 1% also had an income share of 19.34% of the total...the richest 0.01% being 4.08%.

[Aquagraph]

I edited the 1% part as I was wrong. I'll still need to look more in depth to the Obama administration and national debt.

@Subteigh Am I brainfarting but doesn't the accumulation of debt mean debt that wasn't paid off during your regime? Also, Bush was after Clinton, so the statistics about Bush are not meaningful. I'm pretty sure that the US Department of Treasury chart didn't involve inflation which has been huge (97% over the last 100 years).

[Not A Communist Shill]

I'm not too knowledgeable on macroeconomics (who is!) and it didn't even interest me until fairly recently, but I did look into whether government debt was necessarily bad...I found out there was little on the subject. There was one study which showed that, yes, it was a Bad Thing, but then this had been debunked because of some flaw...and in fact, the debunkers demonstrated that the opposite was actually true! That during periods of great national debt, growth was actually greater, not lower! But looking at it made me appreciate what a clusterfuck of a sham the whole business is...it may not be so surprising that growth after WWII was higher than normal for example...and of course, you have so many variables like economic policy, worldwide economic conditions, the effects of being a stable Western economy, maybe even the effect of an increasingly aged people, the effect of freely available credit to individuals, the benefits of new technology in certain periods etc.

I'm sure it must be true that individuals borrowing heavily is a bad thing, if nothing else. I don't see how with the American system, a president is going to be elected (and re-elected) solely on promising to cut the debt and promising little else...maybe something that congress has to draw up a long-term plan for.

[Not A Communist Shill]

I edited the 1% part as I was wrong. I'll still need to look more in depth to the Obama administration and national debt.

@Subteigh Am I brainfarting but doesn't the accumulation of debt mean debt that wasn't paid off during your regime? Also, Bush was after Clinton, so the statistics about Bush are not meaningful. I'm pretty sure that the US Department of Treasury chart didn't involve inflation which has been huge (97% over the last 100 years).

That stat doesn't take into account ALL debts accumulated between Washington and Clinton...it counts the overall debt after taking away debts that were payed off, which is a much lower figure.

Anyway, according to the US treasury website the total outstanding public debt when Obama became president was: $10,626,877,048,913.08, today it is listed as: $17,436,444,226,130.22 which includes $4,990,014,819,965.70 that the government owes to itself.

[mu4]

You can't really blame Obama for the debt accrued in the first few years of his presidency. You gotta blame Bush for that. Also Bush inherited a surplus from the end of Clinton's presidency and squandered it. It's very easy to see where the debt comes from.

1. War(Bush started)
2. Lower taxes(Bush laws)
3. Financial crisis(Cylical)

Boom bust periods have to be viewed as cyclical imo becuase it always happens and the 2008 crash is no different, the fact that it was worse might have been compounded by political issues but there would still have been a problem in the late 2000's early 2010's. The recession is not over because wages have stagnated since the 70's, in eras of higher employment, it was not noticed as much but today with long term unemployment becoming more common, there is going to be a large group of people without governmental aid and without any wages/employment to escape poverty. The government is certainly the problem, but losing a few(tens maybe) million people in a revolution is also a problem. A lot of these problems aren't really solvable but they are manageable if governance is able to enact the appropriate measures and reforms such as increasing wages, cutting military spending, raising taxes on the rich, and putting effort into research in order to acquire energy independence.

Hey, you can go the other way too, cut wages to third world levels, lower taxes on the rich so they can ship it overseas(or maybe if the wages are low enough they'll just start the sweatshops here), go fight some more wars and bow down to the energy lobby. That'll work just fine..

[mu4]

I'm not too knowledgeable on macroeconomics (who is!) and it didn't even interest me until fairly recently, but I did look into whether government debt was necessarily bad...I found out there was little on the subject. There was one study which showed that, yes, it was a Bad Thing, but then this had been debunked because of some flaw...and in fact, the debunkers demonstrated that the opposite was actually true! That during periods of great national debt, growth was actually greater, not lower! But looking at it made me appreciate what a clusterfuck of a sham the whole business is...it may not be so surprising that growth after WWII was higher than normal for example...and of course, you have so many variables like economic policy, worldwide economic conditions, the effects of being a stable Western economy, maybe even the effect of an increasingly aged people, the effect of freely available credit to individuals, the benefits of new technology in certain periods etc.

I'm sure it must be true that individuals borrowing heavily is a bad thing, if nothing else. I don't see how with the American system, a president is going to be elected (and re-elected) solely on promising to cut the debt and promising little else...maybe something that congress has to draw up a long-term plan for.

IMO, government debt is virtually meaningless. Social stability is the real currency that backs government debt, it's the "credit" rating of societies. In a society without debt, social instability will still destroy it or will quickly create a insurmountable debt. Most of the debt in a stable society will be to it's own people, often in the form of benefits but that's in a way very obfuscated as the benefits will still be delivered. However debt can cause social instability either due to perception or inability to pay creditors due to political bickering, as long as the perception of the world is that your society is stable, then foreign exchange and trade will keep your currency strong and "hard" so to speak. Fiat currency is not really only a estimation of value of goods but also a estimation of the stability and power of a society. Economics tend to treat Fiat currency and currency in general as something that measures the value of goods, but economics fails to account for the political power which backs currency. In many ways Fiat currency is only here to facilitate exchange and a tool to do so, it is often manipulated but political stability allows for it to be protected from manipulation.

The Chinese actually recognize the fundamental social character of its currency, it is called Renminbi, which essentially "people's currency". It's a bit interesting because it means a bit more than that because it has a way of interpreting it that it would mean that the money is the price of human life, or blood money. The way that systems values it's currency is in human relations and social relations which is actually very Marxist in character. Money is no longer about goods and rather about social relations and the power of social relations.

[Aquagraph]

Hey, you can go the other way too, cut wages to third world levels, lower taxes on the rich so they can ship it overseas(or maybe if the wages are low enough they'll just start the sweatshops here), go fight some more wars and bow down to the energy lobby. That'll work just fine..

First of all, governments don't cut private wages. They can abolish the initiation of force towards people who are willing to work for lesser wages.

Secondly, I don't see how fighting more wars is the other direction since Obama has started a war or "limited military intervention", or what was their Orwellian term, against Syria to help out their trusted Al-Qaeda allies to take over. "WE ARE NOW AT WAR WITH EURASIA, WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EURASIA"

Thirdly, if you can't compete with some shoeless uneducated Chinese cheap labor, get a training.

You'll basically scare away the rich if you raise taxes on them. Not to forget that your corporate masters won't raise taxes on themselves. But they don't mind you making pleas with your votes for someone that isn't Bush the Evil.

[mu4]

First of all, governments don't cut private wages. They can abolish the initiation of force towards people who are willing to work for lesser wages.

Secondly, I don't see how fighting more wars is the other direction since Obama has started a war or "limited military intervention", or what was their Orwellian term, against Syria to help out their trusted Al-Qaeda allies to take over. "WE ARE NOW AT WAR WITH EURASIA, WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EURASIA"

What is happening in Syria is incredibly limited and very cheap from a economic perspective, it cost far less than the trillions of dollars Iraq was.

Thirdly, if you can't compete with some shoeless uneducated Chinese cheap labor, get a training.

Unfortunately, the shoe-less uneducated Chinese cheap labor is not as shoe-less, cheap or uneducated as you think. The country has over a 95% literacy rate. The fact they are just rising into the middle class and unsophisticated does not mean they're uneducated or untrained. The Chinese(india as well) have a bigger middle class population wise than the US already, and it's only growing. Historically the Chinese have been one of the most literate cultures in the world, and they prize education and knowledge. It's no surprise that they will continue to acquire skilled proficiency in the future. The Chinese also no longer want to be the sweatshop of the world, they want to create upmarket goods that cater to a premium audience. The recent acquisition of Motorola by Lenovo is a move in that direction. Lenovo is a very strong company with very competent management and it's only likely they will succeed, they are already the biggest PC maker and 2nd biggest phone seller in China. It's likely within a decade they will overtake Samsung in China and compete with companies internationally. There's still a huge disparity between regions but China will start to even out later in the 21st century.

You'll basically scare away the rich if you raise taxes on them. Not to forget that your corporate masters won't raise taxes on themselves. But they don't mind you making pleas with your votes for someone that isn't Bush the Evil.

What's wrong with scaring away the rich? The rich and powerful tend to play political games whereever they happen to be. They can go somewhere else and play their oligarchy games there and screw it up. If taxes/wages don't rise because opposition groups in the government keep them down, it's no fault of the individuals that I support. Certainly I will get no traction with people who are entirely against my interests or people who just cry wolf like you from another country. Anyways you are not really interested in the plight of Americans or really any other individual other than yourself, most of your politics is based on a lack of tangible interest in any of these purported topics, you got nothing to lose and nothing to gain either way, it's just a bunch of wank.

[InvisibleJim]

Until the economies are willing to raise the interest rates to a palatable level to allow middle class investors to get returns and therefore for the middle class to grow the long term economic trends will continue unabated.

[Aquagraph]

Unfortunately, the shoe-less uneducated Chinese cheap labor is not as shoe-less, cheap or uneducated as you think.

Okay, insert China with next sweatshop country available. If none is available, let's be wealthy together then.

What's wrong with scaring away the rich? The rich and powerful tend to play political games whereever they happen to be.

You know, with the invention of electronic money transfer, they can do that just as easily over the seas.

Anyways you are not really interested in the plight of Americans or really any other individual other than yourself, most of your politics is based on a lack of tangible interest in any of these purported topics, you got nothing to lose and nothing to gain either way, it's just a bunch of wank.

Well, you know me. Wait, you don't. What does it even matter if people like you like to participate in my threads. If crying a bit about the poor and the rich gives your head a nice little socialist halo, we all win. It's symbiosis, baby.

[mu4]

You know, with the invention of electronic money transfer, they can do that just as easily over the seas.

The game of power requires a lot of face to face, actions at a distance are much harder to monitor, and there are always local issues to distract you. There is a significant cost to leaving and and focus shifts.

Well, you know me. Wait, you don't.

Actually I do, I've met upteen kids just like you, talk like you, etc. I'm sure other people have as well.

[Aquagraph]

The game of power requires a lot of face to face, actions at a distance are much harder to monitor, and there are always local issues to distract you. There is a significant cost to leaving and and focus shifts.

It's fairly common that owners hire CEOs to run their companies on the other side of the world. I don't see why the same couldn't be used to run special interests.

[mu4]

It's fairly common that owners hire CEOs to run their companies on the other side of the world. I don't see why the same couldn't be used to run special interests.

I think you are wrong to look at business and political struggle as something entirely similar. Business is based around eliminating what political struggle centers on, business often strives to treat customers equally, and treat it's goods as commodities and endeavor to sell goods to these customers. It strives to provide agnostic product despite differing viewpoints. I am a proponent of business in this sense and it is as a whole also a democratic institution. Political struggle is very different from this and uses difference in people's views as a way to form divisions and use those divisions to form power structures in which interests are promoted or individuals are manipulated. Business can be done from a much larger distance because the goal is to figure out how to provide something which is palatable despite any sort of difference of opinion. The organization of business itself seeks a certain level of distance from political struggle, because that's just bad for business. However this doesn't mean that individual who acquire wealth and power thru business do not seek to influence the political struggle going around them, but this requires more closeness of contact because political struggle requires more secrecy, security and downright nastiness. Of course political struggle can be accomplished from afar, but it generally occurs in a destructive fashion, it's very hard to build something without investing oneself locally but if you want to destroy things, you can always send saboteurs and the nasty folks.

Ultimately business and political struggle are very different things and confusing one practice for another is a mistake.

[Aquagraph]

I think you are wrong to look at business and political struggle as something entirely similar. Business is based around eliminating what political struggle centers on, business often strives to treat customers equally, and treat it's goods as commodities and endeavor to sell goods to these customers. It strives to provide agnostic product despite differing viewpoints. I am a proponent of business in this sense and it is as a whole also a democratic institution. Political struggle is very different from this and uses difference in people's views as a way to form divisions and use those divisions to form power structures in which interests are promoted or individuals are manipulated. Business can be done from a much larger distance because the goal is to figure out how to provide something which is palatable despite any sort of difference of opinion. The organization of business itself seeks a certain level of distance from political struggle, because that's just bad for business. However this doesn't mean that individual who acquire wealth and power thru business do not seek to influence the political struggle going around them, but this requires more closeness of contact because political struggle requires more secrecy, security and downright nastiness. Of course political struggle can be accomplished from afar, but it generally occurs in a destructive fashion, it's very hard to build something without investing oneself locally but if you want to destroy things, you can always send saboteurs and the nasty folks.

Ultimately business and political struggle are very different things and confusing one practice for another is a mistake.

Does it ever get tiring to come up with definition-twisting text full of weasel talk so that you can try to counter-argue in your own forum where most people happen to consider you as an idiot?

Foreign powers have been long able to incite riots, rig elections and so on. Physical distance is not a problem.

[Aquagraph]

I was under the impression that inflation averages to just over 3% per year. Over the course of 100 years, this would be an increase of over 1,921%.

Only 97% over the past 100 years seems fatally low. Prices are way more than double what they were in 1914. The stock market is way more than just double. Heck, even in just the past 10 years, it seems health insurance has doubled.

Unless you mean 97% as in a devaluation of money/real value of 97%, then that statistic might seem more feasible.

First of all, the states way to measure inflation has changed during the years and the raw data used for it's calculation isn't even available. Secondly, costs of the products used in comparison to the nominal amount of dollars in different years will be harder to determine since the production turns more efficient through economic and technological innovations which in turn makes them cheaper, meaning that the real inflation is higher. Most importantly, the number 97% was meant that the current dollar is worth 3 cents of 1914. I'm currently very tired and will look into my phrasing and edit it to make more sense after I've slept.

Also, the health insurance price might be affected with some of the recent socialization. I'm not saying it is necessarily because of the ACA, although I'm sure it will increase costs to some. If Obama would have actually found a way to implement a more effective health insurance that can be achieved without the use of state violence (taxation & regulation), he would be in the insurance business.

[Aquagraph]

I invite all of you to question my statistics. I will also add more to the OP if they are on topic (which is loose).

I have already done a several edits due to OP being misinforming.

[bolong]

Does it ever get tiring to come up with definition-twisting text full of weasel talk so that you can try to counter-argue in your own forum where most people happen to consider you as an idiot?

Foreign powers have been long able to incite riots, rig elections and so on. Physical distance is not a problem.

ad hominem, you lose.

[InvisibleJim]

ad hominem, you lose.

Not if he's right. c:

Which he is...

[Aquagraph]

ad hominem, you lose.

It's an ad hominem and wasn't meant to be facaded as a real argument but I guess he beat me to it by basically calling me an unloving sociopath.

Anyways you are not really interested in the plight of Americans or really any other individual other than yourself, most of your politics is based on a lack of tangible interest in any of these purported topics, you got nothing to lose and nothing to gain either way, it's just a bunch of wank.

[Aquagraph]

When unaccounted liabilities are accounted to the national debt, it's not only 17 trillion dollars. It's 205 trillion dollars. More than 650.000 dollars per every American or more than 1,4 million for every employed American.

I'll try to summarize how Laurence Kotlikoff, the former Senior Economist for the President's Council of Economic advisers got that number:
Congressional Budget Office releases long-term fiscal forecasts for the government spending. It used an Extended Baseline Forecast which assumes cuts that the Congress doesn't even believe in. Congress, however, has an Alternative Fiscal Scenario which is what the Congress actually believes that the taxes and spending will be. Based on this latter, which is hard to find, the deficit would be 205 trillion.

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Monopolized currency is really bad news, if you didn't already know this. I'm thankful to the brutal honesty of the billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller when he praised the Quantative Easing ( past terms are Inflating the Money Supply / Money Creation / Counterfeiting) in 2013. He said: "This is fantastic for every rich person" and "This is the biggest redistribution of wealth from the middleclass and the poor to the rich."

[mu4]

Does it ever get tiring to come up with definition-twisting text full of weasel talk so that you can try to counter-argue in your own forum where most people happen to consider you as an idiot?

Foreign powers have been long able to incite riots, rig elections and so on. Physical distance is not a problem.

"Of course political struggle can be accomplished from afar, but it generally occurs in a destructive fashion, it's very hard to build something without investing oneself locally but if you want to destroy things, you can always send saboteurs and the nasty folks."

Yea, what I said. But that's a foreign power messing stuff up for you, not a former citizen trying to build something positive for your country from another land. People that leave generally have little or no interest left in creating value and benefit for people from the place they left. The might want to milk it for $$$ or whatever they can but their investment in the culture is gone. You can have a vacation home and such which is what people do sometimes, but long term disengagement has a cost.

Political struggle is not merely for destruction, political struggle is often to build something, to reform something, to improve something. Also what I said about you was not you were a sociopath, but that you have no skin in the game and you are mostly just parroting propaganda without a real point of view. You're not American, you have no tangible interest in America's success and it's likely you dislike America for various reasons. You fall under the whole foreign power thing. It's funny you have to talk about forum perception of me because you can't really talk about what I've said about debt, what I've said about the nature of political struggle and the various things that you would be able to talk about if you actually read more than political propaganda. No matter what happens you don't have to face the consequences of what you say. It's easy for you to support policies that would create a economic and social collapse, it's easy for you to be a paper revolutionary, since you'll be in Finland. Nobody really like the institutions which have existed long before we were born, but how to reform them without total collapse is entirely different than some sort of anarchist fantasy.

You started the ad hominems way early saying that I am in support oligarchs and etc. So do not even go there. I also address your BS before I start calling you a ignorant little kid(which you are), so my viewpoint you're a ignorant little kid with no skin in the game is irrelevant to the arguing points. I.E not ad hominems. When you stop being a parrot with the standard propaganda, maybe you'll figure out how much you're really thinking for yourself.

[mu4]

This seems to contradict your other statement:

Do you see what I mean? I agree the fundamental goals of business and politics are different. For unity/selling versus division/power plays as you mention. But then you say the rich and powerful tend to play political games. Unless you're referring to 'rich and powerful' as being unrelated to business, but one tends to become 'rich and powerful' through business. And both are related in that they have a social impact/affect on the people around you.

Becoming rich and powerful through business is something that can occur but it's not the only way, in the past becoming rich and power also occurred thru force and plunder and tribute. The modern way is business but becoming rich and powerful still comes about thru other things such as corruption, financial speculation, etc. And staying rich and power is often not about business but about power struggle, staying rich is also a bit easier than getting rich. Democratic societies and societies with a state generally grant the government a monopoly on the use of force and thus the use of force by individuals to acquire property/wealth is prohibited. The nature of the modern 1st world is fairly distanced from political struggle because democratic institutions distance individuals from the dire(life/death) consequences of political struggle. This is not Game of Thrones, House of Cards maybe.

Also tell me what you think is the contradiction.

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17 Facts to Show Anyone that believes that the US Economy is just fine

#1 The homeownership rate in the United States has dropped to the lowest level in 19 years.

#2 Consumer spending for durable goods has dropped by 3.23 percent since November. This is a clear sign that an economic slowdown is ahead.

#3 Major retailers are closing stores at the fastest pace that we have seen since the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

#4 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20 percent of all families in the United States do not have a single member that is employed. That means that one out of every five families in the entire country is completely unemployed.

#5 There are 1.3 million fewer jobs in the U.S. economy than when the last recession began in December 2007. Meanwhile, our population has continued to grow steadily since that time.

#6 According to a new report from the National Employment Law Project, the quality of the jobs that have been "created" since the end of the last recession does not match the quality of the jobs lost during the last recession...

Lower-wage industries constituted 22 percent of recession losses, but 44 percent of recovery growth.
Mid-wage industries constituted 37 percent of recession losses, but only 26 percent of recovery growth.
Higher-wage industries constituted 41 percent of recession losses, and 30 percent of recovery growth.

#7 After adjusting for inflation, men who work full-time in America today make less money than men who worked full-time in America 40 years ago.

#8 It is hard to believe, but 62 percent of all Americans make $20 or less an hour at this point.

#9 Nine of the top ten occupations in the U.S. pay an average wage of less than $35,000 a year.

#10 The middle class in Canada now makes more money than the middle class in the United States does.

#11 According to one recent study, 40 percent of all Americans could not come up with $2000 right now even if there was a major emergency.

#12 Less than one out of every four Americans has enough money put away to cover six months of expenses if there was a job loss or major emergency.

#13 An astounding 56 percent of all Americans have subprime credit in 2014.

#14 As I wrote about the other day, there are now 49 million Americans that are dealing with food insecurity.

#15 Ten years ago, the number of women in the U.S. that had jobs outnumbered the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps by more than a 2 to 1 margin. But now the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps actually exceeds the number of women that have jobs.

#16 69 percent of the federal budget is spent either on entitlements or on welfare programs.

#17 The number of Americans receiving benefits from the federal government each month exceeds the number of full-time workers in the private sector by more than 60 million.