So is the s*%t starting to hit the fan for you?

[Wifezilla]

Our standard of living is dropping so that other countries standard of living may rise.

These two are not related.

 

[moolie]

The United States is in a period of transition. Portions of our biggest sector, the middle class are going away. Our standard of living is dropping so that other countries standard of living may rise. It's a hard pill to swallow. We don't have any control over it, even through our most sacred rights. The right to vote and to free speech. It's something new to us. So yes there's a lot of blame and fear going around.

If I may, I believe that the new millennium has brought incredible challenges to reconciling what we think of as society to what is evolving on a day by day basis. The world has become smaller, technology invades every corner of our lives, we're all stressed out and busy all the time and don't know how to cope.

Standards of living in the west haven't kept pace with those in the developing world, this is true, but I don't believe that the standards are rising in the developing world at the expense of the standards of us in the west.

The middle class is actually a fairly recent societal development, and may not survive as we know it.

Systems have become bloated. And unsustainable with the current demands of the population. We see it here daily in Canada with regards to our medical and education systems. From what we hear on the news, it seems that in the US many people want smaller government, yet still want government-provided services. It can't go both ways.

My personal view is that entrenching ourselves as survivalists in mountain strong-holds isn't the way to go. The Taliban does that, and look how they're getting by. We'll never find complete consensus as humans, people are too different. But we've got to find ways to work together for the common good or we'll all suffer. In isolation from one another.

Sorry if this is disjointed, lots going on around me and I have to head out now but I look forward to reading more posts on this topic tomorrow.

 

[SKR8PN]

Our standard of living is dropping so that other countries standard of living may rise.

These two are not related.

Yes they are.........think about it for a minute........

 

[Dunkopf]

Our standard of living is dropping so that other countries standard of living may rise.

These two are not related.

In my opinion they are related. It may not be the intended consequence, but it is exactly what is happening. Yes there are a lot of people at the top that are getting rich over it. Look at China and India and tell me their standard of living has not increased. Look at all the unemployed people here. A very large chunk of those jobs have gone to other countries. The reason is so that the people people having the goods made elsewhere can make a larger profit while still being competitive in the large chain stores where most goods are purchased. The result is that the economies in Asian countries and India have skyrocketed in the past 12 years or so. Our middle class is suffering from the highest unemployment since the great depression. It isn't just because of the banksters.

The 2 are related.

 

[Dunkopf]

The United States is in a period of transition. Portions of our biggest sector, the middle class are going away. Our standard of living is dropping so that other countries standard of living may rise. It's a hard pill to swallow. We don't have any control over it, even through our most sacred rights. The right to vote and to free speech. It's something new to us. So yes there's a lot of blame and fear going around.

If I may, I believe that the new millennium has brought incredible challenges to reconciling what we think of as society to what is evolving on a day by day basis. The world has become smaller, technology invades every corner of our lives, we're all stressed out and busy all the time and don't know how to cope.

Standards of living in the west haven't kept pace with those in the developing world, this is true, but I don't believe that the standards are rising in the developing world at the expense of the standards of us in the west.

The middle class is actually a fairly recent societal development, and may not survive as we know it.

Systems have become bloated. And unsustainable with the current demands of the population. We see it here daily in Canada with regards to our medical and education systems. From what we hear on the news, it seems that in the US many people want smaller government, yet still want government-provided services. It can't go both ways.

My personal view is that entrenching ourselves as survivalists in mountain strong-holds isn't the way to go. The Taliban does that, and look how they're getting by. We'll never find complete consensus as humans, people are too different. But we've got to find ways to work together for the common good or we'll all suffer. In isolation from one another.

Sorry if this is disjointed, lots going on around me and I have to head out now but I look forward to reading more posts on this topic tomorrow.

Yes the middle class is fairly recent. In the US it was created by unions and the growth of manufacturing. Now that we can no longer be competitive because of labor and health care cost the middle class is being severely depleted. Once the cost of labor in other countries rises and between that and shipping cost we can be more competitive, we will see manufacturing jobs again. Those jobs will only pay a fraction of what they used to pay though. They will have little or no benefits too. People in those jobs will be considered amongst the working poor.

India is and will continue to claim a large portion of our tech jobs. The US is indeed being topped off. Our mountain isn't quite as high as it used to be. We are still the biggest economy in the world but the gap isn't what it used to be.

I'm growing weary of playing the blame game. Things are what they are. The inevitable is going to happen. We can't stop growth in other countries and we have to be allies with other countries to survive as a nation. That's why we hear all sorts of talk from our political leaders about stopping job loss overseas but don't see any real action.

A global economy is already happening. We may have different currencies but we are all tied together.

 

[Icu4dzs]

[I'm growing weary of playing the blame game. Things are what they are. The inevitable is going to happen. We can't stop growth in other countries and we have to be allies with other countries to survive as a nation. That's why we hear all sorts of talk from our political leaders about stopping job loss overseas but don't see any real action.

A global economy is already happening. We may have different currencies but we are all tied together.

Forgive my sounding "IGNORANT" but what pray tell do you consider to be "THE INEVITABLE"? and "what do you propose "...is going to happen"?

For someone who is feels "Alarm-ism" is the only way to get people to do anything, I for one would really like to know what it is that YOU suggest we do?

How can us poor SS folks be "prepared" for the "inevitable" if we don't know what EXACTLY "the inevitable truly is?

The current situation in the middle east is apparently one "match away from a fire-storm" as the current governments of all the countries surrounding Israel are being "challenged" by the Muslim brotherhood who aligned themselves with Hitler during WW II and were financed by Adolph Eichman. Is this what you refer to as "the inevitable?" Not going to take this to a political discussion...sorry

Are you telling us that this is "on its way here"?

Enquiring minds would really like to know...What is the "INEVITABLE" because our entire future is consumed by this concept if you ask me.

 

[Dunkopf]

[I'm growing weary of playing the blame game. Things are what they are. The inevitable is going to happen. We can't stop growth in other countries and we have to be allies with other countries to survive as a nation. That's why we hear all sorts of talk from our political leaders about stopping job loss overseas but don't see any real action.

A global economy is already happening. We may have different currencies but we are all tied together.

Forgive my sounding "IGNORANT" but what pray tell do you consider to be "THE INEVITABLE"? and "what do you propose "...is going to happen"?

For someone who is feels "Alarm-ism" is the only way to get people to do anything, I for one would really like to know what it is that YOU suggest we do?

How can us poor SS folks be "prepared" for the "inevitable" if we don't know what EXACTLY "the inevitable truly is?

The current situation in the middle east is apparently one "match away from a fire-storm" as the current governments of all the countries surrounding Israel are being "challenged" by the Muslim brotherhood who aligned themselves with Hitler during WW II and were financed by Adolph Eichman. Is this what you refer to as "the inevitable?" Not going to take this to a political discussion...sorry

Are you telling us that this is "on its way here"?

Enquiring minds would really like to know...What is the "INEVITABLE" because our entire future is consumed by this concept if you ask me.

The inevitable is that the world is turning economically flat. Our manufacturing and customer services industries as well as engineering are all going overseas. Multi national corporations are reaping the benefits of cheaper wages and no benefits supplied by other nations with a lower standard of living. This in turn is lowering our standard of living. The upper classes are widening the gap. The middle classes expect lower prices on consumer goods. All the while the cheap goods are eroding the very foundation of the middle class. It's a vicious circle and it's inevitable that it will continue to happen. Heavy tariffs and not honoring trade agreements will hurt our economy even further.

The only way to be prepared is to be debt free including your mortgage and be able to produce a good portion of your own food.

The current situation in the Middle East wasn't even part of my posting as I remember. We are tied to the Middle East whether we want to be or not. We have been forced to support dictators for many years just to be sure we have an uninterrupted flow of oil. You saw what happened last time when speculators drove prices up. As a nation we reduced fuel consumption substantially. Prices on a lot of things went way up with fuel surcharges on deliveries. Those surcharges stayed in place even after prices went back down. If the gov does anything to control our insatiable appetite for oil it will have disastrous results on an already weak economy.

No I'm not even a little worried about Muslim extremism like GB talks about coming to our shores. Just more alarm-ism in my opinion. I am concerned about what the events in the Middle East will do to the flow of oil and the prices as speculators drive the prices up over concerns of stability.

Hopefully threats of cutting off aid to Egypt will have some effect on what happens over there. I am worried about the void when Mubarek gets ousted. We can only hope that the people over there will pick someone that's more or less Democratic.

 

[moolie]

I'm sorry if this is news, but the current version of "the global economy" has been in full swing for a good 60 or more years, it became a necessity during WWII. Americans are pretty used to eating bananas at this point, can't see going back now. Heck, "the global economy" probably started with the spice trade between western Europe and Asia during Roman times that continued through the middle ages and to some extent still exists today. People have always wanted more than is locally available--the grass has always looked greener, especially in the depths of a cold winter.

As related to the comments about the middle east's control over petroleum-based energy, post-WWII America took Britain's place as the "controller" of middle east oil and never looked back--oil has been king ever since. The fact that those nations developed and took control over the resources from their own sovereign lands, as is their right, seems to have eluded many.

America also never looked forward, to a time when oil could/must be supplanted by more renewable energy sources. Two terms under a petroleum-industry friendly government meant that new non-petroleum based energy technologies that were ready for the mainstream languished or were squashed outright. So other nations have furthered development in those technologies and the US is now even further behind the 8-ball on sustainable energy.

It's not about the middle east.

All that middle east oil (along with what we have here in Canada) could be well on the way to redundancy at this point if the developed world were not so lazy and entrenched in old ways.

People have comfort levels, and are very unwilling to try new things.

Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House roof in the 1970s. Ronald Reagan had them taken down in the 1980s because the technology was "too expensive and not useful to the average American". Why? Why not work to change that?

And why does every middle class citizen of the People's Republic of China now yearn for the day when they can purchase an automobile that relies on the internal-combustion engine when they got along just fine for the past 150 years with bicycles? That's backward thinking inspired by an idealized view of the west. We'd all be a great deal healthier if we were stuck with the bicycles.

Barack and Michelle Obama planted a vegetable garden on the White House grounds a couple of years ago, has that encouraged Americans to try to live more sustainable and self-sufficient lives, or was it just eye-candy for the media during trying economic times? Are they keeping it up?

Aside from energy concerns, the comments above about how the American middle class is disappearing as a result of other nations becoming more developed
is really just fear-mongering. America gave away those manufacturing jobs "to keep prices down" (well the big multi-national corps did). At the expense of the American (and Canadian) blue-collar worker. It's happening in tech fields now, my husband's job got out-sourced to an Indian firm last year--and he saw it coming for years.

But isn't that what a free-market American-style economy is all about? Survival of the fittest?

The truly interesting thing is that a year later that company isn't saving any money. Those contracts are written to be very beneficial to the off-shore company. His company threw away local jobs for nothing. And now they have to wait till the contract renewal date to get out of it and get back to normal.

There are no easy answers, and "blame" isn't the way to go.

People need to take personal responsibility. Blaming a foreclosure on the often-corrupt sub-prime mortgage industry means that an entire generation of people don't understand money, debt, and how to best proceed in their own best interests. Our grandparents, and parents in the case of some of us, paid "cash on the barrel" for everything and have security that investments and pension systems can't replicate.

If it takes the fall of a broken system to make people wake up and start taking responsibility for their own actions, and to make the government that is supposed to be of and for the people start doing right by those people, so be it. Empires have risen and fallen many times in history, people are no worse for wear today as a result.

 

[moolie]

(I really need to strive for brevity in my writing )

To summarize: America once had more power over other nations, those nations are in the process of developing similarly to America and crave the same level of power. As you sow, so will you reap.

Perhaps it's not about maintaining what was in the past, but moving beyond the past to a new and better future. Loss is a great way to let go of what has tied you down and embrace new possibilities.

That said, the sky still isn't falling. There are simply challenges to be met intelligently.

 

[Dunkopf]

I'm sorry if this is news, but the current version of "the global economy" has been in full swing for a good 60 or more years, it became a necessity during WWII. Americans are pretty used to eating bananas at this point, can't see going back now. Heck, "the global economy" probably started with the spice trade between western Europe and Asia during Roman times that continued through the middle ages and to some extent still exists today. People have always wanted more than is locally available--the grass has always looked greener, especially in the depths of a cold winter.

As related to the comments about the middle east's control over petroleum-based energy, post-WWII America took Britain's place as the "controller" of middle east oil and never looked back--oil has been king ever since. The fact that those nations developed and took control over the resources from their own sovereign lands, as is their right, seems to have eluded many.

America also never looked forward, to a time when oil could/must be supplanted by more renewable energy sources. Two terms under a petroleum-industry friendly government meant that new non-petroleum based energy technologies that were ready for the mainstream languished or were squashed outright. So other nations have furthered development in those technologies and the US is now even further behind the 8-ball on sustainable energy.

It's not about the middle east.

All that middle east oil (along with what we have here in Canada) could be well on the way to redundancy at this point if the developed world were not so lazy and entrenched in old ways.

People have comfort levels, and are very unwilling to try new things.

Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House roof in the 1970s. Ronald Reagan had them taken down in the 1980s because the technology was "too expensive and not useful to the average American". Why? Why not work to change that?

And why does every middle class citizen of the People's Republic of China now yearn for the day when they can purchase an automobile that relies on the internal-combustion engine when they got along just fine for the past 150 years with bicycles? That's backward thinking inspired by an idealized view of the west. We'd all be a great deal healthier if we were stuck with the bicycles.

Barack and Michelle Obama planted a vegetable garden on the White House grounds a couple of years ago, has that encouraged Americans to try to live more sustainable and self-sufficient lives, or was it just eye-candy for the media during trying economic times? Are they keeping it up?

Aside from energy concerns, the comments above about how the American middle class is disappearing as a result of other nations becoming more developed
is really just fear-mongering. America gave away those manufacturing jobs "to keep prices down" (well the big multi-national corps did). At the expense of the American (and Canadian) blue-collar worker. It's happening in tech fields now, my husband's job got out-sourced to an Indian firm last year--and he saw it coming for years.

But isn't that what a free-market American-style economy is all about? Survival of the fittest?

The truly interesting thing is that a year later that company isn't saving any money. Those contracts are written to be very beneficial to the off-shore company. His company threw away local jobs for nothing. And now they have to wait till the contract renewal date to get out of it and get back to normal.

There are no easy answers, and "blame" isn't the way to go.

People need to take personal responsibility. Blaming a foreclosure on the often-corrupt sub-prime mortgage industry means that an entire generation of people don't understand money, debt, and how to best proceed in their own best interests. Our grandparents, and parents in the case of some of us, paid "cash on the barrel" for everything and have security that investments and pension systems can't replicate.

If it takes the fall of a broken system to make people wake up and start taking responsibility for their own actions, and to make the government that is supposed to be of and for the people start doing right by those people, so be it. Empires have risen and fallen many times in history, people are no worse for wear today as a result.

You just said exactly what I said. I'm not blaming China or India for taking our jobs. I'm blaming the multi nationals who are simply doing their jobs. Make more money for their investors. Yes the jobs going to China and India didn't cause the actual collapse. The banksters and Wall Street along with relaxed regulations and a demand from the govt for sub prime loans caused an artificially inflated and unsustainable housing market. The lack of jobs that have been outsourced is keeping the economy from coming back.

We are losing jobs and our standard of living is going down. That's just a fact.The global economy in it's current form has not been around that long. Of course we have always traded with other countries. Tariffs have been relaxed for a long time. It's just since NAFTA that things have gotten really rough.

Couldn't agree with you more about Carter and Reagan. Carter warned us and even had a fire side chat about it for which he was ridiculed by the right. So other countries are far ahead of us in the technology. Meanwhile we are still trying to control the Mid East to insure that we can drive our SUV's with one person per car. Look around next time you're in stop and go traffic and notice how many cars have only one person in them. Look how much protest is put up by the right every time someone talks about expanding public transportation. It's not going to change.

We're going to run ourselves completely out of oil before anyone does anything substantial about it.

As for mortgages. Anyone that didn't know enough to read the contract they are required to give you before you proceed to closing has no reason to blame the dishonest mortgage brokers. People will make money however they can. It's buyer beware. If you're going to sign a note for 200k or more you should know what you're getting into.