If Osama Bin Laden had an aircraft carrier and a banner, would he be celebrating today?

The Kipplinger letter on Aug 28, 1998 said that the US will be a target of Muslim terrorists for many years, due to our prominent role in the world.

Now, due to the attacks on Sept 11th, our leadership has bankrupted our political capital on the world stage and our financial capital at home. So far this year 11 banks have gone belly up, with probably another dozen before the end of Q4. Moderate estimates say 3 percent of our 8500 FDIC insured banks will fail by the end of 2009.

Lehman Brothers isn't nearly as bad as the loss of Budweiser. Not only are we losing institutions that don't make a product, but now the few facets of goods we used to own are disappearing.

The US won't ever regain the stature we held in the 80s. Who would have thought the end of the Cold War would be the "good ole days"?

So Osama, alive and well in Afganistan or Pakistan... while we piss our money away on a war in Iraq and maybe a war in Iran, while we spend money buying invisible things and reselling them while China sells goods and buys US businesses and mortgages and property to recycle the money ... you can't help but start to realize that we lost a long time ago.

Where do we go from here?

Where do we go from here?
You can start by never agian letting a neo con into power.


Cheers,

We get a guy into the office of the Presidency, that will address these issues, frankly, and is willing to meet them head on.

Since we aren't electing Ron Paul, it looks like it's up to Obama to try and fill those shoes. Hopefully he can use that oratory ability of his to galvanize the public into action, a la Kennedy with the 'man on the moon by the end of this decade' speech.

We also need to bring jobs back here to the U.S. and start fielding a generation of kids that aren't afraid of hard work and the discipline in order to do said work.

While we are at it, I want a pony as well.....

Don't feel too bad. Sometimes people overestimate the effect politics has on global historic trends.

kill unions= economy getting better.

Yeah, the tiny fraction of the US workforce that is unionized is obviously bringing the whole system down despite no such similar effect in more heavily unionized nations. I feel more embarrassed for some people every time they talk.

Sorry you disapprove oh great and powerful oz.

In my perception, unions had a purpose, much like the appendix, and the Electoral college. I have seen unions make small buisness unable to operate from first hand experience. Unions driving wages up and causing rediculous excessive things. For example paying one guy to turn on something, but having to pay another guy to turn it off.

The union that some of my coworkers belong to negotiated a raise that made us go form the most paid sales people to the most paid by a long shot. While i am not complaining about the raise I am complaining that the unions have power over entire industries. These things prevent companies from making competative pricing and it makes more economical sense to ship work overseas.

IS my perception wrong?

Let me get this straight, you have a single anecdotal experience of a completely irrelevant job corps unionizing for what I'm going to bet was a sum total salary difference of less than a single executive's bonus, and from that you conjecture that small businesses that do not use said employees are unable to operate?

You have no long-term union versus non-union wage information, no comparative operating cost information, mountains of counter evidence in that non-union job markets have been offshored just as fast as the rest of them, a fallacy in that your specific example doesn't even apply to people that can be offshored due to required proximity to the people they're selling to, and you have to ask if your perception is wrong?

There are plenty of dumb things that are true about unions. Some of them are pretty obstructionist. None of that has a damn thing to do with actual market economy performance.

We all need a union these days, to keep our salaries increasing as fast as inflation. That'd be a full time job, the way the FED is printing money this year.

Let me get this straight, you have a single anecdotal experience of a completely irrelevant job corps unionizing for what I'm going to bet was a sum total salary difference of less than a single executive's bonus, and from that you conjecture that small businesses that do not use said employees are unable to operate?

You have no long-term union versus non-union wage information, no comparative operating cost information, mountains of counter evidence in that non-union job markets have been offshored just as fast as the rest of them, a fallacy in that your specific example doesn't even apply to people that can be offshored due to required proximity to the people they're selling to, and you have to ask if your perception is wrong?

There are plenty of dumb things that are true about unions. Some of them are pretty obstructionist. None of that has a damn thing to do with actual market economy performance.


A simple, you are wrong would of sufficed....

And who the hell does as much research as you are suggesting when making a god damn post here?

To add i was just using my customerfacing job as an example sir. BTW the same union that applies to me applies to the customer service people that ARE being shipped overseas.

Anyone who doesn't want to look like a dumbass should at least read the liner notes to said research. Most of that data is publicly available from the department of labor and the shadow-government style reporting and oversight style organizations.

I do that kind of research before I form an opinion on a subject because I'm not magically psychic and just as prone to confirmation bias as the rest of humanity. Nothing wrong with saying "I am not informed enough to comment on that subject."

i think i'll just stick with confirmation bias and looking like a dumbass....will give you something to post about.

Unions didn't magically appear in 2000 and are kinda irrelevant to the discussion. We've expended all of our resources outside to protect ourselves, we've let our insides decay.

I just fear this type of disease is one we can find a cure for, though I'm skeptical. I really think we're toast, and don't see us getting out of this before another depression ... and no WW2 in sight to pull us out of it.

it looks like it's up to Obama to try and fill those shoes

Agree completely. I'm not looking for Obama to be the greatest leader of all time all i want is for him to stop the bleeding. maybe toss alittle first aid cream on the wounds and stabalize the patient long enough to load us into the ambulance and get us heading for the ICU.
If thats all he can manage i'll call that a success.

I'm sitting smack in the middle of a strike by employees of one of the nation largest employers and most successfull companies. it wasnt the wage increase that they disliked nor the lump sum bonus offered. it was the language written into the contract the Boeing retains the right to continue to outsource and consign parts construction to offshore "partners".

Your new contract doesnt matter for shit when the next day your job gets to Bolivia and you get a lay-off slip. 30+ years of union busting and wage growth suppression has not resulted in much unless your a CEO like Carly Fiorina.

Nah.. Its not the unions..

We have to accept a standard of living on par with that of the Rural Chinese.. THEN the jobs will come back!

A bowl of rice, not living in the mud....

Guess I just aspire for a little more in life....

Sixee, he was trying to make an ironic point about globalization - one I was trying to make nearly 20 years ago to my parents without success, and should be patently obvious to anyone able to put 2 and 2 together.

Absolutely free markets mean that those who are most willing to exploit their workers and their environment will nearly always win - and we as a society have to make what we think is our best deal with regard to what we are willing to stomach in the name of profits, erm I mean 'shareholder value'. Where is the 'sweet spot' with regard to both protecting and growing valued industries (for the sake of national security, if nothing else - we're learning the hard way now what it means to have an economy based on candyfloss), and being economically competitive? And for the record, 'protectionism' isn't always bad. Ever wonder *why* South Korea has such a strong automotive industry, seemingly popping out of nowhere? I'll give you a hint - it's in that dirty word. While they were *growing* their automobile infrastructure and industry, South Korea was the only developed nation on earth where you would see *no* Japanese cars (they are allowed in the country now, btw). Know why Mexico still has textiles, plastics, and a shoe manufacturing base? Because they slap a monster VAT (value added tax) on imports from many other countries (but most specifically China) on those products in order to keep those markets from being flooded by those willing to engage in slave labor... It's my opinion that Clinton should *never* have granted 'most favored nation' trading status to a country which not only still engages in horrible human rights abuses, but is willing to poison its own children in the name of profit (see this week's melamine in baby formula scandal). Is this *really* what we want the world to look like, who we want to be scrabbling over our lump of horseflesh with?

And placing the blame on unions for corporate flight from US markets, especially in the last two decades where unions have had relatively little power, is just asinine. The contract that employers used to have with their employees has been broken for reasons that have little or nothing to do with unions driving up labor costs - in my former professional field (industrial microbiology), my salary at (unionized) Kraft Foods and Daisy Brand (nonunion) was *exactly* the same (a whopping 9.50 an hour in 1995, or less than I made without a degree at a plastics plant) - the differences came in how workers were treated with regard to benefits, promotions, grievances/rights of the workers, mobility within the company, etc etc. As a result of such basic things as not being able to be arbitrarily fired without cause, and other things that imparted a basic sense of security and loyalty, some of my co-workers at Kraft had been in the same positions for 35 years. With a few exceptions, even the massive concessions that have been wrung out of the unions over the past 25 years (not to mention the percentage of employees in union jobs nationwide is at its lowest in 50 years) were not enough for their CEOs and shareholder boards of the major corporations, who saw only the next quarter's earnings, without thinking about their own futures, and who was going to be able to *buy* their products on that Wal-Mart salary.

The workers at the plastics plant I worked at from the late 1980s until 1994 attempted to unionize in 1993. Why? Because while they were making compounded plastics for car bumpers with a raw material cost of about 89 cents a pound, and which sold for 400.00 or so dollars (wholesale, you'd pay much more if you needed yours replaced) - yet the guys who threw rubber on the belt all day, breathed stabilizers, and were prone to all sorts of occupational injuries were paid... 5.75/hour (minimum wage at that time, although we did have decent benefits). Clearly, a lot of profit was being made, and we had great quarterly reports to the shareholders (most of the time, except when they hamstrung QC, the predictable things happened, and we got railcars of material sent back), but very little of it was 'trickling down' to the workers, many of whom were actually trying to support families on that wage. Sadly, in addition to the usual anti-union propaganda and scare tactics often employed when folks try to unionize, our company 'stacked the deck' by requiring at the last minute that the lab techs, who worked in a clean environment, were paid much better, and were mostly students who weren't going to make that a long term career, (and hence had little empathy for the line workers) but were technically hourly employees, be included in the vote, and the 20 of them pushed the vote narrowly over the line against. Most of the shift leaders and line workers who had shown any sympathy for the union were subsequently demoted or fired.

(As a side note, as a known sympathizer, I was subsequently driven out of the company (and received a settlement when I threatened to sue for wrongful termination, although they informed me they'd go to the mat over it) via reorganization of my job responsibilities to include much harder manual labor, a subsequent refusal to make ADA accomodation (which would have cost nothing), and after-the-fact alterations to my performance reviews by an individual two layers up the company who had no acquaintance with my work. Yay for 'right to work' states!)

All of this doesn't even touch on the real meat of the *current* economic crisis, which centers on unfettered speculation in the nonexistant creating a lot of imaginary money, much of which was siphoned off, the difference which now will have to be made up by the taxpayers; but in a way you can hardly blame the speculators for taking advantage of the system, which has been increasingly disconnected from actual product over two decades, as investors looked for ways to make a profit cannibalizing our shrinking industrial and real economic base, and the rank and file sought to maintain their standard of living.

It's time to accept the fact that, in this world, truly *free* enterprise is a false religion, and continuing to follow its tenets will have even graver consequences than those we have already seen. While the EU hardly has all the answers, I do believe that both they and some of the South American countries are doing a much better job of trying to strike a balance with regard to short vs long term investment, infrastructure, and national and public security and well-being. Would I accept a nominally 'lower' standard of living (read: not being smothered in crap I don't need) in exchange for reasonable job security, faith in my investments, decent quality products, and a less degraded environment? In a heartbeat, and I think many Americans are increasingly deciding they'd take that deal, too...

Regards,
Nydia

I still recall when I used to watch the stock pages when we first passed 2000 on the exchange. Everyone was going nuts thinking that we were seeing the best of times. Now, thanks to the movement to a paper-driven economy rather than a product-driven one, we have seen what, 12000?

And suddenly, people are actually surprised that that tower is collapsing. Me, I look at what has happened over the past few weeks in the financial sectors and I keep seeing the mental image of Sauron's tower collapsing, following Gollum's fall into the lava.

We have a multitude of opportunities for job growth in this country, but we need to get the oil men out of office and have someone who is willing to admit the advantages of stem cell research; alternative fuels and stem cell research can have a massive impact on both job growth and our nation's standing on the world stage.

Also, I have said it before, but a massive move to rebuild and replace much of our infrastructure would have the benefits of putting people to work, increasing the safety of our citizens, and an implicit affect of raising pride in country for those helping to physically improve their nation's highways and bridges and power grids.

And as far as the union issue, I have many reasons not to like unions, but I also know that with the extraordinary amount of people out of work these days if management was able to toss out the unions you could expect wages to be cut in half pretty much across the board, regardless of what sector your job is in or how much seniority you have; and benefits....lol. There are too many who would do your job for less, and without unions we would find ourselves competing with third world countries for who is paying the least.