What part of NO.....

[KvHagedorn]

Ah, I see, then.. work for 5 years at some job that Americans in general think you don't deserve to LIVE if you do, then pay the ridiculous tuition costs, then when you get out and get a new job in some technical field, work hard for a year or two, then receive the ultimate insult from upper management.. be assigned to TRAIN your successor who is from India and will work for minimum wage because he lives with his family or whatever, with the knowledge than once you train him, you will be fired. Where do you get off calling me lazy? What intelligent person would participate in this sort of sham? America is the greatest country on earth.. IF you are filthy rich...

[Jessterw]

Well KvH, you could always land yourself a really nice job working for a foreign company - say, one in Japan

[Jessterw]

You know, I think we need a "Send KvH to another country" fund

[Dr Mordrid]

And if you really check out who works at Walmart you'll find the largest groups are;

1. retirees who are supplmenting their retirement and Social Security income. This is a relatively new group in the US not because of poverty but because until 2000 there was an earning limit that withheld $1 in benefits for every $2 in wages if the retiree worked over X amount.

Obviously that was not exactly an incentive for SS retirees to work, even if they wanted to

After the law was changed you started seeing retirees working all over the place.

2. very young people short on work experience, in whose case that job is at least indoors and has some benefits. When I was in this position I was shoveling chicken s**t in a barn that had >5,000 birds

3. wives with little formal training who are supplementing the family income. Not exactly the group who is going to go out and get high wages for that amount of work anyhow, unless they have a law degree

Dr. Mordrid

[KRSESQ]

America is the greatest country on earth.. IF you are filthy rich...

I'm about as far from being filthy rich as is possible and still be above the poverty line, but I wouldn't want to be living anywhere else or doing anything else on the planet.

OFF the planet is another issue...

Kevin

[Sasq]

Dammit doc, there you go again, doing something uncalled for and introducing facts into his rants again.

[GT98]

You know, I think we need a "Send KvH to another country" fund

Yeah I think that could help take care of his xeophina he has.

[Maggi]

Yup...and mostly our gains were because of lower taxation and higher productivity. Lowering taxation to increase economic activity in particular has proven itself time and again in our history.

Because lower taxes stimulate both economic activity and productivity you actually end up with more taxes going to the govenment that at the higher rates that dull activity and productivity.

In the 60's JFK pushed lower taxes and it was followed by a huge economic expansion, even in the midst of the later VietNam war. Some of the gains were because of military spending, but only a small percentage.

Later on Reagan pushed lower taxes and again the gains were enormous, even if the budget got blown by the Democrats in Congress going on a spending spree.

The same thing happend after the internet bubble burst in 1998/1999 and the 2001 9/11 attacks pulled us into a recession.

Bush's use of the JFK/Reagan model stimulated the US economy to the point where now the Federal deficits are shrinking due economic activity his tax cuts brought on. Even State govenments are seeing their huge deficts of 2001-2003 disappearing and being replaced by surpluses.

In addition unemployment has dropped to about 5.3%, which is historically low, and long term interest rates for things like mortages are at historic lows; about 6% - 7%. Home sales are also at record highs. Even minority employment and home ownership are at increasing high levels, so the rising tide has floated most of the boats.

Good lessons there for Europe.

Dr. Mordrid

What kind of good lessons are you talking about ?

The ones that cost you more than an arm and a kidney ?
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

[Maggi]

or lessons like these ?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/08/opinion/main686839.shtml

Regardless of how it is sliced and diced, we are looking at an annual deficit of $368 billion this year and a 10-year projected deficit on $1.35 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

[cjolley]

Dammit doc, there you go again, doing something uncalled for and introducing facts into his rants again.

All I saw were some vague assertions.

Doc, do you have sources?
I couldn't find many hard statistics using Google.

Googling "demographics Walmart emploees" gets mostly stuff like this documenting the rather higher than average public assistance cost for Walmart employees as compaired to other retail employees.

[RedRed]

On this KV has a point (his diffenence between median and mean earnings).

The US does have a higher average wage glogally, but at the cost of the biggest differential between rich and poor. The poor are really, really piss poor.

We dont have that in Europe - at least to the same extent.

It also means that generally our poor live longer than they do in the US - 11 years difference between the same socio economic groups!!!

Doc - I didnt think that JFK was in power at the 'height of the veitnam war' - certainly in terms of SPENDING....

buying (with Regan et al) your way to economic growth only works if you repay the silver spent in earlier rounds of spending. THe US govt has singularly failed to do this since the '70's - devaluing your currency globally, encouraging forien trade and harming your exports. It opens the floodgate for the problems KV was sharing with us - IE cheaper labour taking your real jobs - anyone can work for wallmart (or shovel shit) - that leaves you on the bottom of the median - and a victim of dying young. (in the US anyway)

How did 9/11 pull you into recession? you were in the spiral at that time.... with all the govt spening on arms and aircraft - the US govt single handedly kept US industry form a '20's scale crash!!!

[KvHagedorn]

In this country, if the milling herd does not deem your contribution worthwhile, then you are not worthy to even live. We are moving into the same mentality the Huns employed.. might makes right, and everyone else must die! That's why elementary school teachers make practically nothing while basketball players with an IQ of zero get paid millions per year. Some highly intelligent folks with degrees in fields that the ignorant masses do not find worthy need to settle for lesser jobs outside their field of study. These folks wind up dying younger as RedRed says, because they cannot afford to support American doctors, who make hundreds of thousands annually because the AMA supports the idea that they are worth 20 or 30 times as much as the person who has to work checking groceries. Yes, they should make more, but not 20 to 30 TIMES as much! These American doctors might as well take their BMWs and run over the uninsured poor with them.. it would amount to as much. When I was a child, doctors made probably the equivalent of $80,000 today, while preachers and teachers (the least valued intellectual professionals) made about $30,000. Well today, preachers and teachers have stayed about the same, but doctors and dentists make well over $200,000 as a bare minimum. People become doctors now for the sole expressed purpose of becoming rich, and as such, they have less professional integrity now as a group, which lowers the real quality of healthcare.

Pure capitalism is as unworkable as pure communism, but unfortunately too many Americans are convinced otherwise. This has produced the society where a subhuman moron like Mike Tyson can make $30 million for ten minutes work, while a dozen dedicated teachers taken together will not make this during their entire careers! Hardly the "cream rising to the top" as those who worship unfettered laissez-fairism would have you believe. We are in a defacto feudal society today, whether you want to admit it or not.. it's just a matter of degree, and it will get worse.. much worse; that is, until more people take off the blinders and realize what's going on, and that their own learned beliefs are betraying them. I am a social conservative and a fiscal liberal, partly because my parent's generation accepted the dogma that being precisely the opposite was the "way to be." We have gone so far and so blindly down this road, beaten by the forces of vested capitalist interest on the one hand, and political correctness on the other, that we are arriving at a place we really do not want to be. We need to turn around and go back, not to a point at the other extreme, but to a sensible place of balance, where there is room in this world for the English teacher and the humble priest, and these people can support their families decently, even at the expense of doctors losing their $100,000 automobiles and CEOs having two or three fewer vacation homes apiece.

[Jon P. Inghram]

But... but... what's the fun in being filthy rich if you don't have poor people to compare yourself to?

[KvHagedorn]

Please remember what happened to Marie Antoinette not long after she said "let them eat cake!" That wasn't much fun at all was it?

[Jon P. Inghram]

Who said what? (I had to google that phrase, I didn't have a clue what it meant or who Marie Antoinette was. )

If only economies and politics didn't involve people, it wouldn't be such a hassle... I wonder if the last short story in I, Robot would ever work (socially, not technically.)