“Once you strip out the effects of the debt binge, the artificial stimulus via currency depreciation, and the fabled ‘wealth effect’ from the equity market runup, real GDP growth stripped-down to its core was the grand total of 0.7% last year. Potemkin would be proud.”
#2
It is not enough to dig us out of this hole.
If they don't tackle this debt or show slow progress, there is no real addition because that .7 will not finance the interest on the debt.
#3
Who cares what GDP growth is? How well are our people doing? To the devil with GDP. We need to make a good life for our people and if that means decreasing the all-so-holy GDP growth then so be it.
Posted by: Herb McCoy7309 ||
02/28/2018 3:31 Comments ||
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#4
Well, Everything must be based on an annuity. You cannot even pay for anything at all if there is no liquidity to do so. This is why no one used to get a loan in war or depression. You must have an engine with enough gas and air to fuel an economy.
And with-ought that, your general stores would dry up of goods. We need enough growth to pay for itself and enough growth to support the 2% population growth included.
Economics are laws, they may only be broken for so long.
This posting is only a call for corrective action on our debt.
#5
I know little about economics but do not trust the gov't or anyone else who must consistently borrow money or make trouble to survive. The gov't would appear to have no intention of actually paying any of it back. I see it then as legalized thrft.
#8
If you went in and stripped out the nonsense and crazy crap environmental and economic policies of the states controlled by the Trotskyites Democrats, you could probably jump that growth figure up a bit.
#9
Sometimes, I read the headline and the article. Sometimes, it pays to read the article -
I spent the entire Obama presidency obliterating the fake economic data perpetuated by his BLS, BEA and every other government agency trying to paint a rosy economic picture. I voted for Trump because the thought of Crooked Hillary as the president made me ill.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/28/2018 10:39 Comments ||
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#10
Anyone know anything about "The Burning Platform". I don't know enough about economics to say if he's right or wrong but "The true purpose of the actions taken since 2008 has been to enrich Wall Street while impoverishing Main Street. " sounds more than a little conspiracy theoryish to me.
#11
Whaddaya mean, conspiracy theorish? They have been crushing us for decades. NAFTA was the beginning of the end for the American working class. Admitting China to the WTO was a killer, and TPP would have been the coup de grace.
America is an incredibly wealthy country. Why is it that all the gains go to Wall Street while we have to bust our asses to find a job, only to get laid off? Wages have hardly budged in 20 years. The tremendous gains in productivity enabled by computerization have all been pocketed by Wall Street.
Posted by: Herb McCoy7309 ||
02/28/2018 11:23 Comments ||
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#12
IT is one thing to suggest folks want to get wealthy and don't care about the middle class and poor and an entirely different thing to say the true purpose is to get rich "while impoverishing Main Street" This might be bad wording but it's going clearly towards conspiracy territory teh way it is written.
#13
The tremendous gains in productivity enabled by computerization have all been pocketed by Wall Street.
Anyone who has a little spare change can own a piece of Wall Street. One needn’t have thousands of dollars set aside to gamble on stocks; some of the basic, broad-based Charles Schwab mutual funds have a starting purchase requirement of $100, according to this article.
#14
If you have a 401k, you have probably shared in the wealth - at least on paper.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/28/2018 14:14 Comments ||
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#15
I agree with RJ (#12) It is one thing to suggest folks want to get wealthy and don't care about the middle class and poor and an entirely different thing to say the true purpose is to get rich "while impoverishing Main Street"
I recall the Dems and their cronies got richer in the Obama years, and almost certainly so during the Clinton years. Perhaps a little less during the Bushitler terms of office.
That's why Hilly had such a strong following - they all wanted to get in on the action. That's why the Deep State is still trying to push Trump out of office - they know the Dems will reward them appropriately.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/28/2018 14:18 Comments ||
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#16
Our legacy welfare programs are the bulk of the expenditure. Disability, social security, medicare.
Those three alone are casey jones.
[PowderedWigSociety] When we think of the horrible school massacres that are now an unfortunate part of American history, we recall University of Texas, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, and now Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Parkland, Florida.
As horrific as all of those monstrous slaughters of our innocent youngsters were, the deadliest school mass murder in US history is hardly known, the Bath School massacre in Michigan in 1927, during which not a single bullet was fired.
Bath was a rural village of 300 people despite its location ten miles from Lansing, the state capital. The local institute of learning was Bath Consolidated School, built only five years earlier to replace the scattered one-room schools of the surrounding farmland. It had 314 students from around the region, many the sons and daughters of farmers. Some students were bused in, and all took classes with their peers over the course of elementary and high school, according to Smithsonian.
May 18 was the last day of classes for students that year, but at 8:45 the north wing of the three-story structure exploded with such force that the boom was heard miles away.
"We knew it came from Bath, but we didn’t know what it was or anything, so we jumped in the old car and drove as fast as we could to see what it was," Irene Dunham told the Lansing State Journal. The centenarian is the oldest living survivor. She was 19 at the time, a senior about to finish her last year‐and stayed home that morning due to a sore throat.
"There was a pile of children about five or six under the roof and some of them had arms sticking out, some had legs, and some just their heads sticking out. They were unrecognizable because they were covered with dust, plaster and blood," wrote local author Monty J. Ellsworth in his 1927 account, The Bath School Disaster. "It is a miracle that many parents didn’t lose their minds before the task of getting their children out of the ruins was completed. It was between five and six o’clock that evening before the last child was taken out."
As community members rushed to help after the explosion, getting rope to lift up the collapsed roof and pull the students and teachers from the rubble, a member of the school board named Andrew Kehoe drove up to the site. Kehoe stepped out of his truck filled with dynamite and shrapnel, aimed his rifle at it, and fired. The ensuing explosion killed the school superintendent, several other bystanders, and Kehoe himself. Continues.
#6
Andrew Kehoe was the 55-year-old school board treasurer and was angered by increased taxes and his defeat in the Spring 1926 election for township clerk. He was thought to have planned his "murderous revenge" after that public defeat. He had a reputation for difficulty on the school board and in personal dealings. (School Dynamiter First Slew Wife". New York Times (via Bauerle FreePages @ RootsWeb.com). May 20, 1927. Retrieved January 15, 2013.)
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/28/2018 14:36 Comments ||
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#4
People often are confused on the difference between Courage and Bravery. A kitten attacking a pit bull is brave, while a mother cat sacrificing herself to save her kittens is courageous.
Courage is a choice. Courage is also a learned behavior. Few people are born courageous. I had to learn. My 1st taught me a lot and counseled me on how the men expected me to be both brave and courageous in combat. I cannot tell you how many times the first six months I was a platoon leader that I pissed myself and after the shooting stopped finding a quiet private place to puke.
It got easier over time. I quit pissing myself and by the time I was a company commander I had quit puking. Eventually, you learn that if your number is up, it will get you whether you hunker down in that foxhole safe and sound or asleep in your hooch at night or running in front of your men leading from the front.
#6
Sock Puppet of Doom: The hardest part is dealing with giving orders to men you know will likely die doing their duty. It is one thing to put your own butt on the line and "Follow Me". But to assign men to their possible death while duty demands they go without you? Anyone with honor carries those men with him foreer.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
