Generation Y? Disconnected. And even more so than in the past.

I’d love to take a look at longevity versus family size. It’s my guess that family size is getting smaller, especially after the boomers, and yet longevity is increasing. Thus we have less to support an aging population. The Greatest Generation, on the other hand, gave birth at a high rate, and so there are many babies to support this group.

So we have an aging society with entitlements with less and less of a population to support it. Even if the population in growing, the ratio of old to young is increasing because of the bulk of the population being in the baby boom. This illustrates that the population growth is in part a result of increased longevity, yet the productivity of those over 70 isn’t so high.

Again, it’s revenue neutral. Get a clue. You are aware that total tax receipt for the feds this year are only about $1.0 trillion while they are spending closer to $4.0T? Accounting tricks (inter-agency transfers, off budget items, etc.) make it look like less, but that’s the reality. And you think the porkulus is going to help? We are so hosed, and the vast, vast majority of Americans so totally clueless that the light will never come on in the exit sign.

As for your last paragraph, I don’t even know where to start if you really believe the government is smarter and more effective than the people at managing individual choice. That’s a whole different topic.

By scotsman @ 92:

RE: WestSideBilly @ 88 –

By cutting or eliminating both FICA and income taxes now consumer’s paychecks would increase by 8-40% depending on their tax bracket. That money would be available to the consumer to pay off debt, increase purchases, whatever they chose. That spending would boost existing businesses, reducing unemployment. Since consumers are 72% of GNP it would give a substantial boost to the national economy. Unlike the stimulus, the majority of which hasn’t even been spent, the tax cuts could be made immediate, even retro-active if desired and their effect would have been felt by now. And from the government’s perspective a cut in tax revenues is the same as an increase in deficit spending except for who has control of the money. Since it’s the tax payer’s money, not the government’s, why not let the consumer have control?

.

My gosh, that’s brilliant. Why hasn’t anyone thought of that before. I mean, the government can just print any money it needs. Problem solved. And we can change the name of our country to Zimbabwe.

RE: WestSideBilly @ 88 –

By cutting or eliminating both FICA and income taxes now consumer’s paychecks would increase by 8-40% depending on their tax bracket. That money would be available to the consumer to pay off debt, increase purchases, whatever they chose. That spending would boost existing businesses, reducing unemployment. Since consumers are 72% of GNP it would give a substantial boost to the national economy. Unlike the stimulus, the majority of which hasn’t even been spent, the tax cuts could be made immediate, even retro-active if desired and their effect would have been felt by now. And from the government’s perspective a cut in tax revenues is the same as an increase in deficit spending except for who has control of the money. Since it’s the tax payer’s money, not the government’s, why not let the consumer have control?

You would also quickly eliminate 100% of the the income many elderly/retired people rely on because FICA pays for Social Security. You would quickly eliminate a huge percentage of revenue that hospitals and doctors rely on, because FICA pays for Medicare, likely driving many hospitals out of business. Since federal individual income tax pays for 100% of the discretionary federal spending, you’d have to lay off the tens of millions of Americans who work for the federal government. In other words, eliminate the government all together. Is that really what you’re suggesting?

I suppose the logical followup to your abolish-the-government tax plan would be a federal sales/consumption tax. This, of course, would punish the taxpayers it purports to help by raising their effective taxation significantly. Unless you’re rich and save most of your money, of course.

Ignoring the radicalism in your post and the hyperbole in my reply, marginal reductions in tax rate would have little effect on the economy. The advantage stimulus has is that it can be directed directly at what you’re trying to fix – in our case unemployment. Unfortunately the major stimulus package passed last winter mostly failed at doing that. But giving money back to people and relying them to spend it on ways that benefit the economy have failed repeatedly – reference the “rebates” W’s people tried twice. Most likely they end up saving it (or paying down debt), which doesn’t contribute to the GNP, or they buy more of the same stuff they’ve been buying – which is of course mostly imported.

I Don’t Expect It To Save Me

And I’m a Boomer [and most of the Boomers I talk to too have my opinion too, BTW]….be careful with labels, they more than likely will bite you in the rear.

What gets me though with the brainless elite-type Boomers, thinking that uncontrolled growth below Generation Y wages will bail out SS….LOL….it would take 10 of them working [BTW working where? Your's and my jobs?] to equal one good baby boomer or gen X pay slot….it ain’t gonna happen, look at the mounting “lagging indicators” [unemployed and underemployed] snowball getting bigger by 512K in October and add in about 100K/mo uncontrolled growth with no jobs to come to [except your's and mine], to that figure too…ask our USCIS agency if you don’t believe me…..LOL

The same rules of arithmetic apply to public sector pensions. There’s just not enough real income to support them under any tax regime, and barring a miraculous increase in real productivity – there never will be.

What’s most amazing to me is that the public sector unions have been able to successfully employ the rhetoric of the little guy while employing ever lever of state power that they can get their hands on to pry money out of the average person’s pockets to fund a suite of benefits and insulation from economic realities that virtually no-one in the private sector will ever see in their lifetime.

Ditto for the labor cartels that rig the game with tariffs, subsidies, and set-asides that make everything from cars to groceries more expensive for everyone outside the cartel.

Pretending that increasing unionization has, is, or could ever lead to an increase in real productivity and real incomes for everyone relies on the fiction that everyone can live at everyone else’s expense. Unfortunately, there’s no indication that the general public has figured that out, so the unfunded and manifestly unfundable pension and healthcare liabilities that unions – particularly public sector unions – heaped on other people’s shoulders will continue to accumulate until the rules of arithmetic can no longer be ignored.

AMS:

Name a skill-set present on any assembly line that can generates a return sufficient to justify the wages on a UAW line. There are none. The only way that such wages can persist is if their shielded from competition via tarriffs, subsidies, or other regulations that effectively force consumers to pay the excess costs.

The UAW’s only prayer for long-term survival is a continuing spigot of government largesse that manifests in one form or another, or radical restructuring of the production processes that they participate in coupled with massive capital investments that dramatically increase their productivity.

(The most amusing thing about the UAW’s fan-base here in Seattle is that the vast majority of the folks who are ostensibly concerned about their plight are amongst the least likely to be caught dead driving *any* of the vehicles that their comrades back in Detroit actually produce. If you really want to help them out, drive to the nearest GM lot and trade in the Prius for a Cobalt. I’m sure they appreciate the lip-service, but it’s not going to cover the annual COLA on their pensions, much less gastric and coronary bypasses that they’ll need shortly after they retire at 55).

My own personal observations:

Baby Boomers expect the system to save them.

Generation Xers are suspicious of the system, but generally live within it. This is especially enforced because of their close connection to the Baby Boomers.

Generation Y is having it tough, and there is no where to go.

The next generation is going to have it even worse.

The problem, as I see it, is that the boomer are expecting more when the system has less to give, and this is the very system that’s supposed to save the boomers.

Agreed, pensions and SS solvency are a huge problem lurking on the horizon that very few are even talking about and no one that I’m aware of is seriously addressing. It’s gonna leave a mark..

Do I expect sudden upswings? Yes. Do I expect sudden downswings? You bet.

“And the longer we continue to cling to the past and fail to embrace the challenges ahead, the harder it will be.”

Given the number of baby boomers, retirees, and so on, I suspect that the challenge is going to take some time. Failed pension funds, such as sudden rise in failed municipal pensions, is going to be a long-lasting problem.

I should also add that there are a good number of those who have their pensions reduced because the PBGC’s maximum is less than the amount formerly paid.

Exactly. I get a kick out of the folks looking for and debating whether this will be a “V” or “W” recovery. It will be neither. What we are headed for is a flat line down for many, many years. Our economy must transition from credit fueled consumption to real production, something we haven’t seen for decades. And as I said above, while we’ve been playing the world has changed. We’ll have to fight pretty hard to come back to anything close to the standard of living we’ve collectively experienced for the last twenty years. And the longer we continue to cling to the past and fail to embrace the challenges ahead, the harder it will be.

How many guys on a modern automotive assembly line actually turn a wrench?

Kudos to you for your tireless efforts to argue against the ongoing experiments against reality that seem to have a dedicated fan-base here.

The sad fact is that the incentive/regulatory regime that generated the housing mega-cluster resulted in an a massive, massive missallocation of capital into credit sensitive sectors that can no longer be supported by consumer demand, and it’s going to take years and years to re-align our productive capacity with real consumer preferences. Capital has a real, physical structure – and you can’t just push a button and magically convert the human and physical infrastructure dedicated to churning out condos and SUV’s into assets that generate a positive economic return.

The machine tools on the Chevy Suburban line have to be physically removed and sold for whatever someone will pay for them. They may find their highest value being sold for scrap, melted down, and converted into machinery in China that’s actually used to produce and output that can be sold for a price that exceeds the cost of the inputs. The guy turning a wrench on the line for a total comp of $85/hour is going to have to figure out another way to make a living in an industry where the value of his labor inputs actually exceeds the total value of his annual compensation. Ditto for the bankers and attorneys who shuffled MBS paper. Multiply this process by a few hundred million and you get some idea of the real, micro-level processes that are going to be necessary to drive any sustainable macro-level recovery. There’s no escape from this.

Unfortunately, the current consensus of opinion seems to favor political distortions that perpetuate or exacerbate the existing misallocations will only prolong the pain, further amplify the losses, and forestall a true recovery.

Big, big, black hole. Followed by “reset.” Or a war.

1) Corrupt banking fails without govt bailout
2) Corrupt WS fails without govt bailout
3) Incompetant car companies fail without govt bailout
4) Housing/RE continue to fall even with govt bailout
5) Jobs continue to get trimmed

NONE of the underlying conditions/problems have been fixed….only propped up with our money

NOBODY is being held accountable for anything

Things look even more grim than they did before because all the “good news” is just a facade over all the rot, lack of oversight, and corruption that caused it all in the first place. So we’ve spent all this money and none of the root causes have been addressed……can you say “black hole”?

And the stock market goes up??????

I never thought I’d live to see so much delusion and denial on such a large scale….

Final comment- the largest 4 or 5 banks in this country really do very little of true value, and hardly anything essential that couldn’t be handled on a local level by either a consortium of smaller banks or one medium bank. When I was a banker we often participated in huge deals, well beyond the possabilities of our own capitalization by buying into packaged deals where we might own 2-10% of the total loan. The borrower got their funding, and the risk was spread out over many banks, not one that then became “too big to fail.” It’s a better model in the long run.

By cutting or eliminating both FICA and income taxes now consumer’s paychecks would increase by 8-40% depending on their tax bracket. That money would be available to the consumer to pay off debt, increase purchases, whatever they chose. That spending would boost existing businesses, reducing unemployment. Since consumers are 72% of GNP it would give a substantial boost to the national economy. Unlike the stimulus, the majority of which hasn’t even been spent, the tax cuts could be made immediate, even retro-active if desired and their effect would have been felt by now. And from the government’s perspective a cut in tax revenues is the same as an increase in deficit spending except for who has control of the money. Since it’s the tax payer’s money, not the government’s, why not let the consumer have control?

While you’re correct that federal debt as a percentage of GDP has been higher, total debt- consumer, federal, state, commercial, etc. is off the chart and has never been this high. That’s the number that counts. That’s the number that the total output of the country has to service- and can’t.

Warren Buffet’s BRK-A and BRK-B are both down about 35% from their pre 2007 highs so I’m not sure he’s the best example of financial wisdom. And there’s quite a bit of discussion on the wisdom of his choices going forward, especially some of his longer term bets. We’ll see. My investing follows a different path.

RE: One Eyed Man @ 78 –
I like your thinking. There has been a lot of “end our dependance on foreign energy” talk lately and I have hope that even with how messed up things are right now that we might make some progress on this. I’ve read quite a bit about the uniqueness of our sun belt in the world and it’d be great if we could start using that whether it be via solar, or creating algae to make oil, etc.

I think you nailed the macro issue. Washington State is Example 1.

What concerns me is that the stimulus projects are neither building assets for the future or have a high labor input component. I watched the program about the Civilian Conservation Corp on public television the other day and noticed that their projects met both tests.

RE: One Eyed Man @ 78 –

Wow, you certainly type faster than I do.

Factual note: Reagan’s tax cuts did increase economic growth and tax revenues. Trickle-down works. But he and the congress blew it by increasing spending at an even faster rate. The result was deficits. Too often folks look at the whole, failing to realize the roles played by component parts.

Had Obama cut taxes at a rate equivilent to the “stimulus/porkulus” cost it would have had a much greater and immediate impact. That, coupled with forcing banks to take their losses and regroup/move on would have us well on our way out of this mess. Legitimate regulation reform would prevent the same from happening again. A balanced budget ammendment would be nice.

But for politics, greed, and corruption we would be healed.

How would reducing the tax burden on those who are employed (and in many cases worried about losing their job) improve the situation for those who are unemployed? And how would it be immediate?

RE: mydquin @ 56 – Yeah clearly I am not sophisticated enough to understand how rewarding the institutions that got us into this mess, and continuing / expanding the same policies that caused the problem in the first place are obviously the best way to fix things.

I’m not so sure you can judge something as being wrong because it was done before and now. For example, let’s say you were in a flash flood area in Nevada as a result of having driven there at 100 mph. Would that mean that driving 100 mph to avoid the flood would be a bad thing? Things we did before, particularly deficit spending, wasn’t necessarily good because it was done nearly constantly and thus at the wrong time. That doesn’t mean that deficit spending now is bad. Near constant deficit spending is bad.

As to something more clearly bad, a lot of what got us into this mess was mergers and acquisitions. I’m not convinced that having a failed entity merge with an already large entity is necessarily good. I’m thinking specifically of BoA. It would probably be a lot stronger entity but for the failed entity acquisitions, and now it’s even bigger than it was, making its potential failure even more catastrophic than it was.

Anyway, the point is some of the past practices may be good now and some bad. They aren’t bad just because they were a past practice.

CYes, the stimulus could be a complete waste but you shouldn’t judge it based on unemployment (LAGGING indicator) which wont see the benefits until all the money is spent.

Gosh, if I were spending the stimulus money I’d sure try to use it to create jobs immediately, not hand it out to people with the hopes that they’d go spend it on things that would then create jobs for Americans. Let’s look at two examples.

1) During the Depression, “stimulus” money funded the WPA. They employed people immediately and built beautiful things that we are still enjoying today – maybe even generating tourism and ongoing income.

2) Today, we give people tax breaks and cash for clunkers/first-time buyers credits. Many of these people go out and buy a car built abroad (creating jobs there) or new electronics made in Asia to deck out their new homes (creating jobs there). These items are consumption and will never generate income for America.

America is clearly a great power in decline. And we’re going to waddle fat and oblivious right off the cliff.

Your rebuttal is you know some one who is employed, so there is no unemployment.

It’s odd that you would seize on my comment about doctors.

Let’s take radiology as an example. Each hospital would have one or two radiologist on staff. Now X-Rays can be read remotely, by internet, through a secure server. Hospitals are businesses that are looking to cut costs. Physician Assistants do more work, nurses aids do more work, nurses do more work that fewer doctors can direct.

It makes no difference actually. It an old study that says by keeping working age people out of the work force longer helps lower unemployment. The military does the same thing. If the wars end many people would be entering the private sector work force.

I wanted to acknowledge your comment without disrupting what is a great discussion, but it is odd that you have a fascination with my opinions.

It hurts to be holding dollars right now.

http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/119/GLB_USDRES1109.gif

By the way, I find it really interesting how a lot of people don’t seem to know the difference between the stimulus bill and the original loans used shore up bank balance sheets.

I also find comments, like “more debt than productive assets to support that debt,” interesting in light of the fact that our national current debt as a percentage of GDP is half of what it was in 1946 and not that much higher than it was at the end of the Reagan-Bush administration.

No one is saying America doesn’t have a tough slog ahead of it. And I am just as pissed off about the scam that the investment banks and the credit rating agencies pulled on America as the next guy. But that doesn’t justify the kind of fiscal ignorance that caused the 1937 double dip recession. Populist alarmism is not sound economic logic. Sure, the stimulus is imperfect because of politics, but it is way better than doing nothing, especially when you start to consider the secondary economic outcomes like investments in new battery technologies, infrastructure, preventing crime, funding education, installing LED lighting in commercial and govt buildings, preventing homelessness. And don’t take my word for it, just look at what the richest, smartest investors in the world are doing right now. They are buying assets in a hurry while the price is right. Do you think you know more than Warren Buffet who just placed a $34B bet on Burlington northern? I don’t think so.

yeah, Reagan economics worked sure they did if you weren’t getting trickled on, what was it that Bush one called it oh that is right Voodoo economics.

Wow, you certainly type faster than I do.

Factual note: Reagan’s tax cuts did increase economic growth and tax revenues. Trickle-down works. But he and the congress blew it by increasing spending at an even faster rate. The result was deficits. Too often folks look at the whole, failing to realize the roles played by component parts.

Had Obama cut taxes at a rate equivilent to the “stimulus/porkulus” cost it would have had a much greater and immediate impact. That, coupled with forcing banks to take their losses and regroup/move on would have us well on our way out of this mess. Legitimate regulation reform would prevent the same from happening again. A balanced budget ammendment would be nice.

But for politics, greed, and corruption we would be healed.

“Anthropomorphize?” Odd choice, since the banks are really nothing more than the sum of their human inputs. They don’t manufacture, no natural resources except time are consumed or produced, they are nothing beyond the collective humanity that comprises them. Greed, lust, envy, pride, sloth, gluttony and wrath, the seven deadly sins, the definition of the dark human condition, the very essence of humanity. ” Anthropomorphize” and banks go hand in hand.

The current mess has clear roots. A few large banks, along with the political class, expressed their own humanity through greed, lust, envy, etc. by facilitating and subsequently taking advantage of the exact same traits in the greater population at large. It’s really pretty funny in a dark way. But what was essentially a ponzi scheme has come to an end and none of those responsible are willing to man up and suffer the consequences.

The economics isn’t complicated. We can b.s. all day about velocity, M1-3, U1-6, the carry trade, whatever. It doesn’t matter. the bubble has burst, and we now find ourselves with more debt than we have productive assets to support that debt. So the debt is going to default, the losses will have to be taken, and the economy will have to rebuild on a more sustainable scale. Unfortunately, while we were having our little credit fueled binge the rest of the worl caught up with (or even exceeded) our productive capacity. so now. as we rebuild, it is within the confines of a more competitive and wage restrictive model. Translation? Uphill, through the snow, into the wind, both ways. In the dark.

Seems to me Tim has a pretty accurate grasp of the situation, Unlike many, he doesn’t put on the rose colored glasses or blinders when looking at the facts. It must be something about engineers. If you think some of us are missing the magical exit strategy you seem to see, please turn on the light.

The last time we had 10% unemployment was during the 2nd and 3rd year of Reagan’s first term, Sept ‘82 to June ‘83 with a peak of 10.8% in December of 1982. Some would say that we turned it around with supply side tax cuts, not with an Obama/Pelosi left wing Keynesian spending packages. But, others would say that when you run the biggest budget deficits in history like Reagan did at that time, it’s pure Keynesianism. For a discussion presenting that case see the following:

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/6Economy.htm

So, if it was good enough for Ronald Reagan, why isn’t it good enough for The Tim? (Am I pissing you off yet Tim?;-) I didn’t vote for McCain or Obama either. But I’m more of a “civil” libertarian than an “economic” libertarian as I believe that economic freedoms are deserving of less protection and can be more highly regulated than civil liberties, but that’s a separate extremely long discussion.)

But why hasn’t the current stimulus turned unemployment around? First, we’re only 9 months into Obama’s term and most of the stimulus has yet to be spent. We need to give it time. Per BEA, the 1982 recession ended in the 1st quarter of 1982, but unemployment didn’t start decreasing until the first quarter of 1983. Second, this isn’t your normal inventory recession and the recovery will likely be less robust and unemployment will take more time to correct. And third, even though US manufacturing has grown substantially through the last couple of decades, we’ve been losing manufacturing jobs for years, even during times of strong economic growth.

http://www.uschina.org/public/documents/2006/09/us-manufacturing.pdf

If you don’t like the economic statistics in the US China Business Council report and think they might be bias, most of them match the data on US manufacturing from other sources including the international statistics published by the UN. Check ‘em if you doubt ‘em.

So, even if we are out of the recession in Q3 of 2009, our unemployment is growing and our manufacturing employment will shrink even if our manufacturing output increases. You grow the economy, but it needs less labor. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. You’ve ended the recession but you can’t decrease unemployment. What are you gonna do?

First, attack the balance of trade issue. But how do you do this when it costs more to employ a US worker than an Asian, Mexican or South American worker. The answer is you switch energy usage to stop importing 350+ Billion Dollars of petroleum. Our current balance of trade deficit is running at about 30 billion a month, down from double that. But if you could cut the 30 to 15, you would keep 180 billion a year in our economy. In the long run, you spend tens of billions per year working on alternative energy until you get it right and become the world leader in alternative energy technology. That would cost less than the current 700 billion plus stimulus package and probably have more long term benefits.

In the short run, over the next 4 or 5 years, you spend about 50 billion in stimulus money to switch truck and bus fleets to CNG, and to put in CNG fueling stations across the country. Even if it costs a million dollars per station to put in CNG, you could put in 25,000 CNG stations for 25 billion dollars. That’s 500 CNG truck stops per state for each of the 50 states.

In addition to helping the balance of trade, it employs thousands in installing CNG infrastructure, it helps strengthen the dollar and it hedges against escalating petroleum prices. Of course, you have to ramp up natural gas production and manufacture and sell natural gas trucks, buses and cars. A tax credit will help move that forward. I think it costs about 5K to retrofit a car to burn CNG. I don’t know what it would cost per vehicle to put it on vehicles on the manufacturing lines but it would presumably be significantly less per vehicle. You might also have to subsidize CNG if gas and diesel prices fall below $2.50 due to decreasing demand, but hedging always has a price.

Thats a start to providing long term job growth with new and inovative technologies. I’ve heard there is a bill making it’s way through Congress right now to implement some version of the “Perkin’s Plan” including some of the above ideas. It supposedly has broad bypartisan support. I just wish it was first priority in fornt of health care and cap and trade.

The harder part of decreasing unemployment is to free up capital by cutting government spending. This requires cuts to military spending, cuts to SSI, health care rationing through cuts to medicare and other government sponsored health programs (whether in the form of a public option or otherwise, etc. I don’t know if any politician has the charisma to survive cutting everybody’s pork like that. The left might cut defense spending and the right might cut social welfare spending, but nobody will cut both. During the Reagan administration, the compromise was to increase both. It will take a hell of a charismatic leader to get them to cut both. If Obama does that, I’ll become a believer. Until then, like they said in “Miracle on 34th Street,” he’s just another nice old man with whiskers (aka Santa Claus).

Politics= economics=housing prices. It’s not much of a jump at all.

Fox News? You can do better than that. I’d say 98% of the folks here want to deal with the facts, learn the relationships, and understand how we got here and where we may be headed in the future. “Spin” doesn’t do much to help you prepare for the reality ahead. And last time I checked the facts didn’t have any political affiliation. But it you want to tie your future to a political perspective instead of reality and survival, that’s your choice.

The other 2%? They’re too busy fighting for position to lick the spittle from Keith Olberman’s chin.

“What say you?”

By the way, you do realize that only about 22% of the stimulus has been spent so far, right? Because your snarky reference to the total $787B suggests that you don’t have a clue what is really happening.

Moreover, the second you start trying to anthropomorphize banking institutions with the “moral hazard” argument, you immediately reveal how little you understand about the macroeconomic & political situations.

So please, give me a break.

I love the local real estate stats you provide. I really appreciate the way you have taken on the local media cheer leading. But until you are ready to start seriously considering economic issues, like liquidity traps, accelerator effects, general gluts, and M3 replacement, you really should stick to local real estate because you are starting to sound more like a very un-entertaining version Rush Limbaugh or Keith Olbermann than a respectable source.

… and there it is, in a nutshell. Very nice. It may take a long time for that reality to sink in though…

Partly good idea, terrible timing imo. To me it would be much better if real estate was left to properly correct or even over correct relative to the current economy. First it would create a sustainable, stable and healthy real estate market and if people can buy homes for much less they will have increased real disposable income ( not through debt from refis etc ) that they can spend on all kinds of services and goods and lift all businesses not only real estate. Lower housing costs will work as massive tax cut and stimulate all industries. So bring on the home price declines for the sake of future growth, stability and competetivness for the US economy, industries and workers.

Now I’m looking forward to Nov 27 Black Friday. Lets see what the retailers are unloading. My target is a 50 inch Plasma for 500.00. They seem to be holding at 749.00 at Costco and Amazon.

I bought a 50″ Panasonic plasma at Vann’s 2 years ago on Black Friday. After 11 months, the panel went out. I got it replaced free under warranty (barely beat the clock on that one). Another year has passed, and the TV is working superb. My GF said I should have paid the extra $350 for the extended warranty. But truthfully, by the time this thing finally gives up the ghost, I can pick up a new improved model for about the cost I would have paid for the extended warranty.

As far as the economy goes, I’m beginning to wonder if there is anything left other than debt games and spending perks? It seems to me the country has a fresh stash of h and is currently glib about being alive. I’m curious to see what happens when the h runs out again?

I am not suggesting that I agree with any of the actions that have been take, but I do enjoy my new car, and when I received the $4,500, I must admit that I enjoyed lapping it up.

Hopefully you don’t have substantial cash in the bank. Otherwise, you’ll lose far more than the $4500 your neighbors spent on your car.

Hmmm, that foul odor is very familiar. Where have I smelled it before? Perhaps when the republicans were voted out during the last election, and the democrats were voted in? It appears, the wheel has made a half revolution.

The game is set up with a 2 party system where both parties give equally to the special interests who support them. It appears to onlookers the parties are different, but that’s because each party is sponsored by its own corporate set. This gives each party a slightly different hue and odor that imparts a distinct flavor to the ballots.

The key to the con is convincing people that when things go bad they can win the game by voting for the other party. Thus, there is no need for changing the system itself.

It is the perfect system, and people will go to their graves defending its honor before they revolt against it.

I just tried to edit my comment at the bottom of the second paragraph and the text in the box kept automatically scrolling up not allowing me to highlight/erase a word.

If you allow business to canabalize your own economy and workforce to enrich a relative few at the expense of the majority, you will pay the price eventually. This sin’t to say that it’s all the fault of business and those in power. Obviously there’s something very wrong with our work ethic and our perception of entitlement when many feel it’s ok for someone to demand an $80,000 salary to leisurely ride a tricycle around and polish the scratches out of a paint job on an aircraft assembly line, while some poor schlepp at your local Wallmart/gas station gets less than 20K annually for a year of what many wouldn’t tolerate for a week. Sins of the father, as it were.

-How or why anyone thinks that borrowing money to re-inflate the prices of an already overpriced asset instead of championing policies that increase real worker productivity amounts to anything other than a shell game that will ultimately destroy far more jobs and wealth than it creates is beyond me.

The only driver for real wage growth and an ensuing increase in real wealth (that can sustainably drive home prices higher) is an increase in real productivity. Lacking that, the name of the game seems to be lobbying the government to pick favorites and forcibly transfer wealth from the rest of society to various labor/commercial cartels.