The thrust of Obama's agenda follows Lenin's. The old jobs are gone. We must prepare for the future by educating our youth. The sturm und drang of the "We Musts" quickly becomes an argument for pandering to the teacher's unions. Only by empowering the teacher's union will we be able to compete with China. But China isn't strong because of its teachers, but because it has no independent unions, no minimum wage, no pollution laws and nothing to get in the way of the terrible machine of its industry. The People's Republic of China is not beating us in science or math, but in manufacturing cheap products with an undervalued national currency.Basically, the whole thrust of Obama's speech was pure bull. What he is talking about is pap, not a call to take on the real problems in this country. Again, read the whole thing, I've got to go.
Handing out free educations to beat China is like going to college to fight a bear. Not only will it not improve your bear fighting skills, it actually gives the bear the upper hand. American math and science degrees are used to do research whose practical applications take the form of products manufactured in China. Even if all 300 million Americans all go to work as researchers, we are not going to "out-compete" and "out-innovate" by "out-educating" Americans. Russia has the highest percentage of college degrees by population in the world. China has the lowest. These figures have little to do with their economic success.
America already has a college degree program percentage rate on par with Sweden and Finland, countries that almost wholly subsidize higher educations. Greece subsidizes 99.7 percent of higher education, and yet has a lower degree rate than America and is in a state of complete economic meltdown. America has higher rates of graduates than many of the European countries which heavily subsidize their education systems. The takeaway is that state subsidized education does not ensure more graduates. And more graduates does not mean more jobs.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Obama's State of the Union Address - Profile in Cowardice
As most Americans know, our country is in a severe economic predicament, caused chiefly by exploding entitlement programs such as Social Security, and Medicare, but exacerbated by exploding federal budgets, begun under the Bush II administration, and hyperinflated under the Obama administration. In the State of the Union address, Obama would call this a "Sputnik Moment", which implied that this moment of economic peril was similar to the call-to-action that occurred when the Russians launched Sputnik, putting a satellite into orbit before anyone else did, and kicking off the US space program. This would be an economic Sputnik moment, spurring the US to action against this dire economic threat. But, as is demonstrated in this very well written article, Obama, as is his modus operandi, took the cowards way out. Again, a read the whole thing article, but here are some good paragraphs:
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I did not watch the SOTU nor did I read anything about it other than the article linked above. I did not feel like being lied to and hearing a bunch of meaningless and decipitive talk about cutting our debt and growing our economy. His actions and words contradict each other. I think America does need to improve its education system although not in the way Obama wants to: more government and teacher unions. Obama's SOTU
ReplyDeleteThe whole premise of Obama's Sputnik moment speech and the linked article above attack on it is that America needs to be able compete with China to avoid being beaten by China. This is flawed in that it misses the big picture and whole situation that America and the world faces. China will never overtake America as any slow down in China's economic growth will lead to social unrest. China's economy might already be overheating because the communist government has been putting growth above all else. China also has demographic issues. China must continue to buy our debt and to hold it. China's economy is linked to how well America's performs. America's economy and the global economy will have a transformative reset/collapse of the global monetary structure that will change the whole paradigm or situation in the world. So this whole talk about America needing to compete with China by enacting some central planning/government run transformation of our economy is worthless and if carried out will only hasten our economic demise.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01/27/cbo-director-trillion-dollar-deficits-risk-fiscal-crisis/#ixzz1CJSDE2VS
"The top numbers cruncher for Congress warned Thursday that the federal government increasingly risks sending the country into a "fiscal crisis," projecting that unless cuts are made, within a decade the national debt could reach nearly 100 percent of all annual economic activity."
Cuts won't happen. Just talk and feigning about it. Look at raising the Debt limit. Had to be done to prevent social unrest and an economic collapse, but this just kicks the can down the road.
Social security is offically broke. http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/cbo-social-security-revenues-are-now-in-permanent-deficit/
"The CBO’s revenue/expenditure estimates now place the program[SS] in permanent deficit."
It is time to get your head out of the sand. There will be a major transformative global economic downturn whether the necessary free market reforms are made or we continue on the same path. This is the real threat to global stability and to America's future well-being.
The problem is our ignorant people. Hardly anyone knows what and how it is happening. The facts that you guys just stated arem't understood by the vast majority of Americans.
ReplyDeleteI constantly tell Ashley about the dire straits our country is headed for. She tells me that she knows and understands. Then I tell her the necessity of me picking up another job and she gets irritated that I want to put my son in a daycare because both of us have to work. I say,"You don't get it. Making it in this world takes sacrifice. It takes hard work. Shit aint gonna fall on our lap." She is like everyone one else in America who has never had to worry about the acquisition of food. Ignorance is bliss until the shit hits the fan.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/27/AR2011012707000.html
ReplyDeleteSome news from the beloved, in Melkor's eyes anyways, IMF. "U.S. officials must act quickly to control government deficits or face slower growth and even more difficult choices in the future, the International Monetary Fund said Thursday in a report criticizing the tepid U.S. response to its rising public debt."[...]'The U.S. has a lot of credibility. This does not imply their credibility can last forever,"' IMF fiscal affairs director Carlo Cottarelli said as he released the IMF study. It concluded that the United States is falling behind on a promise it made to other top economic countries to halve its budget deficit by 2013.[...]Not long ago, the United States appeared to be on track to meet the commitment to halve its annual deficit by 2013. At a gathering of the world's top economic leaders in Canada last summer, U.S. officials promised to reduce the deficit to roughly 6 percent of gross domestic product. But new, less-optimistic forecasts put the country in danger of missing that goal. According to data released this week by the Congressional Budget Office, recent tax cuts and expected spending will keep the annual deficit this year at about 10 percent of GDP."
Hot air did a piece on this news http://hotair.com/archives/2011/01/29/imf-to-us-better-start-taking-care-of-business/
The article goes on the say that America credit rating could be downgraded. The only reason it is AAA now is that the rating agency is American and the agency knows that downgrading America would cause a major shock in the financial markets.
Yeah most people don't realize a crisis is happening until it is too late and people don't deal with problems until it starts affecting them. One example with me is that my car's wiper blade is fucked up and I still haven't fixed it. It will take me getting caught in a rain storm and not being able to see to drive before I will fix the problem. America has a limited window of opportunity to prevent this Greece-Like- economic crisis. Nothing as of now shows that anything substantive will be done to address the issue. The best thing is to stay out of debt and be debt free: not possible for most people.
Staying debt free is remarkably doable. To do it is simple. The problem is its so tempting to go in to debt.
ReplyDeletePeople graduate high school without even knowing how to plan a simple budget for themselves. Economics, marketing, and business were all electives. They were not required. Most students, myself included, would rather take woodworking, painting, photography, or drawing instead. Students graduated high school more knowledgeable about the shamefull history of their race then they did on how to save money and manage finances. Humanities were required and they made sure we knew about slavery (which is important, but it doesnt take 12 years of classes to tell Americas children that slavery is wrong). This plays in to the governments Keynesian economic plan. We immediately become slaves to the system. Jeff is lucky that he was not exposed to this indoctrination. Unfortunately his social skills were damaged.
I was exposed and I am about $200,000 in debt. I'll be fine though.