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Dreadnaught
Post subject: Re: U.S & Economic CollapsePosted: June 28th, 2011, 4:36 am
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Carnac wrote:
But the question then becomes one of what missions it should take on. Should the "World Police" really be led by America, or should it be more equally distributed?
NATO looked to the US during the air war over Yugoslavia and NATO looked to the US for the Libyian operation so its not the US muscling its way into the role its other nations expecting it from us.


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Carnac
Post subject: Re: U.S & Economic CollapsePosted: June 29th, 2011, 5:30 am
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Dreadnaught wrote:
Carnac wrote:
imo the best way to fix the US economy would be to do two things

1. Stimulus. Not for the banks, GM, etc, but give money to citizens. Then people have money to spend, and it restarts circulation.

2. Cut defense spending. Honestly, does America need 12 carriers when the rest of the world combined doesn't have that many? (correct me if I'm wrong here, and although there may be more then 12 non-american carriers in operation perhaps one or two are supercarriers of Nimitz proportions). Same goes for all other branches, with the Airforce's B-52s/F-22s/B-2s, and the Army's sheer size.

Ok and after Johnny takes that govt check and pisses it away on an Xbox, tattoo, a couple of cases of beer and a penis piercing then what? Have the govt seize more of Bill Gates' money until he's a broke mofo like the rest? How about just print another gazillion bucks to give Johnny more beer money? Hey let's just pay everybody with the game Monopoly and use the money in that because that's how worthless the money is going to be. Oh yeah Johnny's penis piercing has become infected but he has no money anymore so I guess we had better give him free medical care because after all JOHNNYS GOTTA HAVE HIS FUCKIN BEER MONEY.

Besides we are doing that right now, hell we have been doing since the 60's. You have tons of inner city single mom's who get a govt check for every kid they have. Look up The Great Society passed by the democrats in Congress and LBJ signed off on it.

Also if I see another "the US needs to cut defense spending because the defense budget takes up 4,000,000,000,000% of the total US govt budget" I'm gonna puke my guts out! The defense budget isn't even 10% of the federal budget. The waste and corruption is ACROSS THE BOARD in the US govt. I read there are like 80 different federal govt job retraining programs with huge staffs and bloated budgets. You think maybe we should cut a few of those first? FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, NRO, DEA, ATF, INS all various law enforcement, intell agencies that have overlapping ops. Ever since the Dept of Education was created in the 70's under Carter the kids are coming out of public schools dumber and dumber every year and every year there budget goes up and yet schools beg parents for their kids to buy pencils and paper because for some reason the schools can't afford to supply paper and pencils.

Now if there are folks out there who don't like the fact we have so many supercarriers let me tell you some folks who are. The people who surivied the Indonesian quake and tsunami. The US CBG that deployed there was the only fully functioning hospital, the only source of fresh water, the only source of power and the only operational airport in the area to airlift supplies to survivors. We also deployed a CBG to Japan after their quake and tsunami. Meanwhile we had a CBG in the Persian Gulf doing its thing and CBG's ready to keep an eye on China or to go to another crisis and still have carriers in dock so the crews could be with their families and still have carrier in a 2 to 3 year overhaul.

Don't blame the US for our large military when NATO, South Korea, Japan and Australia/New Zealand USED THE US TO BE THEIR ARMED FORCES. While all these regions spend all their money on social programs like healthcare and unlimited unemployment benefits and gutted their own armed forces.

I get the feeling that folks really don't know how big a trillion dollars is so here's an example. NBA Miami Heat player LeBron James gets paid about 40 million dollars a year. Now in order for him to make a trillion dollars on that salary he would have to pay basketball for 25,000 years. Yes 25,000 years, and the US govt is 14 trillion in the hole.

Yeah Dreadnaught's pissed and delivered a full broadside but I'm fed up with this hippy "let's just steal all the money from the rich and everything will be alright" BS.

The problem is that is not how the economy works. First of all, if you're homeless or dirt-broke and the only thing keeping you from being productive (IE in the recovery) is money, giving a few hundred will help. You're assuming all people are piss poor with money. A second point that can be drawn for that is all the money he is "wasting" goes into companies like Microsoft, because he's buying their product. Part of that is sent back to the Government as tax, you need factories to produce the Xbox, etc. The point is you're getting money flowing. As we've seen, giving it to the big banks to have longer vacations on bigger cruise ships for their CEOs isn't helpful and doesn't get the money flowing.

The economy is all about monetary flow. Currently, most of it is "pooled" near the top and not moving at all, and needs a kick start. What you're calling "hippy bullshit" is simply agressive economics with the Government as it's main actor.

And no, I never suggested printing money until it's worthless. Not that it has any worth other then what the Government says it is worth, given that it's purely fiat currency. "Johhny's fucking beer money" is what's keeping the economy alive. Without Johhny buying, nobody's selling, and there's no economy. In your ideal world, you give Gates and Branson all the money in America, leaving the rest as poor as Kenya, and measure your economy by how rich Gates and Branson are.

The defence spending isn't even 10% of the federal government's spending, no. But perhaps you've seen this:
[ img ]
If we assume that defense and deterence against "threats" such as North Korea and Iran takes up half of that, it's still over double Europe combined that goes to unneeded programs. Yes, American ships are hospitals the world over and I commend them for that. On the other hand, programs that aren't needed are everywhere. Do you need to be developing weapons so powerful there's no known threat that could defeat them, and none conceivable in the near future? Not really. Yes, China is trying desprately to catch up. But America is not at war with any major state actor. Everyone seems to forget that bit. When's the last time you saw an Ohio or Los Angles as a hospital ship? What about a Burke? Do they serve any purpose other then World Stage Dick Measuring?

So to firmly and bluntly retort your closing statement, I'm tired of this Tea Party "let's give 99% of the money to 1% of the population and everything will be all right" bullshit.

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Dreadnaught
Post subject: Re: U.S & Economic CollapsePosted: June 29th, 2011, 7:16 am
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Ok Carnac show me where govt seizing money and giving it to the poor has worked? Europe has been doing it since the end of WW2 and look at the economic mess that's over there, Soviet Union collasped trying to do that. Finland? The Reindeer outnumber the Finnish and so does the population of my state of Florida. It may work on small scale but not large scale, look at EU and Soviet Union.

Gates and Branson use their money to employ people at the companies they have created those people get paid and then go out to buy stuff. Haven't seen a poor homeless unemployed person give someone a job and again when their govt seized money runs out the govt has to seize more money from someone else.

How much has Kenya been given in foreign aid since its independence? How many billions in foreign aid has been given to the third world countries and remained third world? I'll tell you this. When industry left the US and set up in these third world countries and now the unemployed were now employed they became less than third world. Look at India they are the third largest economy in the world not because of billions of dollars in foreign aid but by captialism. Hell they are the call center captial of the world but those folks who work at those call center have money in their pocket and go out and spent it.

You also need to get a clue about war. You don't go to war expecting a fair fight. You cheat, you win there's no such thing has a fair fight. Yeah I want the US to have weapons so powerful that there are no known defences for them and the will to use them because then no one will want to screw with us because they lag behind. I never want China to catch up to us. You want peace, you prepare for war. As for our defense budget compared to the rest of the world. Well we do have the largest GDP on the freakin planet so what you think is excessive defense spending is chump change to us (only 4% of our GDP is spent on defense). Maybe if the rest of the world govts stopped subsiding unemployment and piss poor health care they could spend a few bucks on their militaries they wouldn't feel so wimpy dicked compared to the US military

You believe govt will solve this economic mess? Last I checked they caused this mess and have put the whole world in so much debt that it will never be paid off. Everybody's in debt right now, that's why cash isn't flowing.

You want to hate on Gates and Branson? Hate on Bono and U2 has well. They just caught hell for moving their operations out of Ireland because they don't want to pay high income taxes. Singer Adele was just bitching about the high taxes she has to pay for the worthless govt services in England.

and stop with the "let's give 99% of the money to the 1% crap" it shows me that you're not a thinker.


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Dreadnaught
Post subject: Re: U.S & Economic CollapsePosted: June 29th, 2011, 8:03 am
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Carnac wrote:
Same goes for all other branches, with the Airforce's B-52s/F-22s/B-2s, and the Army's sheer size.

US Bomber strength:
B-2 20 out of 21
B-1 66 out of a production run of 100
B-52 85 out of 750

Total 171 Not excatly The Mighty Eighth 1000 bomber raids into Germany in 1944.

F-22 168 out of a planned 187 in service.

Largest armies by active duty manpower

China-2,285,000
India-1,325,000
North Korea-1,106,000
South Korea-687,000
Pakistan-617,000
USA-562,000

I don't know where you are getting this idea that the US has this massive military. Oh and to show that your stats on your little pie chart can be misleading Saudi Arabia spends more percentage of its GDP at 7% than the US does at 4% so I guess that makes them even bigger warmongers than the US.


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Demon Lord Razgriz
Post subject: Re: U.S & Economic CollapsePosted: June 29th, 2011, 11:01 am
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Frankly, to end out of this mess, the Western World is going to have to realize that the current standard of living is not sustainable long-term. And because we've exceeded that amount we can sustain, we're going to have to take hard & painful cuts, such as Govt. subsidized Healthcare & yes, large defense budgets.

The defense budget's easy to settle. Force out the 'waste' by putting all Black Projects on hold for 5 years. If it is badly needed program, it can come out into the light. Also end the cycle of starting & cancelling programs. There's absolutely no reason for going through 3 multi-billion $ programs to develop a TOW/Maverick/Hellfire replacement with basically the same requirements and nothing coming of them. If you want a missile, stick to it. If it's overrun the budget, the company can pick up the tab.

Healthcare? When the majority of the people say no, just listen to them and don't ram it down their throats.

As for large scale job creation, that quite possibly will be the single hardest thing to do, especially with the Unions. To be blunt, Unions are killing job creation. There's no way around it, they've grown from their initial creation that they wield vast amounts of power and can bend companies to their will if they operate here in the US, particularly companies with big manpower intensive factories. And they now fear losing that power. While they were needed in the beginning in securing decent working conditions and reasonable work hours & pay, they've grown greedy and demand far more than needed. $40 an hour, 30 days of paid vacation, plus paid sick leave, $2 for $1 401k, company stocks, etc, etc... And on top of that, Union only States, where only union workers can work particular jobs? Isn't that called a monopoly on the workforce? And then, AND THEN, demanding other workers who aren't in unions to pay union dues?.... I'm sorry, Unions just need to go. There's nothing left to say on them.

Lastly on this long rant, I'd also consider lowering Minimum Wage a quarter or two. But that'd be an iffy thing to do, leave that up to the economist, the real ones, not the wannabes in Congress.

Once we have more jobs in America where people are building(industrial economy) & not just buying and selling(service economy), the economy will improve so we can pay off our debts and be debt-free. Also, if he's still alive, put whoever the idiot was that said a nation in debt is a good strong nation on the most wanted list for Pure Idiocy & Killing the Economy.



Other than what I've above, the only way we'll get out of this is to shrink the population & sell off land...

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Carnac
Post subject: Re: U.S & Economic CollapsePosted: June 29th, 2011, 1:58 pm
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Dreadnaught wrote:
Ok Carnac show me where govt seizing money and giving it to the poor has worked? Europe has been doing it since the end of WW2 and look at the economic mess that's over there, Soviet Union collasped trying to do that. Finland? The Reindeer outnumber the Finnish and so does the population of my state of Florida. It may work on small scale but not large scale, look at EU and Soviet Union.

Gates and Branson use their money to employ people at the companies they have created those people get paid and then go out to buy stuff. Haven't seen a poor homeless unemployed person give someone a job and again when their govt seized money runs out the govt has to seize more money from someone else.

How much has Kenya been given in foreign aid since its independence? How many billions in foreign aid has been given to the third world countries and remained third world? I'll tell you this. When industry left the US and set up in these third world countries and now the unemployed were now employed they became less than third world. Look at India they are the third largest economy in the world not because of billions of dollars in foreign aid but by captialism. Hell they are the call center captial of the world but those folks who work at those call center have money in their pocket and go out and spent it.

You also need to get a clue about war. You don't go to war expecting a fair fight. You cheat, you win there's no such thing has a fair fight. Yeah I want the US to have weapons so powerful that there are no known defences for them and the will to use them because then no one will want to screw with us because they lag behind. I never want China to catch up to us. You want peace, you prepare for war. As for our defense budget compared to the rest of the world. Well we do have the largest GDP on the freakin planet so what you think is excessive defense spending is chump change to us (only 4% of our GDP is spent on defense). Maybe if the rest of the world govts stopped subsiding unemployment and piss poor health care they could spend a few bucks on their militaries they wouldn't feel so wimpy dicked compared to the US military

You believe govt will solve this economic mess? Last I checked they caused this mess and have put the whole world in so much debt that it will never be paid off. Everybody's in debt right now, that's why cash isn't flowing.

You want to hate on Gates and Branson? Hate on Bono and U2 has well. They just caught hell for moving their operations out of Ireland because they don't want to pay high income taxes. Singer Adele was just bitching about the high taxes she has to pay for the worthless govt services in England.

and stop with the "let's give 99% of the money to the 1% crap" it shows me that you're not a thinker.
The Red Scare is over, by the way.

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Novice
Post subject: Re: U.S & Economic CollapsePosted: June 29th, 2011, 3:02 pm
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Demon Lord Razgriz wrote:
As for large scale job creation, that quite possibly will be the single hardest thing to do, especially with the Unions. To be blunt, Unions are killing job creation. There's no way around it, they've grown from their initial creation that they wield vast amounts of power and can bend companies to their will if they operate here in the US, particularly companies with big manpower intensive factories. And they now fear losing that power. While they were needed in the beginning in securing decent working conditions and reasonable work hours & pay, they've grown greedy and demand far more than needed. $40 an hour, 30 days of paid vacation, plus paid sick leave, $2 for $1 401k, company stocks, etc, etc... And on top of that, Union only States, where only union workers can work particular jobs? Isn't that called a monopoly on the workforce? And then, AND THEN, demanding other workers who aren't in unions to pay union dues?.... I'm sorry, Unions just need to go. There's nothing left to say on them.
As for unions , well you'll just have to look at Britain's economic woes in the 1960's to see how right that statement is. The big Seamen strike and then the big strike by dock workers did practically killed the British merchant fleet.

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Dreadnaught
Post subject: Re: U.S & Economic CollapsePosted: June 29th, 2011, 11:11 pm
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Here's a start. Disband the Dept of Energy and Education. Neither one were needed in the first place and have only made matters worse in their areas. Disband the IRS and install a flat tax. 15% max. If you only made 50 bucks last year you pay 7.50 in taxes, if you made 500,000 you pay 75,000 in taxes. So there all you liberal commie hippies there's your rich paying their fair share and the poor aren't getting screwed. CIA handles outside intell (includes spy sats) FBI handles inside federal law (includes drugs, guns, booze) INS/Customs handles border and immigration and disband the rest. Disband the Fed. Disband all unions.

Put term limits on every electable govt post from Congress down to local dog catcher. Lobbyist lose influence. Make white collar crime a major felony and send them to big boy prison and face hourly ass raping.

Put time limits on unemployment and welfare payments. They will be forced to look for work even if it means cleaning toliets or digging ditches. (I've done it and I'm college educated) Round up all illegals and deport them. Lock down the US Mexican border and you don't need a multi-billion dollar "smart wall". Three lines of razor wire with an anti-tank ditch and minefield in between and deploy ground sensors to detect tunnelling.

As for defense spending no more $800 hammers. Instead of trying to develop sci-fi wonder weapons that get canceled or take 15 to 20 years to deploy (The F-22 was started when Reagan was president) continue production of current weapons with tech upgrades. If South Korea's Slam Eagles and Israel's F-16 Sufas are good enough for them then the US Air Force Should have thousands of both (3 Slam Eagles or 5 Sufas for the price of one F-22)

@Carnac- "The Red Scare is over" I did say that the Soviet Union collasped did you miss that? But not over. You got commies itching to burn Athens to the ground. Commies trying to get the UN to force developed nations to give away billions to third world nations in the name of the farce called "global warming". Commies lying to the world that Israel is rounding up arab babies and doing a double tap to their heads in front of their mothers and commies in the White trying to bullshit me in saying the economy is getting better when I see food prices rising, college students thousands of dollars in tutition debt and no jobs for them and see stripmalls going from half empty to 3/4 empty and construction of others stopped.


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Colosseum
Post subject: Re: U.S & Economic CollapsePosted: June 30th, 2011, 12:36 am
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posting in a stupid thread

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Carnac
Post subject: Re: U.S & Economic CollapsePosted: June 30th, 2011, 12:56 am
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Dreadnaught wrote:
Here's a start. Disband the Dept of Energy and Education. Neither one were needed in the first place and have only made matters worse in their areas. Disband the IRS and install a flat tax. 15% max. If you only made 50 bucks last year you pay 7.50 in taxes, if you made 500,000 you pay 75,000 in taxes. So there all you liberal commie hippies there's your rich paying their fair share and the poor aren't getting screwed. CIA handles outside intell (includes spy sats) FBI handles inside federal law (includes drugs, guns, booze) INS/Customs handles border and immigration and disband the rest. Disband the Fed. Disband all unions.

Put term limits on every electable govt post from Congress down to local dog catcher. Lobbyist lose influence. Make white collar crime a major felony and send them to big boy prison and face hourly ass raping.

Put time limits on unemployment and welfare payments. They will be forced to look for work even if it means cleaning toliets or digging ditches. (I've done it and I'm college educated) Round up all illegals and deport them. Lock down the US Mexican border and you don't need a multi-billion dollar "smart wall". Three lines of razor wire with an anti-tank ditch and minefield in between and deploy ground sensors to detect tunnelling.

As for defense spending no more $800 hammers. Instead of trying to develop sci-fi wonder weapons that get canceled or take 15 to 20 years to deploy (The F-22 was started when Reagan was president) continue production of current weapons with tech upgrades. If South Korea's Slam Eagles and Israel's F-16 Sufas are good enough for them then the US Air Force Should have thousands of both (3 Slam Eagles or 5 Sufas for the price of one F-22)

@Carnac- "The Red Scare is over" I did say that the Soviet Union collasped did you miss that? But not over. You got commies itching to burn Athens to the ground. Commies trying to get the UN to force developed nations to give away billions to third world nations in the name of the farce called "global warming". Commies lying to the world that Israel is rounding up arab babies and doing a double tap to their heads in front of their mothers and commies in the White trying to bullshit me in saying the economy is getting better when I see food prices rising, college students thousands of dollars in tutition debt and no jobs for them and see stripmalls going from half empty to 3/4 empty and construction of others stopped.
I agree with most of what you said here, by the way. A few things I don't agree on are disbanding unions, however regulating them so they don't protest over silly things is important. Calling global warming a farce is calling the sky orange. You can say it all you want, but evidence to the contarary is easily avaliable. I also think a graduated tax is a good idea, however not 10-99%, more like 10-20%. This way the rich still pay more percent then the poor, but it's the difference between five mansions and three yachets; and four mansions and two yachts.

And contrary to your belief, not everyone left of Reagan is a commie.

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