And Now We're Headed For The GREATEST Depression

[kranky]

BTW those evil regulations keep your water clean, your children's toys safe, your medicine from killing you etc...

Read some Upton Sinclair and see what the unregulated meat industry did....

Deregulation in the 80s was so good right?

Nobody objects to regulations that keep water, toys, food and medicine safe. The problem is the regulations that do not serve any purpose other than to cater to special interests or to feed an already-bloated bureaucracy.

We do work on some projects funded by the government. The projects typically have hundreds of pages of requirements, which of itself is not necessarily bad. But many of those requirements are simply unnecessary and do nothing to improve quality, safety or effectiveness of the project. What they do is increase cost needlessly and make sure there are a lot more people required.

Would you think it might be possible to point out areas where the cost could be reduced without any negative impacts? You can, but if it conflicts with the requirements, the answer is always no. There is zero interest in gettting the work done at less cost to the taxpayer.

Here's an example. The requirements specify certain types of cable to be used. Let's say the work specifies using 1,000 feet of Modern Cable ($3 per foot) and 1,000 feet of Old-style Cable ($5 per foot). I point out that Modern Cable is not only technically superior but also meets all the performance characteristics of Old-style Cable. I suggest that we use only Modern Cable, which would be a savings and also better quality. We would give 75% of the cost savings back to the customer to reduce their cost. Answer: NO, the requirements say use Old-style Cable, end of story.

The bureaucrats pay private companies huge sums to write these requirements and then the bureaucrats keep paying those companies to make every decision that needs to be made. The bureaucrats who are supposed to be doing the work in fact defer everything to the consultants. That makes consultants happy, and keeps the bureaucrats from ever getting in trouble for doing something wrong. They do nothing, which is the way to get ahead in their world.

I once had to go to a meeting with the customer to resolve a question about the length of a particular railing because the giant book of requirements was unclear. I tried to call the government official responsible and get an answer on the phone (this is about as trivial of a decision that would ever need to be made) but the official said to come in for a meeting. At that meeting was 5 people from the consultants, 3 government employees and myself. The meeting took 30 minutes - 15 minutes waiting for the last guy to show up so we could start, 10 minutes to make the decision, and 5 minutes of off-topic conversation at the end. The consultants billed for 5 people for 2 hours (an hour for the meeting and 30 minutes travel each way), which came to over $600. They decided to use the length which I had suggested on the phone in the first place. But that bureaucrat was determined not to make any decisions so if by some chance there was a problem, he could say it was the consultant's fault. That bureaucrat would insist to his dying breath that he was just looking out for the public interest and following the regulations.

 

[Acanthus]

So if I wanted to start a small business as a remodeling contractor or a coffee bean roaster what specific steps would the government and larger corporations take to stop me? Would they set my building on fire? Send some guys over to harass my customers?

This guy sounds like the white Al Sharprton: "It's not your fault, the man is keeping you down. You can't do anything, just complain about how hard the man is making things for you."

Simple, buy outsourced goods in quantities thousands of times what your startup can afford to take on. Their price is lower than your bottom line cost. With the break even point impossible to reach, you go out of business.

 

[kranky]

Remodeling contractor: very likely you need to be licensed by the state. In my state, you have to use a very specific type of contract with your customers or courts will declare the contract null and void. Maybe post a performance bond. Get liability insurance (not cheap). Legal fees to get started. Perhaps an accountant. Business license required by your township. Worker's comp insurance. Think about how much of that stuff is all due to government regulation in one form or another.

Coffee bean roaster is probably less troublesome from a regulation point of view, but as Acanthus pointed out, you will never be able to compete on price with the big boys.

 

[Craig234]

Nobody objects to regulations that keep water, toys, food and medicine safe.

Of course some do. The Libertarian ideology suggests the government has no place in these issues - consumers can sue if harmed, and the market will incent the companies to make safe products, which is better than the inefficient, wasteful, repressive regulation by the government of the private companies.

They're wrong IMO and it's a disastrous policy.

The problem is the regulations that do not serve any purpose other than to cater to special interests or to feed an already-bloated bureaucracy.

Hm that sounds familiar.

We do work on some projects funded by the government. The projects typically have hundreds of pages of requirements, which of itself is not necessarily bad. But many of those requirements are simply unnecessary and do nothing to improve quality, safety or effectiveness of the project. What they do is increase cost needlessly and make sure there are a lot more people required.

Would you think it might be possible to point out areas where the cost could be reduced without any negative impacts? You can, but if it conflicts with the requirements, the answer is always no. There is zero interest in gettting the work done at less cost to the taxpayer.

Here's an example. The requirements specify certain types of cable to be used. Let's say the work specifies using 1,000 feet of Modern Cable ($3 per foot) and 1,000 feet of Old-style Cable ($5 per foot). I point out that Modern Cable is not only technically superior but also meets all the performance characteristics of Old-style Cable. I suggest that we use only Modern Cable, which would be a savings and also better quality. We would give 75% of the cost savings back to the customer to reduce their cost. Answer: NO, the requirements say use Old-style Cable, end of story.

The bureaucrats pay private companies huge sums to write these requirements and then the bureaucrats keep paying those companies to make every decision that needs to be made. The bureaucrats who are supposed to be doing the work in fact defer everything to the consultants. That makes consultants happy, and keeps the bureaucrats from ever getting in trouble for doing something wrong. They do nothing, which is the way to get ahead in their world.

I once had to go to a meeting with the customer to resolve a question about the length of a particular railing because the giant book of requirements was unclear. I tried to call the government official responsible and get an answer on the phone (this is about as trivial of a decision that would ever need to be made) but the official said to come in for a meeting. At that meeting was 5 people from the consultants, 3 government employees and myself. The meeting took 30 minutes - 15 minutes waiting for the last guy to show up so we could start, 10 minutes to make the decision, and 5 minutes of off-topic conversation at the end. The consultants billed for 5 people for 2 hours (an hour for the meeting and 30 minutes travel each way), which came to over $600. They decided to use the length which I had suggested on the phone in the first place. But that bureaucrat was determined not to make any decisions so if by some chance there was a problem, he could say it was the consultant's fault. That bureaucrat would insist to his dying breath that he was just looking out for the public interest and following the regulations.

Those are horror stories, and I agree. But they're not the whole story. Horror stories occur in the private too, and you can still get good things done even if there's waste.

How do you systemically remove waste? You can make some efforts - many of the stories like you tell might result in something better happening - but there will be some.

Do you not have a program that does good because of that? You have to weigh them. But 'waste' is a scapegoat a lot of the time, exaggerated as a sort of catch-all when it's a small part.

Every politician loves to use 'waste' - of the programs he opposes - to campaign on. No need to take a tough position that actually hurts someone - just oppose 'waste', everyone agrees.

It's one thing to say 'there's bad waste' and support improvement if you can find some, and another to say 'there's waste and so that outweighs the benefit'. So many stories of waste don't mention that.

There used to be popular stories of expensive parts in military equipment - $600 toiled bowl seats and $50 screwdrivers. Did that mean 'don't make any ships'? No. (Fewer, but that's another issue). Rather it exposed not exactly 'the government' but 'the contractor' situation - contractors who were 'inefficient' and corruption that awarded them contracts instead of having more competitive contractors. If you can find a way to fix the military industrial complex corruption, I'm all ears. Propose any cuts here and posters will call you a commie.

What some 'waste' complaints are really about are back-door special interests who just want the spending cut. If you have a group that wants to get around regulation, you might see reports of 'waste' in the regulation, prepared and distributed by the people regulated - to let them to bad things. The corporatocracy most here seem to be concerned about loves to bash the government that might represent the public against it if we fix our elections.

'Waste' is often a misleading and hyped issue.

 

[SammyJr]

There is absolutely zero credibility to anything he just said. Profits are up and many companies have revamped and stabilized. As soon as the consumer stops worrying about spending 1 dollar, employment will go down and the face of a healthy economy will be seen. The body is getting better, but the face, the consumer is still lagging. This whole doom and gloom has zero evidence. Employment has been spiking for months now, but hasn't come crushing down.

Thank you for providing a quality example of the disconnect that so many Americans have.

American workers and American consumers are the same group of people. Unemployment is high, therefore, there are significantly fewer consumers.

This same disconnect allows people to believe that we can shift entire industries overseas with no impact to the spending power of the population. Its a fantasy at the religious level.

 

[dmcowen674]

Always amazes me that apparently most of the Corporate CEO elite killing the country off reside right here.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Since I don't work at Walmart or am poor I must be "rich."

I didn't read the article yet, but the excerpt was a little sensationalist. I agree the middle class is being wiped out, but it isn't gone yet. There is still time to act, but the window is rapidly closing and our gutless politicians are too busy pursuing their own interests instead of the interests of their constituents.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Any doof can make 1,000,000 predictions, have 999,999 of them turn out wrong, revise his past predictions so that they are hazy, and then say "AHA, I WAS RIGHT!".

See: dmcowen674.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

This is the problem with libertopians, anarchists, and anti-business tools. They refuse to accept the fact that people are what brought us here. If people would stop buying from Wal Mart, or stop buying foreign produced goods, demand for domestic goods would go up and we would see a resurgance.

You're right, there is enough blame for everyone.

 

[LegendKiller]

The problem is that you don't benefit directly from your virtuous action of buying American. When you buy an American-made product, your own job isn't the one that's going to be saved.

So, if you pay more for the same item, you are losing. If you purchase the less expensive foreign-made item, you save money.

This situation is akin to a tragedy of the commons. Everyone is going to feel compelled to despoil the commons and extract as much value from it as possible because everyone else is doing it and being responsible has no personal benefit. Of course--everyone would be better off if the commons were not despoiled and if people acted responsibly--but no one has an individual incentive to do that.

Is there an entity in our society that could solve this tragedy of the commons-like problem? Is there an entity that has the power to make rules for everyone's benefit?

Oh, that's right. It's the federal government.

The federal government could force Americans to buy American by instituting tariffs and a zero-dollar trade deficit policy. End of the problem.

But as I said in my other post: Ultimately, it is individual Americans who are the problem since they elect the politicians. People in many other nations where the people have a sense of economic self interest would revolt if they had our traitorous politicians.

I say people are dumb because they can't think beyond the immediate impact. They have no idea of the spillover effects they are having. It's pretty sad that most people can't think beyond their current time and place to see what their actions will cause. Certainly do agree with tragedy of the commons. America is probably the worst offender as we are all too selfish to look beyond the "here and now" despite our vast resources and intelligence.

 

[ericlp]

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the good times or depression to bloom. I try to look at everything with an optimistic view. Tho, I think that if we go down a depression road... We won't be able to BUY our way out of it but I believe we still haven't fully recovered from bush's fuck ups. But... What my point of view.

When you had an idiot that didn't know how to run a country for 8 years it doesn't take a very smart person to figure out that we are still paying for it. Were not out of the woods yet. It may take a few more terms to fully recover that is if we don't get any more idiots running the nation. Not to say that obama is doing a grand job but he's doing 2-300% better then bush. And probably 5-600% better then palin.

 

[manimal]

Nobody objects to regulations that keep water, toys, food and medicine safe. The problem is the regulations that do not serve any purpose other than to cater to special interests or to feed an already-bloated bureaucracy.

We do work on some projects funded by the government. The projects typically have hundreds of pages of requirements, which of itself is not necessarily bad. But many of those requirements are simply unnecessary and do nothing to improve quality, safety or effectiveness of the project. What they do is increase cost needlessly and make sure there are a lot more people required.

Would you think it might be possible to point out areas where the cost could be reduced without any negative impacts? You can, but if it conflicts with the requirements, the answer is always no. There is zero interest in gettting the work done at less cost to the taxpayer.

Here's an example. The requirements specify certain types of cable to be used. Let's say the work specifies using 1,000 feet of Modern Cable ($3 per foot) and 1,000 feet of Old-style Cable ($5 per foot). I point out that Modern Cable is not only technically superior but also meets all the performance characteristics of Old-style Cable. I suggest that we use only Modern Cable, which would be a savings and also better quality. We would give 75% of the cost savings back to the customer to reduce their cost. Answer: NO, the requirements say use Old-style Cable, end of story.

The bureaucrats pay private companies huge sums to write these requirements and then the bureaucrats keep paying those companies to make every decision that needs to be made. The bureaucrats who are supposed to be doing the work in fact defer everything to the consultants. That makes consultants happy, and keeps the bureaucrats from ever getting in trouble for doing something wrong. They do nothing, which is the way to get ahead in their world.

I once had to go to a meeting with the customer to resolve a question about the length of a particular railing because the giant book of requirements was unclear. I tried to call the government official responsible and get an answer on the phone (this is about as trivial of a decision that would ever need to be made) but the official said to come in for a meeting. At that meeting was 5 people from the consultants, 3 government employees and myself. The meeting took 30 minutes - 15 minutes waiting for the last guy to show up so we could start, 10 minutes to make the decision, and 5 minutes of off-topic conversation at the end. The consultants billed for 5 people for 2 hours (an hour for the meeting and 30 minutes travel each way), which came to over $600. They decided to use the length which I had suggested on the phone in the first place. But that bureaucrat was determined not to make any decisions so if by some chance there was a problem, he could say it was the consultant's fault. That bureaucrat would insist to his dying breath that he was just looking out for the public interest and following the regulations.

excellent response:

Bureaucracy and private interest has always had a push pull relationship with regulation. The issues at hand though is the political fallacy that unregulating markets is good for the country. It is for a fact good for business but the net outcome for the common person is far from good. Take the deregulation of the savings and loan industry by ronnie. It created a mess that ultimately cost taxpayers billions of dollars back when billions were actually alot. Take the deregulation of the energy companies in the first year of the bush administration. We are just now seeing cancer clusters at an alltime high with cases of entire towns being affected and some land becoming unlivable for generations. Take a look at the plumes of oil in the gulf. Take a look at the money lost from the financial meltdown.

Regulation-deregulation has become cyclical with neither side learning from the past transgressions. Its time learn...

 

[PeshakJang]

Employment has been spiking for months now, but hasn't come crushing down.

Yeah... pretty sure that's not the case. Unemployment has been pretty constant (~10%) for about a year. It would have gone up this month due to census jobs being lost, except for the large number of people who left the workforce.

 

[Kappo]

"I have an idea, lets cut taxes for the rich some more!" - An idiot supply sider.

"I have an idea! Let's penalize people MORE for being successful!" - Idiot libtard with entitlement mentality.

 

[dmcowen674]

And Now We're Headed For The GREATEST Depression http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticke...JlaGU-?tickers=^dji,^gspc,tlt,tbt,edv,udn,tip

Republican Mission Accomplished

 

[IGBT]

so how did barny frank's idea of giving property loans to people who couldn't even make the first payment?? how did that effect your property values and jobs??

 

[Jaskalas]

Republican Mission Accomplished

Care to explain how that works?

 

[hal2kilo]

Care to explain how that works?

Don't feed the McCowen.

 

[piasabird]

Every time the Democrats write more legislation, they make it more and more difficult for new companies and new smaller businesses to start and they they make it easier for large corporations to stay in business. Corporations like complicated laws that make it hard for the small guys. If the democrats in office dont enforce the current laws, why do we need new laws to make things even more difficult for small businesses?

In Germany they had a program to get old cars off the road. $5.000.00 payout for anyone with a car over 10 years old. So what did the democrats do? They designed a process so complicated that it only rewarded people who purchased gas guzzlers, and they manged to waste almost 2/3rds of the tax payers money on administration and paperwork. Imagine the economy effect if that many more vehicles had been purchased? Just one more case of a Government Failure. Even worse was that if you had purchased a car that was economical or was not a gas guzzler, you were punished by not being able to take advantage of this stupid program. Are the Democrats just idiots?

 

[Budarow]

Vote out the people in office who made it possible for these big corporations to be bailed out. Had they failed... that money and business could have went to the smaller companies.

It's not that simple. If the big companies and small countries weren't bailed out (i.e., the banks, GM, Chrysler, Greece, Spain, etc.), it would have started a domino effect via the world-wide derivatives market (DM). Supposedly, the DM (i.e., "bets" on literally EVERY kind of happenings around the world) is ~$700T world-wide. Once a dozen or 2 large BETs go bad, it would have triggered more and more bets to go bad (i.e., parties won't be able to cover their losing bets which triggers other parties from being able to cover their bets, and so on and so on).

IMO, the real problem was the greed of the world power players (large companies and most countries) which caused them to resort to unlimited amounts of debt and derivatives in the 1st place. The whole economic system increased productivity rates, increased debt and captured sales/profits over a decade when it should have taken several decades to capture. Now the world can't "unwide" the debt and derivatives positions without it falling apart so they do everything possible to keep it going until eventually, it will fail.

Seems like we won't be able to produce our way out or pay down the debt in time so at the very most, the system will collapse within a few years. Unless there's world-wide debt forgiveness. And that's very unlikely to happen (i.e., the rich will no longer be nearly as rich as they "seem" to be now).

We're in a bad situation.

 

[bradley]

Corporations aren't bad, per se, just the lack of awareness involving the history of corporations and major developing pitfalls. We can't find a solution to a problem that has never been properly addressed.

A must-see awesome documentary for every American...

http://www.thecorporation.com/

View it for free on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=FA50FBC214A6CE87

 

[Budarow]

There is absolutely zero credibility to anything he just said. Profits are up and many companies have revamped and stabilized. As soon as the consumer stops worrying about spending 1 dollar, employment will go down and the face of a healthy economy will be seen. The body is getting better, but the face, the consumer is still lagging. This whole doom and gloom has zero evidence. Employment has been spiking for months now, but hasn't come crushing down.

It's your right to believe whatever you want but keep in mind, the "consumer" would like to consume but they can't spend what they don't have through wage increases or increasing debt. In my own situation, I have NOT received about $20k over the last ~3 years due to cut backs at work (i.e., no raises, no 401k match, smaller and smaller bonues each year, etc.). During normal times, I'd get ~4-5% in annual raises and a 3% pay match to my 401k along with ~a 5-8% bonus/yr. All gone for the last 3 years and no talk of it coming back.

If you think there's "no evidence" of doom and gloom, you haven't had your eyes and ears open since ~last April. Economic "indicators" in the U.S. have been trending lower for 3-4 months. Corp. profits are up, but sales/revenue has been lighter than expected for Q2 for ~1/3 of the S&P 500 and the latest companies such as Cisco who's quarter ended on 7/31/10 have mostly missed sales/revenue expectations. I think that's why 1st time jobless claims increased to 500,000 for last week. At my work over the past 20 years, every time we had a slow down in revenue expectations (~4-5 times over 20 years), we laid off workers at a rate of 1 person for every $100,000 of decreased revenue/yr.

Firms are running out of ways to take from employees in order to meet corp. profit expectations. Since high paid executives receive ~75% of their compensation as a result of increased profits and thus increased stock prices, they won't hire people unless revenue is going up enough to warrant the new workers.

Next companies will lay off more workers (i.e., 1st time unemployment claims) followed by reducing pay rates and decreasing benefits.

This will in turn scare more consumers and they'll spend even less. And so the cycle will continue. Add in reduced tax revenue followed by increased tax rates to compensate.

Keep your eye on 1st time jobless claims over the next 3-4 weeks and the U.S. stock market also. Reportedly, 1st time jobless claims is a decent predictor of the movement of U.S. equities. At least it was in the recession in 1991.

 

[Darwin333]

While I disagree with much of what was said by that guy its time we collectively decide that some of the paradigms of the past are dead or we will have a second depression

supply side economics......dead
global policemanUSA........dead
deregulation=good...........dead
onepartywillkeepyousafe...dead
onepartyisforthepeople.....dead

consumption is king in all markets. If there is healthy demand regulation and taxes do little to curb the appetite of the consumers. Rich people if taxed more still spend money too so the idea that uncertainty keeps the markets unstable is preposterous as well.

BTW those evil regulations keep your water clean, your children's toys safe, your medicine from killing you etc...

Read some Upton Sinclair and see what the unregulated meat industry did....

Deregulation in the 80s was so good right?

I know multiple companies that want to hire a few more employees. Nothing earthshartering or anything, and nothing that would cause them to lose money/jobs if they didn't have the employees, but they currently have no plans to do so. Why? Probably the largest reason is because they have no idea how much those employees, or their existing ones, are going to "cost" going forward. A not so distant 2nd is because they think their (the owners) income is going to be significantly reduced in the near future via increased taxes, retarded regulations (mounds of 1099's and such) and rising HC costs.

At the same time, every project they bid/do they are putting their own asses (and pocketbooks) on the line and their profit margins are already down to 6ish%. There is an insane amount of competition in the market already which is the reason for the razor thin profit margins, so if these guys say fuck it there won't be anyone starting up a new competing business to hire the ex-workers. The owners have plenty of money/assets and could probably live comfortably for the rest of their lives off of what they currently have or with a bit of low risk investment. At some point the risk simply isn't worth the reward and if my anecdotal stories are any sort of indicator then we are pretty close to that point or at least people perceive we are.

Yes, the people I am talking about are "rich" but they are not willing to risk becoming not rich or significantly less rich for the possibility of very little reward. Especially when they can sit at home, take significantly less risk and earn even 1/6 of what they were when they worked 18 hour days. Don't get me wrong, like most rich folk they have a huge desire to become more rich but only if the risk/reward makes sense.

 

[Darwin333]

Of course some do. The Libertarian ideology suggests the government has no place in these issues - consumers can sue if harmed, and the market will incent the companies to make safe products, which is better than the inefficient, wasteful, repressive regulation by the government of the private companies.

They're wrong IMO and it's a disastrous policy.



Hm that sounds familiar.



Those are horror stories, and I agree. But they're not the whole story. Horror stories occur in the private too, and you can still get good things done even if there's waste.

How do you systemically remove waste? You can make some efforts - many of the stories like you tell might result in something better happening - but there will be some.

Do you not have a program that does good because of that? You have to weigh them. But 'waste' is a scapegoat a lot of the time, exaggerated as a sort of catch-all when it's a small part.

Every politician loves to use 'waste' - of the programs he opposes - to campaign on. No need to take a tough position that actually hurts someone - just oppose 'waste', everyone agrees.

It's one thing to say 'there's bad waste' and support improvement if you can find some, and another to say 'there's waste and so that outweighs the benefit'. So many stories of waste don't mention that.

There used to be popular stories of expensive parts in military equipment - $600 toiled bowl seats and $50 screwdrivers. Did that mean 'don't make any ships'? No. (Fewer, but that's another issue). Rather it exposed not exactly 'the government' but 'the contractor' situation - contractors who were 'inefficient' and corruption that awarded them contracts instead of having more competitive contractors. If you can find a way to fix the military industrial complex corruption, I'm all ears. Propose any cuts here and posters will call you a commie.

What some 'waste' complaints are really about are back-door special interests who just want the spending cut. If you have a group that wants to get around regulation, you might see reports of 'waste' in the regulation, prepared and distributed by the people regulated - to let them to bad things. The corporatocracy most here seem to be concerned about loves to bash the government that might represent the public against it if we fix our elections.

'Waste' is often a misleading and hyped issue.

And its often not....

Another good story, 2 years ago we did a project for one of my all time favorite .gov bureaucracies the Corp of Engineers (yes, that is sarcasm). They wanted the new building to be "hurricane resistant" so they hired a consultant to design the roof system. He came up with this system that was completely absurd and had never been done OR TESTED. No manufacturer even made the material because it was simply absurd. We went to the COE and proposed using a roof system that had been designed AND TESTED to withstand 150MPH winds, well above their 130MPH requirements and either met or exceeded all other design criteria. Not only did we want to give them a BETTER roof system we wanted to give them 3/4 of the cost back ($400K for the roof we proposed, $1.6mil for the roof their consultant invented after consuming copious amounts of drugs). We would have even made less money (granted, it would of freed up a ton of a project managers time to pursue other projects) but our profit is a straight percentage of the total estimated cost of the project.

They wouldn't even entertain the idea. It gets better too, the deck that this roof was attached to had ZERO engineering in it. I am not an engineer but I would bet a months pay that in a 110mph blow that the roof will perform exactly as designed and stay attached to the decking. The decking, along with the roof still attached to it, will probably be found a few blocks away though. We brought that up top but they didn't want to hear that bullshit either because they were over budget. We then offered to redesign the entire roof framing structure, decking and the actual roof to withstand 150MPH winds for LESS than the cost of just the roof and they told us, in writing, that if we weren't willing to build it as designed then they would hit our bond and get another contractor.

You just can't make shit like this up. On a good note, I got a huge bonus from that project. We found a plant to make the product a bit cheaper and laughed all the way to the bank. So I guess I should thank the COE, although I won't because they are lower than alligator shit in my book, for buying me a nice ass boat that year.

Ain't it funny when the "evul corporations" can't even give money back to Uncle Sugar? Bet ya think I am the bad guy for profiting off of it too even though I couldn't have gave them the money back if I wanted to. The boat has been an absolute blast though, taking her out again labor day weekend. I'll be sure to drink a cold one for ya.

 

[kranky]

Yes, the people I am talking about are "rich" but they are not willing to risk becoming not rich or significantly less rich for the possibility of very little reward. Especially when they can sit at home, take significantly less risk and earn even 1/6 of what they were when they worked 18 hour days. Don't get me wrong, like most rich folk they have a huge desire to become more rich but only if the risk/reward makes sense.

People should not underestimate the importance of this. When people with capital feel they can succeed, they invest and expand. When uncertainty and risk is high, they protect what they have.

So you have businesses paralyzed by uncertainty and won't hire people, and regulations keeping the average person from starting a business on his/her own. The unemployment rate is at least 7 percent higher than what is officially reported, and is not getting any better. Do people not understand what is going on?

When we finally comprehend the horrendous impact of what has been done in the last couple years - the health care bill, the bailouts, etc. - it will probably be too late to do anything about it. We're on the road to becoming Greece.