How do you rate the state of the union in the U.S.?

[amdhunter]

None of that is true. Gas is at similar levels to bush times and inflation is at some of the lowest levels in US history.

Then why am I feeling way more burdened than I was back then? Oh yea, every damned thing costs more.

 

[werepossum]

on a 1 to 10 scale, It's a 2 or 3 right now.
Mostly it's so piss poor due to international competition for the job market. It doesn't help that politicians always put politics above policies, and that ethics no longer exists in business or politics. Essentially, greed is the only remaining driving force for the world.

Seriously, a 2 or 3? That doesn't leave much room above Somalia or Yemen or Egypt or Guatemala. You really think this many people are spending so much money to sneak into a 2 or 3? I fully agree with zsdersw's comments about the dangers of our entitlement mentality and willful lack of responsibility, but at the worst of the crash I'd rate us no worse than 6. Today I'd say we're at a 7, if only because we're no longer falling.

They are no different on anything that effects economy which of course is that matters most. Because with good jobs/economy you don't need obamacare, worry about debt, underfunded pensions, underfunded SS, or worry about schools because everything is flush with cash from huge population in the workforce paying taxes.

All support third world slave labor so their corp masters can get rich beyond their wildest dreams and putting you on subsistence welfare. Bank bailouts. Fed monetary policy of inflation instead of stable prices. Debt at all levels instead of production and savings. And everything else that screws 99% of Americans.

Lot of truth to that, but it's worth pointing out that even in the best of economies there are always people who need Obamacare or something similar. It's true that a rising tide lifts all boats, but there are always people at the bottom; while they may be rising with the tide their noses never get far above the surface and they are always one wave away from transforming from boat to bottom structure, to belabor a metaphor.

Then why am I feeling way more burdened than I was back then? Oh yea, every damned thing costs more.

People who claim inflation is low obviously either don't spend any time in the grocery store, or are too stupid to do math, or believe whatever the government tells them over their own experience.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

You may have strayed too far if you think America is not better than most any alternative.

There is a thought and spirit in America that is unique in human history, and only exists in flawed ways in other countries. Despite all America's problems, the undistilled spirit that exists in us makes us more valuable than 3/5 of the rest of the world.

Could you please elaborate on this American exceptionalism?

When you suggest that America is better than the alternative, are you referring to third world nations like Somalia and Mexico, or are you referring to places like the Scandanavian countries and Japan?

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Tying the minimum wage to the cost of living is a wonderful way to illustrate the cost of government spending, debt and inflationary federal reserve policies. On top of ensuring that businesses always have increasing costs which would always in turn increase the cost of living and force these wages to climber higher and higher so you end up with a rat race of cost of living chasing increasing wages, etc in a inflationary manner.

You're making the assumption that minimum wage increases are the sole or even primary driver of cost of living increases when in reality a 10% minimum wage increase might only increase the cost of living by 0.2%.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Name one country that is better off than the U.S.

Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Japan*, and probably a good number of other countries. At least many other nations don't have the health care crisis that we have nor the gigantic wealth gap between the rich and working classes. If you ignore the small percentage of the populace that is wealthy or upper middle class and compare middle classes, we could probably add a bunch of other nations to the list.

*Don't let Japan fool you, see this article:

http://www.sane.org.za/docs/views/showviews.asp?ID=78

 

[WhipperSnapper]

If you guys think that these other countries are better off, then why not move to the other countries?

These nations don't have the suicidal immigration policies that the United States has (which is part of the reason why the U.S. is in such a dire state--global labor arbitrage), at least not close to the extent we have it. It isn't nearly as easy to immigrate to many of these nations as it is to the United States.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Quiet!

Obama is shoring up a voting block.

The government most assuredly can eliminate poverty and suffering, if only we didn't have the obstructionist party and their selfish greedy "principles".

Are you sure that you're not constructing a straw-man argument of what the Democrats and liberals support? Have they ever actually said that their plan is full-blown socialism like the Republicans and free market dogmatist morons would like to have you believe?

What if they support economic and social policies that have less to do with the government eliminating poverty and suffering directly and more to do with structuring the economic playing field such that the way wealth is distributed in the market would result in reducing poverty and suffering?

For example, what if they supported policies that would result in the wealthy taking a smaller percentage of the amount of wealth produced by the lower classes with the lower classes receiving a larger amount of the wealth they produce?

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Bush will rank as one of the 5 worst Presidents in History. Obama will rank pretty low too. The problem we have is that Bush and Congress fucked everything up and Obama and Congress hasn't fixed anything.

I think that Obama will end up being merely average or slightly above average. You have to judge him in the context of the mess he inherited and what he had to work with. For example, it isn't Obama's fault that he can't fix the nation's health care system by implementing real, socialized medicine.

At least Obama didn't outright lie to the American people in order to start a war that cost hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives like the last time we had a Republican in office.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

That depends on who you are looking at.

Is a single mother with no job skills better off in Norway. Almost certainly.

It is a college educated professional better off in Norway though?

Wouldn't that depend on whether or not that college-educated professional is employed in his field and has onerous student loans? For example, numerous college graduates with professional degrees (such as MBAs and law degrees, 6 and 7 years worth of college education, respectively) are unemployed or underemployed-and-involuntarily-out-of-field. Even scientists with PhDs are unemployed or underemployed.

According to one recent study, only about 50% of the people who have bachelors degrees actually do work that requires having a bachelors degree. See:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...arly-half-are-overqualified-for-jobs/1868817/

http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/research/studies/underemployment-of-college-graduates

It seems like it would also depend on your health care needs. Just because you are employed with your college degree does not mean that your health insurance covers much. (And in the case of self-employed professionals, they pay for 100% of their health insurance costs.) Depending on your health care needs you might very well be better off being a college-educated professional in Norway than in the United States.

You're also less likely to be subject to violent crime (possibly resulting from our nation's abysmal economic situation and distribution of wealth) in Norway than in the United States.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

The state of the union is poor, We still havent made serious spending cuts which are crucial if we want to get out of this mess. obamacare must be repealed and replaced with a true free market system which encourages competition and will reduce costs and improve quality.

Could you please elaborate on how costs would be reduced? Where would the cost savings come from?

Would it come from allowing any aspiring entrepreneur who wants to call himself a "doctor" to put up a shingle and offer to do appendectomies for $500?

Would the cost savings come from no longer providing medical care for the poor, the sick, and the elderly? (That's not really a cost savings in terms of cost per amount of care delivered, it's just a decrease in the amount of care delivered.)

Will the massive insurance company and medical billing inefficiencies be magically reduced somehow? Will the hordes of wealthy insurance company and hospital executives be reduced?

Would the cost savings come from the elimination of malpractice liability (meaning that doctors and hospitals no longer need to be held personally responsible for the costs of their negligence/recklessness)?

Would the cost savings come from hidden clauses buried deep on page 450 of the 800 page health insurance contract that stipulates numerous ways that the insurance contract can be revoked when someone gets sick? What happens if people have to hire lawyers at a cost of $5000 to review and/or negotiate the health insurance contracts before they sign them?

Would some of the cost savings be the result of health insurance company "death panels" where employees receive bonuses and/or commissions for figuring out ways to legally cancel people's health insurance when they get sick?

 

[Siddhartha]

The current state of the Union is great, stellar, etc compared to where it has been it in the past, for example in the 1850's and 1860's. To think otherwise is being a victim of believing apocalyptic delusions and being ignorant of the history of this country.

 

[Smoblikat]

Better than it was under Bush, with at least a solid chance of things getting better. So "fair".

How so? Noth the better than Bush part.........though thats debatable too. What makes you think things are improving?

 

[werepossum]

Are you sure that you're not constructing a straw-man argument of what the Democrats and liberals support? Have they ever actually said that their plan is full-blown socialism like the Republicans and free market dogmatist morons would like to have you believe?

What if they support economic and social policies that have less to do with the government eliminating poverty and suffering directly and more to do with structuring the economic playing field such that the way wealth is distributed in the market would result in reducing poverty and suffering?

For example, what if they supported policies that would result in the wealthy taking a smaller percentage of the amount of wealth produced by the lower classes with the lower classes receiving a larger amount of the wealth they produce?

Obama himself famously said the problem with the Constitution is that all its guarantees are "negative liberties", what government cannot do to you, and what we need is some "positive liberties", what government must do for you. Hard to see much difference between that and "From each according to his means, to each according to his need."

Nothing against Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, and Japan - I could live in any of them if I spoke the language and had a need - but they are all more socialist and therefore have less personal liberty. One simply cannot have the benefits of socialism without also having the loss of liberty that entails, because government has nothing to give you that it does not first take from someone else (or borrow, to be paid back with something they took from someone else.) Not caring that government takes something from someone else to give it to you is no different than not caring whether gay marriage is legal because neither you nor your loved ones are gay. It's merely an expression of entitlement, a form of selfishness that assumes other people are here to serve you.

 

[OverVolt]

The older you are, the better things are doing.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

One simply cannot have the benefits of socialism without also having the loss of liberty that entails, because government has nothing to give you that it does not first take from someone else (or borrow, to be paid back with something they took from someone else.) Not caring that government takes something from someone else to give it to you is no different than not caring whether gay marriage is legal because neither you nor your loved ones are gay. It's merely an expression of entitlement, a form of selfishness that assumes other people are here to serve you.

One of the issues is whether you're getting a good value for the price of the taxation and who exactly is being taxed. For example, if the government can provide health care less expensively than the free market, then what's so awful about that? Could it be argued that having public K-12 education is a societal value that is worth the cost? Public roads?

If multi-billionares and multi-millionaires who have received more in income than the actual value of their work effort get taxed so that it can be redistributed to people who have received less income than the value of their work effort, why is that so awful?

The notion that there is such a thing as "full freedom" is fallacious because we live in a finite world which means that there are necessarily constraints. The issue is which freedoms are most important and most valuable and which ones need to be constrained. In the realm of economics, one man's allegedly righteous freedom is another man's constraint.

 

[boomerang]

One of the issues is whether you're getting a good value for the price of the taxation and who exactly is being taxed. For example, if the government can provide health care less expensively than the free market, then what's so awful about that? Could it be argued that having public K-12 education is a societal value that is worth the cost? Public roads?

If multi-billionares and multi-millionaires who have received more in income than the actual value of their work effort get taxed so that it can be redistributed to people who have received less income than the value of their work effort, why is that so awful?

The notion that there is such a thing as "full freedom" is fallacious because we live in a finite world which means that there are necessarily constraints. The issue is which freedoms are most important and most valuable and which ones need to be constrained. In the realm of economics, one man's allegedly righteous freedom is another man's constraint.

You have learned your lessons well. If you were able to think further ahead, you might see flaws in your logic. But the passage of time will teach you those lessons.

 

[Double Trouble]

I rated the state of the union as poor, for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately, I don't think my kids will enjoy nearly as good of a country as I have.