Re: Recession music

On Jul 8, 5:24 pm, Tim McNamara <tim...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Define standard of living.  That's always the rub in these discussions
and the definition is usually biased to make the argument seem sound.  
What is a good standard of living to me and what is a good standard of
loving to you may be very different things.

If you define quality of life as having a TV, air conditioning, hot and
cold running water, flush toilets, etc. then yup.

Yes, that's the important thing, I think. You can do without the TV,
though. I would think your standard of living is higher WITHOUT the
TV.

 If you define quality
of life as having those things without your debt load equalling 50% or
more of your annual income, then nope.  If you own a house with a
mortgage that has more than 10 years left, even more nope.  If you
factor in the $31,201.60 (as of two minutes ago; it's higher by the time
you read this) that each American owes to America's creditors as their
share of the national debt, then a still bigger nope.

Yeah, but all that debt is used for unnecessary things, like wide
screen, high-def TVs, huge houses, SUV's and all that other earth
destroying wasteful stuff...

Prosperity based on debt is false prosperity.  Americans have among the
lowest savings rates in the Western world and a fair amount of the East
as well.

I agree. This is what we have to fix for sure.

In the meantime, 40 million Americans have no health insurance coverage.  
The average income, when adjusted for inflation, has not increased in 40
years.

This is certainly a problem. I pay for my own health insurance now so
it hurts like hell and I totally agree with much of Michael Moore.

However, what people don't realize is that, for example, in Japan
health insurance is not free. It is nationalized, but not free. An
average family pays $500/month for the national health plan. If you
are not up to date on the premiums, too bad. You get no health care.
Zip. In the U.S., there are a lot of things you can do without health
insurance but in Japan, you're out of luck. There is no medicaid and
they won't help you in emergencies either.

I've spent a month in Japan earlier this year and it's a big problem;
people dying in their homes because they have no coverage and there is
no social safety net over there like there is here... Sure, it's not
40 million people dying every day so the numbers are not that big.
But it's a big problem. (not to mention lack of doctors due to their
low pay).

"Working Poor" is a very big topic/subject in Japan right now. This
problem is real over there... I only highlight this not to say "gee,
isn't it wonderful here?!". I say it because it is so common now in
the press to show up how awful we Americans are and how horrible
things are here. My point is that, sure, there are still a lot of
awful things going on here and much suffering. But sheesh, it's
nothing like it used to be and like other places...

 The minimum wage, when corrected for inflation, was at a near
historic low in 2006 after 10 years of decline in value and is currently
worth about 2/3 of what it was in 1968 when the Republicans started
their recent episode of dominance of the White House.

That's true. I think minimum wage should go up too. But I think we
should work on getting people into jobs that are not minimum wage.

I recently read a great article on what they did in Denmark (Foreign
Affairs magazine) and it was incredible. You can probably google up
info on it. Their 'welfare' system was based on education, retraining
and support conditional on the will/plan to work.

The problem with this left/right argument (tax the rich/ redistribute
wealth to the poor) is that although it is necessary, it doesn't solve
the problem. When someone gets a welfare check, they go to Walmart
and spend it so the money goes right back to the rich (shareholders of
WMT) again.

This is just an endless circle that goes around and around.

Sure, we can ban private corporations and profits, but I don't think
that has worked in anywhere (I would hate for all the stores/
restaurants to have the same level of service and quality as the post
office, DMV and subway...)

I believe in redistribution of opportunity, not redistribution of
wealth (although I do believe that taxes should go up for the rich).

0.00013% of the US population (400 people) owns 5% of the total wealth
of the United States (about $1,250,000,000,000).  That's an average of
$3,125,000,000 each.  Each of these individuals' wealth is higher than
the GDP of the 60 least wealthy nations and territories.  According to
the World Bank, the poorest 20% of Americans receive 5.6% of all income
and the richest 20% receive 46.4%.

Well, to some extent you can't help that. Rich people own stocks. In
a good economy stocks go up. Of course George Soros is going to get
richer in a good economy than I will with my puny IRA.

Game's been pretty close to being up since the early Reagan years, when
capital celebrated its triumph over labor.

But it's much better now than back then. We had 20%+ interest rates
in 1980, 10%+ unemployment etc... I can't believe my parents bought a
house with a mortgage back in 1979. That just sounds so totally
insane.

(yes, I know you will argue about the bogusness of government
statistics. But even still, except for specific hard hit regions like
Detroit and other towns dependent on one industry, I think the general
feeling is much better now than it was back then... But sure, that's
arguable.)

We'll see.  I'm still looking for a candidate that I think would be a
good President.  None of the options thrill me.

Well, the good news is that it's not possible to do any worse. ;)

Ken
.

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