Politics of fear

**jmw_man** · 02-06-09, 10:06 AM

Originally Posted by WorstPE

What do you mean, your family is doing well in that area?

My family owns and my brother runs a precision production machine shop. They opened up for business in 2002 and have only been growing. They made the Houston Fast 100 list twice in the last two years and received other rewards for their growth. My bro is an industrial engineer, it's uncommon for an industrial engineer to literally run everything in a machine shop, normally they just oversee, though, being an engineer, he's a problem solver and can get any job done with the right tools. Can't get the right tools unless you do your research, which he spends massive amounts of time doing. They are doing well because of his competitiveness and his brains. IMO, it's not that Americans are lazy, they are simply dumb or lack education. All too often I've seen people work really hard without much gain due to other bad decisions only costing them money.

Check em out.

www.wells-mfg.net

**DJ Ms. White** · 02-06-09, 10:21 AM

That's some purdy machining.

**jmw_man** · 02-06-09, 10:33 AM

Originally Posted by DJ Mr. White

That's some purdy machining.

Yea, my brother and I like to go all out to make them SHINE! There's a finish requirement on the prints but my brother gets a hardon exceeding those requirements. The issue is that since there are so many different ways to perform a single operation, people usually perform the first that comes to mind while with a little research and a new 500 dollar tool, you can cut the operation time in half and outcome with a profit paying for your tool. In the end, IMO, America has a problem with lacking the competitive edge they need to produce the profit they want. They end up working harder and longer than they really need to.

**Muqtar SGT_Clintok** · 02-06-09, 10:34 AM

Wow - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...502766_pf.html

An article, published this morning, which goes on to expound my point with far more eloquence that I am capable of.

**rock_lobster** · 02-06-09, 10:42 AM

Originally Posted by jmw_man

I'm far from being an economist but I look at it this way:

When you look at your net worth, you count the money in the bank and you have your property appraised. Who is richer, a man with no possessions but 5 mill in the bank or a man with a 5 mill dollar house and no money in the bank? I say neither because their net worths are still the same. To me, this stimulus bill will improve the net worth of america by improving its roads, bridges, parks, recreational areas, law enforcement tools, birth control, etc.

The man witht he 5 million dollar house is willing to sell his house if he has to. America's assets aren't going to be sold.......If we are strapped for cash we aren't going to sell Yellowstone National Park to Canada.

And it will create jobs...temporarily.....Cut EVERYONE'S TAXES and allow them to spend their own money....I say create businesses, not jobs....government jobs like roadwork and building infrastrcuture are temporary...if we give the citizens money (through tax cuts) we allow them to use the money themselves (they know better of what they need than our government does). In turn a lot of these same people will create business, and that will create jobs...that last.

Not to mention, tax cuts benefit those who actually pay taxes....meaning people who actually work....so now the people that sit there and collect welfare for a living get no extra benefit....

Or, if you absolutely positively have to have a stimulus bill....bailout nothing but mid sized to small business....you do that, you are saving millions (or even creating more) jobs that are going to last longer than highway projects.

Again I say, who knows your needs better, you or the governement? Let us spend our own money, stop playing the parent, Congress.

**WorstPE** · 02-06-09, 10:57 AM

This just came to mind. Everyone says we need to fix our infrastrcuture. But no one is actually looking at how long this will take?

Look at any major city in the US. A road construction project takes years and usually over budget. Do you think they are accounting that into the bill too? Doubtful. Even then, the projects wont start for years to come. Then any plans for the road being built is already outdated. And we will still have bad roads when it's built.

**jason_jinx** · 02-06-09, 12:30 PM

Originally Posted by WorstPE

This just came to mind. Everyone says we need to fix our infrastrcuture. But no one is actually looking at how long this will take?

Look at any major city in the US. A road construction project takes years and usually over budget. Do you think they are accounting that into the bill too? Doubtful. Even then, the projects wont start for years to come. Then any plans for the road being built is already outdated. And we will still have bad roads when it's built.

Money goes back into rotation.
There is not enough gold to backup the paper money so its all bullshit anyways but lets make the best of it. Even if it takes years and goes over budget the workers still get paid. Then the workers spend their cash on bills and activities puts the money right back into circulation.

The government is not just gonna send out checks to every Joe Blow to spread around money. Instead they are going to inject money into the heart of America funding programs. These projects and programs needs workers. This is the way to earn our money. Someone already said we are to lazy but I think that is about to change. People in America are finally waking the fuck up slowy but surely.
We are creating jobs and at the same time somewhat renovating our country.
Two birds with one stone.

**WorstPE** · 02-06-09, 12:35 PM

I just found this. It was an essay wrote by Frank Herbert back in 1980 for Omni Magazine.

http://www.dunenovels.com/news/genesis.html

How did it evolve? I conceived of a long novel, the whole trilogy as one book about the messianic convulsions that periodically overtake us. Demagogues, fanatics, con-game artists, the innocent and the not-so-innocent bystanders-all were to have a part in the drama. This grows from my theory that superheroes are disastrous for humankind. Even if we find a real hero (whatever-or whoever-that may be), eventually fallible mortals take over the power structure that always comes into being around such a leader.

Personal observation has convinced me that in the power area of politics/economics and in their logical consequence, war, people tend to give over every decision-making capacity to any leader who can wrap himself in the myth fabric of the society. Hitler did it. Churchill did it. Franklin Roosevelt did it. Stalin did it. Mussolini did it.

My favorite examples are John F. Kennedy and George Patton. Both fitted themselves into the flamboyant Camelot pattern, consciously assuming bigger-than-life appearance. But the most casual observation reveals that neither was bigger than life. Each had our common human ailment-clay feet.

This, then, was one of my themes for Dune: Don't give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those people may appear to be. Beneath the hero's facade you will find a human being who makes human mistakes. Enormous problems arise when human mistakes are made on the grand scale available to a superhero. And sometimes you run into another problem.

It is demonstrable that power structures tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power and that a significant proportion of such people are imbalanced-in a word, insane.

That was the beginning. Heroes are painful, superheroes are a catastrophe. The mistakes of superheroes involve too many of us in disaster.

It is the systems themselves that I see as dangerous Systematic is a deadly word. Systems originate with human creators, with people who employ them. Systems take over and grind on and on. They are like a flood tide that picks up everything in its path. How do they originate?

All of this encapsulates the stuff of high drama, of entertainment-and I'm in the entertainment business first. It's all right to include a pot of message, but that's not the key ingredient of wide readership. Yes, there are analogs in Dune of today's events-corruption and bribery in the highest places, whole police forces lost to organized crime, regulatory agencies taken over by the people they are supposed to regulate. The scarce water of Dune is an exact analog of oil scarcity. CHOAM is OPEC.

But that was only the beginning.

It's a short read. What I posted above is just one of the subjects that the essay touches.

I agree with him one a lot of the essay.

**MotoZ** · 02-06-09, 03:50 PM

Muq,

Obama apparently got the message. Earlier today he presented a team of independents to advise him. The team is lead by Paul Volcker. This team is in addition to the team led by Larry Summers, whom Obama referred to as his advisor in the White House. He also signed an Executive Order which I presume states their mission, but isn't on the White House web site yet.

Obama said the team includes economists and some who think they are economists. And that in these times millions of people think they are economists. I LOL'd.

**Red_Lizard2** · 02-06-09, 05:37 PM

by the way the idea that cutting taxes and giving american's the money to spend how they want isn't a fix either. See we have this great thing called inflation, and lets say through tax cuts, every person in america gets $2,000 dollars back. All that means is prices are going to up to balance out the new found money that people now have to spend.

Basic Principle economics says that business want to sell at a high price, and consumers want to buy at low price. Eventually you get to a price in which the manufactor and consumer feel is a fair price for the product. depending on the product some are elastic demand and some are inelastic.

So lets look at Milk, at the store right now lets say its 2 dollar a gallon. People will always buy milk and its fairly inelastic in its price. Now if people have the money to buy milk at 3 dollars a gallon, why would you sell at 2 dollars?

Basically if they give us the money and say "have" prices are just going to go up and we'll be back to square one, this time with the need for more money because cost of living would have gone up, thanks to inflation.