Future jobs won’t support decent living standard

[rashi]

You guys still don't get it.


There's still a Rich v. Poor debate, all of that is irrelevant. The "Rich" are getting richer because loop holes are getting easier (the more taxes are, the easier it gets), the "Poor" is getting poorer due to monetary policy set by your compassionate elected officials.

 

[rashi]

You guys still don't get it.


There's still a Rich v. Poor debate, all of that is irrelevant. The "Rich" are getting richer because loop holes are getting easier (the more taxes are, the easier it gets), the "Poor" is getting poorer due to monetary policy set by your compassionate elected officials.

 

[rexanglorum]

I will never understand the mathematical obsession with a middle class, as if there must be a bell curve for incomes. I do understand the focus on the very high earners but if they are responsible for creating large amounts of wealth and make millions or billions of dollars income, it is causing anyone harm and in many cases, the very richest people are the people who bring items of value to larger and larger numbers of people. The so called robber barons of the 19th Century brought people cheaper and better ways to heat and illuminate the home, cook food or transport once self or one's goods. Many of today's new billionaires are people who find better and cheaper ways to allow ideas, information and entertainment to flow into our homes (and more erecently into our mobile phones) and conversely, fortunates have been made by allowing people to let their views, sentiments and opinions flow out into the rest of the World. The CEO of a bailout Bank, the sugar farmer whose wealth is largely a result of costly protectionist tariffs, the malpractice lawyer who drives up the cost of medicine by suing doctors who practiced medicine comptenetly and in good faith are parasitic and their wealth does come at the expense of everyone else but many people who are rich earned their money by providing ever more goods for a lower price than his or her competitors.

What ought to be the primary metric for economic health is the buying power of the bottom quintile of the population and the mean income earner. How many hours does a low income person have to work in order to afford a pound of chicken or a gallon of milk or a gigabyte of computer processing power, if the number is shrinking that means that the economy is working. It astounds me that global trade, industrialization and financial institutions are demonized yet they have all made it so that more and more people can buy more goods. For thousands of years, there has been small elite that has enjoyed good food, entertainment, comfortable clothing, education, leisure time and the ability to travel more than a day's walk from home. It has been financial institutions, who aggregate people's modest savings lend the money to businesses so wealth producing jobs can be created and people with modest savings can safely store their modest stores of wealth; the textile factories, that made it so that instead of rough woollen cloth, cotton and synthetic silk touch of the skin of the common man and woman; the oil tycoon; that allowed the average person the ability to cheaply illumianate one's home; the entrepreneur that opens a Pho restaurant and allows a plumber or car mechanic to have a wonderful meal for in exchange for the money he earned in 15 minutes of his time at work.

What is the most astonishing thin gof all is that those types of people are not only not celebrated, they are shunned and the people whom our society celebrates are people who destroy wealth through wars and those who lived fabulously on the backs of the labor of tens of thousands. From the man Alexander, to Napoleon, to Lincoln (he started the war of 1861 to satiate his ego and that of the Central government and only later. He only made the war about slavery later on, because it would stop Britain and/or France from helping the Confederates. Only revisionist history would know him as "the Great Emancipator"), to President Roosevelt (both are undeservedly made into secular saints but I am referring to the one whose first eight years as President never saw a month of unemployment below double digits) to Mao Ze Doung, a man whose economic experiments killed 60 million human beings and on and on through the list of murders and thieves whom who call statesmen and to we grant glittering sobriquets just as "The Great."
Let the mathematical distribution of income be anything as long as the bottom fifth and the median and/or mean are moving up in terms of standards of living.

 

[rexanglorum]

I will never understand the mathematical obsession with a middle class, as if there must be a bell curve for incomes. I do understand the focus on the very high earners but if they are responsible for creating large amounts of wealth and make millions or billions of dollars income, it is causing anyone harm and in many cases, the very richest people are the people who bring items of value to larger and larger numbers of people. The so called robber barons of the 19th Century brought people cheaper and better ways to heat and illuminate the home, cook food or transport once self or one's goods. Many of today's new billionaires are people who find better and cheaper ways to allow ideas, information and entertainment to flow into our homes (and more erecently into our mobile phones) and conversely, fortunates have been made by allowing people to let their views, sentiments and opinions flow out into the rest of the World. The CEO of a bailout Bank, the sugar farmer whose wealth is largely a result of costly protectionist tariffs, the malpractice lawyer who drives up the cost of medicine by suing doctors who practiced medicine comptenetly and in good faith are parasitic and their wealth does come at the expense of everyone else but many people who are rich earned their money by providing ever more goods for a lower price than his or her competitors.

What ought to be the primary metric for economic health is the buying power of the bottom quintile of the population and the mean income earner. How many hours does a low income person have to work in order to afford a pound of chicken or a gallon of milk or a gigabyte of computer processing power, if the number is shrinking that means that the economy is working. It astounds me that global trade, industrialization and financial institutions are demonized yet they have all made it so that more and more people can buy more goods. For thousands of years, there has been small elite that has enjoyed good food, entertainment, comfortable clothing, education, leisure time and the ability to travel more than a day's walk from home. It has been financial institutions, who aggregate people's modest savings lend the money to businesses so wealth producing jobs can be created and people with modest savings can safely store their modest stores of wealth; the textile factories, that made it so that instead of rough woollen cloth, cotton and synthetic silk touch of the skin of the common man and woman; the oil tycoon; that allowed the average person the ability to cheaply illumianate one's home; the entrepreneur that opens a Pho restaurant and allows a plumber or car mechanic to have a wonderful meal for in exchange for the money he earned in 15 minutes of his time at work.

What is the most astonishing thin gof all is that those types of people are not only not celebrated, they are shunned and the people whom our society celebrates are people who destroy wealth through wars and those who lived fabulously on the backs of the labor of tens of thousands. From the man Alexander, to Napoleon, to Lincoln (he started the war of 1861 to satiate his ego and that of the Central government and only later. He only made the war about slavery later on, because it would stop Britain and/or France from helping the Confederates. Only revisionist history would know him as "the Great Emancipator"), to President Roosevelt (both are undeservedly made into secular saints but I am referring to the one whose first eight years as President never saw a month of unemployment below double digits) to Mao Ze Doung, a man whose economic experiments killed 60 million human beings and on and on through the list of murders and thieves whom who call statesmen and to we grant glittering sobriquets just as "The Great."
Let the mathematical distribution of income be anything as long as the bottom fifth and the median and/or mean are moving up in terms of standards of living.

 

[rashi]

I will never understand the mathematical obsession with a middle class, as if there must be a bell curve for incomes.

There really isn't. It's a politically convenient term that applies to a wide audience. "Rich", "Poor", "Middle Class", "Fair", ect. are terms used by politicians when they want people to pay attention.


See, it's hard for us Austrians to come to grips with the means of Statists because our ideology doesn't have a Class System. We don't group people and put them into categories, we don't see a race, we see potential and what each individual can do with it.

 

[rashi]

I will never understand the mathematical obsession with a middle class, as if there must be a bell curve for incomes.

There really isn't. It's a politically convenient term that applies to a wide audience. "Rich", "Poor", "Middle Class", "Fair", ect. are terms used by politicians when they want people to pay attention.


See, it's hard for us Austrians to come to grips with the means of Statists because our ideology doesn't have a Class System. We don't group people and put them into categories, we don't see a race, we see potential and what each individual can do with it.

 

[Betonblck]

Originally Posted by Rexanglorum

I will never understand the mathematical obsession with a middle class, as if there must be a bell curve for incomes.


Let the mathematical distribution of income be anything as long as the bottom fifth and the median and/or mean are moving up in terms of standards of living.

More middle class people are becoming poor and the country is turning into a whole lot of poor people and a few rich people.

The bottom fifth and the median/mean have been moving down over the past 20 years. 

Our country is on a path to becoming a third world country in which there are a few rich people and everyone else is poor.  I guess you see no problem with that yet. 

 

[Betonblck]

Originally Posted by Rexanglorum

I will never understand the mathematical obsession with a middle class, as if there must be a bell curve for incomes.


Let the mathematical distribution of income be anything as long as the bottom fifth and the median and/or mean are moving up in terms of standards of living.

More middle class people are becoming poor and the country is turning into a whole lot of poor people and a few rich people.

The bottom fifth and the median/mean have been moving down over the past 20 years. 

Our country is on a path to becoming a third world country in which there are a few rich people and everyone else is poor.  I guess you see no problem with that yet. 

 

[caerus]

At this point, has the need for Education risen or fallen now in the U.S.?

I've heard mixed responses...

 

[caerus]

At this point, has the need for Education risen or fallen now in the U.S.?

I've heard mixed responses...

 

[elderwatsondiggs]

Originally Posted by Rexanglorum

It does not have to be this way. The world has more physical capital and with economic growth slowly but surely churning through Eastern and Southern Asia, there is a growing amount of financial capital. The more wealth and income being produced per capita, all things being equal, there should be more money available, at lower interest rates to finance the starting of new firms and the expansion of existing and well run firms.

I think that some of our problems are caused by government intervention in the economy. Taxation, regime uncertainty (not knowing what the law makers or regulatory agencies or courts will cause paralysis for job and wealth creators), subsidies of poorly run firms (they not only cost tax payers in terms of money, they consume scarce resources that would create more wealth and a generally higher standard of living if those same resources were managed by more dynamic firms) and in some cases there are excessive amounts of red tape from various bureaucracies and environmental lawyers. Most importantly is the behavior of the Federal reserve and the complimentary legislation in Congress (such as the mortgage write off on income taxes and the increasing demands that Freddie and Fannie take on subprime loans) that create malinvestment. Malinvestment means that Scarce resources get directed into ventures that could have been producing more wealth, more productivity and better jobs.

In the case of the 2000's, artificially low interest rates and government policy caused too many scarce resources to be invested into housing and by the late 2000's and probably through most of this decade, we will see homes that are unoccupied and because there was a lack of investment in other sectors of the economy, wages and unemployment will stay high. In the 1990's there was over investment in the tech sector and in 2000, that bubble burst and casued a relatively minor but still costly recession, the recession was minor because the boom was less intense than the housing boom, few families invested so much of their household budgets, banks did not put insane amounts of their portfolios in the "dot coms," Congress did not waive capital gains taxes or give tax payers a write off for buying tech stocks.

My prediction is that the next bubble to burst will be higher education/student loans. The damage will be less than the housing bubble but greater than the dot com bubble, there too many students with BA and even MA and JD's, who owe six figures and can barely make five figures, annually, after they gradiate. Like housing, there are governmental and social pressures to incur debt to purchase higher education. The Secretary of education, Arne Duncan, when asked by a CNBC correspondent "is there anyone who should not go to college?" could not even concede that maybe one such young person even exists. I, and other decent economist and/or investor, should be able to see this coming because the market for higher education is, clearly, a bubble right now and government policy is not to draw down and maybe deflate the bubble and avoid a crash, the Obama administration and any future administration/Congress will not want to be seen as limiting access to higher education so they will further subsidize, like government did did with housing, student loans that will be even larger and that will have even lower returns than they do today, just like with housing. Eventually, no amount of subsidizing will push so many people into something with not only a net negative return, but a very large net negative return.

So we can make life better and have better jobs if we stop having policies that create malinvestment. Low interest rates have caused too much money to go into mortages and other very long term investments, worse yet, those interest rates are artificial and unsustainable. If there were no Central Bank and interest rates would accurately reflect the amount of capital in the world (capital is basically all wealth produced, minus all private and public consumption, what remains is investable, extra wealth), the rate would be higher and less money would go into mortgages and more money would go to firms that would buy more capital (things like new tools, equipment, computers and other inputs to production) that would enhance worker productivity and when worker productivity increases wages tend to rise and unemployment decreases. Prices in general and interest rates in particular need to be allowed to float in order to better allow siganls to be sent to people, households, firms and maybe even governments and scarce resources can be more widely invested, used and consumed and that would improve quality of life for ordinary people.

We do live i nworld of increasin geconoic change and that makes in encumbent upon people and governments to give people a chance to have more financial securit yand be able to change career paths and/or augment existing skills. Individuals, who are able to do so, should consider actually saving money, if people in China, who make $3,000 or $4,000 can put away 10% to 20% of their income, Americans who make a multiple of that should be able to put away 10% of their income and have at least a few months living expenses for times when they have to have tehir hours cut or even loss their jobs.

Government can help by providing unemployment benefits and subsidies for job and career training, as they do now. Beyond that the Government should use the very powerful force of taxation and tax exemption to encourage and incentivize private saving (actually it does now but mostly for retirement, it should give similar tax shelter status to people who set up a rainy day fund as it gives to those who save for retirement). There should also be efforts to take away the tax exempt status given to employer provided payments on health insurance premiums for employees (Candidate John McCain wanted that in 2008 and Candidiate Obama opposed it but then made it part of his health care reform legislation, the fact that some people get high end, low deductible insurances means an artificially high demand for health care by some and higher health care costs and very high out of pocket costs for the uninsured and rising premiums for the insured). 

The problem with government policy and American society and household budgeting is that almost everything is based on the assumption that some will graduate high school or college and will never be unemployed for more than a few weeks until they retire in their sixties. Households and government policy have assumptions that you will have four decades of no prolonged periods of unemployment, that is foolish. I believe that in a very dynamic and market oriented economy (right now we have a static economy with some sectors highly driven by market forces and some driven mostly by government fiat), the average worker will make more money and have a better standard of living over a life time. A robust and quickly changing, information driven economy will give people richer and fuller lives but there will be fewer jobs that involve large doses of menial and manual labor in exchange for an equal measure of strong job security) but that same person will face longer periods of unemployment in exchange for greater levels of wealth over a lifetime. Long term gain can and does have serious short term costs, they is no avoiding that fact.

In short, while there is no simple solution to economic uncertainty, the best, in terms of policy is two pronged. One is to allow firms and production to be flexible, dynamic and able to get financing for sudden changes that could or potentially could increase productivity and wages. At the same, have a public safety net and use tax policy to encourage households to save for and to respond to the short term setbacks and loses, that are associated with any economy that is not static and stagnant.





 

Damn dude, your walls of text are extremely annoying. I know you do it as a display of your  economic/financial "acumen", but you could easily convey the same amount of information in a more concise manner. Stop writing these damn mini-dissertations. Yes I'm mad.

 

[elderwatsondiggs]

Originally Posted by Rexanglorum

It does not have to be this way. The world has more physical capital and with economic growth slowly but surely churning through Eastern and Southern Asia, there is a growing amount of financial capital. The more wealth and income being produced per capita, all things being equal, there should be more money available, at lower interest rates to finance the starting of new firms and the expansion of existing and well run firms.

I think that some of our problems are caused by government intervention in the economy. Taxation, regime uncertainty (not knowing what the law makers or regulatory agencies or courts will cause paralysis for job and wealth creators), subsidies of poorly run firms (they not only cost tax payers in terms of money, they consume scarce resources that would create more wealth and a generally higher standard of living if those same resources were managed by more dynamic firms) and in some cases there are excessive amounts of red tape from various bureaucracies and environmental lawyers. Most importantly is the behavior of the Federal reserve and the complimentary legislation in Congress (such as the mortgage write off on income taxes and the increasing demands that Freddie and Fannie take on subprime loans) that create malinvestment. Malinvestment means that Scarce resources get directed into ventures that could have been producing more wealth, more productivity and better jobs.

In the case of the 2000's, artificially low interest rates and government policy caused too many scarce resources to be invested into housing and by the late 2000's and probably through most of this decade, we will see homes that are unoccupied and because there was a lack of investment in other sectors of the economy, wages and unemployment will stay high. In the 1990's there was over investment in the tech sector and in 2000, that bubble burst and casued a relatively minor but still costly recession, the recession was minor because the boom was less intense than the housing boom, few families invested so much of their household budgets, banks did not put insane amounts of their portfolios in the "dot coms," Congress did not waive capital gains taxes or give tax payers a write off for buying tech stocks.

My prediction is that the next bubble to burst will be higher education/student loans. The damage will be less than the housing bubble but greater than the dot com bubble, there too many students with BA and even MA and JD's, who owe six figures and can barely make five figures, annually, after they gradiate. Like housing, there are governmental and social pressures to incur debt to purchase higher education. The Secretary of education, Arne Duncan, when asked by a CNBC correspondent "is there anyone who should not go to college?" could not even concede that maybe one such young person even exists. I, and other decent economist and/or investor, should be able to see this coming because the market for higher education is, clearly, a bubble right now and government policy is not to draw down and maybe deflate the bubble and avoid a crash, the Obama administration and any future administration/Congress will not want to be seen as limiting access to higher education so they will further subsidize, like government did did with housing, student loans that will be even larger and that will have even lower returns than they do today, just like with housing. Eventually, no amount of subsidizing will push so many people into something with not only a net negative return, but a very large net negative return.

So we can make life better and have better jobs if we stop having policies that create malinvestment. Low interest rates have caused too much money to go into mortages and other very long term investments, worse yet, those interest rates are artificial and unsustainable. If there were no Central Bank and interest rates would accurately reflect the amount of capital in the world (capital is basically all wealth produced, minus all private and public consumption, what remains is investable, extra wealth), the rate would be higher and less money would go into mortgages and more money would go to firms that would buy more capital (things like new tools, equipment, computers and other inputs to production) that would enhance worker productivity and when worker productivity increases wages tend to rise and unemployment decreases. Prices in general and interest rates in particular need to be allowed to float in order to better allow siganls to be sent to people, households, firms and maybe even governments and scarce resources can be more widely invested, used and consumed and that would improve quality of life for ordinary people.

We do live i nworld of increasin geconoic change and that makes in encumbent upon people and governments to give people a chance to have more financial securit yand be able to change career paths and/or augment existing skills. Individuals, who are able to do so, should consider actually saving money, if people in China, who make $3,000 or $4,000 can put away 10% to 20% of their income, Americans who make a multiple of that should be able to put away 10% of their income and have at least a few months living expenses for times when they have to have tehir hours cut or even loss their jobs.

Government can help by providing unemployment benefits and subsidies for job and career training, as they do now. Beyond that the Government should use the very powerful force of taxation and tax exemption to encourage and incentivize private saving (actually it does now but mostly for retirement, it should give similar tax shelter status to people who set up a rainy day fund as it gives to those who save for retirement). There should also be efforts to take away the tax exempt status given to employer provided payments on health insurance premiums for employees (Candidate John McCain wanted that in 2008 and Candidiate Obama opposed it but then made it part of his health care reform legislation, the fact that some people get high end, low deductible insurances means an artificially high demand for health care by some and higher health care costs and very high out of pocket costs for the uninsured and rising premiums for the insured). 

The problem with government policy and American society and household budgeting is that almost everything is based on the assumption that some will graduate high school or college and will never be unemployed for more than a few weeks until they retire in their sixties. Households and government policy have assumptions that you will have four decades of no prolonged periods of unemployment, that is foolish. I believe that in a very dynamic and market oriented economy (right now we have a static economy with some sectors highly driven by market forces and some driven mostly by government fiat), the average worker will make more money and have a better standard of living over a life time. A robust and quickly changing, information driven economy will give people richer and fuller lives but there will be fewer jobs that involve large doses of menial and manual labor in exchange for an equal measure of strong job security) but that same person will face longer periods of unemployment in exchange for greater levels of wealth over a lifetime. Long term gain can and does have serious short term costs, they is no avoiding that fact.

In short, while there is no simple solution to economic uncertainty, the best, in terms of policy is two pronged. One is to allow firms and production to be flexible, dynamic and able to get financing for sudden changes that could or potentially could increase productivity and wages. At the same, have a public safety net and use tax policy to encourage households to save for and to respond to the short term setbacks and loses, that are associated with any economy that is not static and stagnant.





 

Damn dude, your walls of text are extremely annoying. I know you do it as a display of your  economic/financial "acumen", but you could easily convey the same amount of information in a more concise manner. Stop writing these damn mini-dissertations. Yes I'm mad.

 

[Betonblck]

Originally Posted by Caerus

At this point, has the need for Education risen or fallen now in the U.S.?

I've heard mixed responses...

Risen, while Republican/Conservative politicians want to cut education so that poor people stay stupid and stay voting Republican.  They want more money for prisons and senseless wars and cuts to education. 

 

[Betonblck]

Originally Posted by Caerus

At this point, has the need for Education risen or fallen now in the U.S.?

I've heard mixed responses...

Risen, while Republican/Conservative politicians want to cut education so that poor people stay stupid and stay voting Republican.  They want more money for prisons and senseless wars and cuts to education. 

 

[elderwatsondiggs]

Originally Posted by rashi

Originally Posted by ElderWatsonDiggs

Originally Posted by DJprestige21

OH WORD?

Bull Mother-effing s**t. We have the best military and defense infrastructure by a longshot.

That "defense" work great on 9/11/2001.

No defense infrastructure is %100 impervious to attack. You aren't in the loop, so you wouldn't even know how many attacks that would have possibly been more devastating than 9-11 that were rooted out before they had a chance to be executed. Nice try though.

 

[elderwatsondiggs]

Originally Posted by rashi

Originally Posted by ElderWatsonDiggs

Originally Posted by DJprestige21

OH WORD?

Bull Mother-effing s**t. We have the best military and defense infrastructure by a longshot.

That "defense" work great on 9/11/2001.

No defense infrastructure is %100 impervious to attack. You aren't in the loop, so you wouldn't even know how many attacks that would have possibly been more devastating than 9-11 that were rooted out before they had a chance to be executed. Nice try though.

 

[Betonblck]

Originally Posted by ElderWatsonDiggs


Tony Starks,

Defense is probably the most important aspect for us as a nation. What people fail to realize that our very disproportionate military expenditure serves just as much as a deterrent as the threat of the actual deployment of such weapons. Laymen's terms: The fact we have such capability and infrastructure in and of itself is reason enough not to really mess with the US...in a symmetrical aspect at least. Asymmetrically, well we are working on that threat.

Whats a bigger threat? Some tiny country a billion miles away with no nuclear weapons or people in my city who can't find a job that are willing to rob and kill for cash. 

 

[Betonblck]

Originally Posted by ElderWatsonDiggs


Tony Starks,

Defense is probably the most important aspect for us as a nation. What people fail to realize that our very disproportionate military expenditure serves just as much as a deterrent as the threat of the actual deployment of such weapons. Laymen's terms: The fact we have such capability and infrastructure in and of itself is reason enough not to really mess with the US...in a symmetrical aspect at least. Asymmetrically, well we are working on that threat.

Whats a bigger threat? Some tiny country a billion miles away with no nuclear weapons or people in my city who can't find a job that are willing to rob and kill for cash. 

 

[elderwatsondiggs]

Originally Posted by cguy610

Originally Posted by ElderWatsonDiggs


Tony Starks,

Defense is probably the most important aspect for us as a nation. What people fail to realize that our very disproportionate military expenditure serves just as much as a deterrent as the threat of the actual deployment of such weapons. Laymen's terms: The fact we have such capability and infrastructure in and of itself is reason enough not to really mess with the US...in a symmetrical aspect at least. Asymmetrically, well we are working on that threat.

Whats a bigger threat? Some tiny country a billion miles away with no nuclear weapons or dudes in my city who are more interested in pop-locking and doing the dougie instead of learning to defend themselves and making themselves less susceptible to petty street crimes?

J/k cguy610.

Real answer is this. You are confusing national defense with economy and law enforcement. No matter what's going on our national defense must be robust.

 

[elderwatsondiggs]

Originally Posted by cguy610

Originally Posted by ElderWatsonDiggs


Tony Starks,

Defense is probably the most important aspect for us as a nation. What people fail to realize that our very disproportionate military expenditure serves just as much as a deterrent as the threat of the actual deployment of such weapons. Laymen's terms: The fact we have such capability and infrastructure in and of itself is reason enough not to really mess with the US...in a symmetrical aspect at least. Asymmetrically, well we are working on that threat.

Whats a bigger threat? Some tiny country a billion miles away with no nuclear weapons or dudes in my city who are more interested in pop-locking and doing the dougie instead of learning to defend themselves and making themselves less susceptible to petty street crimes?

J/k cguy610.

Real answer is this. You are confusing national defense with economy and law enforcement. No matter what's going on our national defense must be robust.

 

[Betonblck]

Originally Posted by ElderWatsonDiggs

Originally Posted by cguy610

Originally Posted by ElderWatsonDiggs


Tony Starks,

Defense is probably the most important aspect for us as a nation. What people fail to realize that our very disproportionate military expenditure serves just as much as a deterrent as the threat of the actual deployment of such weapons. Laymen's terms: The fact we have such capability and infrastructure in and of itself is reason enough not to really mess with the US...in a symmetrical aspect at least. Asymmetrically, well we are working on that threat.

Whats a bigger threat? Some tiny country a billion miles away with no nuclear weapons or dudes in my city who are more interested in pop-locking and doing the dougie instead of learning to defend themselves and making themselves less susceptible to petty street crimes?

J/k cguy610.

Real answer is this. You are confusing national defense with economy and law enforcement. No matter what's going on our national defense must be robust.

You got me. 

 

[Betonblck]

Originally Posted by ElderWatsonDiggs

Originally Posted by cguy610

Originally Posted by ElderWatsonDiggs


Tony Starks,

Defense is probably the most important aspect for us as a nation. What people fail to realize that our very disproportionate military expenditure serves just as much as a deterrent as the threat of the actual deployment of such weapons. Laymen's terms: The fact we have such capability and infrastructure in and of itself is reason enough not to really mess with the US...in a symmetrical aspect at least. Asymmetrically, well we are working on that threat.

Whats a bigger threat? Some tiny country a billion miles away with no nuclear weapons or dudes in my city who are more interested in pop-locking and doing the dougie instead of learning to defend themselves and making themselves less susceptible to petty street crimes?

J/k cguy610.

Real answer is this. You are confusing national defense with economy and law enforcement. No matter what's going on our national defense must be robust.

You got me. 

 

[elderwatsondiggs]

^^^^ Good to see we still have a few NT'ers who can roll with a joke. But I do agree that we must get our economy in order somehow (I don't have any answers, I'm not well versed on economics), because as people get more desperate, things tend to get worse. And a Tomahawk aint gonna do it.

 

[elderwatsondiggs]

^^^^ Good to see we still have a few NT'ers who can roll with a joke. But I do agree that we must get our economy in order somehow (I don't have any answers, I'm not well versed on economics), because as people get more desperate, things tend to get worse. And a Tomahawk aint gonna do it.

 

[ooiron manoo]

It's nice to puff our chest as a country to "protect" the country from the outside.

It's crumbling from the inside, how will those in the military feel when the day comes in which our "defense" is deployed against it's own people?